ST. LOUIS _ When you get baseball writers from all over the county as well as Canada and Japan together at the All-Star Game along with executives and scouts from all 30 major-league clubs, the rumors starting flying.

The Pirates, not surprisingly, are in the middle of most of those rumors.

The most interesting one to pop up Monday during the All-Star media day is the reincarnation of a deal that could have been made at the winter meetings 2005 at Dallas that would have the Pirates sending left-hander Paul Maholm to Toronto for right fielder Alex Rios.

Former Pirates general manager Dave Littlefield turned that trade down then and it will be interesting if current GM Neal Huntington will pull the trigger now. It would certainly be a big roll of the dice but Huntington has shown this season that he isn’t afraid to make moves.

The Pirates’ top priority is finding a right-handed power hitter, who could eventually team with Class AA Altoona left-handed hitting third baseman Pedro Alvarez in the middle of the batting order. Rios is a right-handed bat with some pop but he has never lived up to the vast promise he showed while coming up through the Blue Jays’ farm system.

Rios, 28, has never hit more than 24 home runs in his five full seasons in the major leagues. He has a .262 batting average with 10 homers and 46 RBIs in 88 games this season.

The Blue Jays would have to eat a sizeable portion of Rios’ contract before the Pirates would even consider making this deal. There is approximately $62 million remaining on the seven-year, $69.835-million contract Rios signed prior to last season with a $13.5-million club option for 2015.

Maholm is in the first year of a three-year, $14.5-millon contract with a $9.75-million option for 2012.

Whether the Pirates would want to make this trade on a talent-for-talent basis is question No. 1. Even if that was answered in the affirmative, the bigger question would be if there would be any way the sides could make the money part of a deal work.

If nothing else, it’s certainly an interest rumor to chew on.