Column: Huntington has made the stupid smart move

Remember that episode of Spongebob Squarepants with the Alaskan bull worm? 

No, you’re not going crazy, and the above sentence — the beginning of a sports column — asks about a Nickelodeon cartoon.

In case you don’t know about the episode: A furious, elephantine worm threatens to destroy Bikini Bottom while the townsfolk gather at the Krusty Krab, conjuring ways to save the community. 

Right now, Pittsburgh is Bikini Bottom, and the Alaskan bull worm is college football. With the Panthers moving to the ACC, the football season is likely to be arduously enduring, its onset nonetheless imminent. So I hope you’ve gathered here with me, like Bikini Bottom’s denizens, looking for a solution to sidestep this forthcoming beast.

The bull worm’s victims state their losses, one of which includes a pair of kids’ homework (making this creature even more like the college football season). There’s a parking official ticketing a car parked too closely to a fire hydrant. When the bull worm devours the car, the officer moves the hydrant closer to another car and still writes a ticket.

This storyline is more lifelike than I initially thought.

But, if you recall, Patrick Star steals the spotlight during the townspeople’s meeting, suggesting: “We should take Bikini Bottom and push it somewhere else!”

The raucous crowd silences and a perplexed, yet optimistic, note chimes over the scene. Squidward breaks the silence to say: “That idea might just be crazy enough … to get us all killed!”

Pirates general manager Neal Huntington, by trading two prospects for Marlon Byrd and John Buck on Tuesday, is Partick Star.

It’s almost as though Huntington knew football season — college and professional — was closing in, a time when Pittsburgh is used to tuning out the Pirates. Since both the Panthers and Steelers could realistically struggle at their respective levels, Huntington saw a moment to hush the clamoring of how to avoid this doomed reality.

In the cartoon, Sandy Cheeks steps forward and decides to stop the bull worm head-on, her brass met with immediate crowd approval and support.

“Go get ’em, Sandy! We have the utmost confidence in you,” Mr. Krabs says, his optimism seemingly bounding.

Once she leaves, though, Mr. Krabs turns directly to Patrick and asks, “Now what was that idea of yours?” The next scene shows the creatures pushing the town.

Huntington’s trade was stupid, but it was something he had to do. Pittsburgh has been abysmal in right field: Pirates stationed there have posted a lower collective on-base plus slugging percentage (.686) than that of any team in the National League. So with fewer than 30 games remaining on the schedule and the Pirates trailing St. Louis for first place by a slim margin, Huntington had to do something to upgrade the productivity at that position.

Byrd is an upgrade, albeit under the condition that this is the best professional season of his life. He’s been worth four wins above replacement-level players, by Baseball-Reference.com’s numbers, and his .852 OPS is the fourth highest among all right fielders. His only other similarly successful season was in 2008, when he played for the Rangers in a hitter-friendly home park.

But Byrd is thriving at age 36, and is by no means anything other than a stopgap until prized prospect Gregory Polanco, who is currently mashing at Double-A, is ready — presumably by sometime next year.

Buck, 33, is nothing but extra catching depth for the Pirates’ late-season games. He’s insurance if Russell Martin or Tony Sanchez suffers an injury.

Now here is why it’s a poor trade.

The Pirates gave second baseman Dilson Herrera and reliever Vic Black in exchange for the two former Mets and $250,000.

Herrera, 19, has held his own in a league where most players are older than him, all while playing a premium offensive position. He’s about the 10th best prospect in the Pirates’ farm system, but the organization has depth at second base in guys like Jordy Mercer and Alen Hanson.

Black, meanwhile, has seen limited time in Pittsburgh this year as a low-leverage reliever. His upside, however, is that of a dominant late-inning, back-of-the-’pen pitcher, featuring high-90s heat and pure strikeout stuff.

Though neither player projects to become a perennial all-star, Herrera and Black have a great shot at becoming productive major leaguers. Black is ultimately a reliever and Herrera is far from the bigs.

The Pirates need wins now, so they paid a fairly steep price for a 36-year-old in the late stages of a career year and a backup catcher. Both players are upgrades in the present, but provide no value beyond the next couple months. 

It’s a dumb trade in the abstract, but it’s one that helps Pittsburgh immediately — if for no other reason than that it might keep the Pirates relevant later into the fall and ease the stress of a futile football year.

The transaction was dumb enough that it just might work, kind of like pushing Bikini Bottom away from the bull worm’s path of destruction. 

In the Spongebob episode, Sandy and Spongebob evade the worm, leading it to fall off a cliff — right to where the town was pushed. Whether or not a moribund football season still falls as heavily as usual on the city of Pittsburgh, though, will be determined by the success of Huntington’s questionably brilliant plan.