At the end of August last year I wrote a story about the number of young players the Pirates had acquired via trade, and recently drafted, while looking ahead to bigger and better things. One year later, the song remains the same in Pittsburgh, coming off of a very active month in July in which they traded off half of their big-league roster for younger, cheaper (and hopefully more talented) players.

Here’s the part that sounds like a broken record: The Pirates haven’t finished with a winning record since the 1992 season, and it would appear that their fans are going to have to be even more patient if they expect that trend to be broken anytime soon. They currently have the third-worse winning percentage of all of baseball, meaning they once again will be making their first draft selection among the first three to five picks next June, a position they are becoming far too familiar with.

I’m sure by now you have seen the projected roster of players the Pirates have traded over the last two seasons. If the stars had aligned better for the Pirates, all of that talent may have led to more wins, but this is a team that has been littered with bad decisions and even worse luck.

They got started early this year, trading Nate McLouth to the Braves in early June for a trio of prospects. Eric Hinske was shopped to the Yanks at the end of the month for a pair of prospects, and then they made an interesting swap of young players with the Nationals in which outfielders Nyjer Morgan and Lastings Milledge traded addresses.

As the trade deadline approached at the end of July, Adam LaRoche was sent to Boston, Ian Snell and Jack Wilson went to Seattle, Freddy Sanchez was dealt to San Francisco, and a pair of lefties, John Grabow and Tom Gorzelanny, were sent to the Cubs. 11 players came in return for this sextet, highlighted by speedy centerfielder Gorkys Hernandez, slugging catcher/first baseman Jeff Clement and former Aflac All-American hurler Tim Alderson.

The team hopes this wave will supplement the young talent the team already has been slowly but surely developing. Andrew McCutchen is being given the opportunity to show his considerable promise in the big leagues, right-hander Brad Lincoln is healthy and was rewarded with a successful 13-game stint at AA with a bump to AAA, while Pedro Alvarez is seeing the ball extremely well at AA and seems poised to start making contributions for the big-league club at some point next year.

For this year’s draftees, I have previously noted that I’m not especially opposed to the Pirates drafting Tony Sanchez fourth overall, even if it does seem like a pretty big reach for a player that did not project to go in the first half of the first round. Sanchez could make the Pirates look awfully smart if he continues to build on a baseball career that has been trending upward the past several years.

They’re more than making up for savings taking Sanchez by signing later round picks to record-breaking deals. Sixth rounder Zack Von Rosenberg and eighth rounder Colton Cain each received seven figures recently, while fourth rounder Zack Dodson received second-round money.

Heading into the weekend prior to the August 17 signing deadline, the Pirates have all of their picks taken in the top 11 rounds under contract, and were expected to be one of the teams (and possibly the frontrunner) prepared to sign dynamic Dominican infielder Miguel Angel Sano prior to Major League Baseball stepping in to investigate his age/identity.

So, they are taking the right steps to improve the club moving forward, but they need to make sure they are making the right decisions. While the results are encouraging so far, Tony Sanchez can’t get thrown onto the “whoops” list joining Bryan Bullington and Daniel Moskos when B.J. Upton and Matt Wieters could already be on the team. That may be an unfair burden for the young man, but the overall success of this next wave of talent may be on his shoulders.

Signing deadline

The aforementioned signing deadline comes this Monday, with an astonishing number of draftees still not signed, including 18 of the 32 first-round picks. While we are going to see many of these players sign between now and then, we also are likely to see a surprise or two go unsigned and either go to college or re-enter next year’s draft in hopes of improving their potential riches.

Stephen Strasburg is obviously the biggest name of this group, and I’m sure Nationals fans are getting nervous not having him in the fold, even if it does seem likely they will have the first overall pick in the 2010 draft as well. However, that’s not necessarily a good thing, since the projected top pick available for next year, Bryce Harper, is also represented by Scott Boras and won’t come much easier than Strasburg if all goes as expected between now and next June.

This past year we saw a couple of premium draft-eligible pitchers from the 2008 draft re-enter the 2009 draft to improve the overall talent base. Those two pitchers, right-handers Aaron Crow and Tanner Scheppers, are actually still unsigned and seemingly don’t have any negotiating power left.

And much of what is happening is posturing. With Major League Baseball pointing to a struggling economy and teams being asked to hold firm to the recommended signing bonuses, the players are calling their bluffs, insistent that the money they are offered should continue to go up, not down, from one year to the next.

This continues to stress the importance of having the draft properly addressed in the next collective bargaining agreement. That may not be an easy task for those hoping that MLB overall addresses the competitive unbalance in baseball, especially since prior attempts to fix the draft have been virtually ignored.

It would seem fairly obvious that some kind of structured bonus system would be a no-brainer for baseball, similar to pre-determined slot values other major sports institute for their drafts, and not just the recommended values in baseball. But like anything else, it is an area that would need to be bargained, and the owners don’t have much to work with since time and time again it is the players that end up winning these battles.

The thoughts and opinions listed here do not necessarily reflect those of Perfect Game USA. Patrick Ebert is affiliated with both Perfect Game USA and Brewerfan.net, and can be contacted via email at pebert@brewerfan.net.