The 2007 Outlook

It's hard to do the outlook for a year with something like baseball when the season doesn't really start until April. Instead, I suppose this is more of a "Mid-Off Season Report," just a reminder of things that we knew at the end of last season that get lost in the shuffle during the winter. The basic philosophy of the Pirates this off season has been, "We'd like to make some moves, but not if we have to give up too much. Dammit, we were a good team in the second half last year and we're not breaking this team up if we don't have to." Of course, as a reminder, the Pirates were outscored by over 50 runs after the All-Star break last year. They only had one player that had an OPS of over .800 after the break last year. That is not good, that is lucky. Look, I'm as happy as the next guy that the Pirates aren't flushing their money down the toilet after what they did last season, but the problem is that they aren't going to be a good team with the players they currently have assembled in Pittsburgh and there isn't much help coming from the minors.

Currently, the Pittsburgh Pirates lineup for 2007 will likely look something like this:

1. Chris Duffy, CF
2. Jack Wilson, SS
3. Freddy Sanchez, 2B/3B
4. Jason Bay, LF
5. Xavier Nady, RF/1B
6. Jose Bautista/Jose Castillo, 2B/3B
7. Ryan Doumit, RF/1B
8. Ronny Paulino, C
9. Pitcher

There's a huge question mark batting leadoff in center, a black hole batting second, a great hitter that's a good candidate for a dropoff season batting third, a genuine slugger who will be avoided like the plague batting fourth, a platoon player batting fifth, either an enigma or an unproven player batting sixth, a huge injury risk that has yet to prove himself for any extended period of time in the bigs batting seventh, and another big dropoff candidate batting eighth.

The rotation will be:

1. Zach Duke
2. Ian Snell
3. Tom Gorzellany
4. Paul Maholm
5. Shawn Chacon

We've got Duke who's got a good year and a sophomore slump under his belt, three guys with a year or less of real big league experience, and Chacon, who sucks. No matter how much the Pirates spin these guys, they aren't good enough to carry a below average lineup to a winning record next season. Sure, Duke, Snell, and Gorzy may all eventually turn into pretty decent top/middle of the rotation guys, Maholm could be a decent bottom of the rotation guy in the future, and you could do worse than Chacon in the five-slot, but it would take Halladay, Santana, Carpenter, and Clemens to carry this line-up as currently structured to a decent record.

Of course, the offseason isn't over. This post for now serves as more of a warning than anything. If Littlefield and Tracy think this team will be significantly better than 67-95 as currently configured, they are wrong. You don't need to look at ZiPS or any other projections to see that. They were a bad team last year and they haven't changed at all. On the offensive side of things, Sanchez and Paulino almost have to regress and counting on guys like Nady, Wilson, Duffy, and company to all significantly outperform their projections is foolish no way to build a good baseball team. The rotation is young and good but not great, and that's assuming that no one gets hurt. Of course, that means that one bat isn't going to fix things. Adam LaRoche, Casey Kotchman, and Melky Cabrera are all good young players that I'd love to see in black and gold, but none of them are going to turn a 67 win team into an 82 win team. On top of that, counting on McCutchen, Walker, Lillibridge, and Lincoln to be on their way to finish that job off and turn the Pirates into contenders in the next couple of years doesn't seem to be any different than counting chickens before they hatch given the recent history of our farm system. It's not that I'm counting these guys out, it's just that it looks more and more like Littlefield is going to sit back and hope that the second half magic recreates itself over 162 games next year. It won't. That's not good enough anymore. The Pirates have to do something or 2007 will be just like 2006 and 2005 and 2004 and 2003 and...