This won’t be a long post, just something I thought was worth sharing.

This from Tim Dierkes over at MLBtraderumors.com.. 

“Joe Smith of the St. Petersburg Times says the Rays’ trade talks for an outfielder ’should intensify in the next couple days.’ Smith suggests the Mariners, Dodgers, and Angels as teams with outfielders to spare. He believes the Rays might part with an out of options pitcher like Edwin Jackson or Jason Hammel. Hat tip to DRays Bay, which speculates on Andre Ethier, Delwyn Young, Reggie Willits, Juan Rivera, and Jeremy Reed as possibities. The Halos seem like a pretty good match.Additional outfielders the Rays could consider: Matt Murton, Gabe Gross, Xavier Nady, Jason Bay, Jay Payton, Coco Crisp, Shin-Soo Choo, David Dellucci, Randy Winn, Dave Roberts, Kevin Mench, Nathan Haynes, Nelson Cruz, and Ryan Freel. Whew.”

Note the amount of names on that list of available outfielders. If your curious why Huntington and the Pirates FO haven’t been making moves, this is probably the best answer we can give you. At this point, it looks like more teams are trying to sell outfielders than buy them. This is a lousy, lousy market to be selling outfielders in, and it would make sense that the Bucs can’t get what they deem to be fair return for the X-man or Bay.

Granted, I’d take Nady and Bay over just about everybody there (with the exception of Crisp and maybe Murton, depending upon team need), but why sell the farm for a risk like Bay when you can get Murton or Mench for way cheaper?

Five years ago, trading away a Nady or a Bay would have been cake, if nothing else because teams just hadn’t realized that players in their late 20’s weren’t worth the increasing asking prices.

Not good news for the Pirates FO, and not good news for those of us pushing for a fire-sale of sorts.