A day late

Perhaps it is ill-form to write another post about the offense the day after a 13-2 win, but in my own defense I had it formed in my head yesterday and didn't have time to post it on Mothers' Day. Plus more people read on Monday, so I wanted an extra day to go over it and fix things up.

In yesterday's Inside the Pirates bit at the PG, Dejan took a look into the Pirates' system to figure out what's going on with the hitting. The whole piece was topped with this caveat:

With the Pirates off to a historically poor offensive start, this public complaint might be more common than any:

What are they teaching these guys?

Well, before attempting to answer that, know this: Of the eight regulars in the major-league lineup of late, only Ryan Doumit, Jose Bautista, Chris Duffy and Ronny Paulino came up through the Pirates' system. The rest were taught somewhere else.

I don't know where this came from. It could've been Dejan, but I'd bet on someone else quoting this fact to him. Because immediately after that quote, Brian Graham starts professing that the crappy hitting in the majors has nothing to do with what he's teaching in the minors. Of course, it's not really anyone's fault that we can't hit. It's just bad luck that this many bad hitters ended up here.

Here's what drive me nuts. When no one hits, well, hey, none of these guys came from Pittsburgh! We're handcuffed here by whoever taught that Jason Bay clown to hit! But when the team is playing well, things show up like this Pirate Notebook from last August in which we get to learn all about the great homegrown talent the Pirates have.

No more excuses for Littlefield and company. He and his front office have been on the job since 2001. If there's a guy on the Pirates with a poor approach at the plate that they didn't teach in the minors, it's their fault for acquiring him. And you can't just point to the minors and say "Things are great!" Half the guys that play for Altoona and Indy are old enough to be my dad (OK, maybe not). They're never going to amount to anything for the Pirates. It's great that Randy Ruiz can take a walk, but he's a 30 year old AA player. Don't care. Let's be accountable here, people.