The trade deadline this year is a lot murkier than in recent memory, in large part due to the fact that more teams are in contention. With eight postseason slots per league, there’s a lot more competition to make the postseason, even if some of the contending teams themselves are more or less mediocre.
Finding teams that clearly want to sell in this environment will be difficult, but that’s not the case with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates are bad — they know it, and the league knows it. They will be selling at the deadline, and there’s only one problem with that.