Baseball trade bizarro world: Pirates pay Yankees to take a player

The first major interleague trade of the season happened over the weekend when the Cleveland Indians sent up their white flag and traded their most valuable commodity, versatile veteran Mark DeRosa, to the St. Louis Cardinals.

That was almost expected, as DeRosa had been shopped for weeks. And the Yankees made a move for a similar versatile veteran (yet not as good), acquiring Eric Hinske on Tuesday.

The Yankees are always a buyer in trade talks, so acquiring a veteran bat from a team like the Pittsburgh Pirates is nothing new. But here's what is very weird, and boggles my mind a bit:

The Pirates agreed to give $400,000 to the Yankees to offset Hinske's salary. He's due roughly $800,000 the rest of the season.

Break that down again: The Pittsburgh Pirates, with a payroll of $48.6 million entering the season, are helping pay for a player for the Yankees, who had a payroll of $201.4 million entering the season. Sometimes I think I'll never understand baseball economics. The Yankees, despite their inability to sell those expensive box seats at the new Yankee Stadium, can't possibly lose money with their sweetheart TV deal.

Would have loved to hear that conversation between Yankees GM Brian Cashman and Pirates GM Neal Huntington: "Yeah, Neal, we'd love to have Eric, and those two minor-leaguers sound fine. But you'll have to sweeten the deal a bit. How about an extra $400,000?"

I'd have hung up the phone. But Huntington must have really liked those prospects. It wasn't the only trade the Pirates made on Tuesday, either. They also made a deal to acquire Lastings Milledge of the Nationals. (So Milledge shifts from the Titanic to the Lusitania.)