Pittsburgh Pirates Trade Deadline: Best Reliever Option

The Pittsburgh Pirates

GM Neal Huntington should be a very busy man the next few days in Arizona.  Huntington and his scouts have done another solid job of constructing a bullpen this season.  As the countdown ticks away toward the July 31 trade deadline, we have been taking a look around the majors for possible acquisitions.

But how about looking inside the Pirates system?

Bryan Morris was ranked by Baseball America as the sixth best prospect in the Pirates system coming into 2011.  He flamed out as a starter for now after a rough outing on June 14.

Since moving to the bullpen, Morris has pitched 13.2 innings at AA Altoona and allowed seven hits, no earned runs, no home runs, three walks and he has struck out 17 bad guys.

In a sidebar of an article posted by Rob Biertempfel yesterday, we saw an interesting quote from Pirates GM Neal Huntington about a relief acquisition:

"Right-hander Bryan Morris, who last month was converted to a reliever at Double-A Altoona, might be a candidate for a bullpen job with the Pirates later this season. “One of our scouts came forward and said our best bullpen acquisition might be Bryan Morris,” Huntington said. “(He has) two power breaking balls, 93-97 mph. If he continues to pitch well, he could put himself in the middle of our bullpen picture.”"

Remember watching the game in Washington against the Nationals when the team seemed to run out of effective arms in the bullpen? Bryan Morris could change all of that very quickly.

A scenario like that would fit perfectly into this fairy tale season wouldn’t it?  The one player left in the Pirates organization from the Jason Bay trade gets called up to the bigs…..and pitches well in relief this season.

It could happen.  It probably will happen.

Hell, maybe Morris even gets stretched out and becomes the eventual long man for the Bucs.  But isn’t it nice to know that if Evan Meek doesn’t come back as strong as last season, or if Ross Ohlendorf doesn’t come back fully healthy that there are even more options in the Pirates system?

Sure the Bay trade sucked, but another power arm in the Pirates system to go to as an option is refreshing.

Or maybe he is just trade bait?

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