In the past 363 days, the Pittsburgh Pirates have traded four starting outfielders, 75 percent of their starting infield, their best left-handed setup man, another left-handed reliever, a bench player and their one-time “ace.”

Seven-of-Nine was nice to look at on Star Trek: Voyager. Trading seven-of-nine starting position players in less than a year is not so nice to look at.

But that’s what trader Neal Huntington has done.

He has sent Jason Bay, Nate McLouth, Xavier Nady, Nyjer Morgan, Adam LaRoche, Freddy Sanchez, Jack Wilson, Damaso Marte, Sean Burnett, Eric Hinske and Ian Snell to the four corners of the baseball universe.

In return, he has gotten 21 players to infuse into a minor league system that had fewer prospects for the future than a high school dropout.

In the wake of these deals, the Pirates are officially fielding a minor league team.

Only four players in the Pirates’ lineup in a 1-0 shutout loss to the Giants Wednesday were in the majors when the season started.

Garrett Jones, who no one outside of his home town of Harvey, Ill., had heard of until a month ago, hit cleanup. He also represents 10 of the 32 home runs belonging to Pirates’ hitters on the current roster.

Jones didn’t even get a major league at-bat last season after hitting .208 in 31 games with the Twins in 2007.

That’s your star, Bucco fans.

It’s going to be a long August and September at PNC Park.

The Pirates may need to print a new media guide.

The supplemental biographies the club hands out to the media are going to be four inches thick.

Programs are going to sell like $1 hot dogs the next two months.

And, most likely, the Pirates are going to lose many, many games the next two months.

It’s all in the name of building for the future.

Rebuilding is something the Pirates have plenty of experience with — the Buccos have been rebuilding for 17 years now.

It’s too early to tell if any of these 21 players the Pirates snagged in their large trading net will be keepers, or are thrown back into the baseball sea.

But even if just a third pan out and mature at the same time, fans could look back at the last 363 days and say that was when the franchise corrected its course.