Rafael Devers trade briefly bails out Pirates, Bob Nutting for all the wrong reasons

The Pittsburgh Pirates and the rest of Major League Baseball took a back seat to the biggest news in the baseball world on Sunday as the Boston Red Sox made the shocking move to trade three-time All-Star Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants.

In most cases, it's practically impossible for Pirates fans who have lived through the Bob Nutting era to feel any sort of sympathy for other MLB fanbases. But this ... yeah. This is really bad.

Nutting's refusal to open his wallet and his ineptitude when it comes to hiring competent front office staff are usually the biggest culprits in the Pirates' organizational failures. But the Red Sox let their own egos stand in the way of success – not just Devers' ego in his refusal to change positions, but Craig Breslow and John Henry's egos that caused them to lie to Devers about their offseason plans in the first place.

John Henry takes heat off Bob Nutting, Pirates after Red Sox's ridiculous Rafael Devers trade

Even the Pirates would never do something this bad. They wouldn't dump a franchise player in what is supposed to be their window of contention. (To do that, they would have to spend the necessary funds to have elite talent and be in a window of contention in the first place, but that's beside the point.)

In 2018, when the Pirates traded Andrew McCutchen – ironically, to the Giants – he was more or less their Devers equivalent (minus the World Series championship, of course). That's how the fanbase felt, anyway. They were betrayed and resented the move.

The difference, though, is that the Pirates were not even remotely close to contending at the time that they traded McCutchen. They did it when they could get a good return for him – a return that included Bryan Reynolds, in fact – and they clearly didn't destroy their relationship with their franchise player in the process, considering he returned five years later in free agency.

Don't get it twisted – Nutting is still a terrible owner who shows no sense of urgency in building a winning franchise. But it's hard to imagine him treating a player, much less a face of the franchise, the way the Red Sox treated Devers. Let's just hope if the Pirates ever acquire a player of that magnitude again, they learn from Boston's detrimental blueprint.

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