2007: A season in review

You know, it's funny. Before the season started, I thought the Pirates would win about 73 games. Throughout the course of the season, I became so disgusted with the play of just about everyone on the team that I hardly even put the games on MLB.tv after I moved down to NC. Still, they managed to win 69 games, which was two more than last year or the year before. Were my expectations for the players too high in 2007? I suppose they actually were. I mean, I would venture to say that most of the readers here didn't expect the Pirates to win many more games than they did this year, but I would also assume that most of you would say that Jason Bay, Adam LaRoche, Ronny Paulino, Jason Bay, Zach Duke, Jason Bay, and most of the bullpen underachieved this year. Maybe they just stand out in my mind because they were so disappointing this year. I don't really know.

If 2007 did anything, it completely shattered Dave Littlefield's notion of "2008 and 2009 are our years." This team was light years away from competing in a very bad division in 2007 and it's going to take a major overhaul to get it there in 2008. That is the trick for Coonelly and Huntington this off-season: to get the team competitive in 2008, they may have to mortgage the future even further. And so the question now stands, what is more important: stopping the team losing streak at 15 or building a viable baseball franchise? I don't know if you can do both, and that's why 2007 was the most depressing Pirate season I can remember. It was like the curtain was blown off of the charade once and for all and the old management was proven to be everything we feared it would be. That's a very depressing thing to watch as a fan, but I guess it's something we'll eventually get used to.

Anyways, the season review is going to go like this- every day I'll look at a player or two or more on the team and review what they did in 2007. The important players will get their own posts. The less relevant players will get lumped together. This year, I'm going to focus a lot more on what we might be able to expect from these guys down the road and whether or not they're going to be a part of the future of the Pittsburgh Pirates.