It has been a month since the Nationals and the Pittsburgh Pirates swung a four-player trade with a bigger-than-expected effect on both franchises.
Washington’s move for outfielder Nyjer Morgan and left-handed reliever Sean Burnett comes under greater scrutiny this weekend as the two teams meet for the first time since the July 1 deal.
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The Nats have spent the entire season in Major League Baseball’s basement. They even lost three games out of four at home to the Pirates during an excruciating series in May. But the team Washington is playing this weekend at PNC Park looks nothing like the one it met just over two months ago.
Instead, Pittsburgh has decided to finally embrace a full, painful rebuild. With the clubhouse in revolt since a May trade of veteran outfielder Nate McLouth, Pirates general manager Neal Huntington has traded six veteran players in the last week alone — four of them in the majors and two at Triple-A Indianapolis — and eight of the nine starters from Opening Day in 2008 are gone save catcher Ryan Doumit.
“They’re the laughingstock of baseball right now,” Burnett told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Thursday. “They’ve gotten rid of everybody. They won’t keep anybody around. Some of the guys here, they don’t understand it, but Nyjer and I knew this was coming.”
Since the deal, Morgan is batting .404 — with 40 hits in 99 at-bats entering play Friday night — and has given Washington the defensive presence in center it sorely lacked. Burnett has provided steady production in relief with a .75 ERA since the trade and 2.24 on the season.
On the other side, the Nats are seeing a pair of familiar faces in Lastings Milledge and Joel Hanrahan — their part of the trade. Milledge began the season as Washington’s Opening Day centerfielder and leadoff batter. Within a week he had been demoted to Triple-A. Within a month he had broken the ring finger on his right hand and went on the disabled list. Fed up, Nats general manager Mike Rizzo made the trade.
But Milledge has progressed quickly since the deal, earning International League player of the week honors at Indianapolis and earning a callup on Friday, where he started in left.
Hanrahan, meanwhile, pitched just nine innings in July, allowing three earned runs with 10 hits and a walk for the Pirates. He did earn a win, however — for the Nats after the trade. When Washington won a game against Houston earlier this month that had been suspended in early May, Hanrahan was the pitcher of record. But his ERA has dropped only from 7.71 with Washington to 6.70 with Pittsburgh.
