I'm all for Starling Marte's development, of course. He's young, 22, and loads of potential. He's done pretty well against AA pitching, with a small sample size.

I'm not a fan, at this point, of one or the other. I feel like I'm in an Orwell novel.

At some point we have to make a stand and not be afraid of past deals gone wrong. The team is in a different situation right now, lots of young players on team, lots of young prospects in the minors, drafting pretty well, good field manager. Small market teams, every move you make is enormous and subject to going sour. Just as much, subject to working out well. Most haven't worked well for the Pirates in the recent past, but at some point, that has to turn around.

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Playing football was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. If I could go out today and suit up, I would do it.--Jack Butler

I'm not advocating that the Pirates trade McCutchen at the first sign of Marte being a legit major leaguer.

Just that if Marte pans out and McCutchen wants to price himself out of town, he would be tradeable. And that's obviously, a great thing.

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And then you take a good look around and they stole your rock n roll
And once it's gone you'll never get it back

Giving Cutch a long term deal wouldn't make him any less tradeable. That can be an option whether they lock him up or not. This all comes down to whether or not the Bucs are willing to pony up the cash necessary to buy out any of his free agent years. And frankly this whole Marte as a replacement for Cutch irritates me. First off, what is wrong with having two dynamic players? Secondly, I have serious doubts that Marte is going to ever measure up to Cutch. He doesn't have anything close to major league plate awareness. The guy has almost 1600 minor league plate appearances and he has drawn less than 75 walks. With that kind of pitch selection he is going to get eaten alive when he starts seeing big league quality pitching.

I agree with you complete, I was just throwing it out there as an option.

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And then you take a good look around and they stole your rock n roll
And once it's gone you'll never get it back