Kevin Gorman: Trading Starling Marte might force the Pirates to finally use the R-word

The Pittsburgh Pirates touted their unveiling of new road jerseys at PiratesFest on Friday at PNC Park as “rewriting the script,” which is one way to use an R-word without using the R-word.

Refresh. Recalibrate. Rewrite.

Anything but rebuild.

The Pirates have a new management team attempting to create a new culture while avoiding talk of a teardown at all costs. The uniform rebrand, with Pittsburgh in script across the chest of black and gray jerseys, is a great start as it brings back memories of the Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla teams of the early 1990s.

But it begs this question: Will Starling Marte ever wear them?

While the Pirates didn’t say they would trade Marte, they also didn’t deny it’s a real possibility. They are willing to listen to offers for the center fielder who is their longest-tenured, best all-around and highest-paid player at $11.5 million. The New York Mets and San Diego Padres reportedly are interested.

Marte is the most marquee name missing from PiratesFest this weekend, yet he’s hardly alone. The team’s three highest-paid players won’t attend, as pitcher Chris Archer ($9 million) and right fielder Gregory Polanco ($8.6 million) also will be absent.

That might bring back bad memories for Pirates fans. Andrew McCutchen and Gerrit Cole missed the fan-friendly event in December 2017, a month before both were traded. General manager Ben Cherington, however, said Archer, Marte and Polanco all had reasons to receive excused absences.

Cherington and manager Derek Shelton discussed a future with Archer and Polanco but avoided mentioning Marte by name. Not when I asked Cherington directly about the possibility of trading Marte. Not even when I asked Shelton if he had any names etched into the starting lineup going into spring training.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Josh Bell is probably going to play first base a lot,” Shelton said of the All-Star first baseman who led the club with career highs of 37 home runs and had 116 RBIs last season.

And that was it for the position players.

Where Cherington discussed building a team that has a chance to “play meaningful games in September and October (and) has a chance to sustain winning,” he didn’t go as far as former team president Frank Coonelly and talk about how it’s “too damn long, 40 years!” since the Pirates won a World Series.

That talk was followed by a 93-loss season, which is why the only thing Cherington is willing to promise Pirates fans is the club will strive to be better and work toward building a winner by spending “every kind of resource you can imagine, whether it’s time, energy or dollars.”

Well, maybe two out of three. With a projected payroll of $69 million, Pirates owner Bob Nutting is proving once again that he won’t spend his way to a World Series. So we’re looking at another management team that will put its time and energy into building a winner, one banking on big seasons by Bell and Bryan Reynolds.

“We need more players with more collective upside,” Cherington said. “We are really excited about the players that we have. We are excited about working with our current players to tap into more upside. But we need more of them. And those can come from any direction. It can come from our current minor league players getting better. It can come through the draft. It can come through international scouting. It can also come through trade.”

The hope would be trading Marte — a 31-year-old former All-Star and two-time Gold Glove winner coming off a 23-homer, 82-RBI season in which he slashed .295/.342/.503 — could infuse the team with talent the same way sending McCutchen to San Francisco brought back rookie sensation Reynolds and relief pitcher Kyle Crick.

The Pirates could harken back to Branch Rickey’s infamous retort to Ralph Kiner, as it relates to Marte: We finished last with you. We can finish last without you. Marte has had some magical moments for the Pirates, but he hasn’t led them to a division title, much less a World Series in his eight seasons.

But this begs another question: How does trading Marte make the 2020 Pirates better?

The answer: It doesn’t. There is no addition by subtraction here, unless the return is a starting major league pitcher and a starting major league catcher. But even that would create a crevice in center field, one the Pirates can’t count on Guillermo Heredia to fill.

It’s a trade that would require the Pirates to finally use the dreaded R-word, no matter how you rewrite the script.

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