Some offseason thoughts

We're a week or so from the annual GM meetings, where Dave Littlefield will undoubtedly be trying to do SOMETHING. So what will he do? It's tough to say right now, but I do have some thoughts at the moment that I wish he'd keep in mind this offseason.

• Right now he should be convincing Mark Redman of the attractiveness of being a free-agent. While it's possible he comes out and has a great April/May next year and we can trade him for something useful, it's also likely that he comes out and sucks something awful and we're stuck with his salary. Hell, even if we can trade him we probably have to hope for Jody Gerut at best. If he opts out it can make things a lot easier and we can give his rotation spot to someone that actually deserves it.
  
• If you're seriously going to put thought into signing someone like Jacque Jones or Preston Wilson, ask yourself if paying them $5 million+ a year is going to get you more production than you could get in right field than you would from Craig Wilson and Nate McLouth. McLouth may not fill the potential we saw in that last month and 2004 might be a flash in Craig's pan, but not everyone is Reggie Sanders just begging to hit .280 with 30 homers and 90 RBIs for a pittance.
  
• Yes, trading a pitcher is tempting, I won't pretend that it's not. Just keep in mind that you have to be careful who you trade. Duke and probably Maholm should be absolutely untouchable. Kip is at his absolute lowest value point. You can trade him now if you want, but if Jim Tracy and Coburn are serious about working with him (and I really do think he can be fixed), you might be better served to wait it out and see if he's not worth something more during the season. The obvious mark for a trade is Perez. Lots of people are excited about the prospects of sending Perez to Cincy for Adam Dunn. We'll pretend for a mintue that could actually happen (I don't know if I'd make that trade if I was Cincy, Perez raises a ton of questions, plus we'll be paying Dunn a bunch of money for those two years), just remember that trading Perez is a double edged sword. If you know something about his health that I don't, by all means do it. If you don't, then don't forget Mark Langston and Mike Campbell like the rest of the world has. They're the guys that the Expos got for Randy Johnson. I'm not saying don't trade Perez, I'm just saying that if you do it, you better do it right because Oliver Perez could be a scary pitcher in this league for years to come.
  

That's all I've really got at the minute. I'll be able to weigh in a little better when we start to know what DL is thinking about doing. Until then, I'm just going to assume he's going to try and trade one of the young pitchers and sign bottom of the barrell outfielders/first basemen that won't be much better than the young guys we have.

More strange happenings

I thought that Oakland's farewell/welcome back of Ken Macha would be the strangest going-on of the offseason. It very well may be, but now at least there is a challenger. Back at the beginning of the month we hired Jim Tracy. Tracy was available because of his disagreements with Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta, who was hired by the team's new owner, Frank McCourt. That's perfectly normal, new owners often bring in new GMs, and more often than not a new GM will want his own manager, someone who views baseball in the same light that they do. Except that now DePodesta's been fired. So what does this have to do with Tracy? Probably nothing, to be honest. Bill Plaschke (who from what I can understand is LAs version of Smizik) will crow about how this is what DePodesta deserved for cutting Tracy free blah blah stat geek blah blah nerd blah blah blah. The truth is, any owner that fires a GM after two seasons, one of which was a division championship and another of which was marred by injuries. The only thing worse than a tightwad owner is a meddling, rich owner who thinks he knows baseball.

Odds and Ends

So baseball is officially over for the year. With no postseason left to talk about, my blogging will probably get a little lighter for the time being. Of course I'll weigh in with opinions about Hot Stove stuff as it happens as well as anything else that pops up into my head to write about during the offseason. I probably won't post every day, but I'd say you can count on at least a few new postings every week. I may also try some cosmetic changes to blog, maybe see if I can make it a little more "Pirate-friendly."

The Pirates announced yesterday that they would be keeping their announcing team the same for next year, meaning that Blass and Wehner got new contracts (their contracts were up, everyone else was signed through 2006). That's generally not a bad thing, as I do like the Pirates announcers, though Blass and Wehner are my least favorites. Blass just has a tendency to not really pay attention to the game at all as it happens while Wehner has some decent things to say, he just has a voice that was made for the telegraph (I can't take credit for that brillant analogy, that was all Rory). He did get better as the year went along so I'm willing to give him another year. As for everyone else, well, Bob Walk knows his stuff, Greg Brown does a great job with play-by-play, and Lanny's voice is still golden as far as I'm concerned (as long as him and Blass are kept apart, that can be painful). Plus, as long as Lanny is still around we can all dream of hearing "The Pittsburgh Pirates have won the World Series, AND THERE WAS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! DOUBT ABOUT IT!!!"

Also in today's news, we decided to let Mesa, Meadows, and White test the free agency waters (read: we don't want them back). Mesa's career has to be over at this point, but Meadows and White will end up somewhere. Meadows was surprisingly not completely awful when you actually break his numbers down, while White had a good ERA but a penchant for letting inherited runners score. Meanwhile, Ryan Vogelsong dances in the streets and Salomon Torres celebrates his return to being the primary set-up man, a role he sort of shared with White last year after battling some injuries.

Potential Free Agents

Here's a list of everyone that can file for free agency this offseason. You'll find no more stellar a list than Brian Meadows, Jose Mesa, Rick White, Mark Redman, and Daryle Ward.

Congratulations to the White Sox

Congrats to the 2005 World Series Champions, the Chicago White Sox. They were the best team all year, and they were far and away the best team in the post-season. They somehow dominated a series that they only outscored the Astros by 6 total runs in (maybe because when you hit as poorly as the Astros you never seem like you're in a game when you're behind). South Side Sox has more, if you're looking for a Chicago perspective.

One other quick note, I was very disappointed in Phil Garner in this series. I've never really been impressed by his game-managing skills, but he was downright awful handling his pitching staff in this series, then ignored that fact and tossed his team under the bus after Game 3 ("I'm very disappointed and frustrated right now" and "We wouldn't have scored if this thing went 40 innings," stuff like that). You can manage poorly and that's fine, but nothing gets to me more than a manager disparraging his team in public. It was disgusting and I'm really going to find it hard to root for Garner after that. I do feel bad for Bagwell and Biggio, though. If anyone deserves to win, it's those two guys.

Things I learned during Game 3

For a 3-0 World Series, every game has been really close. This reminds me of the 2000 Subway Series, the Yankees beat the Mets 4-1 but no one won a game by more than 2 runs. Anyways, throughout the duration of the game I learned a lot of things (instead of Biochemistry, which I was supposed to be learning).

• Not only is FOX shamelessly self-promotional, they keep track of how many times they promote their own shows (it was something like 24 times during the first 12 innings, and by the way, don't forget to check out the new season of 24!).
  
• The Astros offense might be worse than the Pirates. From the bottom of the 9th through the bottom of the 14th, White Sox pitchers walked 8 batters. Keep that in mind when you hear about what a lights out job their bullpen did in this World Series. The truth is, they were awful last night, some of them couldn't throw a strike to save their lives. The Astros offense was just that bad.
• The Florida Panthers have more black players than the Houston Astros (the Pens were on OLN last night). I'm not the only one who noticed, either.
  
• Ozzie Guillen has a much better feel for managing than Phil Garner. Garner couldn't have handled his pitching staff worse last night if he just left Oswalt out there forever... oh, wait, a second. He didn't even bother to visit Oswalt in the middle of the worst inning of his life, 40+ pitches, 5 hits, a walk, a hit batsman, and 5 runs. He just hung him out to dry. He only let Lidge throw 17 pitches when it was obvious he had his stuff back. Pulling Lidge early lead to Ezequiel Astacio pitching in the 14th (where was Backe? If Clemens is good to go for Game 5 he's good to go for Game 4). Astacio is flat out awful, worse than Wandy Rodriguez even. Ozzie, meanwhile, pushed all the right buttons including bringing out Mark Buerhle to get the last out (of course if Houston could hit the ball, it wouldn't look like Ozzie pushed the right buttons at all). Win today has to be the mantra in the playoffs. Garner was too concerned about tomorrow.
  
• I'm the 15th match on Google for the phrase Ezequiel Astacio face disease. I can assure you that the first time that phrase has appeared on this blog is directly above you. I see some strange searches that lead people here, but that one takes the cake.
  
• That "What If" Gatorade commercial with Jordan missing "The Shot", Jeter being a split second slow on "The Flip" and Craig dropping "The Catch" is one of my favorite commercials of the year. So cool, and so much better than Prision Break hype.
  
• Did I mention that McCarver, Chris Meyers, Scooter, "Right Now", Prision Break commercials, and FOX in general drive me insane?
  

The Series: Game 3

If I had to pick one pitcher from either team to start me a game down 0-2 it'd be Roy Oswalt. The way he carried that team in St. Louis in game six of the NLCS after the Pujols game was damn impressive. I do think Bud Selig should keep his hands off when it comes to the roof at Minute Maid (is he going to tell Roger Clemens the roof has to be open if there's a Game 5 and he doesn't want to pitch on his bad hammy in 60 degree weather? No, he's not, so he shouldn't do it now). Bottom line, it's the Astros field and it's called home field advantage for a reason and the 'Stros should be able to do what they want with it. It's amazing how often the MLB manages to stick it's foot in its mouth. Questionable umpiring has had an undeniable affect on this post-season (you know how I feel about the Doug Eddings/Josh Paul play, but you can't deny that the umpiring had an effect on that play even if you think Josh Paul screwed up just as badly like I do) and instead of talking about that all Selig can do is bitch about Milk commercials and make stupid rules about why roofs (or is it rooves?) have to be open. Priorities, Bud, priorities.

On the other hand, as the wonderful Uni-Watch points out, we have a matchup here of two teams that have some of the most fantastically terrible uniforms in the history of the majors in their past. Wouldn't you kill to see the rainbow 'Stros play the 80s ChiSox? Or maybe if Bud wants to mandate that the roof should be open, he should level the playing field by making the White Sox wear shorts (all links from that same Uni-Watch column). Of course the Astros have only marginally tuned down the ridiculousness as they actually wore 5 different uniforms in the first 5 games of the NLCS. People want a salary cap, I think there should a uniform cap, three unis max for each team (let's get rid of those stupid pinstripes here in the 'Burgh).

Anyways, enjoy Game 3 of what's been a very good World Series so far (despite the lopsidedness of the standings at the moment) in one of the stupidest ballparks in the world.

Some Bucco Updates

Looks like I'm a bit behind on Pirate related news here, sometimes being a student by day, Pirate-blogger by night doesn't always mesh well.

In terms of importance, we'll go with the Dave Williams first, as he signed a contract yesterdayish for next year to avoid arbitration in the spring. It's worth about a million and a half, which is fine with me, especially if he's our 4th or 5th starter next year instead of our 2nd or 3rd starter, as he was much of this year. With the signing of Williams though, one has to begin wondering what Littlefield and Tracy have planned for next year's rotation. Zach Duke is a lock and one would think Oliver Perez is as well, barring any setbacks this winter. Paul Maholm will get a long look, but some of his numbers (especially his K/BB ratio) weren't as good as his stellar ERA indicated. I wouldn't be surprised to see him start next year in AAA. Tracy has brought up Kip Wells repeatedly since his hiring, so unless he and Coburn have him slotted for Eric Gagne duty (promising starter with sometimes dominating stuff that simply couldn't put it all together) you have to think he's going to be in the rotation. Ditto for Redman if he picks up that option, Littlefield will want him in the rotation to try and duplicate that start from last year and sell high. So is that where we are right now? Duke, Perez, Wells, Williams, Redman? We can safely say that they're going to screw Snell, Bullington will be hurt, and Burnett and Van Benschoten will at least start in AAA next year, so I can't really see things starting any other way with the rotation, I guess. They may try to trade Kip, but there won't be many takers and like I said above, Tracy seems to have made fixing Kip his own personal crusade. Still, those five names together just don't look very promising, unless Perez and Wells can make a serious return to form. In April we'll still be half a season away from the Duke, Maholm, Burnett, Perez, Van Benschoten rotation that seems to hold so much promise but also seems to always be just out of reach.

We also seem to be having trouble hiring a hitting coach. It's not really that surprising, as soon as we hired Tracy I heard speculation that Wallach wouldn't want to come to Pittsburgh and I don't think anyone could really imagine Robin Ventura as our hitting coach. As Perrotto reports, the next two candidates are in-house, Jeff Manto (our minor league hitting instructor) and Hensley Meulens (Indy's hitting instructor that got a September call-up). If you follow the two links above, you'll see that both played in the majors and neither was known for their hitting. Meulens' nickname is "Bam-Bam" so, as far as I'm concerned, that makes him the favorite.

Also, in the release from Pirates.com that announced the Williams signing, it was also mentioned that Jose Mesa was informed his option will not be picked up for next year. OH HAPPY DAY!!! Coburn gets to test his reputation as a guy that develops closers, but that's besides the point because WE DON'T HAVE TO WATCH MESA NEXT YEAR.

For some other reading, Wilbur Miller grades the depths and ceilings of the minors and it isn't pretty below AAA(here's a hint, there's lots of Fs). Also (and this is really late, I know) Baseball America named its Top 20 prospects in each Minor League. Andrew McCutchen was named the top prospect from the GCL and for everyone back home, Nolan Reimold was named the top prospect from the New York- Penn League. The Eastern League and International League chats involve some talk about Pirate prospects, mostly about how they weren't good enough to make the lists (though there are some exceptions, Doumit, Duke, Bullington, and Maholm all make their respective lists... IL for the first three and EL for Maholm).

Game 2 quick thoughts

Scott Podsednik. Wow. Brad Lidge must be hurt.

On the bright side, we won't have to hear Garner get universally lauded for the mentally challenged move of bringing up Vizcaino to pinch hit with the game on the line in the top of the 9th, then tying the game on a single and a great slide by Chris Burke.

On the other hand, I didn't get what the huge (no pun intended) deal was about Jenks. Yeah, he throws hard, but his numbers this year weren't mind-blowing or anything.

Did I mention Brad Lidge must be hurt? I mean being owned by Jack Wilson is one thing, giving upthat bomb to Pujols is entirely different, but a walk-off to Scott Podsednik? The guy hit ZERO homers this year. I wonder if Lidge is headed into Robb Nen territory.

Also, the Jermaine Dye phantom hit by pitch call in the 7th was a more damaging call than the Doug Eddings/Josh Paul call. Despite Eddings wrong call, Paul could have easily rectified the situation. Awarding Dye first base when the ball CLEARLY hit his bat took things out of the Astros hands and put Konerko up.

The Astros are in pretty deep here, but with a good start by Oswalt and the emotional boost that Clemens "shocking" return in Game 5 will give them, they certainly could sweep at home. I'm looking for 1979 World Series references from Garner and parallels between Clemens mom dying and Chuck Tanner's mom dying any second now.

The Steve Phillips is an idiot meter (before the Series began, Steve-O predicted that no team would score more than 5 runs and more squeezes would be laid down that home runs hit):

• Homers 6, Squeezes 0
• Times teams have scored 5 runs or more: 3 (out of a possible 4, for a whopping 75%)

Gee, I wonder why he's on TV and not still GMing somewhere.

Sorry

Blogger has been going crazy today and I'm not sure why, so there's double posts, posts not showing up, etc. etc.

Game 1

Well, if Game 1 is any indication, we're in for a pretty good series I think. The cold Chicago weather really got to Clemens stiff hammy last night, leading to the first ever World Series appearance by someone with the first name of Wandy. Wandy actually pitched pretty well, giving up only one run. Too bad for him that one run was the deciding homer off the bat of post-season superman Joe Crede (who also turned in no less than three stellar, possibly run saving plays in the field as if to say, "Come on, really, how did you guys give the ALCS MVP to Konerko?"). The game actually came down to the two points I had made before the first pitch (which rarely happens), the Sox bullpen and Bagwell. Chicago's pen was actually quite the opposite of rusty with Cotts and Jenks turning in 5 strike outs in seven batters faced. Jenks helped prove why I was rooting for Ozzie Guillen this whole post-season, so I could watch him do things like signal for Jenks by putting his arms out, then up, signaling for "the big, tall guy" and creating some wonderful not-so-unintentional humor. Jenks came on with runners on first and third (second and third after he allowed second to be taken) and threw absolute laser beams (I think the slowest pitch he threw was 99 mph) past Bagwell, who clearly had no chance of catching up to that kind of heat with his balky shoulder.

Still, the White Sox win was by no means dominant. With a healthy Clemens last night is a different story. The 'Stros have to hope they have a healthy Pettite tonight to even things up (they said his knee was healthy for the NLCS Game 5, I'm not so sure). They lost the first game to the Cardinals too, afterall.

Sorry- this was done at like noon but Blogger freaked out and refused to publish it for some reason. And now I see it's double posted for some reason. I'm just going to pretend like there's nothing happening.

Some pre-Game 1 thoughts

Tonight's game 1 will center on a couple questions, whether Ozzie made a mistake by letting his pitchers throw four complete games and whether Garner is making a mistake letting Bagwell DH.

I don't think the White Sox should worry about too much rest for their starters, unless it's an extreme amount of time rest is generally a good thing for the starters. The question is whether the extreme amount of rest their bullpen has had is too much, and I think it might be. Only one reliever threw at all in the ALCS and that was in Game 1. Before the ALCS they also had a layoff since the swept the DS. That means it's been almost 2 weeks since any White Sox reliever has seen any kind of significant work. I understand that winning games is paramount in the postseason, but it's not like Ozzie has Rick White and John Grabow to choose from in his pen. Jenks, Politte, Hermanson, and Cotts have all been very good this year. I could be completely off base here, but I think it's something to keep in mind (then again with the Astros offense they may not need their pen much).

For the Astros the question comes in Garner's choice of making the emotional move of giving Bagwell the start at DH tonight. Yeah, he's maybe the best Astro ever. Yeah, he and Biggio are the clubhouse leaders of this year. The problem is we're talking about a guy who had a grand total of 7 extra base hits in 100 at-bats this year (.380 SLG). And letting Bagwell DH puts Berkman in left tonight. Is the emotional boost of Bagwell in the lineup worth more than letting Berkman DH and putting the hot-hitting Chris Burke in left field? I guess we'll find out.

And while we're at it, let's clear up some ridiculous things I've been hearing the ESPN "experts" talk about. I guarantee that someone will score more than 5 runs in a game in this series. It's ridiculous to think otherwise. And I also would be shocked if the teams combined for more squeezes than homers. The White Sox hit 200 home runs this year. It may be a pitching dominated series, but this isn't 1912 guys (I'm talking to YOU Steve Phillips, why does ESPN think moron GMs make good TV analysts anyways?).

The WORLD SERIES

I won't lie, I'm excited about this series. I've watched a lot of both teams, and they were the teams I was rooting for in each league. Instead of big bats like last year, we get the big arms this year (which I actually prefer to watch). If we're talking who I'm rooting for here, it's close, but it's the Astros. They have Bagwell and Biggio, they're from the Central (and they aren't the Cards), and of course, they're managed by Ol' Scrap Iron himself, the 2005 incarnation of Chuck Tanner (at least as a manager). Still, the White Sox have Ozzie, and how can you root against Ozzie? And if the Sox win, it would really make Cubs fans angry, that's always fun too. Plus, does anyone really "like" Roger Clemens? Still, the tiebreaker has to go to Houston since their mayor proclaimed this weekend "No Socks Weekend" in which all residents are asked to not wear socks. Which is waaay better than making a stupid bet with the mayor of Chicago resulting in fat old Ed Rendell butchering the National Anthem before a Celtics/Sixers game in a Patriots jersey, of all things. And yeah, if you throw a World Series once, it should probably be at least a 100 year franchise penalty.

So I'm rooting for Houston, but who do I think will win? The two teams are almost carbon copies at this point. Each has a fearsome pitching staff. I know I picked Houston to beat St. Louis because of Pettite, Clemens, and Oswalt, but they aren't as impressive when they're matching up with Buehrle, Garland, Contreras, and Garcia (not to mention El Duque). The Sox pitching performance in the ALCS was something we might never see again, closing with 4 complete game wins. Still, they aren't overworked (I don't think any pitcher threw more than 116 pitches in those games) and they have time to rest up to face off against Houston's big three. But of the big three in the post-season, Oswalt has been fantasic, Clemens has been decent (as a starter), and Pettite hasn't been that great (they lost both of his starts against the Cards, though one of them had something to do with Lidge and that Pujols guy, see, I forget already, told you it wouldn't be the greatest ever if they lost). People have been making a big deal about the advantage Houston has in their ballpark, but honestly, it's a bandbox for both teams. Joe Crede and Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye will be able to hit it into that little box in left too, I swear. The simple fact is, the White Sox are playing practically perfect baseball right now. They closed out the season against an Indians team that HAD to win to get in. They swept them (with their reserves, nonetheless). They moved into the first round against the defending champs with the scariest lineup in baseball, bar none. They swept them too. They moved on to face off against a team that was the hottest team in baseball to close out the regular season (14-2 from September 16th on, then they beat the Yankees in the DS who were probably the second hottest team at that point in the season) and made short work of them too, completely dominating them in a five game series win that saw their pen throw about 8 pitches. That's 9-1 in their last 10 games, all against teams that HAD to win. Houston's pitching is good, and they're peaking at the right time, but I don't think it's enough. White Sox in 6.

It's the Astros

I wanted to put a post up yesterday afternoon about how if the Astros had any chance at all they needed an amazing outing from Oswalt if they were going to have any chance at all. Things that are way beyond my control kept me from getting to my computer yesterday, so you can either take my word for it or you can just think I'm full of crap (which I'm sure some of you do anyways). Either way, it was pretty clear last night why no pitcher in the NL has won more games than Roy Oswalt over the last two years. He placed his hard fastball with laser precision and used it to set up his braking ball when needed, which was rarely. Simply put, no one was beating Roy Oswalt last night. By the time the game got the the 7th inning the Cards were the dead team walking, lead by Jim Edmonds and his Tike Redman impersonation in center field. The Astros needed a start by Oswalt that kept the Cardinals down and let them get a lead, and he did just that. Mulder reverted to last year's second half form and flaked out in the biggest start of his career. It was almost like the pressure of the final Busch Stadium crowd ever was too much on the Cardinals.

After some thought (and some discussion) we came to a simple conclusion, no one could remember many examples of teams bouncing back from a game like Game 5 because when they do, it becomes a footnote of the series. This series will be the Roy Oswalt series, the series in which the Astros finally clinched a pennant, maybe the last stand of the great Cardinals teams of the last two years (there's going to be a lot of turnover there), and the end of Busch Stadium. The Pujols homer because a footnote that only Cardinals fans and die-hard baseball nuts will remember over time.

For some extracurricular reading, the Cardinals fans are very gracious in defeat (both Scott of Cardnilly and lboros of Viva El Birdos) while the Astros fans are just plain excited (Lisa Gray and rastronomicals). Me? I'll certainly be rooting for the Astros. They're from the Pirates division (and aren't the Cardinals) and to be perfectly honest, I want this one for Bagwell and Biggio. I can't think of two other guys who have personified one organization like they have during my lifetime. Will they win? I don't know, I'll probably post a prediction tomorrow (I'm 6-for-6 so far in the playoffs, unless you take away my Astros prediction for more or less bailing on them in the middle of the series).

One quick though on the Pujols homer

People are throwing around words like "Greatest non-World Series playoff homer ever" to describe Pujols homer. I think we need to wait on the hyperbole until the series is over. If the Astros win tomorrow is it greater than the Henderson homer in '86? Nope. Is it greater than David Ortiz's Game 4 homer against the Yankees last year? Nope. If the Cards win the series, then we're talking. We're talking because it would be such a momentum swing against one of the game's best closers, a pitcher that's been almost unhittable in the playoffs the last two years, especially against the Cards. Because everyone expected him to do it and he still did it. But it only goes there if the Cardinals win the next two games.

Did that just happen?

Wow. I still can't describe last nights Cards/Astros Game 5. Being not a huge LaRussa or Cardinals fan and someone that's always begrudgingly admired Biggio and Bagwell, I've been cheering for the Astros this post-season, and especially this series. I like Phil Garner, how can any Pirate fan not? So, I was on the edge of my seat in the 9th inning last night. I seriously think the crowd at Minute Maid was the most excited I've ever seen a group of baseball fans get, at least recently (I remember seeing Joe Carter's homer, but not the fan reaction). When Eckstein punched that single through the infield and took second on catcher's indifference, I started to worry a little bit. Why? Because I was afraid they'd pitch around Edmonds to get to Pujols. Which was just what they did. When Pujols did what he did, it was about as unsurprising as Tommy Maddox doing what he did on Sunday, there was just no avoiding it.

So now the question comes, does momentum exist? I don't see how it can't in this situation. If you're only as good as your next starter, this series is over. Mulder isn't the Mulder of Oakland days and Matt Morris isn't the Matt Morris of a couple years ago. Oswalt and Clemens are both far superior pitchers. But look at some fan reaction. Cards fans here, Astros fans here. Cards fans KNOW their team is winning this series, Astros fans are wondering if Phil Garner should have pinch hit for Pettite in the FOURTH, left Wheeler on the mound instead of bringing Lidge out, and walk Pujols to face to scorching hot Reggie Sanders. Garner's done some stupid things, but those are none of them. This Astros team was built for the playoffs because the simple fact about them was that any of big four could shut you down for 7 innings, and then Lidge would slam the door on the next two if he had too. That's no longer an option. The one thing the Astros knew they could count on, Lidge shutting down anyone in the Cardinals lineup, isn't there. And it's not like he threw a pitch only Pujols could go yard on. That was a fat slider, a pitch anyone hits out of that park.The foundation of this Astros team has been shattered, I'm not sure they can bounce back from that.

The Sports Guy has a great article on the "Stomach Punch Game" here, which is absolutely must read if you have time and can get past all the Boston references. And just remember, the Cubs brought out Kerry Wood after the Bartman game. Did anyone doubt the outcome of that one from the start? No. Eric Neel puts it best in today's installation of Page 2 Second Guessing.

And now they go back to Busch, where the crowd will be out of its head ... and you hate to trot out cliches like "momentum" and such, but there is a psychic toll that comes with a game like this. The Astros players will say they don't feel it, that they will turn the page, and I believe they will, but man, this is the moment in this series when the Astros' history comes into play, when it starts to feel like the club is battling not only the Cardinals but also the franchise's demons. I know that's silly. I know there's nothing to it. I also know the Angels in '86 went to Boston and gacked up their tickets to the Series.

Basically put, no matter how hard they try to turn the page, as soon as things start going right for the Cardinals the thought becomes "Here we go again..." And I promse, things will go right for the Cardinals in the last two games at Busch Stadium. I picked the Astros, but it's a loooong road back from where they put themselves last night.

Odds and Ends

Here's a shocker, Brian Bullington will be out for longer than expected. Raise your hand if you saw that one coming. Raises hand, looks around room, sees many other raised hands.

Also, Seth Stohs of sethspeaks.com has kindly pointed me to an interview he recently did with Minnesota Twins second round draft pick Kevin Slowey, a Pittsburgh native. I think my favorite part was reading about how my school (Duquesne) had no interest in this kid who ended up being a top prospect for Winthrop in South Carolina. It's not like our baseball team couldn't have used the help. Our most famous baseball alumni is Joe Beimel at the moment. Yeah, that Joe Beimel. Anyways, since this guy is only about a year older than me, he's got a lot of the same Pirate memories. His though on the early 90s:

Well, I was still a little dude during the early 1990's, but I do remember the playoff titles and a normal sized Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, and Andy Van Slyke leading the charge. I went to a handful of games each year with my dad and brothers, and the occasional birthday party. I really started going to games a lot during high school with buddies because we could hop on the T (public transit trolley) and be down by the ball park in an hour, no problem. My all time favorite player was, and still is, Andy Van Slyke. I think I still have a few hundred of his baseball cards actually. I was hoping to see him this year when we played his son in Johnson City, but no luck.

Anyone who lists Andy Van Slyke as their favorite player is OK in my book. He then recounts his 1992 playoff memories. I won't reprint that there for anyone that wants to avoid it, but if you want. If you really want to read about a stomach punch game you can hang around for the post that will materialize above shortly. At least it won't involve curse words like S-- B---- or F------- C------.

A team from Chicago... in the World Series?

Well, of all the things I thought I'd see this season, the Chicago White Sox going to the World Series wasn't one of them. I was one of the people that laughed at Ozzie-ball all year, at first saying the Twins would catch them, then chiming in with everyone in the world who thought the Indians were certainly going to catch them down the stretch. Towards the end of the season though, as they played the Indians (I happened to be home that weekend and was able to catch the final two games of their sweep of the Tribe) something dawned on me. All year I didn't want to see the White Sox win because I thought their brand of small ball was useless and futile. I hated hearing people like Joe Morgan tell me that the White Sox were a great team because of all their bunting and hitting and running and stealing. After watching Scott Podsednik in Milwaukee I refused to believe he was that important to anyone. Now, if you read this blog regularly you know I'm not exactly a Beane-nik either (which is a whole different story). I try to not fill this blog with stats and numbers unless I really think they mean something. But watching the White Sox play the Indians it dawned on me that they weren't just a good small ball team, they were a good team, period. They were good at the plate (Konerko might be the best kept secret this side of Jason Bay), their rotation is great (four consecutive complete games, are you serious?), and their good fundamentally(after watching a fundamentally terrible team all year, a good one sticks out like a sore thumb). They don't win because Ozzie bunts and steals until the cows come home, they win because there's nothing that they're bad at and they have a manager that will believe in his guys until the end. That's what Ozzie Guillen brings to the table, unwavering confidence in his players. When everyone from Jayson Stark and Peter Gammons all the way down the totem pole to guys like me are thinking the White Sox are going to blow that lead to the Tribe and miss the playoffs, Ozzie tells reporters that if the ChiSox win the World Series, he might retire. THAT's confidence in your team. The White Sox are going to the World Series, not because of bunts and steals and hit-and-runs, but because they don't have a glaring weakness and they know it, because Ozzie told them they were going to the World Series and every last one of them believed that crazy bastard. While the Red Sox worried about their pitching and their defense, the White Sox hammered them. While the Angels worried about the umpires, the White Sox put up the best pitching performance in years against them. I don't know who's coming out of the NL (as good as the Astros have looked, the Cardinals are a Chris Carpenter gem away from going back home and no one wants to lose the NLCS in the last home game EVER at Busch) but I don't think either team should be happy to know the White Sox are waiting.

Boring roundup stuff

Things have kind of slowed down since we hired Tracy, so I don't have a lot to say. Today in the PG they publish the list of every manager we've hired with prior Major League experience. Danny Murtaugh doesn't count, apparently. Not only is the list not impressive at all, it's also filled with inaccuracies. Like this one:

Donie Bush, 1927-29

Perhaps no manager in history -- other than Clarke -- had as successful a rookie season with the Pirates. He was hired in 1927 and promptly led them to a 94-60 record and a World Series victory over his old team -- the Washington Senators. Pirates record: 246-178.

Who can find the error? The Bucs didn't play the Senators in the '27 Series, they played the Murderers' Row Yankees. And they definitely didn't win. So good luck Jim Tracy, you have Chuck Tanner, Donie Bush, and a bunch of clowns to live up to (OK, Frankie Frisch was alright).

There's also a boring piece about the life of Jim Tracy. I read a couple paragraphs, realized they were talking about Kent Tekulve for no reason I could decipher, and then quit.

Also, a little light has been shed on why Bullington was dropped off of the AFL roster, he needs surgery on his labrum. They make it sound like it's not bad and that he'll be ready for the spring, but those words surgery on his labrum aren't exactly words that excite people. Still, as of now the prognosis isn't bad as the article says he should be throwing by December.

That's all I've got right now. The LCS games haven't been very exciting since the Josh Paul game and my cable has been terrible, so I can barely even seen the games to start with. Still, the White Sox attempt to move on towards the "2 broken curses in 2 years" thing while the Astros are currently going for a strangelhold on the Cards.

Two games in

Two games into each LCS and I haven't changed my feelings about either one. The White Sox are going to take a ton of momentum into Anaheim after that call and I still feel like they're the better team without Colon pitching for the Angels. As for "the call" all I'm going to say is this, even if there was replay I'm not sure there was indisputable evidence to change that call, it was way too tough to tell. By football's standard, the call on the field would stand. As for the whole hand motion thingy, Josh Paul had flipped the ball back to the pitcher before any of it went on behind him (which he couldn't have seen anyways). Did the whole thing look funny? Yes. Should the Angels have known better anyways? Yes. Did Pierzynski do a great job selling it? Sure he did. Do I think there's some vast conspiracy to screw the Angels or that this play proves that baseball's system is seriously screwed up? No. Paul screwed up as bad as Eddings did, that's all there is to it.

As for the NLCS, it's just about how I hoped and thought it would be, dead even. So far the Cards have done what they need to do, take half the games from "the aces" and beat Backe in Game 4. I don't know how much time Reggie's gonna miss, but they're going to miss his bat A LOT if it's significant. And I still can't look past the fact that Clemens, Pettite, and Oswalt will make 4 more starts if the series goes 5 more games.

And I can't stress enough how much I like watching the ALCS without the Yankees or the Red Sox in it. I hope the other AL teams are taking notes, maybe we can make this an annual occaision again. And it's always fun to watch two teams that you're (very) familiar with in the NLCS. It makes things seem a little less futile for the sixth place team in that division.

The coaching staff

Tanner and Russell are out. Russell, I'm not so surprised about. I thought maybe Tracy would keep Tanner around since the bullpen wasn't AWFUL (well, Mesa was, but no one could help that, it wasn't Tanner's fault Lloyd kept calling for the Table) and to keep some Western PA connections in his coaching staff, you know, a familiar face for the fans that don't trust the new guy. Then again, I guess we don't trust the old guys either.

We don't know much else about the new coaching staff, except that Jim Lett will be on it, either as bench coach or third base coach (he was Tracy's bench coach in LA but Glenn Hoffman, Tracy's thirdbase coach in LA, may not come with him). Also joining the Jim convention will be Jim Colborn, filling the capacity of pitching coach, as he did in LA. The Big Jim says he wants to get the staff filled in as quickly as possible, presumably when more people named Jim become available.

Hmmm

Now this is strange.

The A's bloggers, meanwhile, are less than pleased. Really, this is strange. I was hearing the Macha was going to be blackballed by everyone for a year for asking for too much money, that the A's were looking into Hershiser, lots of things. In fact, if I had to make a list of a million things that were going to happen to Macha, this wouldn't have been close to making the list. Did Macha and Beane have a deal that would let him talk to the Pirates, then bring him back if he didn't get the job?

A fitting anniversary

It was 45 years ago today...

Yep, the greatest home run in baseball history. I guess that claim is debatable, but it shouldn't be. The 1960 Pirates are the team that keeps giving us modern Pirates fans hope. Are you paying attention Jack Wilson?

The best part about this is that it's a lot better than what Pirates fans are usually reminded of at this time of year. You know, that thing that happened exactly 13 years ago tomorrow. Ugh.

All we need

Said sugar, make it slow
And we'll come together fine
All we need is just a little patience...
patience...
Ooh, oh, yeah

Great point by Rowdy today at HW. Watching the Pirates last year, they were one of the least patient baseball teams I'd ever seen. Most of the hitters couldn't wait to swing at the first thing they got close to, most of the pitchers couldn't wait for the the ball to be put in play so they went for the strike out. Some of our fielders couldn't wait to get off the field and made routine plays look adventurous, or worse (looking at you here, Tike Redman and Jose Castillo). If Tracy can do one thing it's to preach patience. We were the youngest team in the league for a lot of last year, and we certainly played like it. Of course patience may be something Tracy will need himself, because we aren't like the Dodgers teams he's managed. A lot of patience, at the plate, on the mound, and in the field, will go a lot longer towards the extra win we need per week than a bunch of hit and runs and sacrifice bunts. One group of people that should ignore this conversation, however, is the Pirates marketing department. "All we need is just a little patience" is NOT an acceptable slogan for 2006. Though it's probably better than "Come Hungry" now that I think about it.

Tracy is talking again

Tracy keeps making it harder and harder for me to trust him. Today's PG article talks about his goal to "waste no outs." If that means play good, fundamental defense and don't give the team other outs in the field, I'm all for it. I'm afraid that's not what it means. He's talking, of course, about "productive outs," more or less the stupidest statistic ever invented. An out, in itself, is counter productive. A groundout that moves a runner from second to first is still a ground out. The top three teams in the Majors in productive outs in 2004 (the list appears to be from 2005 due to the presence of the Nats, but it's dated 2004 and Sean Burnett is on the players list so I guess ESPN changed it's team links sitewide) were the Expos, the Rockies, and the Pirates. On the "Jim Tracy or Paul Meyer or possibly both are clinically insane" front, Tracy's Dodgers, the 2004 version which the PG cites as such a good model for the Pirates, finished TWENTY-FIFTH in the league in productive outs. Now, this isn't a bad thing. The Red Sox finished last in the league in productive outs and won a World Series. The problem comes in that somewhere along the line Tracy has decided that "maximizing the efficiency of every out" is of paramount importance when it's not what won him a division last year. Apparently the only thing between us and that extra one win a week (that the article cites as the difference between us and the Astros) is in a whole bunch of sacrifice bunts and hit and runs.

Tracy: day 2

OK, day 2 of the Tracy analyzing is complete. After day one I felt cautiously optimistic. After day two I'd say that I just feel cautious. It certainly seems like the communication from the manager's office to the players will improve. This can only be a good thing. I remember Matt Lawton saying last June he hadn't spoken to McClendon yet. Of course I also remember Matt Lawton saying Lloyd McClendon was the best manager he ever played for about a month later. I also remember thinking when we traded Lawton for Gerut that we lost a guy with a mental handicap for a guy with a physical one, and that given the way Lawton played for us, it was probably a good thing. And I'm not the least bit worried about the Tracy/DePodesta fall out. I've said it already, Tracy and Littlefield think similarly and get along, that's why Tracy was hired. We don't need to worry about Littlefield wanting Eldred in the games and Tracy playing **insert random offseason acquisition here**. We need to worry about Littlefield telling Tracy to bench Eldred (but THAT is a different story). I think that our new coaching staff will be able to help our young pitchers development, something that our old coaches never seemed to grasp. I like to hear Tracy say he thinks he can help Kip Wells.

Still, the oft cited article from earlier today scares the bejeebers out of me. I'm not anti-small ball. I'll certainly agree that a well-timed stolen base or hit and run can be extremely productive. I'm anti-stupid ball. Has anyone watched the White Sox in the first two games of the ALCS? That's stupid ball. How many outs has Ozzie gotten himself into? And only to be praised by the two Fox morons (McCarver and Buck) when a needless bunt set up a run that would've scored anyways tonight. I'm anti hitting and running just because it's a "hit and run situation." That was one of my problems with McClendon. Leadoff hitter on base? Must be time for a steal, bunt, or at least a hit and run. If I know it's coming, that means so does the other team. And I won't lie, if I was reading that article about Tracy today with the names removed, I probably would have guessed that McClendon was responsible for those quotes about the Cardinals. That's what scares me.

So the bottom line is that there are some things that I think will be positives and some things that would appear to be negatives. I'm not ready to condemn or praise a guy based on two days of soundbites and biased stories (from both sides) from his previous area of work. Unless something happens to change my mind, I'll go into the spring cautious. Not optimisitic mind you, but I'm not ready to be negative yet, either. I just want to see the guy in action before I make any real judgements.

Continuing on the Tracy thoughts

OK, now that I'm off the pitching soapbox, this column about how Tracy wants to be like the Cardinals because of their intangibles is downright awful, which means it's time for me to play devil's advocate with myself. The last column (pitching is the universal proven winner, if Tracy can develop the pitching we can win) will be my pro-Tracy column. This one will be anti-Tracy.

They won last year because of their Murderer's Row and they won this year because they added Mark Mulder, Chris Carpenter had an amazing year, and they could still pencil that Pujols guy into the middle of the lineup. Albert Pujols is not the scariest hitter in the NL and maybe all of the league because he "hits the ball through the hole on a hit-and-run and it's first and third and nobody out." He's the scariest hitter in the NL because he had an OPS of 1.039 and more specifically a SLG of .609. There's nothing more maddening than an ill-timed hit and run or steal attempt, something we saw all to much of with McClendon. Why bunt or hit and run with the two hitter after a leadoff hit when Jason Bay can stick a ball in the gap and score a runner from first anyways? I never understood that thinking with McClendon and I won't understand it if that's how Tracy chooses to manage. Yes, small ball appears to work when Freddy Sanchez singles, Jack Wilson bunts him over, and Jason Bay singles him in. And no, I'm not hoping for a team where two people walk and Jason Bay hits a three-run homer. I just don't understand how you can not see that two runners on for Jason Bay is way better than one runner on, no matter where those runners are on the basepaths. You can read last week's Stats Geek again, the biggest problem faced by our offense was that Andruw Jones got up with 503 runners on base this year while Jason Bay only saw 462. We don't need more runners in scoring position, just more runners period. If we get more guys on base, we get more guys in scoring position. That's just how things work. The pitching will be good next year so the offense doesn't need to be great (which was the idea behind that last post). The offense only needs to be adequate. We should have the tools for an adequate offense next year, but that necessitates the use of common sense, which I'm not so sure will be exercised after reading this article.

UPDATE (5:17 PM)- As is pointed out to me in the comments, I need to make my point on hit and runs a bit clearer. A hit and run, as Tracy points out, can be a great play, catching the defense off guard and resulting in first and third, usually. If its overused, as it seemed to be at times with Lloyd managing, the pitcher/defense can anticipate it and turn it into most likely a caught stealing. My point is that the benefit of a hit and run isn't so inherently great (since there is risk involved to start with) that I'd prefer not to hit and run at all rather than to do it too much, as would appear to be Tracy's preference.

Moneyball, Old School, and Jim Tracy

The Jim Tracy situation, both here and in LA, has sparked a lot of debate about "Moneyball" vs. "Old School." This of course got me thinking about the whole thing, which resulted in the following monster of a post. Keep in mind that I'm not trying to bash either side of the argument, or even trying to pick sides. I'm just seeing a reason to stay positive about Tracy when it seems like a lot of people very quickly are going negative.

I read Moneyball about two years ago along with the rest of the free world and was very intrigued by the concept of looking beyond traditional stats to find value players that no one else would see (Scott Hatteberg, etc), but I also wondered if maybe too big a deal was being made because the team on which this so called revolution was taking place had the Big Three in their rotation. Not in a Joe Morgan type way, mind you, but in a typical analytical thought process. Still, Beane's model seemed made sense on a small market scale to me.

After I read Moneyball, the first thing I thought back to the most recent World Series champs (at the time), the Florida Marlins. They were a small budget team with the oldest of old school managers, Jack McKeon. McKeon got a ton of praise from the Good Ol' Boy Network after that series for all the small ball he played and how he didn't pay attention to silly things like how many innings his young pitchers were pitching which was, of course, ridiculous. All McKeon did was trust his young pitchers instead of hinder them. I could be wrong, but I don't remember Beckett or Penny or Pavano racking up ridiculous pitch counts in those playoff games. They kept coming back because they were pitching well, and when they didn't he could fall back on Fox, Urbina, and Looper. Their offense had some decent bats, but nothing that struck fear in the heart of opponents. They won with young pitching (like I'm telling anyone anything new here).

So after Beane, let's move to some disciples. His right hand men who moved on, Ricciardi and DePodesta, have had mixed results in their time in Toronto and LA. I could go on about what has and hasn't happened in their terms as GMs, but I'll just point to this year. Both seemed to be doing OK (even the Jays in the vaunted AL East) until their aces, Halladay and Gagne (Gagne is maybe the one closer in the league that can be called an ace, look at the numbers, they're insane) went down. The seasons went down more or less with them. Neither has been able to reproduce Beane's success in Oakland (though DePo has only been on the job two years) because neither has had the pitching Beane has. Another celebrated Beane/Bill James disciple is Theo Epstein, the wunderkind in Boston. What was the difference between the just short '03 Red Sox and the curse-busting '04 version? Keith Foulke and Curt Schilling. Their offense could make up the gaps in the rotation, but without Foulke and Schilling the Red Sox don't win a World Series last year (just look at this year's Red Sox).

Look at this year's teams. Why did White Sox build up an enormous lead and almost blow it, then run away with the division? Was it because Ozzie-ball magically worked, then ceased to work down the stretch, then worked again? No, it was because Buerhle and Garland were Cy favorites for the first 2/3rds of the year, then faltered, only to be picked up by Contreras down the stretch. As long as Patterson and Hernandez were horses, the Nationals were in contention. The Pirates were a .500 team before Mark Redman and Kip Wells fell off the face of the planet and Oliver Perez went psycho on a laundry cart.

So what am I saying? Am I saying that pitching is the only thing you need to win? No, of course not, you could use my example of last year's Red Sox to disprove what I'm saying just as easily as I use it as more justification. Am I saying Moneyball is bullshit? No, you can't dispute the results that Beane has had in Oakland, Three Aces or not. He's revolutionized the game, in terms of looking beyond batting average and similar things. Am I saying that hearing Tracy say things like

It's the intangibles they (the Cardinals) have. They do the little things. Sure, they can thunder you in a heartbeat. But where they really beat you down is when Albert Pujols hits the ball through the hole on a hit-and-run and it's first and third and nobody out

don't mortify the crap out of me? No, in fact I can't think of a thing more terrifying than Jason Bay hitting and running with the winning run on first base. Lloyd McClendon himself would have said the exact same thing. The only thing I'm saying is that pitching is universal. Billy Beane won with pitching the same way Jack McKeon did. And if our pitching is as good as we think it isl (something I'd say it has a better chance of doing under Tracy and Colborn than it did under Lloyd and Spin) than I think Jim Tracy can do it too.

Jim Tracy

There's your lead image on Pirates.com right now, Jim Tracy, the 37th manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And everyone is thinking that we probably should've given him a uniform with some black sleeves because he looks goofy with white shirtsleeves under our white uni vest. I'll be the first to admit, I wanted Macha. Maybe it was for selfish reasons (my uncle knows Macha so I could've angled for a WHYGAVS exclusive interview), or maybe it was his record with cheap budgeted teams and young players in Oakland. Still, it's hard to be disappointed as it seems like Lloyd McClendon was fired because Dave Littlefield found out about a month ago Tracy was going to be available (remember how the Tracy rumor immediately surfaced?) And it's hard to be disappointed with a guy that's only a year removed from a division title and with such a good record in Los Angeles, no matter what the budget on those teams were (as the Yankees proved, money isn't everything in baseball). And it's hard to expect Dave Littlefield to hire anyone less than someone he already trusts with his job most likely on the line if next year doesn't work out like it should. Tracy's a solid baseball guy who almost ended up with this job 5 years ago (what does that say about the hiring process from five years ago, two of the guys that we interviewed then were the most desirable candidates on the market five years later, Lloyd is a bullpen coach with the Pittsburgh coalition in Detroit). He had butted heads repeatedly with DePodesta in LA, but I don't think that will happen here. DePo is in the process of trying to build an LA version of the Red Sox, Tracy is more of a smallball manager. Littlefield isn't building a team based on walks and three run homers here, instead one that's more based on pitching and defense. There's lots of talk of his bullheadedness and how stuck he is in his old ways (see Charlie's post for a good round-up). I won't try to completely disagree or refute that, all I'll say is that I'm completely willing to give Tracy a chance, but with the caveat that the young players be given fair chances next year, specifically Doumit and Eldred. They were both the type of player that Tracy was no big fan of in LA, big hitters, that don't offer much field, strike out a good deal, and don't hit for a great average (though Doumit has hit for pretty good average in the minors). I simply can't see Littlefield hiring a guy that he knows, knowing that he's so bullheaded that Humberto Cota will play over Ryan Doumit regularly and that Brad Eldred won't be given a fair shake at first base. I may not agree with everything DL does, but I don't think he's stupid.

LCS Previews

I do have thoughts on Jim Tracy, but I need some time before I can organize them and get them posted. That means it's time for the next best thing... FILLER! At least it's on relevant material, the LCS's start today and the Yankees and Red Sox are nowhere to be seen. And what the hell, I was 4-for-4 on my Division Series Predictions (I actually even picked all the final series counts right except for the White Sox sweep so I'm either really good or really lucky, I vote lucky), so lets keep this thing going.

NLCS
In the last 20 years (since the LCS went to 7 games) there's only been three LCS rematches (in consecutive years). One rematch was Yankees and Mariners in 2000-2001. The Yankees were better, everyone knew it, they won both times, yadda yadda yadda. The other two were the Pirates and Braves in the early 90s and the Yankees and Red Sox in the last two years. Both first series had epic first matchups, going 7 games and featuring memorable performances. Both second series' blew the first ones out of the water, with the Braves (this part deleted for the collective mental health of myself and my readership) and then the Red Sox becoming the first team to ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a series. One epic rematch featured a repeat winner, one flipped. Well, last year the Astros and Cards played 7 great games that no one will particularly remember because of what happened in the ALCS. That means that if those are two series are indicators (and they probably aren't, but go with me here) we're in for one for the ages. I'm going with the Astros in 7, winning it in a very memorable fashion for one reason, guys named Pettite, Oswalt, and Clemens will make 6 starts in a seven game series and the Cardinals will have to win three of them. Last year's Cardinals could do it. This year's Abe Nunez Cardinals won't be able to pull it off.

ALCS
I don't have as many opinions on this one because I didn't watch the White Sox and Angels all year. What I do know is this, the White Sox were impressive in the first round and Bartolo Colon's back scares me. I also know that I spent all year disparaging the White Sox and their post-season chances, and now I'm not so sure I want to keep doing that, and here's why. This year's White Sox couldn't hold a candle to a pure OPS machine team like the Red Sox or even the Cardinals of last year. I didn't think they could handle a series with either the Red Sox or Yanks this year on a hot streak. They drew a cold BoSox team and now they don't have to worry about the Yankees. Now they draw the small-ball Angels, a team they do match up favorably with. Add in some Mike Scoscia neurotics (Juan Rivera has been DH'ing all playoffs while the inferior Garrett Anderson plays left field) a bad back on their ace, and having to play three games in three cities in three days to open this series, and I think the White Sox pull this one out in six. Plus Ozzie will get really really really excited and Cleveland fans will get really really really mad and that will be fun to watch.

Ian Snell

Charlie has a long post about Ian Snell and why he won't be pitching in the AFL. I don't know what Ian Snell has done, but it seems clear that the organization doesn't have any plans for him. He was called up this year with Littlefield declaring he would get a chance to start on the major league level, then was used spottily out of the pen, made two spot starts, and was sent back down. He was then called back up and pitched well in two starts before having the rotation shuffled so he couldn't make his last start. That's gotta be considered the pitchers version of "Craig Wilson treatment." The fact is, he's got a great minor league record and to this point he's been treated like crap by this organization, which may explain his purported "bad attitude." All I know is that we've got a ton of lefties, but Snell is one of the few righties and I think we need to be careful.

Report: Pirates to hire Tracy

Looks like the Pirates are going to have a formal press conference to announce the hiring of Jim Tracy today. This is about as surprising as a freight train, which would also be a good way to describe how subtle Dave Littlefield was in the process. He interviewed a minority candidate, he interviewed a hometown guy, then he hired his guy. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, I'm just not surprised, that's all.

Ugh, more on the interviews

In today's redundant "news" Dave Littlefield is travelling to Houston to meet with Jim Tracy. Gee whiz, isn't that where Tracy's agent is based? Yep, yep it is. Apparently, DL is not coming back to Pittsburgh until after the organizational meetings in Brandenton end, meaning that a formal announcement may not come until the end of the week. But I think we all know where this is headed.

If you're looking for something a little different, John Perrotto has an article today about how this is a win-win situation for us, as long as we hire Macha or Tracy. He also goes on to make some Moneyball connections that I'm not sure I completely agree with, but I do think that a manager can be more important than people give them credit for. I guess we'll get to find out this year.

More playoff thoughts

The Cards finished off the Padres last night, making them the second entry into the LCS sweepstakes. As much as I would've like to see the underdog win, it just wasn't going to happen. The Cards impressively steamrolled San Diego, just like they should have, to send a message to the winner of the Astros/Braves series that they're still the top dogs in the NL. The Astros and Braves appeared headed for five games after Houston's 7-1 win last night and Atlanta's 5-1 lead this afternoon (in the 6th). I'm still pulling for the Astros, if only because an all NL Central NLCS will soften the blow of being the only sixth place team in all of baseball. I don't know who's lined up for a Game 5, but I'd assume it would have to be Smoltz for the Braves (on three days rest). And that doesn't bode well for the Astros (though I suppose they'll throw Pettite, which doesn't bode well for the Braves). The Angels will also try to finish off the Yankees tonight after yesterday's rain out, giving America everything that they wanted out of these playoffs, an ALCS without the Red Sox OR the Yankees. Both Washburn and Chacon will keep their starts. Washburn's made some big starts in the past and I'm not sure how Chacon will adjust to the big city pressure in a must-win playoff game after a career in Colorado. I think this one ends tonight.

The PG's season wrapup

Lots of stuff at the Post-Gazette today that's Pirates related. Dejan gives out his final grades and proves my point as to why I don't give out letter grades. Look at the relievers numbers and try to figure out how Mesa has a C-, Grabow has a B+, White has a B-, Meadows has a C-, and Vogelsong has a C-. All of their numbers are practically identical, with White being a little better than the group. Mesa failed miserably at his job to "close", thus deserving an F by definition. The hitters grades are similarly random (Jack Wilson C+, Ryan Doumit C, Jose Castillo B-? What's going on here?) If you missed my grades, hitters are here and pitchers are here.

Also in the season round up is a long article by Dejan about the direction the Bucs need to go in, an article that has the same suspisicions as I do, that a manager could be hired by tomorrow (complete with the classic quote "I'm available. I'd be happy to come back," from Pete Mackanin, who wants work almost as desperately as Art Howe who's still waiting for his phone to ring in Texas), the high and low points of the season (high point was getting to .500, the low point was the Yankees game with the blown call and subsequent 10 inning loss which resulted in the re-launching of Jason Giambi's career), and some mindless dreck from Paul Meyer about trading for Lyle Overbay. If we trade for Overbay the difference between us and the Brewers will be flashing in giant neon lights. If the Brewers don't bring Overbay back it will be because they have a young power hitting first baseman they want to give a majority of their at-bats to. We'd be taking Overbay to take at-bats away from our young power hitting first baseman.

The NLCS is set

And in dramatic fashion, too. As I'm sure most of you know by now, the Astros and Braves played an absolute classic 18 inning marathon today which saw the Astros coming back from a 6-1 deficit in the bottom of the 8th with a Berkman grand slam and then a bottom of the 9th, two out homer by Brad Ausmus. Then maybe the greatest bullpen showing in playoff baseball history took place (actually, it was already in progress as starting in the 5th when the Houston pen came in to relieve Backe and pitching an amazing 13 and 2/3rds giving up only one run) with matching zeros being tossed up left and right from the 10th inning through the top of the 18th. The highlight was Roger Clemens, who's been hurt and getting hit by everyone including the Pirates, pitching three scoreless, one hit innings on only two days rest (and looking he had as many more in him as it was going to take). The hero? Well, besides Minute Made Park (which turned a Berkman fly-out into a grandslam and may have done the same with Chris Burke's game winner in the 18th), it's the rookie Chris Burke, of course. Clemens was amazing, but Chris Burke has officially become the answer to a trivia question. The goat was NOT Joey Devine (who gave up the walk off) as certain media outlets are saying, but instead Kyle Farnsworth. Yeah, it seems like it was forever ago, but without his meltdown the extra innings are not necessary at all.

Anyways, they're on to an NLCS rematch with the Cards. I think I've gotta give the early upper hand to the Astros. Why? Pettite, Clemens, and Oswalt, of course. They may be the chic pick right now, but you just can't ignore aces like that this late in the year. And does anyone really believe Clemens is even human at this point? It should be a great series between two teams that we got to see beat our heads in all year.

Of course the best part of it all is seeing the Braves lose in heartbreaking fashion. Maybe it's petty to still be holding the '91 and '92 NLCS (especially '92, ugghh, the worst part about this is that this game sparked a debate about the greatest non-series post season game ever and of course the "Sid Bream Game" came up, ugggh I think I'm getting sick, man am I glad the Braves lost) against them, especially since Smoltz is the only player left from those teams (I think, don't quote me on that) but I don't think so.

Interviews

Macha- tomorrow, Tracy- Monday. The Pirates organizational meetings begin Tuesday in Bradenton and I'd look for a manager to be hired by then, though that's just a hunch. If I had to guess, I'd still be guessing Tracy, though Macha's good history with young players on a low budget team in Oakland seems, at least to me, to make him the better candidate. We'll know soon.

One down, three to go

Baseball has it's first semi-finalist and it's not the Sox that most people thought it would be. When I made my predictions I picked the White Sox to win, but they were way more impressive in that sweep than I thought. In fact, those of you with good memories probably remember me picking them to lose in the division series back in early September, then lumping them into the category of teams I didn't think had a chance just a little over a week ago. And yeah, outside of this blog I was certain the Indians were going to overtake them for the AL Central title. Still, they held things together and suddenly have me rethinking my statement that the winner of the Yankees/Angels series is going to the World Series. Yeah, this Red Sox team is nothing like the team that won the World Series last year, but they ain't the Pirates either. Of course, best of all is the fact that for the first time in a couple years the ALCS won't be Red Sox and Yankees. That's something we can all celebrate.

Littlefield and Macha

Dave Littlefield will interview Ken Macha sometime soon, says today's PG. As I said in one of the comment threads below, I think Macha will have to have a really outstanding interview to overtake Tracy in DL's eyes. It just seems to me that the history between Tracy and Littlefield makes him the clear favorite. Of course, Macha does have a good history working with young players on a low budget team. This most recent team he helmed in Oakland got exponentially better as the year went on, kind of the opposite of what we've come to expect here in Pittsburgh.

Interestingly enough, as the article goes on to point out, Littlefield and Tracy were just "talking baseball" in what was thought to be a two hour phone interview the other day. Tracy should be flying into Pittsburgh early next week for a formal interview, though, again, I'd think that the guy that can pal around with the GM and just chat about baseball for two hours is probably the front runner.

A philosophical question

Time for some reader response! If Andy Van Slyke does in fact take a job on Jim Leyland's staff in Detroit, do I need to change the name of this blog? You the reader can help determine the future of this blog! Please weigh in with either a "yay" or "nay," if yay you may feel free to suggest a new name, though I'm already kicking a couple around.

UPDATE (10/7, 12:27 PM)- By an overwhelming vote, the name will stay. As most people pointed out, it certainly was a rhetorical question (Van Slyke isn't hard to find, it's not like he's a hermit or anything) trying to capture the spirit of those winning teams of the early 90s, as best embodied (in my mind) by Andy Van Slyke. Like I mention in the comments, I really don't want to change the name, I just wanted to get some outside opinions. Thanks for all the help, guys.

I've had it up to here with this guy

Tim McCarver is an awful announcer.

From Charlie, by way of Baseball Primer, via Bat-girl. Seems like lots of people are tired of annoucers that get names wrong and lavish praise on guys like Jeter and A-Rod that borders on, well, how 'bout we just stick with "unspeakable sexual acts."

Some early playoff thoughts

Yeah, I've been watching the playoffs. The only reason I haven't written anything about them is the whole manager situation, which every time I turn around there's more to think about. So two days of playoff baseball are behind us. Here's some thoughts

• Not only are they barely better than the Brewers, record-wise at least, the Padres got their ace injured in their clubhouse champagne celebration. Any chance they had of winning cracked with Peavy's ribs. This series has "sweep" written all over it. And incidentally, as much as I dislike the Cardinals, it's hard not to root for Reggie Sanders. He's played just about everywhere and made the playoffs just about everywhere (except here) but never won a series. Him getting a ring this year would be the silver lining, kind of like Wakefield last year in Boston.
• How bout those White Sox? There's going to be a lot made about how the Red Sox are never finished, how they're the best series comeback team in baseball, etc. etc. Don't believe a word of it. These Red Sox are nothing like last year's BoSox. It's one thing to come back like they did last year when three of the four wins came from Pedro, Schilling's amazing return, and Derek Lowe. Their pitching staff this year doesn't come close to comparing.
• The Angels and the Yankees are quite an even matchup. The winner of that series is probably the AL champ this year.
• Smoltz and Clemens today? The amazing thing about that matchup is that it's almost as good today as it would've been 10 years ago. The Braves need a split before things head back to Houston. Of course, I hope they don't get it. I still hate the Braves.
  

The circle of rumors

Well, now this article in the PG makes it sound like the only thing Jim Tracy needs to do at this point is show up in Pittsburgh and shake Dave Littlefield's hand, Ken Macha be damned. That's the speculation because other than Fredi Gonzalez (his required minority interview) Littlefield has interview no one else and has no one else scheduled. Macha, however, has hinted at his interest while Tracy's GM has hinted that other teams are interested so Littlefield better be ready to pony up.

Meanwhile in Detroit, Jim Leyland is looking to fill his coaching staff up with an amusing collection of Pirates of the early 90s including Don Slaught (hitting coach), Rafael Belliard (infield coach), and in the biggest threat to the name of this blog yet, Andy Van Slyke (first base coach) to go with Lamont and McClendon. What a group, eh?

Some quick manager related updates

Jim Tracy did interview today, by phone, with Dave Littlefield for two hours. When asked about Macha Littlefield said he couldn't comment on the situation until he gets permission from Oakland to talk to Macha. I don't quite understand that, maybe Macha is under contract with Oakland until a certain date or something. It does appear that Littlefield's talked with Macha's agent, however, probably in a "So are you gonna give us a hometown break or do I have no shot at you because of my tightass owners?" type conversation. It does look like DL is going to give Macha an interview, so things are suddenly not quite as open and shut as they appeared this afternoon. I'd say that's a good thing. The more quality candidates we can get in here to interview, the better. I'd be nervous about what Detroit did if I was a Tigers fan, firing Trammell and then almost immediately hiring Leyland with no consideration for everyone else. At least we know DL is weighing all of his available options.

Hold the phone

Ken Macha and Oakland have failed to reach a contract based on what Billy Beane called "Compensation issues." Beane says there's no hard feelings, but Macha is a free man.

I'm not shocked, but it did seem like they were headed towards a contract earlier this week. Macha's made it pretty clear that he'd like to manage here, though he lacks the Littlefield connection that Tracy has. At the very least I'd say this makes it at least a two-horse race for now, which can only be a good thing.

On the other hand...

I posted Plaschke and Simers and their negative opinions earlier, so it's only fair that I link to this blog, FireJimTracy.com. In their first post (almost a year to the day ago), the reason for starting the blog was this:

Are you tired of drinking the Kool-Aid for mangerial mediocrity? Does it scare you to pick up the Los Angeles Times, right after Jim Tracy blew yet another game, and read that Ross Newhan is advocating signing Jim Tracy to yet another multi-year contract, subjecting us to another several years of random, seemingly arbitrary mangerial decisions? Since Tracy is going to get his extension (something I’ll discuss in a later post—why Jim Tracy put himself ahead of his team for his own job), I was going to save the debut of this website until April, when we could all sit and watch the 2005 Season unfold, rather than referring to the sins of the past. But when all I see is misinformation, even about a situation as obvious as last night’s, it becomes apparent that though nobody will read it, it is important that somebody says it.

If anyone read Simer's article, the complaints seem to be stemming from his reputation as "The Micro-Manager." And like I said, just because the newspaper writers are backing a manager doesn't make what they say true, as this guy clearly dislikes Plaschke. If you have time to sift through, it's pretty clear that this guy (and most of the commenters) have a LOT of complaints about Tracy. Just a little more to stick in your pipe and smoke about Tracy.

The Pitchers

Time for the grades for the pitchers. Actually, I'll be inventing awards and giving them to different pitchers on the team in lieu of the typical ABC scale. If you missed it, the position players are here.

The You'd Be Better Off on the Cover of Sports Illustrated Award
This one's a tie between Zach Duke and Paul Maholm. I can't imagine a worse fate then being designated the Pirates "ace of the future." It's pretty much a sure thing that either you'll suffer a serious injury (Benson, Burnett) or just completely lose your talent (Kip Wells, Jason Schmidt) or maybe both (Oliver Perez). Actually, Duke and Maholm both exceeded all the expectations we had for them by about a mile this year. I could spend space extolling all their virtues, but I couldn't tell you anything you've already heard. If these two are half as good for a full season as they were for a half season this year, we're certainly going to have something to build on. As long as they can overcome the "curse."

The Well, Things Could've been Worse, But Only if You Got Tommy John Surgery Award
It should be pretty obvious who gets this award, Mr. Oliver Perez himself. He didn't throw at all in the offseason, made up a lie about sleeping on his shoulder funny before camp, sucked it up in April and May, kicked a cart in June, and came back with absolutely nothing on the ball in September. Instead of the nightly show of 95 mph fastballs, 7 arm angles, strike outs, fist pumps, and little leaps over the foul lines we got 92-94 mph fastballs, 37 million arm angles, lots of fly balls, lots of homers, and a broken laundry cart. Last year's Perez was missing and it was baffling. It looks like the team is going to grant his request to play winter ball, so we'll have to see if things get ironed out there. If not, I'm still afraid there's something that might be seriously wrong.

The We'd seen Jimmy Anderson and Jeff D'Amico, we thought we knew bad. We didn't know bad until we saw you Award.
Yep, the one and only Kip Wells. How a guy goes from one of the best starters in the National League to the loss leader is beyond me. One night this year he shined with his 12 K 3 H shutout against the Phillies. Besides that he ran his pitch count to astronomic numbers early on, gave up homers, got mad a lot, and things were just all around ugly. Unlike Perez, however, there's something tangibly wrong with Kip Wells. He tries to strike everyone out. There's no phantom velocity drop, just a mental barrier that we let advance way further than it should've. Somehow we noticed Kip doing this last May (of '04), Spin noticed in September. Maybe a new pitching coach can fix him, but he might already be gone.

The Stop Laughing, You're Just as Bad as Kip Wells Award
As bad as Kip was, Mark Redman was worse from the Yankees series on than just about anyone in the NL that did't call Coors Field home. He lost his control and all of a sudden he went from being the best starter in the NL to the worst. He was so bad that he went from being guaranteed a Kris Benson-like contract on the free market after this season in June to having to accept his $4.5 million player option because it's so much more than his market value.

The What A Great Season, But Only by Comparison to Kip and Redman Award
That's you, Dave Williams. He wasn't great, but he wasn't overwhelmingly bad either, which made him our best pitcher not making his debut this year. He's not bad as a 4 or 5 starter, but when he's your de facto ace (as he was for us from June through the beginning of August) it's not a good sign.

The Our Stats Say We're Good but Everyone Knows Better Award
Another dual award here, this time for Rick White and John Grabow. White was an expert at coming into games with runners on base, letting them score, then not letting any of his runners score to keep his ERA low. Grabow got off to a great start and then reverted to Grablow form. He kept a lot of inherited runners from scoring, but he also provided many of the runners for Rick White to let score. Neither one was as good as their decent ERAs suggest.

The Is There a Worse Job in the Bigs than Pirates Mop-up Man? Award
To Brian Meadows and Ryan Vogelsong. They were both used almost exclusively in hopeless situations for most of the season. Meadows got off to an awful start, but put up pretty good numbers after May and was actually more or less reliable. Vogelsong pitched in maybe 2 meaningful games all year which means that you can't really make a comment either way. Lots of people thinks he sucks a lot. I think there still maybe be hope.

The It Sure is Nice Here in Dave Littlefield's Doghouse, but I Hope They Don't Take Us where They Took Bobby Hill Award
To the two most obvious members of Littlefield's doghouse, Josh Fogg and Ian Snell. Littlefield would constantly talk about how little talent Fogg had while Fogg was putting up better numbers than all of our other starters until it finally came true this year. Fogg gave up a ton of homers this year and when you're a control pitcher you just can't do that. Ian Snell, meanwhile, was constantly put in situations to fail as a starter to prove to Littlefield that Snell is really a reliever. Snell responded with 8 shutout innings to beat Roger Clemens for his first big league win. Littlefield then rearranged the rotation to keep him from making his last start.

The Old Yeller Award
We probably should've put Jose Mesa down before this season ever started, but for some reason we didn't have the heart. And the crazy old bastard bit us. Then he bit us again, and again, and again, and again... We did finally learn but by then it was too late to give Gonzalez any real time as closer by that point.

The Don't Forget Us! We Got Hurt and had a Couple Bad Spells, but We Honestly Didn't Suck this Year! Award
To Salomon Torres and Mike Gonzalez. Torres had a neck injury early on that caused him to turn into Eric Milton and Gonzalez had a knee injury that was clearly bothering him in June, though we trotted him out there every day anyways. As a result neither had numbers like they did last year. When they were healthy these two were about as reliable as things got in the bullpen this year.

There's not much to say about anyone else that pitched this year. Gorzelanny took the mound maybe twice, Bullington and Johnston each pitched one game, and Matt Capps looked pretty good, especially for a guy that started the year out in the Sally League. All in all, there was disappointment all around from the part of our team that was supposed to lead the way for us, which eventually led to Spin's firing.

Some thoughts on Tracy

You've all probably noticed that my opinions on Jim Tracy have been noticeably absent thus far, mostly because I didn't really have any. I've done some digging and some thinking and I think I've finally formed an opinion on him. Which probably means the Carlos Tosca era will begin Monday. But here goes anyways:

1. The fact that Tracy managed in LA for 5 years and I know precious little about him besides his falling out with DePodesta is a good thing. Anytime a guy manages in a market that big for that long and remains relatively unknown mostly means he didn't do anything to screw up too badly.
2. Both Bill Plaschke and TJ Simers are not pleased with DePo and McCourt on this one (thanks to lcfplayer in the comments for the Plaschke link, both are LA Times articles so a free registration is required, but it only takes about 5 minutes and it's worth it to read these). True, someone from outside Pittsburgh would read Cook and Smizik and think McClendon was done a great injustice. But the tone of both of these articles is differernt than "If we would've got him some players he MIGHT not have sucked so much," which was about the best anyone could say for Lloyd. The general feel of both articles is that Tracy was doing just fine with the Dodgers until DePodesta came in, shook the team up, told him how to manage, then fired him for finishing 20 games under .500 with his gutted, injury riddled lineup. You can stand on either side of the Moneyball argument here, but DePodesta's demands on Tracy did seem unreasonable.
3. DePo fired Tracy for not following his Moneyball style of management. That's definitely not a problem here as Littlefield isn't putting together any thing that resembles a Moneyball team. I don't think you necessarily need to follow the Beane model to win on a low budget, look at the Twins or the Marlins 2 years ago for example, but you do need a GM and a manager on the same page.
   
4. Despite their large payroll, the Dodgers teams managed by Tracy weren't very good. The money was misspent (Kevin Brown, Darren Dreifort, Eric Karros, Chan Ho Park, etc.) and he still had them over .500 every year but this one, even winning a surprise division last year. In other words, they overachieved.
   
5. Charlie, who has done his own research on Tracy, says that BPro lauded Tracy for his ability to get great work from part time players. Man, do we have a lot of those on this team.
6. Charlie's post also talks about some of the disagreements between DePodesta and Tracy. While it's true that DePodesta is known for getting more out of unknown sources, it's also true that Tracy may be less willing to trust him after he ripped his first place team apart at the deadline last year, then again in the offseason.

So he's quiet, which will be a nice departure from our last manager, he's got a career winning record, and he seems to have a pretty good track record with young players and part-time players (besides in 2005 which can be argued is a different situation). I'd say Jim Tracy would be an acceptable choice.

More on Leyland in Detroit

Now that Jim Leyland is in Detroit, the parade of failed Pirates managers is soon to follow, the PG reports. Not surprisingly, Gene Lamont is believed to have an out-clause in his contract with the Philles (he's currently managing AAA Scranton-Wilkes Barre) to join Leyland if he got a job anywhere, most likely as his trusted sidekick/third base coach. Lloyd McClendon is rumored for the bullpen coach position. The part about this article that intrigues me the most is the Leyland/Pirates dialogue that never took place. Since we made no contact with him from the time McClendon was fired it was mostly assumed we weren't interested. I know I assumed that as did many of the sportswriters and even Leyland himself. But then on Monday, Littlefield called Leyland as he was on his way to Detroit. Then he called him again yesterday, after Leyland accepted the Tigers job. Now, I don't think it's a bad thing that Leyland isn't our manager, don't get me wrong, but something is fishy with this situation. Leyland's take is also interesting.

"I'm very flattered that the Tigers asked me to be their manager," said Leyland, who managed the Pirates from 1986-96 before moving on to Florida (1997-98) and Colorado (1999). "I didn't want to wait for a job I knew I wasn't going to get, a job that in my heart I truly believed I wasn't going to get."

Leyland's reference was to the Pirates' job.

Why was Leyland so sure he wouldn't become the Pirates' manager?

"Because people have a tendency to hire people they know and have worked with and are comfortable with," he said. "It's common sense. That's one reason I'm [with Detroit]."

That's interesting if only because he made it pretty clear he wanted the job, Littlefield called him about the job, and he took Detroit's job without ever even hearing Littlefield's offer. My guess? Littlefield knew public opinion wanted Leyland so he called him to interview him with no intentions of hiring him. Leyland knew this and didn't want to play DL's game so he more or less gave him the finger, making Littlefield look indecisive.

Again, I'm not upset with Littlefield for not hiring Leyland, in fact I'm happy he didn't. I'm just intrigued by the understory here. There was clearly something going on that the public doesn't know about. I assumed part of the reason Littlefield fired McClendon when he did was so that he could get a jump on the field on hiring a new manager, which makes it highly unlikely that he was just "too late" in contacting Leyland. We may never hear the full truth though, unless we hear it from Jimbo himself when he comes to town next June/July.