Where is the Pirates Offense

If Clint Hurdle needed to make a case to Neal Huntington to add a player to the team this year to improve the Pittsburgh Pirates chances in the second half this season all he would need is 3 DVDs.

What would those DVDs contain? They would contain the offensive highlights/lowlights from each of the 3 games against the Cincinnati Reds. I may be mistaken but the closest the Pirates came to a home run in the series was Andrew McCutcheon's double off the wall in yesterday's game.

Clint has done an great job in taking this offense and managing to score runs and obviously win games, but they are sorely lacking power. I hear you out there saying tell us something we don't know. What can the Pirates do? I think they need to trade Lyle Overbay back to his former team in Milwaukee for Prince Fielder. Just kidding. I would not want another slow first baseman who is going to get cut down at home in a big playoff game. It doesn't matter how many home runs he hits, Fielder is huge and he's going to break down sooner rather than later. Not to mention the Brewers will not trade him while they're in the playoff chase and to another team in their division.

What else can they do? They have a glut of outfielders who are all ok, but except for Cutch, none have an extremely high ceiling. The first tier is Andrew McCutcheon and Jose Tabata. Tabata has not proven anything as of yet, but his potential talent ceiling is slightly lower than McCutcheon's. Andrew's proving his talent, Tabata has a way to go. So hang onto those two.

From there it's just a mishmash. The next outfielder who has shown some flashes is Alex Presley. He is lightning in a bottle right now. Starting off his major league career he has been a very good leadoff hitter and has hit for a high average. The home runs don't look like they are in his future. He's a contact hitter and an aggressive baserunner. That has really helped the Pirates out to this point in his brief stop in the Major Leagues. But, we've seen many many outfielders start out just this same way and fizzle after their first year. Where are you Tike Redman?

The rest are Garrett Jones, Xavier Nady.. I mean Paul. By the way, do the Pirates just like guys named Xavier, or what's the story with that. What are the chances they'd get two Xaviers within 5 years. Matt Diaz and Steve Pearce round out the rest of the outfielders.

The ideal option would be to pick up a proven player such as Andre Ethier in Los Angeles, Hunter Pence from the Astros, or Carlos Beltran from the Mets. If the Pirates could get one of or a combination of these guys for Jones, Diaz, Pearce, Presley, Paul that would be fantastic. The only prospect out of that crew is Presley though. The other guys have shown what they have and probably wouldn't tempt anyone to trade for them. Presley is at the height of his value as a prospect right now though. As I said, he is hitting well, played good defense and has been a spark plug getting things started.

The Buzz has heard the rumors circulating that the Mets are willing to give up Carlos Beltran for little to nothing, and pay part of his remaining salary too. There was a definite hesitancy about that with me because of the perceived lack of production from him. Once I dug into his stats though, I was quite surprised. He is hitting .290 this year with 15 home runs. You can look at his some of his other stats to see he is still performing very well, especially the .911 OPS (On base plus slugging).

The other 2 guys are younger than Beltran, but the Pirates have another guy in the pipeline that appears to have all the tools and will probably be in Pittsburgh next year in Starling Marte. Because the Pirates are in the race this year renting a Beltran would be a perfect fit. Take Beltran for the rest of this year, hopefully he'll add some punch to the offense, then get Marte into the fold next year. If he's not ready at the beginning of the year you've still got plenty of outfielders to hold down the fort til he arrives.

By the way just looking at Ethier and Pence's stats. Ethier's hitting .299 with 9 HRs, 44 RBIs and a .817 OPS. Pence is hitting .316 with 11 HRs, 61 RBIs and a .845 OPS.

I like Beltran's 15 Home Runs compared to the other 2. I think the Astros and the Dodgers would want a lot more in return for their players than the Mets for Beltran though.

So, where is the Pirates Offense? Maybe it is in New York, Houston, or Los Angeles. We will see.