Blame who?

This article from Sportsline.com has been getting passed around the internet a lot lately as it's the rare national article that repeats all of the "FIRE LITTLEFIELD" sentiment that gets heard around these parts so much. Littlefield is terrible at his job, but when he gets axed I get the feeling that he's just going to be the fall guy for an entire organization that is rife with problems. This headline at the new Pirates blog Buccowire made me imagine what's going to happen this spring when the Pirates start 4-20... (note- I've tweaked this slightly since I posted it, mostly to make it rhyme better and help the flow)

Robert Nutting: Times have changed
The fans are getting pissed.
They don't obey the spin.
And they scream and yell and hiss.
Jim Tracy: Should we blame McClatchy?
Kevin McClatchy: Or blame that Jim Tracy?
Ogden Nutting: Or should we blame those guys on the TV?
Robert Nutting: No, blame Littlefield!
Blame Littlefield!
With his beady little eyes
And flapping head so full of lies.
Blame Littlefield!
Blame Littlefield!
We can lock him in a vault!
Everyone: It's Littlefield's fault.
Jim Colborn: Don't blame me
For that guy Wells
He met the damn GM
And his veins began to swell.
Jeff Manto: And J. Castillo
Has a donut on his shelf,
And now when he swings I want to kill myself!
Robert Nutting: Well, blame Littlefield!
Blame Littlefield!
It seems that everything's gone wrong since Littlefield came along
Blame Littlefield!
Blame Littlefield!
Everyone: He's a terrible GM anyways!
McClatchy: Wilson could've played in right or on first it's true.
Instead we got Chacon and that guy pitches like poo.
Everyone: SHOULD WE BLAME THE MARKET?
SHOULD WE BLAME THE K'S?
OR THE COACHES WHO HELPED PUT HIM IN A HAZE?
Robert Nutting: HECK NO!
Everyone: Blame Littlefield!
Blame Littlefield!
Robert Nutting: With all his Boston hullaballo.
McClatchy: And that bitch Ed Creech, too!
Everyone: Blame Littlefield!
Shame on Littlefield
for...
The sucking won't stop
The games we lost
The trades that were dumb
Must all be undone
We must blame him
And cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming uuuuuuuuuus!

And of course, the inspiration (not completely safe for work):

Sadly, I don't think this is a joke

In the next couple of weeks, you'll hear certain names over and over again. McGwire. Dawson. Rice. At least one stat-head with a sense of humor will bring up Albert Belle just to piss people off. Should they be in or shouldn't they? Well, the Pittsburgh Pirates would like to add one more name to the mix...Screen grab from the one and only Pirates.com.

To spend or not to spend

The comments thread below on the poll post hits the nail on the head when it comes to the real discussion we should be having when it comes to guys like Suppan, Ohka, etc. The question isn't whether or not the Pirates have the money to spend on those guys (Dejan makes that clear in today's Q&A) because they do have it, the question is whether or not they should spend it one those guys. Honestly, you can make arguments either way.

Don't spend the money
We've got four pretty good young starters and beyond Jason Bay and Freddy Sanchez, we've got no real bats. We're a small market team, getting involved in bidding wars for middle of the road pitchers is not a smart use of that money. Sure Suppan or Ohka may help us in the short term, but in the long term that money could be spent on scouting, on signing Latin American prospects, on improving the minor league system, or in so many other ways that would help this infinitely more than either of those two would.

Spend the money
Baseball is about image. Right now the image that every single player in the league has of Pittsburgh is that it's where careers go to die. No one will ever waive a no trade clause or sign a contract here until that changes. This off-season we've got the money to spend and we've got the hole to fill, bring in a guy like Suppan and prove to everyone else that Pittsburgh doesn't have to mean the end of a career. Who would you rather see in the rotation? Chacon? Burnett? Van Benschoten? If we have to trade a starter to get a bat you might see two of those three in the rotation if we don't sign Ohka or Suppan. Put a proven vet in the rotation to show the young guys the ropes, they looked lost on their own last year at some points. Break out the checkbook, dig a little deeper, and show people that their careers don't have to be on life support to sign with the Pirates.

Now Poll

I replaced the poll before bed last night but didn't put a post up. This week's poll is straightforward, do you want to see DL spend $8-10 million a year on a middle of the road starter like Jeff Suppan (yesterday's hot name) or Tomo Ohka (today's hot name)? A simple yay or nay will suffice. As always, feel free to discuss in the comments.

Last week's results for "Gut reaction to the Soriano signing"

• The Cubs are stupid and desperate- 49%
• Being a Pirate fan is depressing- 43%
• Good move, Cubbies- 9%

Lots of people told me they wished they could vote for each of the top two options. This obviously bore itself out in the vote. Personally, I kind of thought all three things at the same time, if that's even possible.

Kip Wells: Cardinal

Kip Wells has signed a one year, $4 million with the St. Louis Cardinals. This strikes me as a reasonable deal, but then again I don't think Kip Wells sucks, while I know a lot of people disagree with me. Given the Bucs and Cards recent history, look for Jason Bay to take one right in the ribs from Round Tripper Kipper next year while LaRussa laughs his smug ass off in the dugout.

Quick links

Dejan says we are pursuing Jeff Suppan. Not only is it a bad idea to attempt to sign the best playoff pitcher the World Series Champions had in this crazy market, it's not going to happen.

Dear Ed Eagle,
Just because someone sends you an e-mail regarding your "GM For a Day" request doesn't mean you have to print it. You are making us all look bad, yourself included.
Sincerely,
WHYGAVS

Signings:
Indians- Delucci
Dodgers- Wolf
Orioles- Baez
Red Sox- close with Drew and getting closer with Matsuzaka

Charlie recaps Wayne Krivsky's insanity

Rowdy talks about Adam Dunn

Pirates extend Marte in typically pointless manner

I don't know what to make of this. A day after picking up Damaso Marte's option for 2007, the Pirates extended him through 2008 by chopping some money out of his 2007 contract and guaranteeing him a contract for 2008, when he only had a club option. They also gave him a $6 million club option for 2009, which means we (or someone else, but most likely us) will be paying the $250,000 to buy that out. I think this move probably means that the Pirates won't be trading Marte, but I can't tell because this move is stupidly unnecessary. According to Rotoworld, he's now guaranteed $2.45 million in 2007 and $2 million in 2008 with the club option in 2009. This is instead of being guaranteed $3 million in 2007 with a $3 million club option for 2008. Before this deal, the Pirates could tell teams that Marte is cheap in 2007 and if he's good this year, you can keep him for cheap next year as well. Now, they'll have to tell people that he's cheap for two years, but if he sucks you're stuck with him and if he doesn't, it won't be cheap to keep him for a third year. I don't understand how removing the flexibility from the original contract helps anyone, really. The change in money is small enough to be meaningless, even by Pirate standards (they'd have to pay him $6 million to pitch the next two years under his previous contract, now they'll have to pay him $4.7 million to pitch two years and buy him out). Why are we even wasting time making moves like this in the off season? So we can tell people we're doing something?

A closer look at the pitchers

Doing some browsing on the internet looking for something Pirate-related to talk about has finally brought me some inspiration today. While browsing the BBTF blog I found a link to this interesting post by the Baseball Crank. Using the new toys at Baseball Reference, BC compared a bunch of pitchers across generations to see how they pitched in their wins compared to their losses (just read the whole post, it's worth it). He found that as much as people bitch about wins and losses as a useful stat, things evened themselves out over time and in general even great pitchers pitch very well in their wins and poorly in their losses. This is incredibly intriguing to me, though I suppose maybe I shouldn't be that surprised. Still, career-wise, Shawn Chacon has a better ERA in games that he's won than Chris Carpenter, it's just that he pitches well enough to win on a much less consistent basis than Carp does. Anyways, I've decided to have some fun with these splits and a couple other interesting ones to me (OPS against by inning, specifically) on a much smaller scale, looking at the three pitchers that spent the whole year in the Pirates rotation (Duke, Maholm, and Snell). Specifically, I decided to look for what varied most drastically from wins to losses (it's unfortunate that it doesn't track no decisions, but we'll live for now). If at least part of what separates a great pitcher from an average (or an average one from a bad one) one is consistency, were the problems the Bucs' Big 3 had something they can control, or was it attributable to something like bad defense? If nothing else, it's just fun to look at stats like this.

Zach Duke
Key stats in 10 Ws: 72 and 1/3 IP, 2.74 ERA, 70 H, 3 HR, 45 K, 17 BB, .261/.315/.377 against
Key stats in 14 Ls: 88 and 2/3 IP, 6.50 ERA, 122 H, 12 HR, 48 K, 34 BB, .332/.391/.512 against

The two things that jump out, at least at me, are the walks (his BB/9 jumped from 2.12 to 3.45) and the home runs (HR/9 jumped from 0.37 to 1.22), two things that are entirely within his control (well, sometimes Pujols does what Pujols wants, but what I'm getting at is that you can't blame a fielder for a home run). Still, I'm not sure an extra walk and an extra homer every nine innings explains the huge disparity in numbers. Without being completely positive myself, it strikes me that holding the opponents to a SLG only about 110 points higher than their average is very good for a pitcher, whereas when they have a SLG about 200 points higher, things are not so good. Knowing that the Pirates were the second worse defense in the league on balls hit in the air (at least according to David Pinto's PMR rankings) perhaps at least some of Duke's struggles were due to poor defense (it would seem to me that balls hit in the air lead to extra base hits more often than balls hit on the ground). Still, knowing that his homer rate almost quadrupled in his losses, I don't know how much of that I buy as it would seem to be an indication he was just getting hit harder those nights. I suppose it's something to think about, if nothing else. If you scroll further down you'll see Duke's biggest problem in 2006, he got destroyed in the first inning, giving up at .951 OPS against. That's just plain bad.

Paul Maholm
Key stats in 8 W's: 52 and 2/3 IP, 2.73 ERA, 45 H, 3 HR, 29 K, 20 BB, .242/.333/.344 against
Key stats in 10 L's: 52 and 1/3 IP, 6.54 ERA, 70 H, 7 HR, 32 K, 28 BB, .324/.407/.500 against

Maholm is similar to Duke, though he really walks too many people all of the time (his BB/9 numbers jump from 3.42 to 4.81 in losses) for a guy that doesn't strike a ton of people out. His homers also more than doubled (0.51 per 9 to 1.20 per 9). We can make the same guesses about the defense that we do for Duke, and since the homer jump is smaller maybe it's an indication that the defense was in fact worse on nights Maholm lost, but there were some nights when Maholm simply got hit hard and it's hard to ignore that fact having watched a bunch of those games. Maholm also got killed in the first inning, giving up a whopping .995 OPS in the first and a .950 OPS in the third.

Ian Snell
Key stats in 14 W's: 90 and 2/3 IP, 2.28 ERA, 68 H, 8 HR, 87 K, 33 BB, .210/.282/.336 against
Key stats in 11 L's: 57 and 2/3 IP, 7.34 ERA, 79 H, 14 HR, 48 K, 21 BB, .333/.385/.574 against

Now here's some interesting stuff. Snell was better than Maholm or Duke in his wins and worse in his losses. His walks weren't the problem, they were 3.28/9 in both wins and losses. Instead, the problem for Snell in his losses seems to be a drop in strikeouts (8.64/9 in wins compared to 7.49/9 in losses) and a jump in homers (0.79/9 in wins to 2.18/9 in losses). A drop in strikeouts means more balls in play for the defense to screw up, but a huge jump in home run rate means Snell is getting shelled. Snell also had a massive OPS against in the first inning with opponents clocking in with a .990 rate. That mythical wall we talked about Snell hitting so many times is also evident in his splits, his OPS against was .905 in the 5th inning and .972 in the 6th inning.

So do we have a conclusion? It seems likely that some bad defense (probably bad flyball defense) cost the Pirates pitchers some bases during the season. Pinto's PMR rating only takes whether balls were recorded as outs into effect, but we can assume that if the Pirates were poor at turning fly balls and line drives into outs then they were also poor at keeping singles from turning into doubles and doubles from turning into triples, especially with the ridiculous set of outfield arms we trotted out this year. But the three pitchers were also maddeningly inconsistent. Maholm and Duke both walked more batters in their losses and all three of them gave up at least twice as many gopher balls in their losses than the did in their wins. Still, the most interesting split was one I didn't even intend to look at today; the first inning OPS against for all three pitchers was over .950. Since it dropped over the bulk of the game for all three of them, it would seem to me that other teams were simply incredibly prepared for our pitchers and they weren't ready for the opposition. They all adjusted well (save Snell, who got rocked the third time through the lineup pretty regularly), so I'm going to have to say that the advance scouting of Kent Tekulve and whatever advice Colborn was giving them from the tapes they watched was pretty useless this year, at least as far as helping our pitchers prepare for opposing batters. In fact, it might've been more hurtful than the defense was.

The Q&A returns

Dejan is changing his Q&A to a daily format, taking 1-2 questions a day every day instead of a bunch every Friday. That starts today, where he fields a couple extra questions due to his layoff. I'll be back later tonight with something more fun and more original than just another link, I promise.

Hopefully this means a trade is coming

The Bucs have picked up Damaso Marte's option and hopefully the next step from here is a left-handed reliever getting traded. If DL can convince teams that Marte had a good 2006 (read: to ignore his 1-7 record) Marte might bring a decent return in a trade, especially priced at $3 million for one year on a market where Justin Speier is worth $18 million over four. The rest of the article talks about other choices the Pirates are faced with including extending Freddy Sanchez through his arbitration years (something I hope they're not spending too much time on right now as it's not exactly a pressing matter) and deciding whether to tender Chacon or not. I'd imagine that will depend greatly on whether DL pulls the trigger on a trade involving a starter. If he does, he might have the cash on hand for one starter on the market but he almost certainly won't have the money for two. As much as it pains me to say this, Chacon actually seemed to be improving under Colborn after he got here and at around $4 million, well, I doubt we could pull more on the free agent market.

More divisional news

The rest of the NL Central keeps busy while the Pirates stand still. Yesterday the Brewers and D'Backs completed a six player swap. The big names are Doug Davis going to Arizona and Johnny Estrada going to Milwaukee. The Brewers also get starter Claudio Vargas and reliever Greg Aquino while the D'Backs get prospects Dana Eveland and Dave Krynzel. Both Eveland and Krynzel have seen limited time in Milwaukee, but I don't really know a ton about them. Davis is pretty much the definition of an average pitcher (career 62-63 record, 1.47 WHIP, 4.35 ERA), though he did strike out a ton of batters in 2005. Estrada should upgrade the Brewers at catcher in a big way.

The Astros continued their spending spree by inking Woody Williams to a 2 year deal worth $12.5 million. Williams had a good year with the Padres last year, but Minute Maid is not going to help anything and he's going to be 40 next year. If the Astros are hoping to replace the potentially departed Clemens and Pettite with this move, they're failing.

And finally, Alfonso Soriano is asking the Cubs for permission to play in the Dominican Winter League. After reading David Maraniss' Clemente this summer, I understand what a pride point it is for players to play some baseball in their home countries in the winter, but this just has too much potential tragedy for the Cubs to let happen.

Vacation's over

With only a little over a week left until the Winter Meetings kick off, Dejan Kovacevic returns to the PG today with two Pirate related stories, which is pretty much two more stories than we've seen about the team from the PG since his post-season wrap in October.

The first story is similar to what I said here, that the crazy off-season market could benefit the Pirates if they play their cards right in the trade market. In the article Littlefield has this to say about the market:

Sure, it's going to help us. You've got to go someplace to get players. If the free-agent market gets expensive, you would think, in general, that the trade market would increase, as well, as far as value.

It's nice to know that DL's at least got his mind on the right track this winter. I doubt he's thinking of going as far as I talked about in my post (that would be trading EVERYone), but at least he's saying the right things. From the same article, we get what we bloggers thrive on at this time of year, names. One name is one we just talked about, Brad Hawpe. The other is Adam Dunn, who would look awfully nice protecting Jason Bay next year. We may be able to pry Dunn out of Cincy easier than we could pry Teixeira out of Texas because, well, Wayne Krivsky appears to be insane. The problem with Dunn is that he's as expensive as hell ($10.5 million this year and a $13 million club option for 2008) and we'd only get two years out of him before he would almost certainly leave for free agency. If we've got to give up a ton to get him here for only two years I'm not sure it's worth it, only because I don't think Adam Dunn fixes all of the problems this team has. The final name mentioned is Aubrey Huff, who DL says the Pirates aren't going to pursue on the free agent market. This is more good news. The curious news is that he's planning on making these trades without dealing Snell, Maholm, Duke, or Gorzelanny. Just exactly how he plans to do that is beyond me. I'll be as happy as anyone if Jose Castillo and Xavier Nady turn into Adam Dunn, but I'm not sure I see that happening.

Today also marks the return of Dejan's Hot Stove Report. Because of the Pirates' inactivity there's not much to report, thus the bulk of it is on Nyjer Morgan. At the end we learn the Pirates mini-camp may be held at PNC this January (if the weather is like it's been the past couple days we might as well just start the season then). Dejan also mentions Wardell Starling as the only prospect that is Rule 5 eligible and Jesse Chavez as having a shot to make the team out of camp, so maybe Chavez isn't eligible, after all. This is, along with the new CBA rules, is probably worth it's own post sometime early next week. You know, on a day when the Steelers aren't on.

Piling on the Pirates

With no real Pirate news to talk about today (Dejan returns to the PG tomorrow, so we'll certainly have something to talk about then), we can always rely on the Carbolic Smoke Ball (Pittsburgh's version of The Onion, for the uninformed) for some fake Bucco news.

"Ten minutes before a Pirate game, a siren will blare from Mellon Square,
warning everyone a disaster is about to occur," Ravenstahl said. "This system is
long overdue and, no doubt, will spare countless people from experiencing a
calamity."

DJ Gallo is also having some fun with the Pirates over at the Sports Pickle this week in his weekly poll. The question: Why are baseball payrolls skyrocketing? Answer number 5: I don't know, but I heard a rumor that the Pirates are going to offer some guy a 2-year, $900,000 deal, so things are definitely out of hand. And as always, there's lots of other good stuff at the Pickle (making fun of the Manning family and Philadelphia is always a good option).

Maholm for Hawpe?

Holy freaking crap, there's some Pirate news to talk about. Rotoworld is relaying the rumor in from Denver that the Pirates and Rockies are discussing a Paul Maholm for Brad Hawpe trade (the Rocky Mountain News article is here). Hawpe put up a .293/.383/.515 line with 22 HR and 84 RBIs in 499 ABs last year, so we could likely suspect something similar in Pittsburgh since he's a lefty. He played some first base in the low minors but has been a right fielder for a few years now. He had two years in the minors in which he absolutely raked at the plate, 2002 in high class A Salem in which he OPS'd 1.034 and was named league MVP and 2004 in offense friendly AAA Colorado Springs where he slugged .652 in 92 games before a call-up to Colorado. I would guess that a guy like Hawpe is the ceiling for a straight-up Maholm deal, though Rotoworld relays that the Rockies want more and the Pirates may be willing to part with Gorzellany instead of Maholm to make this trade happen. I hope it doesn't come to that. Hawpe's Baseball Cube page is here.

Crazy market update

Gary Matthews Junior was thankful for Juan Pierre, Ned Coletti, and the Dodgers front office yesterday when he signed an even bigger deal than Pierre with the semi-crosstown Angels. If you're curious, his yearly OPS numbers since 2001 (the year he played with the Bucs) are .706, .780, .675, .811, .756, and .856 with those last three years coming in a hitter friendly park in Arlington. That production is now worth $10 million a year over five years for a guy that will be 32 next year. Remember when hockey buried themselves under a ton of player contracts they could no longer pay when people stopped watching on TV? This is getting out of control.

The Astros have reportedly signed Carlos Lee to a six year deal. There's no terms available yet, but Rotoworld is guessing $90 million.

UPDATE (3:05 PM)- Jayson Stark is now reporting that it's six years, $100 million.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Today, be thankful for Jason Bay, Freddy Sanchez, Zach Duke, Ian Snell, and Mike Gonzalez, without whom we'd all be completely insane.

WTM's top prospects

It's not only the holiday season, but it's also the time of year that many people release their "Top XX Prospects" list. I can't think of anyone better to make up a list of the top 20 Pirate prospects than Wilbur Miller, so I would be remiss if I didn't share a link with everyone. It's really a very depressing list below the top three (and even among the top three there's lots of questions about Walker and Lincoln). I count five guys that are already relievers among our top 20 (Sharpless, Bayliss, Chavez, Davidson, Rogers) along with at least three more that are probably headed down that road (Bresnehan, Felix, Youman). Throw in two guys whom we still have no idea about after injuries (Bullington and Van Benschoten) and the fact that Brad freaking Corley and his .438 SLG clock in at 11th (and is the last position player on the list) and this is not a list of guys to be excited about.

New Poll

No holiday will stop the WHYGAVS poll from rolling as scheduled. This week's question deals with your own reaction to hearing about the massive Alfonso Soriano deal. As usual, feel free to discuss in the comments.

Last week's results to Matsuzaka question:

• 40% say it's insane to pay $51 million for negotiation rights.
• 22% said it's not quite insane, but it's certainly crazy.
• 19% think it's just a ploy to keep him from pitching for the Yankees.
• 16% are way more excited about Yuslan Herrera than I am.
• 3% wish the Pirates would do something like that.

All in all, 62% think Theo Epstein should probably be institutionalized for the deal. Not a good sign for the Red Sox.

News roundup

Morneau edges Jeter for AL MVP. I could pick this one apart, but it would involve defending Jeter and I just don't have the stomach for that at the moment (though Jeter did actually deserve to win this year, I'll leave it at that).

More insanity- Juan Pierre is getting $45 million over 5 years and he's not even good. In related news, Gary Matthews Jr. is going to be RICH.

Nomar also extended for two years with the Dodgers. He may move to third base to make room for James Loney, which would make his bat more valuable. This isn't a terrible deal for LA (the dollar amount is $18.5 million) though it's a bad sign that everyone was excited that Nomar was healthy enough to play in only 122 games last year.

The Mets signed Moises Alou to play left field for one year at $8.5 million and it's one of the more sane things I've seen done this off-season. This does serve to make the Mets even older, though.

Mussina will stay with the Yankees for 2 years and $23 million, which is a hefty paycut from the $17 million option the Yanks declined. Moose is 38, but this is probably a good deal for the Yankees.

Ed Eagle runs another mailbag on the team site. Clearly there were not many intelligent questions asked this week if the questions he ran are the ones that made the cut. One thing I will say is that it's insane how everyone is shocked that Paulino didn't get any votes for ROY. They only vote for the top three in that award and off the top of my head I've got Ramirez, Zimmerman, Uggla, Johnson, Martin (at the same position as Paulino), and Ethier all with better rookie years than Ronny. Paulino was a nice surprise this year, but it's not shocking that he didn't get any votes for Rookie of the Year.

That's all the linkage I've got for now. I'm just waiting for someone to give Tike Redman at 4 year $8 million deal at this point.

40 man is set

To no one's surprise the Pirates filled out their 40-man roster by adding 2 middle relief pitchers (Dave Davidson and Romulo Sanchez) and a fast, toolsy outfielder (Nyjer Morgan) without much talent to the roster. They dropped Carlos Maldanado, though it's likely he'll get a non-roster invite to camp anyways. The most interesting part of the whole thing is that they left off Wadrell Starling and Jesse Chavez who may be Rule 5 eligible (it's hard to tell because of the new CBA rules). The article about the additions on Pirates.com last night initially said they wouldn't have to protect Chavez or Starling, though their names have been dropped from the article now (you can follow the whole thing with this thread at OBN). Starling is mentioned as a potential loss in the Paul Meyer article linked above whereas I don't think he was last night around midnight. As is speculated at OBN Starling is likely safe as he's pitched poorly in Hawaii this winter and wasn't really that great at AA this year but Chavez is probably a goner if he's indeed eligible for the draft after his dominating performance in the AFL. If that's the case and Chavez is indeed Rule 5 eligible, Littlefield has made a huge mistake by putting Sanchez on the roster over him. It seems likely that he just doesn't know the new CBA rules, making this a potential "Zane Smith for Moises Alou" disaster (granted, we wouldn't be losing anyone on the level of Alou, we'd just be losing a player we shouldn't have to lose because our GM is a moron).

Writers dig the long ball

Finally an awards choice I can sink my teeth into a little bit. It's not that Ryan Howard is a bad choice for MVP, because he isn't. It's just that Albert Pujols is a better choice. I won't make the argument that Pujols made the playoffs and Howard didn't because, well, the Cards finished with a worse record than the Phillies. First off, Pujols lead the league in VORP despite missing some considerable time with his "oblique" strain or whatever it was. It was a narrow lead, but it was there. You can throw in that Pujols was the whole Cards lineup for long stretches of the year with Edmonds missing long chunks of time and Scott Rolen being a less valuable third baseman(VORPwise) than Freddy Sanchez. Throw in the homer that Pujols hit on this day (the part where I say "It was probably Pujols" really was Pujols, if you recall his big homer to pull out a win against the Padres when the Astros probably would've either tied or pulled within a game of the division at that point, I don't remember which) that pulled the Cards out of their long slump and essentially clinched the division over the streaking Astros and, well, you've got yourself an MVP. Don't get me wrong, the guy and all of his "talent" and "Pirate crushing ability" still piss me the hell off, it's just that you can't ignore the facts: without Albert Pujols the Cards don't make the playoffs or win the World Series this year. He's gotta be the MVP in the National League. No offense to Ryan Howard though. The dude's still a beast and I'd give my left nut for Dave Littlefield to redo the "Benson-for-Howard" swap that he purportedly left on the table for the Wiggy deal two years ago.

Fear is only a sign of weakness

So the market has gone crazy, there's no use in debating that. The thing that I wonder about is why so many people are going all "woe is me" in regards of what this means for the Pirates. Here's the question: If the Pirates had limitless funds to spend, would you want them spent on 8 years of Alfonso Soriano at $136 million? No, you wouldn't. Would you want them spent on 4 years of Justin Speier at $18 million? Or three years of Alex Gonzalez at $14 million? No, you wouldn't. A crazy market only serves to do one thing, create bad deals. The Cubs have been forced to pay $17M/year for Soriano for 8 years when their window for him, Rammy, Lee, and a healthy pitching staff is maybe (maybe!) one or two years. And yeah, they'll be good for those 1 or 2 years, but by the end of this contract my guess is that Soriano is going to be Mo Vaughn, sitting at home watching baseball while being the highest player in the league. To a good GM, it's not worth it. But think of the possibilities this market creates for the Pirates.

Most of the time, people misunderstand Moneyball (yeah, I know, we're going back to Moneyball and the A's, but really, is there a better model besides maybe the Twins?) to mean that OBP is the key to evaluating players. Anyone that's read it knows this isn't the case; it's about exploiting market inefficiencies. If Justin Speier, a right handed reliever who's going to be 33 next year, is worth $18 million over four years, what is Mike Gonzalez worth in a trade? If Alex Gonzalez is worth $14 million over three years, what is Jack Wilson worth in a trade? Or Freddy Sanchez? If Alfonso Soriano is worth $136 million over 8 years, what is Jason Bay worth in a trade? Don't laugh, check the numbers, those two aren't nearly as different as you might think with Soriano playing outfield. If surviving in a small market is all about exploiting the inefficiencies (and it is) in the market, this is in incredibly inefficient market right now. Dave Littlefield is actually holding all the cards this off-season. Instead of doing something about it, he's sitting at the table folding every hand while other teams go crazy. He's designated so many players on the team as "untouchable" but the truth of the matter is, this team is rebuilding until it wins. No one should be untouchable, not in a market like this. This is DL's chance to redeem himself, to make up for year's of bad signings and awful drafts. He could reload the top two tiers of the minors this offseason and actually give Pirate fans something to be hopeful about maybe in 2008, but definitely 2009, 2010, and beyond. Instead, it's looking more and more like he's going to continue on his bleak course of destruction, keeping us a 75 win team at best for the forseeable future while all we can do is hope that he's fired sometime during the 2008 season and we hire someone slightly less stupid.

Soriano to the Cubs?

While you enjoy your beer soaked afternoon in which the Pittsburgh Steelers won a game that Pirate fans will certainly recognize, the Cubs and Alfonso Soriano have reportedly reached an 8 year deal worth $136 million. Is it too much for Soriano? Of course it is. Will it get the Cubs out of last place? Absolutely. If they sign a starter they're almost favorites for the division with the Soriano, Lee, Ramirez heart of the order. Hello, last place. Go back to enjoying the Steelers win, we can talk more about this tomorrow.

DL batting 1.000

When I said earlier I had no more links, I lied. I have one more. Bill Mueller is retiring to take a position in the Dodgers front office. That makes 2 third baseman (out of two) that Littlefield seriously persued last winter to have retired this offseason. And we wonder why this is the world's slowest rebuilding plan.

Skimming along the internet

David Pinto has put up his adjusted Probabilistic Model of Range for 2006 (team defensive rankings... he did one earlier in the week but he's tinkered with it some since then). You'll see the Pirates at the bottom of the ranking there. Pinto's model calculates how many balls in play should be turned into outs (based on a computer program) vs. how many the team actually turns into outs. Thus the Pirates finishing last doesn't mean they had the lowest defensive efficiency rating (DER) in the league, it means they had the biggest negative discrepancy between projected DER and actual DER. Remember when I did the season in review and talked about the high BABIP for pretty much all of our starters? This is why. It's pretty much insane to bulid a team around ground ball pitchers with a team behind them that can't field.

Beyond the Boxscore does a profile on Seth Smith, a

...a good, low risk prospect who is flying below the radar, here's your man. Seth Smith is a big, 24 year old, lefty-hitting corner outfielder who has done little other than hit since he was taken in the second round in 2004.

He's hit a ton of doubles in the minors (91 in the past two years) though not many homers (10 in the same timespan). Doubles often turn into homers with time. I don't know much about him, just passing names that I find interesting along. Here's his Baseball Cube page.

Charlie reiterates what should be the rallying cry of the Pirate blogosphere this winter, TRADE THE RELIEVERS. Cory has a post with a similar theme. Kind of like Heroes and their "Save the Cheeleader. Save the World.", we can have, "Trade the Relievers. Build a Team." It's not that easy, of course, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Brad Eldred has his average in the AFL up to .230. Pirates.com says I should be excited about this. Maybe I should since he was hitting .170 a while back. Anyways, Eldred and the other Buccos along with the rest of the Grand Canyon Rafters are playing in the AFL finals today. You can see the Rafters' full team stats here, though they won't tell you much you like unless you're a Jesse Chavez fan (OK, Walker has started hitting some, too).

That's all the links I have for today. Enjoy College Football this afternoon. Anyone know if there's any big games on today?

The Dave Littlefield translator

Dave Littlefield has been notably quiet this off-season. Granted, most GMs save their big moves for the Winter Meetings in early December, not the GM meetings in November, but everyone likes to make a little bit of noise before then. DL gave an interview to Pirates.com yesterday, which I will attempt to translate into common English.

Dave says: We're just getting started with the whole process and you know it's something you've got to keep a handle on what's going on in a lot of different areas. We're probably more in the trade market than we are the free-agent market, but there's a couple of areas we'd like to fill whether it be trade or free agent.
Dave means: Even if the owners had given me money to spend this winter I'd have to pay at least 3 times market value to get anyone of any worth to come play for a team run by me and Jim Tracy. Accordingly, we will aim for the trade market where the players can't get away.

Dave says: We'd like to get a left-handed bat to help us at either first or right field and to give us a little more balance in the order, and probably another right-handed starter to give us a little more depth in the rotation.
Dave means: Well, the bloggers seemed to think this was a good idea, so let's run with it. I don't know what they think is wrong with Xavier Nady though, I love that guy. He's got tons of intangibles and he's handsome to boot!

Dave says: I'd say probably trade. We've got a lot of young players and for the first time in a while it's good to hear we've got quite a bit of interest in some of our young players. Some of those we'd like to keep -- you don't want to fill a need and create a void somewhere else -- and those are the decisions you have to make, but I think we're probably more trade-oriented in that regard. But maybe to a lower degree, some free agents in some secondary areas of need, we might [go that route].
Dave means: No, seriously, no one will play here so I'm just going to trade Paul Maholm for whatever we can get for him. And maybe Craig Wilson. Wait. Shit. I meant Kip We... damn. I traded away all my organizational scapegoats. I mean, umm, that Jose Castillo sure is lazy, let's trade him. Unless Ryan Klesko is available. Drools.

Jim Molony writes: Littlefield won't reveal the free agents he's targeted and cannot discuss possible trades due to tampering rules.
Jim Molony means: Littlefield hasn't targeted any free agents and has no potential trades on the table.

Jim Molony writes: The Pirates have specific needs to fill and roughly $12 million to spend.
WHYGAVS says: Hold on one second. If we take last year's payroll and subtract Burnitz, Randa, Hernandez, Casey, CWilson, and Wells, that puts us at like... $25 million. Bay will get a raise from his contract and Gonzo and Freddy will get ones through arbitration, but $12 million still almost certainly puts us below what we were at last year. This is bullshit.

Middle relievers traded...

...Dave Littlefield not involved! Somehow DL managed to stay out of a middle reliever for middle reliever swap in the Windy City. By far the most shocking news of the day, unless I find myself reading this afternoon that Chien Ming-Wang has won the AL Cy Young. You know what, it's better not to joke about things like that...

Links

At this time of year the non-Pirate baseball news can really start flying, and between going to class and writing lab reports, I've found myself behind yet again. Time to catch up.

Ryan Vogelsong is a Hanshin Tiger. Go to Charlie's blog, look at the picture, and keep in mind that White Flag is 6'3, not 6'11. Everyone here knows that for some irrational reason, I like Vogelsong. Accordingly, I'm very happy to see him pitch somewhere else so I don't have to hate him anymore. Good luck, Ryan.

Brandon Webb is your 2006 NL Cy Young winner. Trevor Hoffman finished a close second. I would be bitching if Hoffman won, but he didn't. I'm happy the voters overlooked Webb's win total and gave it to the guy that deserved the award.

Jim Leyland and Joe Girardi are Managers of the Year. Again, no surprises or complaints here here. These guys deserve the award.

Frank Thomas is close to signing with the Blue Jays. No numbers have been released yet, but you can bet the number will be huuuge. This will make Dan Johnson much harder to pry from the A's, should DL be so inclined to try.

Via Marc in the comments, the D-Rays have obtained the negotiation rights to Akinori Iwamura for a measly $4.5 million. Iwamura is a left-handed power hitting corner infielder and a star in Japan. You guys know a team that could use a guy like that? We didn't even place a bid (via Bucs Dugout). If that pisses you off (and I don't see why it shouldn't), think how insane it is that the Red Sox bid 10 times as much for a guy that will play 1/5th as often and think about how happy you'll be when they get eliminated from the playoffs next year.

Barry Bonds might not be a Giant next year. If the market falls for him enough (I think it might, even in this crazy off-season Bonds has to terrify most teams), look for him to DH cheaply and powerfully in Oakland next year.

Since it's easy to fall behind on news at this time of year, let's go presumptuous. Johan Santana will win the AL Cy Young tomorrow. That, or we never talk about MLB awards on this blog ever again.

New Poll

I know you've been waiting for it, this Wednesday's poll can only be about one topic, the Red Sox and their Daisuke Matsuzaka insanity.

Last week's results to the question of "Favorite Pirate Uniform?":

• These ones- 39%
• These ones- 18%
• These ones- 16%
• These ones- 11%
• These ones- 7%
• These ones- 5%
• These ones- 3%
• I either wanted to pick another uniform or like the movie Old School- 2%
• These ones- 1%

For those that don't want to click the link, the order is current unis, mix and match, sleeves with cursive Pittsburgh on the road, sleeves with block Pittsburgh on the road, mustard yellow, blue and red, pinstripes on the road with gray caps, non-committal, and finally with one vote, the Dodgers-ish uniforms.

A bad sign

Mark DeRosa- 3 years, $13 million

El Duque- 2 years, $12 million

Aramis Ramirez- 5 years, $75 million

Daisuke Matsuzaka- $51 million just for negotiation rights

No way in hell the Bucs keep up in this market. In this post here, Charlie points to a WTM comment that speculates that this offseason is going to be crazy in terms of dollars thrown around. Like Manny/A-Rod 2001 crazy. Jeff Passan at Yahoo! Sports sees the same thing. I don't see anything that's happened so far to contradict that.

Links

Top Prospect Alert ranks their top 10 Pirate prospects. It pains me that Nyjer Morgan, Adam Boeve, and Josh Sharpless are all on this list and I can't think of suitable replacements for them on it.

Hanley Ramirez and Justin Verlander are your ROYs. I don't really have any qualms there.

Manny Acta, who entered the news last month for living in the building Cory Lidle crashed into, is expected to become the Nats next manager.

It appears that the Red Sox bid for Matsuzaka is in the neighborhood of the Pirates' 2006 payroll. Remind me how they want people to believe the Yankees are worse than them?

Jerry Crasnick writes about names that will get Perrotto going (in fact, he's already mentioned three of these guys).

Littlefield malaise

You've probably (OK, maybe is likely a better word) been wondering why I haven't been doing anything along the lines of Cory's Fantasy GM posts or sifting through the free agent list looking for potential targets for the Buccos. I've been meaning to do something along those lines but haven't gotten around to it and I've finally decided to scrap the idea. You are probably asking why, so let's get to it.

The truth of the matter is, I have absolutely no ability to get excited for another Dave Littlefield-lead off-season. Until something happens to give me reason to think otherwise, creating trades for Mark Teixeira or Chad Tracy or Marcus Giles on paper feels futile to me (note: I am not trying to take anything away from the people that do this in the offseason, I'm just explaining my own mindset for your benefit, please please please don't take out of this that I think everyone that posts about what they think DL should be doing this off-season is wasting their time, in fact, I wish I had the faith in the Pirates' front office that they have). I am unsure why I'm so particularly negative this fall. It is likely that it is at least partially the Steelers fault. It's easy to spend time in the off-season talking about the hopeless Pirates when the Steelers are winning every Sunday, but when the Steelers are as self-destructive as they've been this year, it's even more depressing to think about the Pirates. I doubt that's all of it.

We're now entering the sixth off-season with Dave Littlefield at the helm of this team. While trying to find a list of the off-season trades DL has made in his career, I've discovered that the first two Google hits are columns that Charlie wrote for Irate Fans. While depressing in itself, that little fact eventually comes to mean that we'll have to rely on my memory here. Near as I can tell, big Littlefield winter trades (big used loosely) have been:

• Todd Ritchie for Kip Wells, Josh Fogg, and Sean Lowe
• Roberto Novoa and Adrian Burnside for Randall Simon
• Jason Kendall for Mark Redman and Arthur Rhodes
• Arthur Rhodes for Matt Lawton
• Dave Williams for Sean Casey
• Mark Redman for Jonah Bayliss

If I'm forgetting any, feel free to let me know in the comments (I'm leaving out stuff like the Bobby Hill and Tike Redman trades last winter intentionally, I don't think they're relevant here, also, the Benito Santiago trade makes me want to vomit). The Ritchie trade was a great one, they shipped off a flukey late career success story for three guys, two of which contributed to the Pirates for a considerable amount of time. The Kendall trade and the resulting Lawton trade can also likely be considered a success as Littlefield eliminated the albatross of Kendall's salary for a serviceable starter and an outfielder that fits the mold of hitter we should be attempting to acquire (editor's note: I'm talking about a lefty that's good at getting on base and can take advantage of the short porch in right, not an outfielder that plays right field and runs the bases as if he's constantly in a marijuana haze), though it doesn't apply to anything DL will do this winter (we don't have a big contract like Kendall's to dump). The Randall Simon trade and the Casey trade are similarly pointless, we didn't give up and we didn't get much that could help us. The Casey trade is slightly offset by the Redman trade as somehow DL convinced Allard Baird to take all of Redman's salary, as one move, Casey and Bayliss for Williams and Redman isn't a terrible move, though it didn't make us much better.

So here's my point: Littlefield should be looking for young, left handed bats with decent pop that are either blocked at their position, viewed as too old for their level, are thought of as expendable because of other players in their system, or have some other sort of flaw (meaning "has no real position" when really he's a decent first baseman, "too passive at the plate" when really he's just got a good eye, etc., flaws like Randall Simon's "swings at anything and that includes walking Italian sausages" are flaws to stay away from) that turns GMs just like Littlefield off, and he's simply got no history of doing stuff like that. I like guys like Teixeira as much as anyone, but if he comes here in a trade he's going to eat up a huge percentage of our payroll, cost a ton of talent (at least Duke and Gonzo, probably more), and be gone in two years. If he were the last piece to the puzzle, I'd say do it in a heartbeat. I don't honestly believe that he is though; the Pirates were flawed in more ways than not having a powerful first baseman last year and filling that hole out while removing Zach Duke from the equation doesn't help things much.

As for free agents, what the Pirates need to do is what the Tigers did two Februarys in a row in '04 and '05; overpay through the nose for a top tier free agent in order to convince them to play for them when no one else will. They need to destroy the Jeromy Burnitz, Chris Stynes, Raul Mondesi, Joe Randa "elephant graveyard" stigma (meaning that I think a lot of players consider Pittsburgh to be the place where careers go to die). The Tigers managed to convince Magglio Ordonez and Pudge to play for them, doing that makes something like the Sheffield deal possible. You can say what you want about the Sheffield deal, but there's no way Sheff would accept a two year extension to come here in a trade. The problem is that Dave Littlefield is not Dave Dombrowski. Even with the Tigers in the depths of their doldrums, Dombrowski could point to his time in Florida and Montreal and tell potential free agents that he was building a winning team and he had a plan and that guys like Maggs and Pudge were part of it. How can Dave Littlefield do something similar? I don't think he can. The only off-season that he brought in any useful talent at all from the free agent market(prior to '03 when he signed Suppan, Sanders, Lofton, and Stairs) was a year that the owners have now admitted to collusion. We're four years removed from that now but it might as well have been a million years ago.

So finally, what would I do if I were DL? I know I said I wouldn't waste my breath, but I'll do it anyways. The same stuff I've mentioned at various times before. I'd be trying to trade someone like Paul Maholm or Jose Castillo or both for guys that have been mentioned in the Pirates' corner of the internet before, Mike Jacobs, Adam LaRoche, etc.; Ken Rosenthal mentions Chad Tracy today and I think he'd be a good target as well (via BBTF). All of them could give us 3-4 years and would be cheaper both in terms of the checkbook and in talent given up than Big Tex would be (it's true, I just don't want to spell his name again). I would try not to trade Duke unless it was an offer I couldn't refuse. I would shop Gonzo and Marte like crazy and look for a Rincon for Giles or a Christiansen for Wilson deal. I would throw in any of the million similar relievers we have to complete either deal. If a fantastic deal came up for a Maholm/Gonzo package, I'd do it, but it would have to address more than one of our needs. That would leave a considerable amount of money to spend on pitching, which would mean that I would try my "overpay to come here" theory. I wouldn't waste time with Schmidt, he won't come back here, he's 33, and he's declined the last two years (I know that last year was somewhat of a bounce back year for him, but it still was nothing like '02-'04 peak which was waay better than anything he'd ever done previously... say it with me now, sterrrrrrrroids). As much as it pains me to say this, Jeff Weaver has pitched very well for Jim Tracy and Jim Colborn in the past. He would seem to be a logical choice to fill out the rotation (I know he's a Boras client; we'd have to throw a lot of money at him). If another starter is needed to fill the gap that trading Maholm would create, Vincente Padilla is an intriguing option as he's pitched fairly well in hitters parks the last two years. Mark Mulder is also an interesting option, though he'd likely be a project and a half between his rotator cuff issues and his sucking issues (which are at least partially related). None of those guys are top tier guys and I think they could all be convinced to come here with lots of green, especially if DL made some logic based trades and Colby could sell them on being a rock for this young staff. None of this would be earthshaking stuff, but it would be a bunch of small steps in the right direction towards 2008 when we might be able to accomplish something. Will it happen? My hopes aren't up.

Fire up the stove

On the first official day of free agency the Cubs are the team in the news by giving Aramis Ramirez and raise and keeping Kerry Wood in blue and red. This isn't particularly exciting since they both played for the Cubs last year, but everything starts somewhere. It's also much more interesting than Jaret Wright being traded from New York to Baltimore. If the Cubs are planning on getting serious about turning things around in 2007, re-signing Aramis Ramirez is probably more important than hiring Lou Piniella was. Meanwhile, Charlie posts about the Pirates' off-season and speculates on first base targets.

JD Drew and other links

After speculating for months that there was no "Lefty McThump" in the free agent class, JD Drew has opted out of the end of his 5 year deal with the Dodgers, making him a free agent. There are serious injury issues with Drew and he opted out of an $11 million/year deal so there's that, but he's pretty much exactly what Littlefield has described himself to be looking for. Somehow, I don't think JD Drew opted out of that contract to come to Pittsburgh, though.

Jeff Stanek at the Duquesne Duke got an interview with Freddy Sanchez about his incredible 2006 season.


Keith Law at ESPN ranks the top 40 free agents. It's insider only, but #1 (which you can see)is pretty surprising.

Jeff Passan at Yahoo! Sports has a slightly more free ranking of the free agents.

Surprisingly, reports say that the Red Sox may have the top bid for Daisuke Matsuzaka.

In a non-Pirates link, the Pensblog is making me reconsider a reorganization of links so that I can include Pittsburgh blogs that aren't Pirate blogs. It's just that good. If your a Pens fan and you aren't reading it, you should probably start.

I'm gonna be out of the office 'till Sunday. Until then enjoy the Pitt/UConn showdown that no one cares about. Or PSU/Temple, if you're into that kind of thing.

UPDATE (4:17)- Then there's Sheffield to the Tigers for three pitching prospects. It seems like Leyland and Dombrowski are hitting the panic button after that World Series loss. Of the three prospects it seems like only one (Humberto Sanchez) is a blue chipper (the other two are relievers), but Sheff is 38 and crazy. I'm not sure this is a great move for the Tigers.

This is the definition of LOL

McClendon shifted to hitting coach. Cuz, you know, those teams he managed from 2001-2005 in Pittsburgh were offensive juggernauts.

Thanks to Gary in the comments below for bringing this to my attention.

New Poll

It's Wednesday and after Monday's lively discussion, the poll topic this week is easy, just go ahead and click for your favorite Pirate uniform. If you can't picture the uniform in your mind, use the Baseball Hall of Fame's uniform database, which is one of my favorite things of all time.

Last week's results:

What does the Yuslan Herrera signing signify?

• It's probably a good sign, but Dave Littlefield is involved so I'm not getting excited just yet- 51%
• Dave Littlefield is involved, no good can come of this- 25%
• DL has a plan! Rejoice!- 12%
• I like clicking the funny answer or I don't actually follow the Pirates- 12%
  

Links

ESPN's free agent tracker is up. I wouldn't expect to see the Bucs pop-up on there much, but it's a handy thing to check.

MLB Trade Rumors reports there is some interest in Paul Maholm.

Charlie talks about the Pirates roster management problems.

The A's are moving down the road to about halfway between San Jose and Oakland, just on the right side of the line that MLB uses to divide Giants and A's territory.

Remember when Lonnie Smith spent half a season with the Pirates? Sadly, I do. Anyways, he apparently wanted to kill John Schuerholz in the '80s. Drugs were involved.

Election Day

It's Election Day today and I'm not going to pretend that anyone is here to talk politics (at least I hope no one's here to talk politics). Instead, let's imagine what the world would be like if front office officials in baseball faced the voters every two or four years. I imagine things would start like this.

(voiceover) Dave Littlefield has been Pirate general manager for almost five years now. When Dave took over for Cam Bonifay in 2001 the Pirates were in the middle of a 100 loss season. They haven't lost 100 since Dave took office, and he promises you they won't again on his watch. Dave has stressed fundamentals and basic baseball while obtaining good young players to build on an organization on.
When you go to the polls on November 7th, remember that Dave Littlefield may not ever make your Pirates be good again, but he'll do his best to keep them from being embarrassingly bad.
I'm Dave Littlefield and I approve this message.

Of course there would be an inevitable response.

(flashing) 72-89 (flash) 75-87 (flash) 67-95 (flash) 67-95
(voiceover) For four years, Dave Littlefield has been below average at his job. That is a fact. He's consistently promised to make changes at PNC Park, but he's gone for the same quick fixes over and over again.

(montage)
What's next?
Under Dave Littlefield, the goal isn't to win a World Series. It's to win 75 games. Help restore the Pirates to their glory days.
Vote "No" on retaining Dave Littlefield for the office of General Manager. Enough of the quick fixes. Let's make some real changes.

Paid for by The Committee to Return Pittsburgh Baseball to Respectability.

Logo History

The off season can get a little boring between the end of the season and the lighting of the hot stove, so let's have some fun today. In the spirit of the Uni Watch, let's have a stroll through the history of the Pirates' logo and uniforms. If you're not into this kind of thing, that's fine. You can just skim through to what you like or skip it entirely. But I'd be lying if I said this stuff didn't fascinate me for no reason whatsoever, so let's take a look at it.

Both the Baseball Hall of Fame's uniform database and Chris Creamer's directory of Pirate logos at sportslogos.net start at 1900, so we'll start there. From 1900 through 1935, the Pirates' logo was simply a variety of P's. Some were quite plain, while others were fancy in the Detroit Tigers old English D style. For two years, in 1908 and 1909, they wore a PBC (Pittsburgh Baseball Club I can only assume) monogram. The monogram was worn on the sleeves of the 1909 World Champs, then retired forever. In other years during the time period the Bucs used P's that are much closer to the distinctive P that we're used to today. During this entire time period, the Pirates uniforms were blue and red. That's not really unusual, everyone's uniforms were some form of blue and red back in the day. Anyways, I won't go through every single uniform change the Pirates made in those 36 years (because they made a ton of them), but you can check them all out here.

In 1936 the Pittsburgh Pirates introduced their first non-letter logo. That guy probably looks familiar to you, save the color scheme. He's a rather generic, Blackbeardish Pirate (without the famed smoking beard, of course) that isn't particularly menacing in any way. Neither were the Pirates of that era. They finished over .500 eight times between '36 and '47 when this pioneering Bucco was used, but they didn't reach the World Series once. With no playoffs, that means they really didn't have much success. The uniforms from this era are a little more interesting. Early on the Bucs played with different ways of writing "Pirates" on their home and away uniforms. Back when they used to have "Throwback the Clock" nights at Three Rivers, these were the unis that showed up the most. In '40 they shifted to a zipper front with the Pirate logo discussed above on the chest. Thankfully, these only stuck for two years before they went back to similar templates as the late 30s. Curiously enough, the Pirates tried to be the Brooklyn Dodgers for one year with their all blue and white '47 uniforms. Those look strange.

1948 brought two big changes to Pittsburgh baseball. Most importantly, they changed their colors to the city colors, black and gold. Interestingly enough, they changed their logo to one of the most horrific logos in sports history, this non-black-or-gold monstrosity that looks like a more menacing version of the original Pirate, only drawn by a five year old in crayon. Not surprisingly, the Pirates sucked from 1948 to 1959 when this logo was used. The only other noteworthy event from that time was the chopping of the sleeves from the uniforms in 1957 and hey, those uniforms look familiar (the truly astute will note, however, that the road uniforms read "Pirates" in those days and that the modern Pirates have numbers on the fronts, an addition not first made until 1962). I'm a big fan of that look, but we'll get to that later.

In 1960 the Pirates introduced my all-time favorite team logo, this Popeye-ish looking corsair. I dunno, something about that guy just looks right. It's kind of Skating Penguin-esque and I fail to see how that's a bad thing. The Bucs won the World Series in 1960 with the new logo and kept things the same on the logo front through 1967. As mentioned above, the uniforms stayed the same except for the addition of a number to the uniform front in 1962.

In 1968 the Pirates introduced one of their more famous logos, one that kind of looks like Danny Murtaugh in a Pirate hat. I personally enjoy thinking of this logo as the one of the only members of the 1979 team without a mustache. This is the era where the Bucs started getting crazy on the uniform front. With the move to Three Rivers in 1970 they introduced pullover jerseys with mustard caps. Naturally, the sleeveless look had to go as sleeveless pullovers would've just looked dumb. In 1976 the pillbox caps crept in for the bicentennial, and in 1977 a beautiful disaster struck with the introduction of the (in?)famous mix and match template. On one hand, those things are hideous. On the other hand, can you imagine the '79 Pirates Family wearing anything else? I didn't think so.

Anyways, the 70s ended but the Bucs stubbornly kept the mix and match (toning it down a bit by replacing the garish pinstripe with a plain white uniform) going though the 1984 season. At that point, one of two things happened. Either there was a massive cocaine scandal and the Pirates had to overhaul their uniforms to rehabilitate their look, or I was born and they knew I wasn't going to stand for that mix and match shit well into 1985. Whatever the case, they went to the usual white and grays at that point, strangely keeping the pillbox until 1987. In 1986 the team went back to their first logo, this time with a black and gold color scheme. I would assume this had something to do with the 100th anniversary of the team. Somehow the black and gold make that guy look a little more menacing. They kept the same uniform template for quite a while, making minor tweaks here and there. In 1990 they pulled on a road uniform that didn't read "Pirates" on it for first time since 1953 when they replaced the it with a cursive "Pittsburgh." I won't lie, I kind of liked that look. In '91 they replaced the polyester pullover with a more traditional button down, creating one of the better looks in Pirate history. In 1997 they took two giant steps backward and one step sideways when they added pinstripes and gray caps to the road uniforms and introduced a new logo. The new logo is the one you're used to today, big red bandanna, big sneer, and an eye patch. I really don't mind this logo too much, I like the patch and I think he's sufficiently menacing for a Pirate. Of course there's nothing particularly great about it that stands out and it's the least successful logo in terms of record since that blob-ish Pirate-y thing from the '50s. Somewhere around this time they also introduced a black third uniform which can best be described as "eh." They wore red brimmed caps for a while with the third unis, then switched to yellow brim with a goofy red underbrim. In 2001 with the move to PNC Park they went back to the 1962-1970 uniforms with the vests and numbers on the front. I won't lie, I really like these uniforms a lot. Some teams look stupid in vests, but the something about the plain white and plain gray with the black and gold really looks good to me (pinstripes and vests look stupid). If we never changed uniforms again I'd be happy. They kept the black third uniform until this year and last year they introduced pinstriped Sunday home uniforms, which sucked and were discontinued after this year. They are now rumored to be introducing a red third uniform for 2007, which would be pretty disastrous.

Sosa: "I want to get 600"

Sammy Sosa is coming back. Dave Littlefield must be licking his chops.

I was right!

The article on Pirates.com about Fall Ball that I talked about yesterday has had Eric Young's name mysteriously removed from it. I knew he wasn't a Pirate prospect. For any other organization, something like that might be embarassing.

More links

I wish there was something more interesting going on this time of year, but there just isn't right now. I'm working on something fun for Monday, I swear.

Michael Echan catches up on Fall/Winter Ball stats at Pirates.com. He takes a closer look at some guys I didn't the other day. Nyjer Morgan and Eric Young Jr. (Wait... who's that? I'm not kidding, does he play for us? Why is he in the article? He's not at Baseball Cube or on WTM's site, why are we talking about this guy? Wait, there he is, he was in the Rockies system last year, but is referred to as a "Pirate prospect," I continue to be confused.) are FAST I tell you, FAST! Also, Shane Youman got rocked in his first start in Venezuela. The Mets couldn't figure the guy out, but Cardinales de Lara seemed to have no trouble.

Buried Treasure catches up with position players and pitchers that wore black and gold in 2005 but not 2006. Did you know Tike Redman ended the year with Corpus Christi, the Astros AA coordinate?

Dave Littlefield talks about the new CBA with Rob Rossi. People keep saying that it's not that different, but then things happen like Littlefield mentioning that teams will get an equivalent draft pick for picks unsigned by August 15th. Like Charlie, I'm not sure how that will work. Most teams don't sign a majority of their late round picks, does this rule only apply to first rounders? The August 15th date is a change from before when college players could be signed up to just about the last minute and high school players could be signed until they set foot in a college classroom (about a week later than the 15th). They also talk about the elimination of the rule that if a free agent isn't resigned by their team by a specific date in December, he can't play for that team until May 1st the next year (remember the Josias Manzanillo situation, or maybe the Roger Clemens situation from this year?). That's a good change, I always kind of thought the old rule was stupid.

Links

Despite what Paul Meyer said yesterday, it appears the Bucs and Yuslan Herrera do have a three year deal lined up (Pirates.com has a similar story) which will be finalized when he passes a physical and all of the visa stuff goes through.

Via Bucs Dugout, Joe Randa is officially retiring. There was a rumor that was passed around during the Kansas City series last year that the Joker told KC's broadcasters that 2006 would be his last year, but there was really no mention of it in the Pittsburgh media then (or now, for that matter). I like Joe, which made Littlefield's signing of him much worse this year- it put him in a position to be disliked. All in all though, he pretty much gave us what any reasonable person should've expected from him with the problem being that our front office is not reasonable, thus making him a backup that made nearly 10% of a bad team's total salary. The KC Star article linked above mentions that he's thinking about doing some TV work. I hope he does, he'd be much more tolerable on BBTN than the recently departed Jeff Brantley.

Speaking of Bucs Dugout, Charlie has put together a comprehensive list of all of the Pirate fan sites, message boards, and blogs out there. I do my best to keep the sidebar updated but it's not an easy task.

Don Slaught has resigned after one year as the Tigers hitting coach while Andy Van Slyke has re-upped for another year as first base coach (link via BBTF). No word yet on whether Jim Leyland has put in a call to Jay Bell or Bobby Bonilla to fill the opening.

Francisco Liriano is probably out for 2007 after Tommy John surgery.

The most meaningless official award in all of sports, the Gold Glove awards. It's funny that a Tigers' pitcher won the Gold Glove. Maybe ironic is the word.

Uni Watch has pictures of the hat that will replace the venerable 5950 next year (scroll down to the news ticker section at the bottom of the post). I'm still trying to dig up information on the red third uniform that Perrotto casually mentioned in a column a while back. Keep your fingers crossed and hope that I never find anything.

The Mariners aren't going to bid for Daisuke Matsuzaka. Since it's rumored that it's going to cost something like $30 million just for the right to negotiate with him, the field is narrowed down to the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets, though I suspect that MLB requires all of the AP articles to throw the Red Sox and Mets in there because they don't want fans to know that only the Yankees have a chance of signing international superstars. I mean really, would anyone else pay like double the Marlins total salary just for the right to negotiate with someone? The answer is no.

And finally, here's the latest update on free agent filings and the total list of players filed.

Herrera update

Dave Littlefield has finally commented on the Yuslan Herrera situation by talking to Paul Meyer and it's probably not what people expected to hear.

We're aware of the player and we've been scouting him [for a while]. We're still scouting him and hope to attract him [to the Pirates]. Right now, that's basically it.

The rest of Meyer's column is pretty much a rehash of everything else we've heard, though it doesn't say he pitched in the 2004 Olympics (Olympic baseball stats are incredibly hard to find, I've been trying for a couple days now, and Herrera seems to appear on some lists of that Cuban team's roster and not on others). There's also one other thing that I haven't seen anywhere else. Meyer says,

It's unlikely Herrera, assuming the Pirates sign him, would be with the major-league team next season.

Hmm, that's interesting, though there's a good chance that Meyer knows as much about this guy as we do and he's just speculating. Littlefield's comments do bring to mind another recent situation though, the Bill Mueller situation. Mueller, if you'll recall, dragged out a decision between the Pirates, Giants, and Dodgers until almost Christmas last year. It was rumored for about a week that the Pirates had offered Mueller a third guaranteed year and $13 million while the Giants and Dodgers were offering 2 years each. Mueller ended up signing with the Dodgers for something like 2 years and $9 million, then he, his agent, and Dave Littlefield all expressed surprise at the rumor that the Pirates had offered a third year (a rumor that was being reported as fact in some places). It seemed to me (and to others), that someone inside of Mueller's camp passed around a story to the right places that the Bucs had offered that third year to squeeze an extra million or two out of the West Coast teams that he wanted to play for. Is it possible that Herrera's agent is using Johnny P at the BCT like Bill Beane uses Peter Gammons in Moneyball? We all know Perrotto loves his rumors. All he had to do was drop Herrera's name in a short little blurb and three of the top four Google matches for "Yuslan Herrera" are Pirate blogs. If a team, say the Diamondbacks (who were mentioned in one of the original BA columns), were dragging their feet in getting a deal for Herrera, they suddenly have more motivation to hurry things up. I'm interested to see how this all plays out.

UPDATE (1:23)- Then again, this article just appeared on the dot com in which Ed Eagle repeats the "completed pending physical" meme from the Trib and quote Herrera's agent as saying that once Herrera gets a visa that this will be a done deal.