PITTSBURGH – Has any major league player fallen so far, so quickly as Nate McLouth in recent memory?

Two years ago, McLouth was a 26-homer, 94-RBI guy and the Pirates representative in the All-Star Game. Now he plays for the Triple A Gwinnett Braves, which is where the Atlanta Braves sent him on Tuesday afternoon.

Nobody would have predicted this in spring training. When I spoke with McLouth in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., he sounded quite confident. He had switched to contact lenses, which he said made a noticeable difference. He even took a jab at his former team for its eye examinations, which are pretty standard around the major leagues from what I understand.

Yet McLouth put up numbers that are so godawful that you wonder if somebody else was in his uniform. In 185 at-bats, he hit .168 with three home runs and 48 strikeouts. Since May 18, he had one extra-base hit.

Not only that, but McLouth was as every bit as bad in the field was at the plate, to hear teammate Chipper Jones tell it.

 “The biggest difference I saw was in his defense, to be honest with you,” Jones said to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “Not only did he seem timid offensively, at times he seemed timid on defense. Center field is not a place where you can be timid. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to come get balls. You’ve got to throw to bases. You’ve got to be a force out there.”

In return for McLouth and his $5-million salary, the Pirates received outfielder Gorkys Hernandez, pitchers Jeff Locke and Charlie Morton and a whole lot of flack from the critics.

Morton was the key to the deal, as general manager Neal Huntington and his staff believed he had the potential to be a middle-of-the rotation starter before long. Like McLouth, the 26-year-old Morton has encountered a confidence crisis of his own and been a considerable disappointment this season. After a slow start at Double A Altoona, the 22-year-old Hernandez made substantial progress before he broke his right ring finger the other day. Also 22, Locke made the jump from high Class A to Class AA earlier this month, and he was lights-out in in his first three starts there.

I’m not ready to declare the Pirates as the winner in the deal just yet – at 28, McLouth is too young to write off entirely -- but I like their chances right now.