Fall Ball

Time for a fall ball update.

AFL stats are here. They are depressing as Eldred, Walker, and Stansberry are all struggling mightily at the plate. Our host of middling relief prospects, Shortslef, Chavez, and Rogers, are all pitching well, though Dave Davidson is not.

Hawaii Winter Ball stats are here. Brian Bixler is kind of hitting, Nyjer Morgan is hitting pretty well, and Steve Lerud is hitting very well, though in limited action. Wadrell Starling is getting shelled over there.

Ryan Doumit is still hitting well in Mexico.

Ed Eagle gives a full list of players playing in the winter here. I'm not going to run down all their stats because I don't really care about most of the guys we've sent off for winter ball. A quick rundown on guys that do matter:

• Jonah Bayliss and Shane Youman are pitching for Caribes in the Venezuelan League. Well, at least I think Youman is, his name hasn't shown up on the stat grid yet. If you click around their site you can get the offensive stats for Yury DeCaster and Carlos Maldanado. Yawn.
  
• A bunch of Bucco minor leaguers are playing in the Dominican League. They don't have individual team stats as near as I can tell, instead just listing the stats of everyone in the league alphabetically (which is real helpful, let me tell you). Hitters here and pitchers here. Those stats haven't been updated since September 26th. Jose Bautista may be playing down there, maybe he'll show up if they update the stats ever again. Same thing goes for Nate McLouth.
  
• According to the Pirates.com article linked above, Ronnie Paulino is playing in Mexico for a team that I don't think exists. Maybe I'm wrong, my Spanish certainly needs work.
  

Yuslan Herrera?

I was going to get a post ready tonight about potential free agent starters that might be on the Pirates' radar for tomorrow morning, but apparently DL is acting quickly. The BCT is reporting that the Bucs have signed Cuban defector Yuslan Herrera (link via Bucs Dugout). I've been Googling Herrera like crazy and can only come up with two Baseball America articles about the guy. One is the same as the one that Charlie links to about him from August, in which an unnamed scout projects him as a fourth starter. He is 25 year old right-handed starter with a high 80s/low 90s fastball and a good splitter and a good curve. The consensus seems to be that he could pitch in the bigs right now. This BA article is from the same time period and has most of the same material about him, but mentions that the last time he is believed to have pitched in Cuba is the "2003/2004 season," which meshes with Perrotto's report that he defected after the 2004 Olympics. That, of course, means that we don't have a WBC performance of his to judge. Beyond that there's not much about him besides some mentions of him on message boards and lots of stuff in Spanish. Though I'm a bit hesitant over the fact that it seems possible that he hasn't pitched competitively in 2 years, it's encouraging to see Littlefield looking outside of his typically very narrow field of vision for talent. I'll post more when/if I find it.

Trade thoughts

As the old saying goes, you've got to trade something to get something. If Dave Littlefield is serious about adding some left-handed pop to the lineup, he's got to trade for something because the free agent market is less than promising. So who should DL give up? My candidates, in order.

1. Mike Gonzalez- After I wrote my bullpen review, Charlie pointed out that decent-to-good left handed relievers brought us Brian Giles, Jack Wilson (when he was a top prospect in the Cardinals system), and helped bring us Freddy Sanchez. It can be argued (rather easily argued actually) that Gonzalez is better than Rincon, Christiansen, and Saurbeck. He should be fairly easy to replace from within. It's very unlikely that he'll match his 2006 again because of tendency to walk a ton of people. Trading Gonzalez now would be selling high. I think the Pirates have to seriously consider doing this.
   
2. Damaso Marte- For all of the same reasons above, only Marte is less valuable to us than Gonzo is. Trading him would require picking up his option, a risk that would seem almost unfathomable for this organization.
   
3. Jose Castillo- This is tricky. The Pirates can replace Castillo pretty easily from within by sticking Bautista at third and Freddy at second. The problem is that the fact that he was one of the worst regular players in the majors after June isn't exactly a secret. He's got to be worthless to all of the new-school GMs out there (Beane and the like, Epstein, Daniels, etc.) and he's extremely devalued to just about anyone else. Still, a stupid GM like Littlefield (Bowden, possibly Krivsky) would see a high ceiling on a semi-young player. The part that makes this tricky is that DL would have to outwit someone to trade Castillo for value. He may be better served as a throw-in to push a deal in our favor. Of course, trading Castillo now would be selling very low on a guy that could be a high value player.
   
4. a.) b.) and c.) Ian Snell, Zach Duke, and Paul Maholm in that order. Littlefield will certainly tread very carefully here, if he's going to trade any one of these three he's (hopefully) going to get something in return that can immediately contribute. Trading Snell now would likely be selling high on Snell and I don't think that's a bad idea.
   The obvious choice to try and trade here is Maholm because he's less talented than the other two or Gorzelanny.
5. Jack Wilson- It's doubtful we can trade him for much of value because he's going to be overpaid the next couple years, but he can be traded on the same theory as Castillo, he shouldn't be hard to replace. We also have a bunch of middle infielders hovering around the AA/AAA level that can fill in as a utility guy if we do trade Jack.
   
6. Freddy Sanchez- It's almost unfathomable that Littlefield will even think of this because of how upset the fans would get (which shouldn't be a factor but is). Sanchez is unlikely to ever repeat his 2006 and some GM would likely pay through the nose to get the NL batting champ. It would be the ultimate example of selling high. I'm not saying that Littlefield should trade Freddy, just that he shouldn't be completely closed off to the idea, especially if a huge offer comes his way.
7. Jason Bay- Charlie's already hit the highlights on this one, but we'll recap the theory. The Pirates have lost 89, 95, and 95 games with Bay as the centerpiece of their offense. It is safe to say they can do that without him (this was the argument Branch Rickey made when he traded Ralph Kiner). Bay has immense value- far more than anyone else on the team has at this point. He's good, he's cheap, he's still fairly young. Again, not that they should trade Bay, just that they shouldn't dismiss the idea. The fans will revolt, but they'll be pissed during the Pirates 17th losing season with Bay in left field, too. Trading Bay or Sanchez is not breaking up the '98 Yankees. Dave Littlefield should be open to all avenues when it comes to making the Pirates better, and trading either of these two are certainly options.
   
8. Random relievers- We've got a ton of these. Any of a number of guys can be tossed in to complete or round out deals. In fact, I hope that's why DL picked up guys like Juan Perez, Chavez, Rogers, etc. because the alternative is not comforting.
   

A quick update

I've taken a couple days off with my updates being done and the World Series being over. Regularly scheduled posting will resume Monday. Until then, enjoy the play written by dak at FJM about the ridiculous statement that "David Eckstein may not be the best player in the World Series but he's the player most likely to play for the winning team." I had to link to it because it features the one and only Andy Van Slyke.

UPDATE: Via Bucs Dugout, here's an article where Andy Van Slyke talks about coming up short yet again. He's pretty serious (as he should be), but as usual he's a great interview.

The World Champion... Cardinals?

Frick. This is probably some kind of karma biting me in the ass for getting to see the Steelers win a Super Bowl. It's no secret how much I dislike the Cardinals so we won't even get into that. Let's look at the fantastically prescient things I've said about the Cards this year.

June 13th-
I know I'm upsetting the baseball gods just by posting this, but these are not your typical St. Louis Cardinals that are limping into PNC Park for an early week series.

October 4th-
St. Louis is lucky to even be here with the way they finished the season and I don't think they'll stick around for long.

I'm an idiot.

Oh holy hell, David freaking Eckstein just won the MVP trophy. I'm gonna go barf. FJM is all over this revolting development.

Back to the task at hand, this team is better than people gave them credit for. They won 205 games in '04 and '05 and after their defeat of the Pirates on September 1st, they were 72-61 which is an 88 win pace. If they'd won 88 games, no one would be making a huge deal about their regular season. Down the stretch they rested Edmonds a ton to get him in shape for the playoffs. It almost cost them the playoffs, but it might've won them the World Series. In the World Series, they looked like they'd been there before (which many of them had, either with the '04 Cards teams, other teams, or both). I know that's a terrible cliche that I would usually roast a writer for using, but the Tigers made 8 errors in five games. They were nervous errors that good teams don't make and they didn't lose any of these games by a lot. They swung at everything at the plate and by the end of the series, Sean Casey was their best hitter. Casey was ripping the cover off the ball, but he was the only player that was doing it. Maybe it's surprising that the Cards won this year given their September, but the Pujols/Edmonds/Rolen/Carpenter Cardinal teams have been among the best in baseball the last three years, NL or otherwise, and it shouldn't be surprising that they eventually won a World Series. I know this is all a lot easier to say in hindsight, but it is true.

Collusion

Apparently part of the new labor deal is an agreement by the owners to pay the players $12 million for collusion during the 2002 free agency period (via Baseball Musings). I will admit that I am unsure if the 2002 free agency period refers to the period before the 2002 season or the 2003 season. The only reason this catches my eye is that it is roughly (or exactly, again, depending on the definition of "2002 free agency period" the same time period that Dave Littlefield signed Jeff Suppan, Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, and Matt Stairs cheaply to play productive baseball for the Pirates. So the one offseason that Dave Littlefield is constantly trying to recreate when he signs these over the hill veterans took place either during or shortly after a period when teams were conspiring to keep the prices of free agents down. Sounds about right. I'd bet this is what Kevin McClatchy meant by his "funny water" comments a few years back, a couple of the owners had gone out and overpaid for some free agents when there was an agreement that the public was not aware of not to do so.

Fall Ball Fridays...

...are going to move to Monday or Tuesday. The reason behind it is simple, Charlie does fall ball updates on Thursday (or at least that seems roughly what he's doing) and me doing it on Friday seems redundant.

Mark Cuban is Wendy Peffercorn

Or so says Gene Collier, in a rather fantastic analogy (I'll assume that everyone reading a baseball blog knows who Wendy Peffercorn is, but if your memory fails you go here). As usual when Cuban shows up in town (he was here for the Cavs/Mavs game at the arena a couple nights ago), the topic was buying the Pirates. As usual, Cuban's response (to Collier this time, after he's given the same answer to Smizik and Cook) as to why he doesn't own them is:

There is no other answer than that they're not for sale. I've let it be known through back channels that if they ever were, or if they ever were interested in taking on another investor, I'd be interested.

Whenever Cubes answers that question like all I can think of is the scene in Batman Begins where Alfred tells Bruce Wayne that billionaires like him buy things that aren't for sale. We can only hope.

Links

I'm considering a couple of things to do with the blog until the Winter Meetings start and things get interesting (or at least until the Series ends and moves start getting made), but until then I can pass along some links.

Charlie notes that the Pirates have more minor league free agents than any other team and that 23 of the 2006 Altoona Curve, the only affiliate to make the playoffs, are going to be free agents. That is bad news.

The A's are interviewing Orel Hershiser for their managerial opening. I'm pretty sure that Beane fired Macha in order to hire someone he wanted and didn't think would be available next year. Could it be the Bulldog? I suppose it would make sense to bring him in to work with Haren, Harden, and the young staff there. It may be that Beane wants to hire a glorified pitching coach instead of a manager since managers are mostly a nuisance to him anyways.

Game 4 was rained out tonight and it might be rained out again tonight. If tonight is a no go, FOX will have to delay Prison Break by a week if the series goes 7. If they get rained out tonight and Friday (which seems like a possibility), they'll have to delay Prison Break and House if the series goes 7, at which point FOX will probably consider just shifting the whole thing to FX. They took revenge on everyone by showing 3 hours of The War at Home last night. Of course, the longer this thing gets pushed back, the more likely it is that the Cards can keep pitching Carpenter and Suppan, in which case there won't be 7 games.

2006 in Review

I'm going to make one post to link to all of the 2006 reviews in case anyone missed anything and so that I can put one tidy little post in the sidebar.

Team Review
Jason Bay
Freddy Sanchez
Ronny Paulino
Jose Castillo
Chris Duffy
Xavier Nady
Jose Bautista
Offensive Odds 'n Ends
Zach Duke
Paul Maholm
Ian Snell
Tom Gorzelanny
The Bullpen
Pitching Odds 'n Ends

Bye bye Burnie

In news so unsurprising that the Post Gazette hasn't even covered it, the Bucs are buying the second year of Jeromy Burnitz's contract out for $700,000. This is what Dave Littlefield said about the whole thing:

When we originally signed Burnitz, we felt that we wanted to sign someone to a one-year contract -- in his case with a club option -- with the idea of giving some other players time to see how they developed. Right now, our feeling is that we're going to look in another direction, whether that's internal or through a trade or maybe through another free agent.

What he meant was this:

Oh, damn. I should've listened to everyone that told me signing Burnitz was a bad idea. I mean, we offered him the same contract as the Orioles and he chose ours because our physical was less rigorous. That was a big red flag that I just kind of ignored there. Anyways, now that the fans know that Burnitz sucks, we can't really fool them into thinking he'll hit 30 homers next year. That means that we're going to have to move on in some way, whether it's relentlessly pimping Xavier Nady's abilities and hoping that no one notices that he's a less talented version of Craig Wilson, or making ridiculous "Paul Maholm for Mark Teixeira" offers, then telling the fans we tried to upgrade our bats but no one was interested so we're just going to have to settle for Ryan Klesko because hey, he's not too bad and he's left-handed too! Whatever you do, don't tell Kevin about this conversation. If we start off 2-0 in April I should be extended through the apocalypse.

New Poll

This week's poll deals with what you, the reader, thought of the drawn out season review I did, taking a player or so a day and trying to get a deeper look at them. As usual, voting is on the right and you can discuss in the comments.

Last week's results:
What are you most excited about right now?

• The Steelers- 34%
• The Pens' group of goal scorers that can't even legally drink- 44%
• Watching Dave Littlefield try to do an impression of a good general manager and likely fail miserably- 21%

I was surprised by the result a bit, but then I remembered that the Pens actually have more wins than right now. Ouch. As an aside, who saw Malkin's goal last night? That was damn impressive.

World Series Game 3

Chris Carpenter vs. Nate Robertson tonight. I saw on Sportscenter that in the last 39 series tied 1-1, the team that won game 3 won the series 29 times. That stat clearly bodes well for the Cardinals as they'll put a guy out on the mound who's probably been the second best pitcher in the majors the last two years (behind Santana, of course). I don't have much else to offer on this one other than the fact that I'm sure that no pitcherswill be putting pine-tar on their hands tonight. Anyways, Deadspin has a great Jim Leyland related post today, if you haven't seen it yet, check it out.

2006 in Review- Pitching Odds and Ends

Here's the final player review of the offseason, the pitchers that I didn't do a full profile on or make the main bullpen cut.

Ryan Vogelsong- After what was arguably the best performance of his career, his five innings against the Astros in the 18 inning game, Vogelsong had the lowest WHIP in the Bucco's bullpen. Less than a month later he'd been christened the White Flag. After that he was DFA'd, except no one else wanted him. He went to Indy and pitched very well. Rumor has it a Japanese team wants him. I think he's too damaged to ever be a Pirate again, though he might be a decent middle reliever for someone.

Marty McLeary- Functioned as a good story after making the first two starts of his career in September and looking good on the mound. Don't let that fool you, he's like Vogelsong but worse.

Victor Santos- We got pretty much what we expected from Santos. Actually, he was worse than his career numbers this year, so we got even less than we expected. He won't be back next year.

Oliver Perez- Was his typical post 2004 self for us, looking great one start and awful the next. Colborn couldn't figure him out so we shipped him out of town for half of Xavier Nady. He made one great start for the Mets in the regular season and one in the post-season. Still a mystery to mostly everyone.

Roberto Hernandez- Pitched well for us and then became the other half of Xavier Nady. That's all I got.

Kip Wells- Brought back too early by the Pirates, pitched his way into shape with the Bucs and ran off a string of three starts in a row before he was traded to Texas where he promptly got hurt. He'll be a free agent this year but something tells me DL won't bring him back.

Shawn Chacon- Came to Pittsburgh with an awful reputation and made some terrible starts, but in the long run actually kind of got get better while he was here. The sample size was small though, so he may have been lucky. Dejan has repeatedly said in his Q&As that Chacon is likely to be non-tendered this year, so he goes on the odds n' ends list.

Shane Youman- Just like Chacon only left-handed. If they didn't tilt their hats the same way they'd be mirror images (Chacon and Youman). Managed to pitch decently while up in September, but he doesn't really have good stuff. May be a bullpen candidate next year.

Josh Sharpless- Dominated just about every minor league level he's pitched at but struggled with his control in his short stint in the 'Burgh. He's still a bullpen candidate for next year if someone on the list from yesterday gets shipped out.

Jonah Bayliss- Looked good closing at Indy this year, but also struggled with his control in Pittsburgh. Bayliss just seems like a good reliever, likely because he's got long hair and is probably insane. He throws harder than Sharpless or Youman, which may put him ahead of them for a spot in the pen next year.

Britt Rheames- Not very good. Not very good at all.

Brian Rogers- Our return in the Sean Casey trade. Doesn't throw hard, but does throw strikes. Got lit up in his short stint with the Pirates, though he did pitch well in AA and AAA this year.

Juan Perez- Acquired by Dave Littlefield after he realized he could've had Xavier Nady for only Roberto Hernandez and saw "Perez- LHP, NYM" on the waiver wire. DL was probably disappointed when he found out it was Juan Perez that he'd just picked up. Very small and skinny. Does not appear to be that good.

Jesse Chavez- Acquired in the Kip Wells trade. Didn't pitch for us this year, but looks like Gumby (6'2" 153 lbs). That must be worth something.

Links

I was sent this:

Among the disappointments in Arizona has been a Pirates prospect, C Neal Walker. "This poor kid is way, way behind with his catching," a rival scout says. "He's so far from being big-league ready it isn't funny. His lefthanded swing certainly is going to play, but it's ahead of the righthanded swing. I just don't know what you have here. If he can't catch he's a whole different animal. He could be another Ryan Doumit."

about a day ago with no link to go along with it. Charlie has the link at Bucs Dugout, along with wondering how reliable it can be given that Walker's name is spelled wrong (it's Neil). It's certainly true that his offensive stats have taken a dive in the last week (down to .259/.286/.333) but he's only played in six games, so it's still a small sample size. Still, it's not encouraging.

Also, I'm a moron for taking so long to post this, but apk has designed a FredEx shirt and has it for sale on Zazzle.

It was only a matter of time after Mondesi's House opened. Someone was going to name a blog after Derek Bell. The Derek Bell Yacht Co. is officially open for business.

Ed Eagle is still cranking out Q&As on the mother-site. He tackles some big lefty bat candidates, speculating that the Bucs will at least inquire about Texieria (though he will be very costly) and will probably not enter a bidding war for Seung-Yeop Lee. The speculation is, of course, that the Yankees will be outbidding all comers for him.

And this is a day or so old, but the players and owners have actually reached a labor agreement before the old one expired, which is unprecedented (I'm not kidding, it's actually never happened before). Seems like everything will mostly be staying the same with a few minor tweaks here and there.

Kenny Rogers' stinkpalm

The World Series takes a day off today at a point that it hasn't been at in a while, tied at something other than zero. It's tied because of Kenny Roger's masterful performance last night, which is all anyone wants to talk about today. Of course they're not talking about the game, but rather about the strange, poop-like substance that FOX's cameras found on Rogers' hand last night. The problem is that there's not much to talk about. The facts are pretty clear. Kenny Rogers had something on his hand last night. In all likelihood it wasn't a mixture of dirt and rosin like he claimed. Tony LaRussa asked the umps about it, but Rogers wasn't on the field at the time, meaning there was nothing they could do. He washed his hands off in between innings, getting rid of the crap. Maybe he put it somewhere else on his body, maybe he didn't. Regardless of what happened, no one caught him with anything on the field. That means that while people can speculate all they want about it, nothing is going to come of that speculation. There's no way MLB will suspend Rogers for the rest of the series based on some TV stills. LaRussa is not making a big deal of it, nor are the umpires, which means that everyone that writes something about this (myself included) is wasting their breath, because we're never going to know for sure what was. The best take I've seen on the whole thing comes from the Uni Watch, who noticed that the Gambler has been wearing his batting practice cap all year. That seems like an innocuous detail except that the underbrim is black, making it a little easier to hide a foreign substance.

Anyways, this series is moving to St. Louis this week with Carpenter and Suppan taking the mound for the Cards. I've got a feeling this one's going down to the wire.

2006 in Review- the Bullpen

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: the bullpen

I'm running out of things to review. The bullpen can be done two ways, both as a whole and individually. Before this season started, everyone raved about how great our bullpen would be. They were terribly in the early going, but by the end of the season they had evolved into the strength everyone thought they would be. This must've made DL incredibly happy, as per his genius plan to make us a winning baseball team. Let's take it individually from here.

Mike Gonzalez- He had some control trouble early in the year and 31 walks in 54 innings is high, but 64 Ks and only 42 hits in those innings helps balance that number some. His ERA was low and he converted all of the save chances he was presented with, but ERA isn't a particularly good indicator of anything for a reliever and the save is one of the most flawed stats around. Still, I'm not complaining about Gonzo here. This year he validated the thought that we kept Jose Mesa around one year too long.

Salomon Torres- After his outing on June 24th, Sully clocked in with a 4.88 ERA in in 48 innings pitched. He'd been mostly terrible to that point and I was talking about how he was done and how we'd wasted money signing him. Jim Tracy was saying he just needed to pitch more. Somehow, Tracy was right. Over Torres' next 35 and 1/3 innings, Torres only allowed 8 earned runs. He filled in ably for Gonzo after he went down. He tied the Pirate record for appearences. I was wrong.

Matt Capps- Quite a year for a guy that started 2005 in single A. He logged over 80 innings out of the pen, was mostly effective, and had a 4.5/1 K/BB ratio. He had a 9-1 record which, while mostly indicates luck for relievers, is impressive. I've seen some concern over the amount he pitched this year, but he was a starter in the low minors and throws mostly a straight fastball, so I don't see any reason why he can't be used like he was this year. He's got "future closer" written all over him.

John Grabow- Grabow continued following a pretty defined arc of improvement on his career stats. Like Torres, he rebounded from an ugly first half to a very good second half. He was a fine LOOGY this year and I don't see any reason why that won't continue.

Damaso Marte- His surface numbers aren't so bad, but unlike Matt Capps his record (1-7) is more or less a direct reflection on Marte. Wilbur Miller describes that better than I could on his Marte profile. He was very effective against lefties, but not so vs. righties at all. The problem came in that he pitched more against righties than lefties. He's the reason why I don't understand the need for three lefties in the pen. The Bucs have an option on Marte for this year and it seems unlikely that they will pick it up.

No one else really pitched enough for full consideration this year. I'll pick the rest of them up in my odds n' ends piece tomorrow.

Stats from Yahoo! Sports.

World Series Game 2 Preview

Let's think about something other than football for a little bit here.

Detroit, who just about every major national pundit predicted an easy World Series win for, is playing an absolute must-win game tonight. Yes, people throw that term around way too much (especially when talking about the NFL), but I'm serious. The Tigers simply cannot afford to lose the first two games at home with Chris Carpenter and the on-fire Jeff Suppan waiting for them in St. Louis. They will not bounce back from a loss tonight (OK, the might, but it really doesn't seem likely, does it?). The pitching matchup seems to favor them with Kenny Rogers being the best pitcher to take the mound for anyone this postseason (Suppan included) and Jeff Weaver toeing the rubber for the Cards. Still, I think weather is going to be a factor in this one. It's under 40 degrees in Detroit tonight. It may even be snowing before this one finishes. That could be a huge disadvantage for Detroit with Rogers being 41 years old. The colder it is tonight, the harder it will be for the pitchers to warm up, and I'd have to guess that the (much) older Rogers will be more affected by it than Weaver. Still, it'd be stupid to bet against Rogers after his performances against the Yankees and A's. He has to be who Detroit wants on the mound in a game like this one. It's also foolish to dismiss Weaver, though. He's been very good this postseason and has looked a lot more like the promising Weaver he was in Detroit rather than the crappy Weaver that the Yankees, Dodgers, and Angels got to know. Should be a good one tonight, hopefully closer than last night's game.

Previewing the Series

This is a relatively straightforward series to preview. The Tigers have gotten good hitting and fantastic pitching in the playoffs to beat the A's and Yankees quite easily. The Cards have overcome a severe lack of talent to reach the World Series, mostly thanks to the fact that the Mets made Jeff Weaver and Jeff Suppan look like two very excellent pitchers. In theory, the Tigers should have no trouble making quick work of the Cards. The talent gap between these two teams would seem to be greater than the Astros/White Sox and Cards/Red Sox gaps of the past two seasons, both of which resulted in easy AL sweeps. In practice I don't think it's going to be so easy. The Cards just have this feel about them right now, that somehow they're going to get done what their two more talented predecessors couldn't. Also, every team I root for in major sports championships seems to lose (minus the Steelers, of course, which is a trade I will take every day of the week and twice on Sundays) and I'm certainly rooting for the Tigers here. I dunno, I just feel like everyone is making this out to be waay to easy for the Cards and everyone has made a few too many MLB vs AAAA jokes (between the continuous cheap shots at blogs, the repeating of the same "AAAA" joke over and over and over again with no effort to learn anything about baseball besides the Red Sox, and the absolutely brain damaged commentary on the Yankees' problems I've had it with the Sports Guy). The Cards finished the season slow but they were on the Mets' heels until Labor Day this year. There's been no sign of the team that almost collapsed in the playoffs and despite everything I've said all year, I think this is going to be a good series. I'm not making a prediction here because I don't want to jinx the Tigers. I think they're the better team and I feel like if I pick them, they're doomed (I'm an impressive 0-6 on playoff series this year) and if I pick the Cards I'm reverse jinxing them. Anyways, Verlander and Anthony Reyes kick things off somewhere between the listed 8 PM start time and 8:45 tonight. I don't know the last time two rookies started a World Series opener, but I'd imagine it's been a while. Detroit (the city) should be absolutely electric tonight. The team blogs to follow for this one are Viva El Birdos and The Detroit Tigers Weblog.

2006 in Review- Tom Gorzelanny

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Tom Gorzelanny

2005 key stats: 8-5/3.26 ERA/1.23 WHIP/124 Ks/46 BB/129 and 2/3 innings in AA
2006 PECOTA: 6-9/4.96/1.49/87 Ks/58 BB/123 and 2/3 innings
2006 key stats: 6-5/2.35/0.94/84 Ks/27 BB/99 and 2/3 innings in AAA, 2-5/3.79/1.31/40 Ks/31 BB/61 and 2/3 innings in Pittsburgh

Gorzelanny's stock rose through the roof at the beginning of this year with his dominant stint in Indy. He got off to a rough start with the Buccos, but turned things around quickly. Through his first four starts he'd walked 16 and only struck out 12. Over the next seven he struck out 28 and only walked 15, which is a much better ratio his full season numbers of more than 4/3. All in all, he made a pretty decent appearence in the bigs for a guy that spent last year in AA. He's a nice contrast to Duke and Maholm in that he's a much harder thrower and more of a strikeout pitcher. Still, the high amount of walks (even when he cut down his walks in his last 7 starts he didn't have a K/BB ratio of 2:1) is kind of scary for next year beacuse over a full season the bad peripherals will catch up to him (like they did for Duke and Maholm this year). He's also got some injury questions, he missed time at the beginning of '05 in Altoona and missed a month in August and September this year with some elbow discomfort. The injury this year couldn't have been serious as the Pirates brought him back to pitch for three starts in September, but the injury thing is kind of like a black clould hanging over everything he does right now. Still, I've got high hopes for Gorzo, I think it's quite possible that he's got the best stuff of our four young starters and the 4 starts he made this year when he reigned his control in and before he got hurt were impressive.


Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com (they're the only ones that list current BABIPs for free), and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

Friday fall ball update

Lots of stuff going on in the Fall/Winter leagues. I'm going to try to do this more regularly (read: at least weekly) while the leagues are going on. Perhaps we will call it "Fall Ball Friday."

The AFL stats can be found here. Walker seems to be off to a pretty good start (remember, he's still younger than most of the guys out there), Eldred is doing what he does, which isn't particularly impressive against AFL pitching, and Craig Stansberry is struggling. Jesse Chavez, Josh Shortslef, and Dave Davidson (seriously, who names their kid that?) have all made a couple appearences on the mound, but nothing very extensive.

Commenter Will directed me towards stats for the Hawaiian Winter League. The leaders can be found here, and some clicking around can get you individual team stats (I can't get a permalink to the team stats page). The Pirates in the league are all on the Honolulu Sharks. Nyjer Morgan is off to a decent start, which isn't particularly interesting. Brian Bixler and Steve Lerud (in slightly more limited action) are also off to good starts, which is slightly more interesting. Wadrell Starling, however, has gotten shelled pretty good in his 3 appearences (two starts).

Meanwhile, Ryan Doumit is off to a pretty good early start in the Mexican Winter League with 3 homers in his first six games. He's playing for the Mazatlan Venados and you can find their stats here. Ray Sadler is also playing for the Venados, if you care (and I can't imagine why you would).

That's all I have for now. If anyone knows where any other Pirates are playing this winter, let me know and I'll do my best to dig the stats up.

Are you ready?

Perhaps my memory is failing me, but we are about to witness the most manager-centric World Series coverage in history. Immediately after the Cards won game 7 tonight, Kevin Kennedy mentioned that LaRussa and Leyland are friends and that it would be an interesting matchup of managers in the Series. For the next seven days, everything that happens will directly be credited to one of the two managers. We will hear about how Leyland saved the Tigers franchise and how LaRussa did his best managing job ever to take a team less talented than his last two to the Series. These games will not be discussed as baseball games, but rather as chess matches between two grandmasters, and no matter who wins in what manner, the managers are going to be credited for leading whichever team to victory. There is nothing any of the players can do to prevent this save Albert Pujols and maybe Kenny Rogers. Brace yourself, we're going to have a full week of inane statements, mindless praise, and FJM fodder.

Hold on to your butts

We are less than three hours away from what may turn out to be one of the strangest nights in post-season history. Oliver Perez is starting a Game 7. On top of that, his mound opponent tonight is Jeff Suppan, making this game Dave Littlefield's crowning achievement as GM of the Bucs (besides that Worst GM award he took home in June). Rob Neyer talks about Perez in his ESPN Insider column about Game 7. Most of you probably don't have Insider, so here's the key line:

Perez is almost certainly the worst pitcher who's ever started a Game 7.

Well then. The thing with Perez is that it's impossible to know what to expect of him. The Mets know as well as the Pirates that he can be Sandy Koufax one day and Jimmy Anderson the next. The thing is that, as Neyer points out in his column, Perez is the best option available for the Mets tonight. But here's the thing about Ollie, he always seems to pitch in big games and when people think he can't do it. In a pride game in the WBC this spring he took the mound for Mexico and pitched three shutout innings against Roger Clemens to keep the US from advancing. After Jim Tracy failed to mention his name as a strikeout pitcher, he K'd 9 Brewers on Opening Day. For several weeks in May and June he was mentioned as a candidate to be demoted and almost every time someone called a start "his last chance" he responded with a good start. Now he's being called the worst Game 7 starter in history. That may be true (at least if we're talking about in-season stats), but tonight he'll be facing a lineup he's very familiar with in a pitchers ballpark. If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that Oliver Perez is possible of throwing a much better game than Jeff Suppan tonight. It may not be likely, but if he catches that lightning in a bottle tonight, I would not want to be the St. Louis Cardinals. Mostly, I'd expect him to pitch just like he did through 5 innings in Game 4. He went 5 strong and kept the Mets in the game, Willie Randolph left him in too long (given that he hadn't thrown in two weeks) and he gave up 2 homers and ended up with an ugly line. I don't know if Dr. Jekel or Mr. Hyde will be on the mound for the Mets tonight, but if Perez sets the Cards down in the first and gets that adrenaline pumping in a positive way, I don't think I'd want to face him tonight.

That or Darren Oliver will be in the game before anyone knows what happens, which is at least equally likely.

2006 in Review- Ian Snell

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Ian Snell

2005 key stats- 11-3 3.70 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 104 K, 23 BB in 112 innings at AAA, 1-2/5.14/1.60 with 34 K and 24 BB in 42 innings in Pittsburgh
2006 PECOTA- 6-8/4.61/1.39 with 91 K and 43 BB in 121 and 2/3 innings
2006 key stats- 14-11/4.74/1.46 with 169 K, 74 BB, and 29 HR allowed in 186 innings

And so we get to the righty. He's a little bit more of an enigma than the first two guys we've talked about, I think. Some nights Snell would be dominant, others he'd be exceedingly human. He's got a great fastball and curveball, but lefties absolutely killed him this year. He was also the only pitcher of the three that spent the whole year in the rotation to not make huge strides in the second half (his ERAs were almost identical at 4.74 before and 4.75 after and while his WHIP (1.51 to 1.41) and BAA (.291 to .260) both dropped considerably, he gave up 17 of his 29 homers after the break (in 15 less innings than before the break). His walks also increased in the second half from 3.40/9 to 3.80/9, though his strikeouts increased more dramatically (7.24/9 to 9.28/9). As I've mentioned before, his ERA+ this year is a kind of surprising 95, the same score as Maholm (who he seemed to be much better than). It should be mentioned, of course, that Snell suffered from the same bad defense as Maholm and Duke, his BABIP was .303. Only 3 non-Pirate pitchers had numbers higher than that.

So Snell was better than we expected, but maybe not as good as we thought he was during the season. Now we can throw another wrench into things. Let's look at the Baseball Reference age comps for Snell, Duke, and Maholm (explanation of the similarity scores here, and I know John Franco just mentioned these in the comments and it likely looks like I'm blatantly stealing that idea for my post, but I actually had these laid out during my Duke write-up and was waiting for the Snell post to use them).

Duke:

1. Danny Jackson (990)
   
2. Bob Hendley (986)
3. Bruce Ruffin (979)

Maholm:

1. Pete Richert (987)
2. Cozy Dolan (985)
3. Lou Brissie (985)

Snell:

1. Roy Halladay (981)
2. Jason Schmidt (978)
   
3. John Thomson (978)

Talk about having the most favorable comps. Keep in mind that these are the most comparable players at the age the player is currently at. So when it says Ian Snell and Roy Halladay are similar, it means they're similar at age 24. The basic idea is that since so many people have played baseball in the past 110 years, most players will follow a career arc similar to someone that's already played. Still, these things change a lot over time. Through age 26 Tom Glavine was most closely comparable to someone named Britt Burns, today at age 40 he's now closest to Warren Spahn at 40. His top career comps come up as Jack Morris, Tommy John, and Tom Seaver. So I suppose what I'm saying is that while these are fun to look at, it's a bit early for them to mean much for Duke, Maholm, and Snell. Still, Snell established himself as a good strikeout pitcher this year and managed to be more successful than anyone could've imagined when he was fighting for a rotation spot in spring training. It's certainly a lot to build on.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com (they're the only ones that list current BABIPs for free), Baseball Reference, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

New Poll

Sorry, I'm a bit behind schedule with this week's poll. It's up and running now, though.

Last week's results:

What do you think of the new layout?

• Like it- 24%
• Starting to like it- 29%
• Fear change, bring back yellow- 23%
• Really fear change, bring back black- 24%

In total, 53% indicated that they liked the new layout or that it was growing on them, which means I can continue claiming that this is a blogocracy instead of a blogtatership.

Some thoughts on pitching

While digging through statistics to write up my pitcher's season review, I've kind of stumbled upon something that I can't believe I didn't notice sooner. Let's see if anyone can identify the following splits:

5-2, 3.59, 1.47/3-8, 6.14, 1.77

9-4, 4.19, 1.43/1-11, 4.77, 1.57

7-7, 5.60, 1.53/7-4, 3.94, 1.40

Any takers?

They're the home/away splits for Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, and Ian Snell, respectively, this year. We could go a step further. Maholm and Duke had HR/9 of .85 and .48 at PNC vs. Snell's 1.60 number at home. On the road those numbers Maholm and Duke jumped to 1.12 and .95 while Snell fell to 1.22.

I said it a while back, Charlie has said it recently, and now there are some numbers to back things up, it's foolish to make a pitching trade based on what hand a guy throws with. In fact, left-handed pitching seems to have an advantage at PNC Park. Pirate fans have spent the better part of the last couple months speculating which pitcher Dave Littlefield should deal this offseason and they almost invariably come back to Paul Maholm. I talked a little about this in my Maholm post earlier today, I'd guess it's because people view Maholm as the worst of the "big four" and thus the most expendable. On a superficial level, Maholm didn't have a particularly good year this year. He had a high ERA, a high WHIP, walked a ton of guys, and on and on. I just can't imagine Maholm would fetch much in a trade and I do think he'll be better down the road. Maybe not as good as the other three guys, but better than this year. On the other hand we have Ian Snell. Snell struck out a bunch of guys, won 14 games, and got people to take notice of him. Despite that, his ERA+ says he wasn't any better than Maholm. So you play in a ballpark that favors left-handed pitching, you've got a fairly young right-handed pitcher who may have out-performed his peripherals a bit, and you're looking to make a trade for a good, young bat. I like Snell as much as the next guy, but he might be our best bet at a young "Lefty McThump" and trading him wouldn't be as stupid as people might have you believe.

Links

The Nuttings have dropped their slots bid for Seven Springs at the request of Major League Baseball. For some reason, some thought that the Nuttings would sell the Pirates rather than drop their bid for the slots. This is obviously not the case.

Pirates.com has a Q&A with Dave Littlefield up. It's mostly worthless, but Charlie takes a deeper look. I'm personally more intrigued by Freddy Sanchez replacing Jose Castillo on the homepage.

Speaking of Charlie, he recently did some thinking outside the box with a suggestion for Dave Littlefield.

Meanwhile, Bones at HW grades the only part of the Pirates' front office that did any work this year.

And as you probably know, the Cards are only one game from making this the most manager-centric World Series in years. In other NLCS links, Jeff Passan writes about Albert Pujols (though I'm more interested in the lead-in on the Yahoo! MLB page that refers to Pujols as "mercurial"), Cards fans can taste victory, and Mets fans aren't quite ready to give up hope yet (though I might if John Maine and Steve Trachsel were my team's only remaining hope).

2006 in Review- Paul Maholm

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Paul Maholm.

2005 key stats: 12 starts above AA. I can't think of anything more important than that.
2006 PECOTA: 8-10, 4.49 ERA, 1.48 WHIP, 96 K, 66 BB in 147 and 1/3 innings
2006 key stats: 8-10, 4.76, 1.61, 117 K, 81 BB in 176 IP

I could take the easy way out on this one and say "take everything I said about Zach Duke and say it again for a guy that is slightly less talented" and we'd have our Maholm review. Maholm made an even briefer 2005 cameo than Duke and had a lot of success, though he outpitched his peripherals by a mile (3-1 with a 2.18 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP but a 4.26 PERA, see the Duke post for a PERA explanation). Like Duke, he had an awful first half, and he was hurt all year by bad defense (evidenced by a BABIP very similar to Duke's). He limped into the All-Star break with a 5.10 ERA, a hideous 1.78 WHIP, and a horrible 1.27 K/BB ratio. From the break on, he improved to a 4.28 ERA (better than Snell), a 1.37 WHIP, and a 1.76 K/BB ratio (helped a lot by an impressive 6.23 K/9 rate).

If we want to compare him to Duke and Snell, ERA+ is probably the best method. Duke was exactly average this year with a 100, while Maholm and Snell both put had 95s, putting them slightly below average and thus slightly below Duke on overall performance for the year (go here and scroll down for ERA+ explanation). That's kind of an interesting stat, at least to me, because if you would ask Pirate fans to rate the performances of Duke, Maholm, and Snell this year from best to worst off the top their heads, I'd imagine 95% of us would go Snell, Duke, Maholm without thinking. The best evidence of this is that in most hypthetical trade talk that I see, Maholm is always mentioned as being the arm to ship away with the assumption being that by trading him, we'd lose less than we would by trading Duke, Gorzy, or Snell. Instead, I think it would be another example of Littlefield selling low. I could go on, but that's another post (for tonight, I think). Anyways, I'll close this by saying the same thing I said about Duke yesterday. If he can keep his walks under control, I think the strikeouts will come (they did in the second half this year) and he'll be a much better pitcher next year.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com (they're the only ones that list current BABIPs for free), Baseball Reference, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

2006 in Review- Zach Duke

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Zach Duke.

2005 key stats: 8-2, 1.81 ERA, 1.20 WHIP 58 K, 23 BB in 84 and 2/3 innings at Pittsburgh
2006 PECOTA: 10-10, 3.87, 1.31, 117 K, 53 BB in 176 innings
2006 key stats: 10-15, 4.47, 1.50, 117 K, 68 BB in 215 and 1/3 innings

So what happened here? First off, we can probably throw ERA out, it's a very misleading stat. Baseball Prospectus put Duke's peripheral ERA (a complex stat, but lets just say it's his ERA based on his ERA, hits/9 innings, BB/9, K/9, and HR/9 that have all been adjusted for park, league, etc. ) from his stint at Pittsburgh last year was 3.25, meaning he was lucky last year. Still, 3.25 is a good PERA (it works the same as ERA only its not as dependent on things a pitcher can't control), so what happened this year? Not as much as people think, for starters. Duke's ERA+ (ratio of the league's ERA to his ERA adjusted for ballpark) was 100 this year, meaning he was exactly average. His BABIP (batting average on balls put in play, thus everything except strike outs and home runs) was .310, which his considerably higher than the league average of .290. This either means that Duke was very unlucky this year (among qualified pitchers only Andy Pettite had a higher BABIP this year at .312) or the Pirates defense flat out stunk (it was probably some bad luck and lots of bad defense).

The encouraging part about Duke's season are his first and second half splits. Before the All-Star Break he clocked in at 5-8 with a 5.17 ERA. He was walking almost 3.4 batters per 9 innings and only striking out 5.25. His WHIP over the timespan was 1.59. I don't know what happened after the break, but Duke dropped his ERA to 3.65 for the rest of the season. His strikeouts didn't improve (4.47/9), but his walks dropped to 2.19/9 and his WHIP dropped to 1.40. From the start of September he was excellent, dropping the number of hits allowed along with the walks and looking a lot like he did last year.

So what's the verdict? Baseball, especially pitching, is a game of adjustments. No one had a book on Duke last year and given his very good stuff, he dominated the National League. Being pegged as the pre-season ace of the Pirates this year, everyone studied up on him. The hitters adjusted to him and started to hit the ball better. Being a young guy, Duke took a while to adjust to what the hitters were doing, but eventually he rounded into form. He's still young (this year was his 23 year old season), but the way he ended this year was promising. Jim Colborn worked with him early in the year on some mechanical changes and they seemed to be taking hold by the end of the season. People likened this to fixing something that wasn't broken, but I kind of feel like it might've been more like getting your car inspected, a precautionary measure to make sure something doesn't break down the road. If Duke can just control his walks next year, something I think he can do based on his second half this year, I think the strikeouts will come up (he had decent K stats in the minors for a finesse guy and strikeouts are often the last thing to come for pitchers when they get to the majors) and he'll be a much better pitcher next year.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN.com (they're the only ones that list current BABIPs for free), Baseball Reference and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

Ollie and the NLCS

It is very strange to think that the ex-Pirate who may end up having the biggest impact on ends up in the World Series could be Oliver Perez. He started the most important game of the season for the Mets last night and had to give them 5 or 6 decent innings after John Maine and Steve Trachsel combined for only 5 innings in the Mets' losses in games 2 and 3. Anyone that's watched him this year knows that's no small task for Perez, but he managed to do it last night. His line wasn't great, 5 and 2/3 innings, 9 hits, 5 runs, 3 homers, but it was enough for the Mets. He kept a consistent motion, he threw hard (fastball mostly at 94 all night with a couple pitches topping out at 96), had a good slider working, and only walked one batter, throwing 52 of 96 pitches for strikes (it should be noted that his last game appearence was September 26th). If it was a regular season outing for the Pirates we would've probably called it "encouraging" because besides the homers he pitched pretty well, for the Mets it was season saving (down 3-1 knowing that Trachsel and Maine are starting 2 games is not where you want to be in the NLCS).

As an aside, Perez is still one of the most fun players to watch in the league. He's more emotional on the mound than anyone and there's still nothing quite like watching him try to bat. Last night he dove out of the box against a two-strike Tyler Johnson curveball that was not knee-buckling by any stretch of the imagination only to watch the ump ring him up. Here's an AP article about his struggles this year that pretty much dumps all over the Pirates. As for the series, I still think the Mets are a better team but I also think they pretty much have to win tonight. I don't see them winning both of the last two games with Maine/Trachsel/Perez starting even though they are at home, especially since Carpenter and Suppan (who's been very good this postseason) will take the mound against them.

2006 in Review- Offensive Odds n' Ends

Today for the season in review we're going to hit on everyone I haven't talked about yet. None of them merited their own post for various reasons, which I'll get to as I talk about them.

Played the whole year but not coming back
We've got three players in this category, Joe Randa, Jermomy Burnitz, and Humberto Cota. Not much to say about Randa or Burnitz, in the long run they ended up producing just about how we (we being the pessimistic internet Pirate fans, see Charlie's community projections for them) thought they would. They were both bad ideas when we signed them, and that didn't change. Cota is a bit of a different story. Using BP's VORP rankings for 2006 (since I've been asked to explain my sabermetric stats, VORP is Value Over Replacement Player, BP's measure of how many runs a player is worth at the plate when compared to a replacement level player, the typical AAA call-up, at their position) Cota finished 1008th out of 1030 with a VORP of -10.3. Granted, he didn't really play much and was given no chance to get into any kind of groove at all, but damn, that's awful. Humberto will almost certainly be non-tendered this offseason. I actually kind of like Cota, despite all of his offensive misgivings. If Brad Ausmus and Mike Matheny have had long careers, Cota will probably get a shot somewhere next year.

Injured and/or disappointing
We get two players here, Nate McLouth and Ryan Doumit. Actually, it's not really fair to put McLouth here, he didn't get hurt until August 11th. Regardless of that, McLouth was pretty bad this year, putting up a .233/.295/.385 line in 270 ABs. He was given a chance to win the center field job with Duffy being sent down in May and he absolutely failed at it, end of story. Doumit, on the other hand, was limited to only 154 PAs due to two hamstring injuries, one that was very serious. He also spent most of his healthy time learning a new position. He only put up a .208/.322/.389 line, but 15 of his 31 hits were doubles or homers. As his minor league career progressed he started showing more power, so there's still some potential there, especially as a lefty. Still, he's gotten hurt just about everywhere he's played (missing tons of time with injuries in 2002, 2004, and 2006), meaning that it's stupid to rely on him for anything. A platoon with Nady at first or in right might not be a terrible idea if we can't fill both positions this offseason.

Didn't see much, but didn't really need to see that much
Mike Edwards, Carlos Maldanado, Yurendell DeCaster, and Rajai Davis are the four that fit this bill. Edwards saw some time early in the year as a roster filler because Tracy likes him, but that's about all I can say. Maldanado was a late callup to relieve Paulino because of Doumit's balky hammies and Cota's utter suckitude. I know he was the Indy Indians' MVP this year, but that speaks more about who was on that team than it does about Maldanado and his .283/.354/.390 line there. Keeping him as the backup next year while non-tendering Cota would be a futile endeavor, he actually might be a worse hitter than 'Berto (WTM's write up on him, here). DeCaster made a couple brief appearences, but only got to the plate two times and struck out both times. Rajai Davis is kind of like Chris Duffy only with less power and less contact ability. Twice this year he stole second but overslid the bag and was tagged out both times. He's not the only non-prospect in the system with this problem. I dunno, I have nothing else worthwhile saying about these guys.

Gone
Craig Wilson, Jose Hernandez, and Sean Casey were all sent to contenders in July or August. I doubt any of them will be back (if Casey or Jose K do come back, thinking about it will only piss me off so let's not do that) so there's no use in talking about them.

We'll start with the pitchers tomorrow.


Stats from the Yahoo! Sports, The Baseball Cube, and the BP Website.

This should be fun

First off, congratulations are due to the Detroit Tigers, your 2006 American League Champion. There's lots of talk going around right now about how the Bucs blew their chance by not hiring Leyland in the offseason, but I don't think that's necessarily true. That, however, is a discussion for another day. Right now we should just focus on how well the Tigers are playing and the fact that it now seems possible that Andy Van Slyke will get a ring before Barry Bonds, and just how sweet that would be.

We should also be focusing on the fact that it's entirely possible that the team that finished with the best record in the majors this year will hang their entire season on Oliver Perez today. Maybe that's a bit strong, but 3-1 deficits aren't overcome all that often. It's true that I give Dave Littlefield a ton of crap for everything he does, but the fact remains that Omar Minaya has put his team in a situation in which they must win a game with Oliver Perez on the mound to avoid a 3-1 deficit in the NLCS. If anything, it should be fun to watch.

Links and things

Josh Shortslef has been added to the 40-man to fill one of the three (I think there was three) open spots on the roster. He had decent numbers at Altoona this year but only made 12 starts and is going to be 25 before the season opens next year. Neither of those are particularly good things.

Pirates.com has an article up about all of the Pirates' "prospects" that are playing Winter Ball in Arizona or Hawaii (which curiously omits Shortslef, I might add). I only use prospects because they do, somehow I don't feel like 26 year old Nyjer Morgan (who is a less talented version of Rajai Davis, who is a less talented verision of Chris Duffy, who isn't really all that talented to begin with) who spent this last year in Altoona is much of a prospect. Regardless, you can find the AFL stats here and you can't find the Hawaii stats anywhere as far as I can tell. Also on the Grand Canyon Rafters (the team the Pirates' players were assigned to) is Joe Koshansky, mentioned by Dejan as a lefty masher target from the Colorado system, my former high school teammate Nolan Reimold, now in the Orioles system, and 2006 top draft pick Luke Hochevar.

And of course, if you haven't been following, the Pittsburgh Tigers are one game from the World Series after another dominant performance by Kenny Rogers last night. Meanwhile, Scott Spezio and So Taguchi lead the Cards to a 9-6 comeback win against the Mets, leaving us one game closer to hearing nothing but Tony LaRussa/Jim Leyland stories non-stop for two weeks.

2006 in Review- Jose Bautista

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jose Bautista

2005 key stats: .283/.364/.503 with 23 HR, 90 RBI, 48 BB and 101 K in 505 PA at Altoona (also had 86 PAs in Indy and Pittsburgh)
2006 PECOTA: .244/.315/.389 with 12 HR and 53 RBI in 486 PA
2006 key stats: .235/.335/.420 with 16 HR, 46 BB and 110 K in 446 PA

Jose was one of the more pleasant surprises this year. He had a good year mostly at AA last year, but 24 is old for a "prospect" at that level (he missed 2004 because some moron left him unprotected in the '03 Rule 5 draft, leaving him to sit on 4 different rosters while getting less than 100 PAs on the full season). He started the year off at Indy, but was quickly called up for one reason or another (I don't really remember why, I'll be honest). He responded with a pretty good year for a guy with only something like 160 PAs above AA for his career. His batting average was kind of low but he showed some good power (Brad Eldred slugged .458 in his short stint last year in about half as many plate appearences as Bautista had this year). People complained a lot about his strikeouts, but his K/BB ratio was pretty close to what it was at Altoona last year, which I think is pretty impressive given the two level leap to the bigs. I realize he tailed off pretty badly (.192/.304/.325 with only 5 homers after July 17th) but I still think this was a pretty good year. He can certainly be a better utility guy that Rob Mackowiak was and it's even possible that he'd make a decent starter at third. He's got much better plate discipline than anyone on the team not named Jason Bay (despite only ~450 PAs he was second on the team in walks by 12, and yes, I know he was second in strikeouts as well, but remember, AA last year) which is something that just can't be taught (especially not by Manto). His season this year is overshadowed by Paulino's high batting average, but even with is bad slump at the end he had a higher OPS than Ronny (.755 to .754) and is only a few months older. I didn't have very high expectations for Jose coing in, but he certainly impressed me this year.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

LCS Update/Open Thread

Sean Casey is out for the rest of the ALCS, but Jim Leyland didn't miss a beat by adding Alexis Gomez into the lineup. Gomez proceeded to drive in four runs in an 8-5 win for the Tigers. If you're curious as to who Alexis Gomez is you can check out his Baseball Cube page. Let's just say his performance last night was... unexpected. Oakland has now lost the first two games of the ALCS at home, something no one has ever recovered from to win a series. Get ready to hear about those damn '04 Red Sox non-stop for the next couple days.

The NLCS will finally get underway in New York tonight. The pitching matchup certainly favors the Mets; Tom Glavine will face off against the one and only Jeff Weaver tonight. Yeah, that Jeff Weaver. The Cards would be in trouble in this series except that I picked the Mets to win, which pretty much dooms them. I've been like the anti-Midas this post-season.

2006 in Review- Xavier Nady

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Xavier Nady.

2005 key stats (SD)- .261/.321/.439 with 13 homers and 43 RBI in 355 PA
2006 PECOTA (for NYM)- .274/.332/.447 with 11 homers and 56 RBI in 335 PA
2006 key stats- .280/.337/.453 with 17 homers and 63 RBI in 498 PA

The projections for Weapon X were just about dead on. In his 2 months in Pittsburgh (55 games, 214 PAs) X's numbers were .300/.352/.409. The average and OBP are higher than you would expect, but the slugging was much, much lower. Where that power goes isn't really an X-File. It's mostly a function of PNC Park, in around 120 PAs at PNC Nady is only slugging .314, which is x-ceptionally low. If he's going to be any kind of player for the Pirates, that simply has to come up.

Nady's time in Pittsburgh was a tale of 2 months. In August (his first month here), he tore the cover off the ball, hitting .359/.411/.466. In September he cooled way down to .240/.290/.350, enduring something like an 0-for-22 slump at one point (I think). The bottom line on Nady's 2006 is that he was mostly powerless once he got to Pittsburgh (only 3 homers), which does not bode well for his future at PNC. If he's our starting first baseman next year, we're going to be in trouble. He would make a very good platoon partner in right (.969 OPS against lefties) and wouldn't be terrible there as an every day player (he was mostly a starter for the Mets but they have Beltran, Delgado, Wright, Reyes, etc.), but with the lineup that we have, we need more power than X can provide us with.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

LCS Open Thread

The NLCS game tonight is rained out but the ALCS will play on. Tonight Justin Verlander and Esteban Loaiza take the mound. This is a huge game for the A's, no one wants to lose the first two games at home.

RIP Corey Lidle

Wow, just wow. This is terrible.

New poll

This week's poll deals with the new layout around here. I'm curious what everyone thinks after a week or so of it. I'll be up front, I'm probably not going to change things back even if the new layout gets crushed in the polls (no one said this blog was a democracy), but I'm always interested what everyone thinks.

Last week's results (it was one of the closest polls to date):
Your reaction to 67-95

• Disappointment- 28%
• No expectations, thus no disappointment- 32%
• Disappointed buy angry for being disappointed- 23%
• Relieved that the '62 Mets are still "The '62 Mets"- 17%
  

2006 in Review- Chris Duffy

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Chris Duffy.

2005 key stats: .308/.358/.464 in 338 PAs at AAA Indy and .341/.385/.429 in 135 PAs at Pittsburgh with 4 doubles, 1 3B, 1 HR, and 2 steals in 2 attempts.
2006 PECOTA: .287/.340/.405 with 21 2B, 4 3B, 6 HR, and 16 steals in 21 attempts in 444 PAs
2006 key stats: .255/.317/.338 with 1 HR, 14 2B, 3 3B, and 26 steals in 27 attempts in 333 PAs

Duffy is another tough one to figure out. He was hitting .194/.255/.276 when he was sent down to the minors in mid-May. Tracy and company had every reason to be upset with him at that point, they rightly wanted to turn him into a Freddy Sanchez type hitter that sprayed the ball all over the field. Duffy was not pleased by this and on top of things had 26 strikeouts and only 3 walks before his demotion. He disappeared for a while, screwed his head back on, reported to Indy, and came back to Pittsburgh after the trade deadline. When he came back he was a different player, hitting close to his PECOTAs (with less power), going .282/.345/.366, stealing 23 of his bases, drawing 17 walks against his 45 strikeouts (not great, but a big improvement). All of those stolen bases with only one caught stealing help out his poor slugging percentage, which we might reasonably assume will improve. If he can just perform at about the level he did after his recall, which I think is reasonable (the whole time after his recall, not the very end of the season where he looked like he did in 2005), he's an acceptable stopgap until McCutchen can get here. I'd still like to see him get on base a little more as a leadoff hitter, but for now I think he's probably our best option. He was a lot better than McLouth, so I think he's probably at least earned the right to lose the job in center again.


Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

Links

I haven't done a link dump in a while, so maybe now is time for one.

The Tigers won easily last night. Unfortunately for them, Sean Casey (who's been one of their better hitters this postseason) injured his calf and will miss at least one game. Casey and Jason Kendall were the only two ex-Buccos in action on the field last night and they both went 1-for-3.

You know how Sports Illustrated always does their "Signs that the Apocalypse is upon us" bit every week? I'm pretty sure that this is a strong candidate to make the cut one of these weeks.

The Arizona Fall League has started with several Pirates in action for the Grand Canyon Rafters.

Imagine Dave Littlefield in other occupations. Scary.

In the wake of the Yankees debacle, Fire Joe Morgan has been delightfully shredding newspaper writers who are writing about it but have no idea what they're talking about. It's really quite fun to read. Murray Chass gets his here and Richard Justice gets his here.

ALCS Open Thread

Barry Zito and Nate Robertson take the mound in Oakland tonight to kick off the ALCS, which I can only assume is the series that Pirate fans will care the most about in the coming weeks. If you're looking for team specific blogs to follow for this series, the A's of course have Athletics Nation, one of the most famous baseball blogs out there, and for the Tigers I'd recommend The Detroit Tiger Weblog. First pitch is at 8:05, feel free to use the comments to discuss.

2006 in Review- Jose Castillo

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jose Castillo.

It's time to suck up and get this one over with.

2005 key stats: .268/.307/.416 with 11 homers, 16 2B and 3 3B with 53 RBI and 59 K in 397 PA
2006 PECOTA: .273/.321/.409 with 11 homers, 24 2B, and 3 3B with 56 RBI and 80 K in 509 PA
2006 key stats: .255/.317/.338 with 14 homers, 25 2B, and 0 3B with 65 RBI and 98 K in 550 PA

So, umm, what happened here? After the Brewers game on June 1st, Jose was hitting .311/.359/.500. He had 30 RBIs and had just hit his 8th homer the day before. He had walked 19 times and struck out 28. All of this was in around 200 PAs, about 50 games into the season. Those are some sparkling numbers for any position player, much less a second baseman. From there on out, things were disastrous. He hit .222/.267/.320 (a .587 OPS!). His homer rate was just about halved. Most stunningly (brace yourself, sit down, and get a stiff drink) he struck out 70 times against FIVE WALKS. That's not a typo. He struck out 14 times more than he walked from June on. Of players with 338 ABs or more after June 1st, Jose had the second lowest slugging percentage (interestingly, Jack Wilson had the fourth lowest though, as discussed yesterday, much of that was due to a miserable June) behind only Ronny Cedeno. He also had the second lowest OBP, also behind Cedeno. Thus, we can infer that of all players to play regularly from June 2nd through the end of the year, Jose Castillo had the second lowest OPS. His defense was no better, he was 2 runs below replacement at second this year and a whopping 23 runs below average. Basically, Jose Castillo very well may have been the worst regular player in the major leagues from June 2nd until the end of the season (Cedeno is a much better fielder).

So what to make of this? Consider that after putting up an OPS of .823 in Lynchburg at the age of 21 in 2002, his highest seasonal OPS was the .729 he put up in Altoona the next year. He's going to be 26 next year. That means that, "He's still young," is no longer an excuse, because he really isn't. It means that if we get a decent offer for him at all this offseason we need to press trade before the offering GM finds this post or does any research of his own. I don't see any reason to think that his legendary "potential power" will ever be tapped over a full season. After this last season, we'd be lucky for him to just be average.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, The Baseball Cube, the BP Website,and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

LCS Preview/Predictions

Here's what each team has going for them in their upcoming series:

Detroit:

• They're better than Oakland in pretty much every quantifiable manner.
• They definitely got a wakeup call when they lost the division on the last day to the Twins.
  
• They seem to have that "team of destiny" thing going on after the Yankees series.
• They have Andy Van Slyke.

Oakland:

• We all know that team of destiny stuff is horseshit. Then again, Oakland fans are probably feeling like this is their "team of destiny."
  
• Both teams that won in the AL Division Series' were underdogs, just as Oakland is in this series.
  
• Didn't Detroit kind of look like a team that had just won their own personal World Series when they were spraying the crowd with champagne and partying like it was 1999 on Saturday? They may be out of gas.
  
• They have home field advantage for the series.
• Think about what happens in LCS's when Van Slyke, Slaught, McClendon, Lamont, and Leyland are all involved.

New York:

• They're really freaking good.
• The Cardinals kind of suck.
• Karma dictates that Oliver Perez has complete game 17 K 2-hit shutout in him.
  

St. Louis:

• Albert Pujols and Chris Carpenter play for them.
• I've developed an interesting theory. Each year, one of the finalists in the major sports championships (I'm throwing hockey out for now because of the lockout and rule changes) seems to be a failed semi-finalist from the year before. This year's NBA Finals had the Heat. The Super Bowl had the Steelers. The World Series had the Astros. The 2005 NBA Finals are an exception, but the 2005 Super Bowl had the Eagles and the 2004 World Series featured the Red Sox. The only failed semi-finalist from last year that's left? The St. Louis Cardinals. Recent history may be in their favor.
• Also, I hate them and I doubt I'll be lucky enough to see them lose.

This time around I'll base my predictions on what happened in the prior round. The A's and Tigers won despite both what my head and my gut told me. That means that as much as the Tigers seem like the favorite in this one, the A's will win in 7. In the NL, I made both of my predictions in the Division Series based on my gut feeling rather than my head. I was wrong in both cases. This time I'll use the ol' noggin, Mets in 5 (only because Carpenter gets one start).

2006 in Review- Jack Wilson

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jack Wilson.

Let's churn one more of these out today.

2005 key stats: .257/.299/.363 with 8 HR, 52 RBI, 24 2B, and 7 3B
2006 PECOTA: .270/.312/.377 with 8 HR, 57 RBI, 28 2B, and 4 3B
2006 key stats: .273/.316/.370 with 8 HR, 35 RBI, 27 2B and 1 3B

If Freddy Sanchez provides us with a clear reason not to trust the computer projection models, Jack Wilson gives us a compelling case that they can be quite accurate. Jack actually had a rather interesting year, one that the numbers may not completely bear out. He put on his much ballyhooed 20 lbs of muscle in the offseason and charged out of the gates with a .326/.384/.562 April in which he hit 5 homers and seemed to be back in 2004 form. He injured his hamstring in early May, missed some time, and was miserable at the plate until early July. From May 1st through July 5th he was flat out awful, going .228/.254/.288 (that's an OPS of .543). Was the hammy the problem? I don't know, we used the appendix as a crutch last year, now the hammy this year. At some point, we simply have to say the guy is injury prone and needs to take some more time off. But from July 6th through the end of the year he was better, going .293/.344/.372 for a .716 OPS, not too bad for a shortstop.

Of course the elephant in this room is Jack's defense. Using the BP ratings (there's lots of different ways to quantify defense, so we'll stick with one method), Jack was 44 runs above replacement last year in the field (2nd in the NL according to BP 2006), and 23 runs above average. This year those numbers dropped considerably to 24 and 6 (granted, the replacement and average values they are compared against each season individually and thus are readjusted from year to year, but I don't think the shorstop play changed that drastically in the NL this year so we'll go with it). That means that while Jack wasn't quite as bad as we might've thought defensively this year, he was still a lot worse than he was last year. A shortstop that puts up an OPS around .700 and plays great defense is a valuable player (especially if he's batting 7th or 8th instead of second, but I'll leave that alone here, it's not Jack's fault). Jack didn't do that this year. I don't think he's capabe of a year like 2004 ever again, but if he loses some weight and gets his defense back to where it was in '04 and '05 I don't think he's as useless as people (myself included) like to make him out to be.

Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, The Baseball Cube, the BP Website,and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.

Who to root for in the LCS

Now is not a fun time to be a Pittsburgh sports fan. The Pirates are done, the Steelers are raising blood pressures to unsafe levels, and it's still too early to know what to expect out of the Pens. But since the League Championship Series' are beginning, we can always pick a team or two and cheer them on. Here's how I'm breaking the remaining four teams down, in terms of palpability.

1. Detroit Tigers- We're free to cheer for Sean Casey just for being a nice guy from Pittsburgh now that he's off the team. He had a great Division Series against the Yankees and seems to be peaking after a bunch of injuries this year. Their coaching staff also includes Leyland, McClendon, Sluggo, and the namesake of this blog. Throw in the fact that just three years ago these guys were worse than the Pirates and have pulled themselves out of things, well, you can consider me a Tigers fan this week.
2. Oakland A's- The ALCS is great for Pirate fans. Oakland is a close second behind the Tigers when it comes to things to root for. Jason Kendall was always one of my favorite players when he was a Pirate (I had some issues with him last summer, but that doesn't change the fact that I liked him when he was here) and Ken Macha is a Monroeville native and was many fan's top choice to be the next Bucs manager instead of Tracy. There's no shame in rooting for the A's this week either.
   
3. New York Mets- I can't believe the Mets are only #3 on this list, but any team that gives me the hope of seeing Oliver Perez start an NLCS game can't be all bad. Plus they're not...
4. St. Louis Cardinals- I dislike the Cardinals. A lot. LaRussa pisses me off. Pujols haunts my dreams during the regular season. I really don't have anything against Cardinal fans, they all seem like nice people, but man do I hate the players on this team from Pujols to Spezio's stupid beard to migedty little Eckstein.

LCS predictions (which are admittedly probably useless, but we'll do it for fun anyways) tomorrow. Who's everyone else rooting for?

2006 in Review- Ronny Paulino

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Ronny Paulino.

2005 key stats: .315/.372/.538 with 13 homers and 42 RBI in 301 PA at AAA Indy and .292/.350/.435 with 6 homers and 20 RBI in 183 PA at AA Altoona
2006 PECOTA: .265/.321/.415 with 12 homers and 55 RBI in 452 PA
2006 key stats: .310/.360/.395 with 6 homers and 55 RBI in 476 PA

Baseball Prospectus may have been the only people that saw this 2006 coming for Paulino. One of the comparables the PECOTA system spit out for him was Sandy Alomar, a pretty good outlook for a young catcher. They also guessed that the Pirates' love for his defensive skills might put him ahead of Ryan Doumit on the depth chart. They hit pretty closely on his final OPS, though he ended up with a higher batting average than they guessed and accordingly, a higher OBP, which off-set his poor power performance.

The question that everyone now has is whether or not Ronny can keep it up. Besides his partial-season stint at Indy last year, he never hit .300 for a full season in the minors. What he did do, however, was constantly improve as he rose through the system. He had a very poor 2003 with both Lynchburg and Altoona, but had a good 2004 with the Curve that lead to an early promotion to Indianapolis the next year (full minor league stats here). The giant red flags that went up this year, however, were his batting average loaded OBP and the fact that only 25 of his 137 hits went for extra bases. Power often develops late and he put up a better SLG in the minors, but he mostly just hit more homers in the minors. What I'm afraid of is that he's too slow to leg out a ton of doubles (triples are out of the question) and most of his power is homer dependent, which is a bad thing for a righty at PNC Park.

There is also the subject of his defense. Granted, things are not easy for a catcher that is tossed right into things like he was, but his D was mostly bad. He blocked the ball very poorly all year (he allowed 9 passed balls but there were numerous wild pitches that could've been prevented by him) and a .988 fielding percentage is very poor for a catcher. Still, he did a decent job at throwing out runners and his ball blocking skills will likely get better. BP 2006 rated him as an above average defensive catcher (not much above average, but some) in all of his minor league stops, so we can expect that to improve (I hope).

Paulino was great in 2006 and certainly much better than we could've hoped for. His minor league history also suggests that he might keep hitting for average, but catchers that catch a ton of games (as Paulino did this year and probably will next year if Doumit is his only backup, which is likely) almost never keep that up for long (Joe Mauer is the first catcher to win an AL batting title... ever). If he loses his average, he loses his on-base percentage, which would be a big blow to his offensive contribution to the team. It's also probable that part of his .310 average this year was due to teams simply not knowing much about him or his abilities and not worrying about a rookie catcher. More attention will be paid to him next year and with his long swing pitchers may not have much trouble finding a hole. I'm not saying that we should be negative about Paulino, he's certainly earned the starting job behind the plate next year and done far more than we could've expected. Still, I'd be careful about being anything more than cautiously optimistic about what he might do next year.

Stats from Yahoo! Sports, The Baseball Cube, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.