{"id":26429,"date":"2013-08-31T20:08:07","date_gmt":"2013-09-01T01:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=26429"},"modified":"2013-08-31T21:08:28","modified_gmt":"2013-09-01T02:08:28","slug":"twins-trade-morneauto-pirates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=26429","title":{"rendered":"Twins Trade  Morneau To Pirates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/twonslogo1.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1317\" alt=\"twinslogo\" src=\"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/twonslogo1.gif\" width=\"150\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a>Minneapolis (KCSI-T.V. Sports)\u00a0 &#8211;The Pittsburgh Pirates acquired first baseman Justin Morneau from the Minnesota Twins for outfielder Alex Presley on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Morneau cleared waivers earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m pretty excited,&#8221; Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. &#8220;I talked to Justin on his phone and he is excited and I talked to his former manager, Ron Gardenhire, on the phone and he&#8217;s not excited, though he&#8217;s happy for Justin to have this opportunity. Gardy spoke volumes about Justin&#8217;s approach, intent and conviction to the game. We talked about (Morneau&#8217;s) second half and how he&#8217;s been moving forward and has put himself in a good place.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think he\u2019s found some ways to spark some things offensively in the second half,\u201d Hurdle said.<\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old Morneau hit .259 with 17 homers and 74 RBIs this season for Minnesota and is finishing off a red-hot month in which he smacked nine home runs.<\/p>\n<p>The Pirates will pick up the remaining portion of Morneau\u2019s $14 million salary, estimated at around $2 million. It\u2019s not an insignificant investment for an ownership group that has sometimes shied away from paying the tab for proven players.<\/p>\n<p>Morneau won the 2006 AL MVP award and was one of the best hitters in the game until a concussion knocked him out of action in 2010. Still, he remained one of the cornerstones of the Twins\u2019 clubhouse. His departure is another emotional low point in a disappointing season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minneapolis (KCSI-T.V. Sports)\u00a0 &#8211;The Pittsburgh Pirates acquired first baseman Justin Morneau from the Minnesota Twins for outfielder Alex Presley on Saturday.\u00a0 Morneau cleared waivers earlier this month. &#8220;I&#8217;m pretty excited,&#8221; Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. &#8220;I talked to Justin on his phone and he is excited and I talked to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26429"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26441,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26429\/revisions\/26441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}