Sunday, December 02, 2007

Fire up the hot stove

I'll start this post off by saying that I have a sudden, unshakable feeling of doom about this off-season. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for a fire sale that results in a 120 loss season if we can get quality minor leaguers for the guys we sell off. I've said before that I would take 110 losses in 2008 if it meant that we could have a good team in 2010 rather than 67 wins in 2008 and 67 wins in 2010. But the more I read about Huntington and his plans for the off-season and the direction things seem to be headed, the more nervous I'm getting.

Let's start with the article that will be appearing in this morning's Post-Gazette. Apparently Huntington is hell-bent on trading Xavier Nady, which is fine, and if he can't do that, he's considering non-tendering him. That's effing crazy. Nady won't cost more than $4 million next year and with Jason Bay's slump, Nady was probably the most productive Pirate at the plate last year. I understand wanting to trade him at peak value (which he may be at right now), but not only does even SUGGESTING that kill his trade value, he's not even close to prohibitively expensive. Yeah, I'd love to live in a world where Xavier Nady and Adam LaRoche platoon at first base for the Pirates because we have a right fielder than can hit. But we don't live in that world right now and until then, Nady in right field isn't the worst option. Seriously, this idea makes me so sick I spent 20 minutes trying to decide if I was upset enough to break my "no f-bomb" policy here at WHYGAVS. Ugh.

Now we move along to Jason Bay. The Boston Herald (via Rotoworld, which is indispensable at this time of year) is reporting that the Pirates and Indians are talking about a Bay swap that would involve Kelly Shoppach and some other players. That seems harmless on the surface. I actually watched Shoppach hit in the playoffs this year and thought to myself that he would be the type of player I wanted the Pirates to pick up he's a good hitter and a pretty good catcher who's completely blocked by Victor Martinez. But we're talking about a guy who's going to be 28 years old with 313 plate appearances. That's the name that's coming up in Bay talks? Clearly other players would be involved and if Doogie could work a trade for, say, Shoppach, Andy Marte (who's lost top prospect status faster than you can say 'Lastings Milledge'), and a good pitching prospect, I'd be all for that. But Jason Bay isn't worth that right now and this quote from the Nady article in the PG illustrates that:

"Right now, nobody wants Bay," another American League executive said. "That will change if he shows he's right again. But not now. He's got to get out there and be Jason Bay again."
Somehow I don't see a guy that people talk about like that coming off of the season that Bay just had fetching any kind of serious bounty this off-season. Right now I'd imagine the final trade being Bay for Shoppach and a middling pitching prospect or Bay for Marte straight up right now. Of course, I'm just speculating right now, but you've all watched enough hot stove shenanigans to know how this stuff works.

What's really scary to me is the motivation behind all of it. Honestly, I don't think there's some sinister mandate coming down from the front office to cut payroll. If that was really the motivation behind everything, why go through all the trouble of breaking down most of the front office and coaching staff and hiring new people to fill the roles? All of this talk strikes me as Huntington wanting to change things for the sake of changing things. That's stupid and that's dangerous. The only way a team in the situation the Pirates are in (meaning a small market) can be a good baseball team is for the people running the team to have a vision. They can change the path to the ultimate goals, but never the vision. Dumping everyone because the Pirates suck and the "culture of losing" needs changing, even if you can't get good value for those players, doesn't sound like much of a vision to me.