Pirates' AOL Preview

Over at AOL, they're using one day over the next month to preview every team in the league. Accordingly, they've asked us to do some work at FanHouse to supplement their straightforward preview. Accordingly, I have some fun stuff to share:

The Pirates Spring Dugout. An annual rite of passage in which we laugh hysterically through our tears of truth.

Pittsburgh Pirates' poetry, brought to you by Tecmo of PSAMP.

There should be a Pirates' video preview on the way from Jon Bois of the Dugout. His video previews are awesome (the video is up now).

Finally, there's my own video preview of the NL Central, embedded below.


Enjoy.

Break out the 'Jump to Conclusions' Mat

If there's one thing that's fun to do during spring training, it's taking incredibly small sample sizes from games with dubious competitive value, and trying to draw conclusions from them. So instead of analyzing the hell out of them, I've got a better idea. You see, it's a mat you can put on the floor... and it has different CONCLUSIONS on it that you can JUMP TO! (Note: while we always have a wonderful Office Space theme going at WHYGAVS, it's only fair of me to note that the incomparable MJD ran a similar column once or twice at FanHouse).

Anyways, we're one game into spring training and the good news is that there's already some conclusions to jump to. Today we've got:

1. Brian Bullington got rocked today, giving up five hits, five runs (four earned), and a homer with two walks an no K's in one inning today. He's done. Cut his ass.
   
2. Tom Gorzelanny missed his start, which means he's certainly badly injured and will probably need serious surgery this year.
   

So who's jumping?

I suppose since I already started with an incredibly low opinion of Bullington, I'm not ready to jump on him yet. I think that both he and Van Benschoten are at the end of their careers as starters, but I'd personally toss them in the pen for part of a year and see how they handle that. Due to all of the surgeries both of them have undergone, it's possible their problem centers around them simply not having the arm strength to start anymore. It's also possible that they suck, but there's no harm in finding out (in AAA, that is).

As for Gorzelanny, you know I'm on the "this dude's getting injured" train and I've been on it since probably last June. I just stated the facts in a FanHouse post and we've gone over them here before but once more for the record: Gorzo had arm trouble in the minors, he threw around 40 more innings last year than he did in 2006, and he consistently racked up big pitch counts last year throughout the entire season. Clearly, predicting injuries is not an exact science and I won't pretend to know more than what I just typed out, but if I had to pick a Pirate starter to miss a significant amount of time in 2008, I'd pick Gorzelanny.

One down already

According to the PG, Tom Gorzelanny won't start today against the Phillies in the Spring Opener as he's got a "stiff shoulder." Huntington says this:

"If this were April 2 or Aug. 1 or any date in the regular season, Tom would be making his start," general manager Neal Huntington said this morning. "But it's spring training, and there's no reason to rush anything. This is minor. It's not even going to affect his spring preparation."

I say that Gorzelanny was abused last year by Jim Tracy and if things keep going like this, I'm going to be surprised if he pitches 125 innings this year.

Pirates 5 Manatees 0

You know, there's absolutely no reason to spend a lot of time talking about this game seeing as it's meaningless and wasn't on TV or the radio, but I kind of have a hankering to write a recap, so we're rolling with it.

The Bucs clubbed Manatee County CC today in the 5-0, 3-hit fashion you'd expect a major league team to beat a community college (or, alternately, the way you'd expect a pirate to club a manatee and yes, I know their nickname is the Lancers and no, I don't particularly care). Doug Mientkiewicz had two hits and two RBIs on his path to justify his eventual inclusion on the big-league roster and Ryan Doumit chipped in with the same output in his quest to supplant Ronny Paulino or Xavier Nady or anyone to finally get some real playing time. The rest of the offense was pretty unremarkable, but hey, it's February 27th. We can yelp about it when it hasn't improved in two months, but I'll let it go today.

Really, there's maybe one or two aspects of this game that really are vaguely interesting to me. One of them is Yoslan Herrera. He really bombed out in AA last year and looked like yet another DL bust, but there was a bit of a silver lining to him in that he hadn't pitched for something like almost three years before 2007, which means that we can still hope against hope that he'll find some form in AAA this year and maybe turn himself into a useful pitcher. That means he's someone to keep an eye on this spring, especially velocity-wise since it was widely reported that he couldn't get his fastball above around 86 mph last year. If he can get some mustard on the ball, he might not be as lost as we all thought. The other interesting aspect of this one to me? OMFG DANNY MOSKOS DIDN'T STRIKE ANYONE OUT!!!!!11 HE SUCKS!!!!!!1111one

Real fake games start tomorrow.

RIP Myron Cope

I know this is a Pirates blog and all, but, man this is sad. My mom, a native Philadelphian, once commented that she couldn't stand him when she met my dad and heard his voice for the first time. She did admit that she'd grown to like him, which is like a rite of passage for becoming an official Western Pennsylvanian. There will never, ever be another Myron Cope, so pour some of your IC Light out tonight and wave your Terrible Towel in memory. RIP, Myron.

Bring on the Manatees!

Every year at this time of year, an epic battle is waged on the fields of Bradenton. The mighty Pittsburgh Pirates of the North face off against the portly Manattee County Manatee Community College Manatees in the only game that matters during every baseball season. Because, we know the Pirates are going to finish with a losing record, but if they lose to the Manatees, well, that's just embarrassing.

OK, actually it's a meaningless scrimmage in which our 8th team scrubs will beat up on a bunch of community college kids. But it's baseball, people! Baseball! Seriously, bust out those Pirate caps, dust off your copy of Major League, renew those subscriptions to MLB.tv, do whatever it is you do when baseball starts because it's here.

Ray Olmedo claimed? NOOOOOOOOO!!!

I dunno what they're doing over there in Philadelphia, but they just claimed Ray Olmedo today, which means they've not got Olmedo and Shane Youman over there in their attempts to defend the NL East against the Mets. On the bright side, it's just Ray Olmedo, I mean, come on. On the downside, it now appears that either Josh Wilson or Luis Rivas is a lock for the 25-man roster, which kinda makes me miss Jose K more than a little bit.

In fact, let's take a step back here and look at the roster. If you assume we're going to roll with 12 pitchers in April, that leaves five bench slots behind the eight starters (counting McLouth, Nady, and Paulino as starters right now). Doumit and Nyjer Morgan are pretty much locks for the team, which leaves three spots. It's looking less likely that we're going to waste a spot on an awful backup catcher, so we can give one to Dougie Malphabet (who's making the team because of his relationship with Russell, I don't care what anyone says). Does that mean that Josh Wilson and Chris Gomez get the other two? Ugh, that's a pretty ugly bench, isn't it?

Paul Maholm and the three-slot

It seems that being in grad school has put me permanently one day behind the actual news as it develops. Good thing that nothing that's actually happening is news a this point. I'll get on the ball sooner or later, I promise.

Anyways, this article about Maholm being the "swing-vote" in the rotation from yesterday really bugged the crap out of me. The logic behind it is simple enough: Tom Gorzelanny and Ian Snell are good pitchers, so if Maholm can keep improving, he'll make a third good pitcher, which means over half the rotation keeps us in games (and you can do the math from there). Of course, things are never that cut and dried. Ian Snell and Tom Gorzelanny were both very good pitchers for the Pirates last year, but the Bucs only went 31-33 in games started by the two of them. Granted, that's a better winning percentage than the team put up on the season, but it's still a losing record. To give you an idea of the type of season that Snell and Gorzo had, they finished 30th and 32nd (respectively) in all of baseball in VORP. That put Snell ahead of Jeff Francis (17 wins) and both of them ahead of John Maine, Andy Pettite, and Dice-K (all 15 game winners), and almost every closer, including JJ Putz.

Both these guys were really (really, really, really) good last year, possibly pitching to a level that they won't match again this year, and the Bucs finished with a losing record with them on the mound. While Maholm may improve, he probably won't match the season that either Gorzo or Snell had last year. That means that if the offense doesn't get better, it really doesn't matter how much Maholm improves, because the record is going to stay about the same.

New poll

Last week's results are in and a pretty overwhelming 76% of WHYGAVS readers have no idea how to spell Mientkiewicz. This dude is the blogger's nightmare. This week's question is about our new newest acquisition:

How will the Byung-Hyun Kim experiment work out?

As always, you've got a week to vote and feel free to talk it out in the comments.

Kim is in camp

This is yesterday's news now, but the Byung-Hyun Kim signing is final, he's in camp, and Ray Olemdo's off the 40-man roster to make room. The PG has video of Kim doing some throwing (man, I wish these videos were embeddable) and for one horrifying second, I thought he was going to throw overhand. Then he didn't. It's also worth noting that Kim's contract is not guaranteed, which means we can cut him. I really doubt that's going to happen, but I suppose it's another reason not to hate this signing.

Also, I found one tidbit in the daily Spring rundown from today really interesting. Apparently, Jim Sullivan, who a lot of you probably recognize as the guy that writes the awesome spring training diaries every spring, had a short conversation with Frank Coonelly that ended with Sullivan getting a tour of the team's headquarters and his own private conversation with Frank Coonelly.

Oh, and the awful McDonald's inspired Red jerseys have to stay for one more year because the new staff wasn't in place soon enough to submit an application to the league to change their unis in 2008, but Dejan assures us that they're gone after this year, which I hope means it's a safe bet that while the Heinz 57 vests may hang in the lockers for this year, they won't get out of that home very often.

Where there's smoke

If there's one thing I've learned about Spring Training in general from writing this blog for almost three years, it's that headlines like this one in the PG today are rarely meaningless:

Will Paulino remain the No. 1 catcher?

In the past week, we've seen two articles with pictures of Doumit in catcher's gear and one video in which Doumit capably blocks several balls in the dirt, Paulino makes a terrible attempt and blocking one, and Doumit looks into the camera as if to say, "I'm losing to this guy?"(Screengrab from Peter Diana's video at the PG ... Diana has been doing some amazing work this spring)

It certainly seems like the fact that Doumit is catching is being strongly emphasized. If that's the case, the Pirates are very, very serious about starting him over Paulino if he can stay healthy, which I think is a great sign. We've been over this a million times before, but for a catcher, Paulino is average at the plate and doesn't really offer much behind the dish to justify playing him over Doumit, who's a much better hitter. Doumit's problem is staying healthy, but he reportedly got in great shape this winter in an attempt to stay healthy this year, and I think that has to be worth something to guys in charge. From everything I've heard come out of Huntington's mouth this winter, he has to understand that Doumit's bat is by far the most valuable to the Pirates when he's catching and that the offensive difference between Doumit is a big one. It always drives me nuts when teams keep a good hitter on the bench in favor of a poor hitter so that they have a good hitting utility guy available. The best hitters should go on the field when it's possible. The Doumit/Paulino position battle is officially the top thing to watch this spring besides Steve Pearce.

Ex-Bucs all around

Some updates on our old friends:

Josh Fogg signs a 1-year/$1 million contract with the Reds in an effort to take a starting spot away from a young pitcher. The Reds have a ton of young talent, and I have no faith that Wayne Krivsky and Dusty Baker can cobble it into a winner.

Craig Wilson left the Reds' camp, apparently after failing a physical. I'm assuming this probably has something to do with his gimpy shoulder. To be honest, it doesn't look good for Thor's career from here on out. If he's done, he'll end stuck on a very Midgardian 99 homers.

Oliver Perez won his arbitration case against the Mets and will make $6.5 million next year. And whenever Matt Morris and Zach Duke take the mound this year, I'll be glaring angrily at Xavier Nady on the field in Steve Pearce's place, cursing Dave Littlefield with words that would make Quentin Tarantino blush.

At least they're not screwing around

I will say that as much as I dislike (dislike is the wrong word, I just feel like it's kind of a pseudo science) the emphasis put on ending "the culture of losing", at least the Bucs aren't screwing around with it. Today's story in the PG talks about the changes made in Bradenton, namely covering the team cafeteria with images of the past and what seems to be a rousing speech from Steve Blass to fire up the troops (I seriously hope this speech ends up on YouTube).

In the past the Pirates did a lot of things that I disagreed with, and they did them badly. This off-season the new management has emphasized a lot of things that they want to do differently and I like a lot of what they've had to say. The problem is, of course, that there's not really any way to know what they're really going to do until the proper situations present themselves. What we can say is that Coonelly definitely stressed that they were going to emphasize team traditions and old players and things like that in camp in order to "end the culture of losing" and they've certainly delivered on that. I don't think this particular aspect will have a huge effect on the product that takes the field in 2008, but I do think that it's an encouraging sign that these guys are actually doing what they said they would do.

Sometimes my mind wanders

Sometimes, when I'm reading the daily updates in the paper on Spring Training, my mind just kind of wanders. Today, it took me like three readings to get through the PG's story because my mind kept running away with Bob Nutting's quotes.

"We have a 15-year stretch that we can't dwell on," owner Bob Nutting said afterward. "For most of our history, the Pittsburgh Pirates have been a tremendous, respected franchise ...

... I mean, we won 79 games in a season twice in the 90s! That's a eleven games more than last year! If only this year's team could achieve at that level. And that's only what I remember! My respected sources within baseball tell me that the Pirates were quite a baseball team back in the 60s and 70s! How about that! Buying a franchise is great because the history comes with them! Expansion teams are for losers, because the fans have nothing to aspire to. These fans are still happy about a World Series win that happened almost 30 years ago! Man, owning this team is a sweet gig ...

with players who were proud to wear the uniform, who had an expectation of excellence. I believe we're in a position now to begin that execution."

And with that, a team full of assassins fell out of the sky. The players without a bat or ball in hand were quick victims of the execution. Ryan Doumit began fiercely hacking at the heads of the mysterious assailants and screamed, "So this is why we cut Castillo! His massive, looping swing sure would help here! This whole thing is a major buzzkill." Meanwhile, Ian Snell broke into a berserker rage, ripping the head off of one black-hooded assassin with his bare hands and eliminating more with sniper-like fastballs served from a distance. Still, baseballs and wooden bats were no match for the assassins and their mastery of the art of killing. Within minutes, all 63 invited players were felled, while Nutting and Frank Coonelly stared intently from the first base stands. "We lost 94 games with you, we can lose 94 games without you," growled Coonelly. The two men coldly laughed and walked off the field.

Yeah, like I'm the only person that does this.

More thoughts about Kim

Now that I've had half a day to process the BK Kim signing, I'll like to look into it a little further. As usual, my knee-jerk reaction was probably just a bit overly negative, so let's look a little further into the signing.

First off, holy crap he's only 29. I don't even know how that's possible, but it is. On top of that, he still strikes out a batter an inning. From that perspective, I suppose it's only fair to say it's one of those moves that's "worth a shot" and "can't hurt anything." The problem that I have with it is that he walks a ton of hitters (since 2003, his K/BB ratio has generally been under 2:1, which isn't good) and he hasn't really been a good pitcher by any stretch of the imagination since 2003. He's only 29, but he definitely feels like another retread to me. Maybe if we keep him in the pen and only use him against righties at PNC Park, he'll prove me wrong, but even with all the positive things I just listed, I feel like this could get messy really quick.

Pirates sign Byung-Hyun Kim

Near as I can tell, this is not some kind of mean joke on me. Ugh.

I hate this "Changing the culture" crap

I'm excited, I think I get to break out the way-too-rarely-used "rant" tag on this one. There's not really any one incident that's prompting this post, but rather a full winter of rage building inside of me that I finally have to vent.

Every time someone that hasn't worked for the Pirates for more than five months talks about needing to "change the culture of losing" in Pittsburgh, I want to vomit. It is a wonderful idea. It is something that needs to happen on Federal Street. At the same time, it's not something that you can do by talking about it and it's not something that people that haven't experienced soul crushing losing can quantify.

Sean Casey pledged to change the culture of losing in Pittsburgh. Jim Tracy promise to bring winning ways with him from Los Angeles. Lloyd McClendon's entire tenure was all about trying to do that. I think Dave Littlefield or Kevin McClatchy mentioned it at least once an off-season
every year from 2001-2007. When you suck as bad as the Pirates have, everyone wants to change the culture. The problem is that changing that culture in February seems easy and changing that culture on August 15th when you're 20 games under .500 with 40 to play is something else entirely. I know I've told this story before, but going in to my junior year of high school, our baseball team really believed we had a chance to be competitive, despite our 4-14 record the year before. We knew we had a major league prospect on the team and between a couple other pitchers with good arms and some decent role players, we felt like we could compete with the two teams in our classification we were up against for a playoff spot. Shortly. After about five losses, we were more interested in trying to figure out who was a scout to see our star player, pissing in bottles on the team bus, and trying to convince our coach that we smoked crack (we didn't). Practices was just an awful ritual we had to endure to stay on the team and the games were more depressing than just about any non-funeral situation I've been a part of in my life.

Simply put, everyone can talk about changing the culture of losing, but until the team actually starts winning, it's going to be really hard to change things. The one person that has to understand this is Russell after his season in AAA hell last year. Maybe he's got some secret that will keep the players playing hard in the doldrums of late July and August, but honestly, I'm not going to believe it until I see it.

They're heeeere

I wish I had time to do longer posts with more thought in the, but at the moment, I do not.

First full-squad workout is tomorrow and most position players are showing up today. Make sure you go to the revamped Only Bucs and check out Jim Sullivan's Spring Training diaries.

Seems like the Pirates are considering using Doumit behind the plate. If he can stay healthy, this is really the only move to make. I don't know if he can stay healthy.

Ohhh man, I can't wait to watch some baseball games.

Things could be worse

On one hand, it usually sucks to be a Pirate fan. On the other hand, at least we're not going to be using BP Chacon in our rotation. On a third hand, at least we're in a division with a team that's thinking about it. Somewhere, Hector Carrasco is celebrating.

WHYGAVS Night

Alright, I screwed this one up last year due to complications with moving, graduations, and the like. This year, I am only guaranteed to be in Pittsburgh for one Friday this summer, and it's Friday, June 27th. Therefore, that night is WHYGAVS Night. Appropriately, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are in town. You've got plenty of warning, so there's no excuse for you not to be there. The first thing on the checklist is attendance, followed by obtaining tickets. So who's interested? What's the best way to do this? Talk it up in the comments.

Spring impressions

At this time of year, I feel like all I can do is read articles and get gut reactions from them. There's two pieces in the PG today that I had immediate reactions to, so here are the excerpts I reacted to along with the resulting gut checks:

From the Dougie Bombs article:

"It's time," Mientkiewicz recalled in a lengthy, often emotional interview at his Pirate City stall. "I told Freddy it's time for you to start taking a little bit of a role here. There are too many good players, too many good guys in here. But it's easy to fall into the rut of losing. It's time to be a big-leaguer, and winning is what big-leaguers are all about."

Sanchez's reaction?

"I was, like, 'Wow,' this guy's awesome.' It was unreal," he said. "The things Doug had to say, with all the knowledge he has about things on and off the field ... it was only about 45 minutes or so that we talked, but it was incredible. That attitude he can bring is something we really need."

Ohhh, so that's why he's here. I mean there couldn't be any ulterior motive at all. He's just here to motivate and be a leader and contribute veteran-osity

Mentkiewicz's other reason for choosing the Pirates, one he seems eager to downplay, is his longtime connection with manager John Russell. Russell was his manager in two of his first three seasons in Minnesota's system, including his rookie-ball debut in 1996.
[...]
"I don't want people to think I'm here mainly because of Russell, but there are two main people in my life: One is my father, and the other is John. I know how hard he's worked to be here, and I'd love to be part of it."

Oh. That makes more sense. He's going to be fun to have in camp, though. I suppose that counts for something.

And from the Josh Shortslef injury article:

The roster was reduced by one when the Pirates shut down Josh Shortslef, a left-handed starting pitching prospect, and assigned him to their minor-league camp because of what general manager Neal Huntington described as "weakness" in his left shoulder. He will undergo a period of rest and rehabilitation before being checked again, but there are no immediate signs that surgery is necessary.

Damn, another pitcher's injured. Oh, wait. It's Josh Shortslef. He wasn't going to make the team anyways. Carry on.

Early Spring

Ahh, early spring training. The words "pitchers and catchers report" get everyone psyched beyond belief, but then nothing really happens for a few days. I mean, the pitchers are throwing and people are talking, but other than that there's not much going on. On the bright side, Peter Diana at the Post Gazette snagged this fantastic, John Wayne-esque picture of John Russell for today's Spring rundown article:

Seeing the manager standing in foul territory, watching his players warm up with a bat and glove evokes a ton of memories and really gets my psyched to watch some baseball.

The other good part about this early part of the spring is just hearing the players talk after a long winter off. I had been told by a Mets fan that Doug Mientkiewicz was always a great quote when he was in New York and I don't think he was lying. When asked by Dejan about what he was doing to increase his chances of making the club, this is how he responded (in the same article linked above):

I've seen a lot of average to below-average outfielders turn into first basemen. It's worth giving the other way a try.

With him and Rich Donnelly around, at least camp will be a little more fun. The same article even includes some early spring humor from Matt Morris It's always worth remembering that even though the Pirates acquiring a certain player may drive us nuts, it doesn't mean that player is a bad guy.

Danny Moskos- SP

The big news out of spring training today is that the Pirates are switching last year's top pick Danny Moskos from the bullpen back into the starting rotation. All I can really say is that it's about time. There's not really any point left in complaining about drafting Moskos because he's here and rooting against Pirates is a pretty counterproductive thing to do, especially rooting against young Pirates that were talented enough to be drafted in the first round of the draft (which Moskos would've been, even if Littlefield didn't take him).

The part about picking Moskos that seemed so insane to me was that DL and Creech assured us over and over and over that they got the guy they wanted and they got the guy that was going to help the team the most. Really, it's not that insane to think a pitcher can help the team out the most. Certainly, I didn't agree with that logic, but it's at least defensible. Or it was, until he switched Moskos to the pen. A reliever is never going to be more valuable than a position player and that's really all there is to it. There's only so much of the game that a reliever can affect. Why you would ever pick a guy at #4 and move him straight to the pen was (and still is) completely beyond me. If you put a guy in the rotation and he can't hack it, there's usually an indication that he'll succeed as a reliever (this worked out alright for Matt Capps), but if you start a guy out in the pen, there's no turning back. Not trying Moskos out as a starter was actually one of the more nonsensical things Littlefield ever did. Seeing that Huntington wants to try Moskos in the rotation is a nice breath of common sense.

2008 Preview: Jason Bay

Was Jason Bay's 2007 a fluke or a trend?

Honestly, this is the most straightforward preview I'm going to write. Jason Bay had an awful 2007 in which his second half was nearly as bad as Adam LaRoche's first half. There's really only one of two explanations for the year he had last year. Either he was hurt and his terrible numbers were a fluke or his bad hitting was the beginning of a bad downhill trend. If he was hurt and that was the only problem, he should have no trouble going back to being one of the most productive hitters in the National League and he'll probably top Adam Dunn as the most sought after name on the trade market this year. If last year was the start of a trend, he'll be untradeable, Nate McLouth and Steve Pearce would probably make better starters, and Neal Huntington will wander around his office muttering, "I've made a huge mistake." We've already talked about this at great length here and other people have tackled the question elsewhere. We can break down the salient points.

Backing up the theory that Bay was injured last year is the fact that he was injured last year. He had his knee scoped in the off-season, got to camp late, and looked very uncomfortable both in the field and at the plate once we got into about June. He even missed a bunch of games at the end of the season once all was lost, which is something he almost never did. There was certainly a problem with that left knee last year and it's not really a stretch to think it could've affected his swing. Bay also has said that the knee feels much better this spring, which is a pretty strong indication that it was bothering him at the end of last season.

Of course, it was just his left knee that was injured. It wasn't his plant leg and you wouldn't think that the left knee would affect a righty's swing or power as much. Both he and his doctors said he was good to go before last season started and even after missing time at the end of the year last year, he didn't have more surgery on the knee (please note that I'm not doubting his knee hurt, just wondering how much it affected him). Baseball Prospectus broke down his hit charts and stats in July last year and found pretty strong evidence that he was losing bat speed at a rather alarming rate and if that's the case, it's probably not coming back. His early career does fit the profile of a Bobby Higginson/Jeff Conine type player. That doesn't mean that's the type of player he'll end up being, but it doesn't bode well, either.

Honestly, there's no way to answer this question without seeing Bay play this year. It's certainly the most critical question for the Pirates in 2008 and possibly for the next few years because if Bay plays well, he's almost certain to be traded for prospects to help rebuild the system. I will caution that Bay is a slow starter like LaRoche and he hasn't heated up until May in either of the last two years, so trying to figure out if he's going to snap out of his funk before then may be premature. Personally, I think it was clear that the knee bothered him to some extent last year. He won't hit .240 or slug .418 again, and I think you can take that to the bank. The real question is whether or not there was an underlying problem and whether he'll be Jason Bay again or if we'll have to settle for another Xavier Nady.

Friday lunchtime links

Carlos Maldanado and Romulo! Sanchez were late for camp, but it appears it was due to travel problems and the team knew about it, so it probably isn't a big deal.

Tom Tango at The Hardball Times makes an interesting argument that the baseballs themselves are the reason for baseball's power boom since 1993.

You know, Masumi Kuwata may not have much left in the tank, but you've got to at least give him credit for not giving up on his major league dream.

Ex-Pirate roundup of the past couple days: Kris Benson to Philly, Tony Armas to New York. They're both on minor league contracts, but man, is pitching that thin in the NL East?

I didn't post about John Russell's Q&A in the PG yesterday because he says all the same things managers usually say at this time of year.

Poll

The new poll is of the utmost importance at this time of year: Can you spell Mientkiewicz? Last week's results indicate that Freddy Sanchez's new contract went over well, with 162 votes in favor of it and 36 votes opposed. The percentages once again failed to add up to 100. I don't know why this keeps happening.

Pitchers and catchers report

I understand that the weather is pretty ugly in Pittsburgh right now (it's not in Chapel Hill, but you'll be happy to know that karma has cursed me with the typical end of winter cold/cough/blech that I would have this time of year anyways), but that doesn't mean spring's not right around the corner because PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT TODAY!!! I have no idea why I still get excited about this, but I do and I feel like you should, too. I mean, it's not a superbike race or anything, but at least it's something.

The final building block

The final building block piece is in the PG today and it's about Neal Huntington, of course.
There's a long list of Huntington's new evaluation system and as per the usual, everything he says sounds good. I won't rehash it all here, but I'm sure most of you have read the article by now (and if you haven't, you should). The one thing that does bother me is the constant talk of placing an internal valuation on players and not budging from it. Everything that happens in baseball, be it a trade or a free agent signing, is a negotiation and being rigid on asking price is something that doesn't always play well. Eventually, a team like the Pirates needs to overpay for someone to prove to the rest of the league that Pittsburgh isn't a baseball graveyard. Huntington's right in that there was no one really worth signing out there and I'm certainly not losing sleep over guys like Luis Vizcaino, Johnny Estrada, and Paul Bako playing elsewhere. If Huntington does his job well, though, there's eventually going to be a free agent that can help the Pirates and I just hope he doesn't let his "internal valuation" get in the way at that point if he has to pay a 15% tax to get a player to come to Pittsburgh. Actually, I just hope he gets to that point in the first place. We're still a long ways off.

Why Mientkiewicz? Why now?

There's one aspect of the Mientkiewicz (which I've finally learned to spell) signing that I don't get: why the hell would he sign a minor league deal with the Pirates? He's left-handed, he's a league average hitter, and even if his defense has declined in the past couple years, he's got a reputation as a Gold Glover that many people refuse to look past when evaluating his play in the field. How can a minor league deal with the Pirates be the best he can do? The simple answer is that it probably isn't the best he can do and that the Pirates offered him something that he couldn't get somewhere else: playing time. The only thing that makes sense here is that this move portends a trade of Adam LaRoche or maybe Xavier Nady. It's not that the Pirates can't find room for him on the roster because they can- no one's forcing them to bring in another backup catcher and Huntington's already said he's got no problem with Pearce starting in AAA. Knowing that Russell was a no-hit backup catcher for a lot of his career, I would think he wants a guy in his mold to back Paulino up and won't accept Doumit's bad defense and gimpy hammies (though he doesn't get the final say). That means that between Doumit, Nady, and Pearce, Mientkiewicz is really redundant. The only way this move makes even a modicum of sense for either side is if LaRoche or Nady are traded, and soon.

2008 Preview: Adam LaRoche

Can Adam LaRoche duplicate his 2006 season?

I know the question you want me to ask here is "Can Adam LaRoche hit in April?" but the truth is that's not a terribly profitable line of inquiry for two reasons:

1. It's really hard to break down why he didn't hit in April and May last year because he literally did everything terribly and figuring the problem out would be nigh impossible without complete pitch-by-pitch data and a ton of time.
2. His career line in April is .184/.282/.354, so no, he probably won't hit in April this year. The best we can hope for is that he doesn't tank May, too.
   

I'm not positive, but I think Adam LaRoche had one of the most statistically misunderstood seasons in recent memory in his first year in black and gold. Everyone screamed and hollered about his awful start, acting like he was the worst acquisition in history when reality dictated that there was no way he was going to be that awful for a full-season. Then he hit the ball in the second half and everyone declared him cured and the savior we had hoped for back to his 2006 level if he just hadn't hit so badly at the beginning of the year. That idea is almost equally flawed as thinking he would OPS .500 for the season. I know I've done this before, but let's look at his monthly OPS numbers from his breakout 2006 (listed first) and last year (second):

• April- .747/.520
• May- .910/.798
• June- .756/.779
• July- 1.043/.905
• August- 1.239/.971
• September- .786/.796

There's the proof: he didn't even approach the numbers he put up in July and August of 2006 as a Brave. He hit 14 homers in those two months with the Braves and he only hit 21 all year with the Pirates last year. LaRoche is clearly a streaky hitter and there's probably nothing that's going to change that. The big question that's left is whether or not he can have months that match that peak he put up in Atlanta, because those two incredibly hot months are what seperates his 2006 (130 OPS+) from the rest of his career (around 105 OPS+).

Anyways, to try and answer the question of what LaRoche did better in 2006, I queued up David Pinto's Day-by-Day database to check out LaRoche's splits in July and August of 2006 and 2007. It was a mostly fruitless endeavor as his lefty/righty splits don't do much but confirm that he hit everything better in 2006 (he actually hit lefties better during this span in 2006 than he did in 2007). The only thing I could think to do from there was to check his full-season home/road splits. Again, it was pretty fruitless as in 2006 he went .835 at home and .994 on the road while in 2007 he went .881 at home and .721 on the road. Despite all the analysis I did last month, PNC actually helped his bat (if not his power) in 2007.

Anyways, that leads us back to the question of whether or not LaRoche can get as hot in 2008 as he did in 2006. The honest answer is that I don't know. His career history suggests that his numbers in 2006 were probably a bit fluky, but his big drop in road OPS last year kind of confuses me as I don't think of any of the NL Central parks being particularly hard on lefties, especially when he came from a division where he played a bunch of road games at RFK and Shea. I don't see a whole lot of evidence to suggest that he can replicate his 2006 season, but then again I also don't see a whole lot of evidence that he can't given that he's at the age that most players enter the peak of their careers, especially because he should be able to put up monstrous road numbers at parks like Wrigley and Great American and he didn't do that last year.

My job just got a whole lot harder

According to the PG, the Pirates' have just unleashed the blogger's nightmare upon us. I'm talking about the man referred to as "Malphabet" or "The Eye Chart" or my personal favorite, "Doug Mienl;aksdjfl;ajdgfl;adfjl;kajwcz." That's right, Doug Mientkiewicz is coming to Bradenton. It's hard to get worked up over a minor league deal, but with Steven Pearce, Adam LaRoche, Xavier Nady, and Ryan Doumit all on the team, this move is straight out the Department of Redundancy Department. Maybe this move portends a trade and maybe it doesn't, but if the Eye Chart gets to Pittsburgh before Steve Pearce this year, I'm going to scream.

The 2008 Season Preview Preview

For some reason, writing a preview for this season seems like a more daunting task than it ever has in the past. I'm not exactly certain if it's because of the sudden physical distance between me and the Pirates, though that probably doesn't have a lot to do with it during this age of the internet and cable TV packages and the like. The truth is, previewing 2008 seems like a daunting task because essentially, 2007 was like one long preview for this season. We already have a full year's worth of evidence on how these guys are going to pay, so previewing them feels a bit redundant.

Lucky for you guys, being redundant has never stopped me in the past. The way I'm going to break this down is going to be pretty simple. I'm going to look at each of the players that are going to play a key role on the Pirates in 2008 and ask a simple question about them. They'll be questions like, "What happened to Jason Bay in 2007 and what does that mean for 2008?" and "Can Jack Wilson ever hit well for two consecutive months?" I'll probably write a ton for some players and a paragraph or two for other players. I suppose it will all depend on the player, their role on the team, and the depth of the question. I will admit this will be a slow process because I'm not going to half-ass these posts and I'm a pretty busy guy, so bear with me if it seems like I'm never going to finish them because I eventually will, I promise. The hard part is going to be coming up with questions for each player, and so I'm going to solicit you guys for help on that part. If there's a question about a specific player that you have for the coming season along the lines of the examples I used above, leave it in the comments and I'll consider it. I won't make any promises to use any suggestions since I've got a bunch of these in mind already, but I will certainly read and at least think about whatever you guys come up with. If we get the ball rolling on this one right now, I can probably get the majority of the team done by the time the season starts.

Sunday links

The PG has their questions for spring training and Paul Meyer and Dejan's lineups posted, as well as a number of other spring training items. That can only mean one thing: spring is almost here. Like this winter could get any longer.

New Pirate blog alert: Hyzdu Headquarters. Definitely worth a look.

If you haven't seen it yet, Charlie at Bucs Dugout has already started one of my favorite pre-season series- the Community Projections.

That's all for now, but I'll be back tonight to kick-start the WHYGAVS 2008 Season Preview.

The Hardball Times Season Preview

It's not incredibly often that I make straight up book recommendations here on WHYGAVS, but I'm here to point you towards The Hardball Times Season Preview: 2008. I should warn you that I'm pretty biased in this recommendation because I wrote the Pirates' chapter of the book. In fact, they got bloggers to write previews for each team, and that's all kinds of awesome. David Gassko has a full preview of the book here, some interesting tidbits from it here, and a sample chapter here all up today at THT. If you're interested, hit up that first link and order yourself the book. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Copy editors have fun jobs

This headline in the PG made me laugh out loud:

Pirates take a look at Colon in Dominican

It didn't have anything to do with Bartolo Colon, either. And then I thought ... holy crap, Bartolo Colon? Has a Cy Young winner ever fallen faster?

Two Bucco links

First up, Sean Burnett passed through waivers, was outrighted to the minors, and will get an invite to camp as a longshot to make the bullpen. This isn't exactly shocking given Burnett's injury history, poor showing in the minors and, according to the article, inability to even approach 90 mph. I suppose the real surprise is that we actually brought him back.

The other link I have at the moment is alluded to in the first one: the Pirates hired Baseball America editor Chris Kline to be an area scout. I don't know much about Kline, but it is the kind of outside-the-box hire that will help convince me that Greg Smith isn't completely a lost cause, despite his terrible track record.

Frank Coonelly's plan

I'll admit, I've been enjoying the "Building Blocks" series in the PG, if only to get some kind of handle on the people that are now running the baseball team that's managed to consume so much of my life. Today's article about Coonelly is no different. Still, something about these stories hasn't been sitting right with me.

I think the problem with them is that the more I read, the more I get the feeling that the front office is just feeding the public what they want to hear. I'll be perfectly honest, I don't buy the "We have to fix the way people think and change this culture of losing" bullshit that Coonelly seems to be so fond of. The way to change a culture of losing is to win. Believing in yourself won't do it, nor will scrapping an ugly mascot and changing a slogan. The front office, lead by Coonelly, has to prove to everyone involved that they're not a continuation of the old group and that they know how to put a winning baseball team on the field. No words can convince me, or any Pirate fan, that things are definitely going to be different until we all see that they've changed. The things that have happened so far, firing Littlefield, building in the Dominican, etc., are all steps in the right direction, but they're only steps. The fact that Coonelly spends so much time talking about doing this worries me, because he's got work to do.

Baseball and comics collide!

Thanks to apk for pointing me towards the graphic novel "21." If you haven't guessed, it's a Roberto Clemente bio. You can check the official site here and the author's Flickr page here for some awesome looking Roberto-inspired drawings. You don't even have to be a comic nerd to appreciate this!

Freddy signs

The numbers on the Freddy Sanchez extension are out. Two years with a vesting third option based on plate appearances (which is not really unusual) and/or all-star appearances and up to $18.9 million. It's not a bank-breaker, but I think this is a lateral move at best for the Pirates and could end up being a bad one if Freddy declines quickly. But you know what I think ... what do you think? Freddy's the topic of the new sidebar poll.

Last week's results:

• Start Steve Pearce in Pittsburgh- 80% (128 votes)
• State Steve Peace in Indy- 19% (31 votes)
• The underpants gnomes- 1%
  

Fun with lineup analysis

As mentioned below, I'm going to take David Pinto's lineup analysis and run with it a bit in regards to the Pirates offense in 2008 (if you've been reading a while, you're probably realizing this is one of my favorite things to do in the off-season as I've done it each of the past two years). As always, this comes with the disclaimer that we're working in hypotheticals here and nothing's set in stone. I'm just using this tool to try and guess at the answer to some questions we all have during the off-season. All of the projections I'm using are going to be Dan Szymborski's ZiPS, which I'll include the first time I name a player. Let's roll with this and see where we go.

Lineup #1

1. Nate McLouth - CF (.259/.329/.415)
2. Freddy Sanchez- 2B (.298/.340/.415)
3. Jason Bay- LF (.265/.361/.478)
4. Adam LaRoche- 1B (.272/.348/.492)
5. Xavier Nady- RF (.258/.319/.449)
6. Jose Bautista- 3B (.249/.329/.415)
7. Ronny Paulino- C (.263/.321/.366)
8. Jack Wilson- SS (.261/.313/.361)
9. Pitcher- (.170/.168 ... these are the numbers Pinto used and seem as good as any to me)

That lineup is good for 4.258 runs per game. For a measuring stick, that's 690 for a full season assuming that this exact lineup played every single at-bat of every single game (and they won't, I'm giving the full-season numbers for perspective only). That's pretty brutal and if this happens, Neal Huntington is going to feel like a huge idiot for predicting that as many as five players will improve this year.

Lineup #2- This one's the same as lineup #1, except with Steve Pearce (ZiPS: .267/.324/.462) plugged in for Xavier Nady. That gives us 4.284 runs per game. For comparison, that's 694 runs per game. ZiPS and the lineup analysis don't see much of a problem swapping those two out. There's no objective reason to keep Pearce in the minors this year.

Lineup #3- LaRoche out (we'll say traded for no one major league ready), Pearce in. That gives us a paltry 4.171 per, or 675 runs over 162 games.

Lineup #4- This is the "Break in case of Jason Bay trade" case. 4.156 runs per game (673 per 162). As with the -LaRoche lineup, that's freaking brutal.

Lineup #5- Take Lineup #1 and sub in Brian Bixler for Jack Wilson. This tells us that if we traded Jack, we'd score 4.234 per game, which is 686 over a season. Losing Jack barely even registers.

Lineup #6- If the Pirates took my advice and traded Freddy, plugging Bixler in at second, they'd score 4.105 runs per game, which is the lowest total yet (a paltry 665 over the season).

So what can we conclude from this, if anything? It seems pretty clear to me that if Huntington can't trade Nady, keeping Nady in the starting lineup does nothing but block Pearce's development. All of the projections I've seen thus far have predicted Pearce for a better season than Nady. The usual caveat that goes with projections applies here, but they're really pretty good when it comes to predicting offense and since ZiPS and Bill James (who has Pearce down for .314/.366/.518!) both agree on Pearce being better than Nady, it's at least a good bet that Pearce will outhit Nady in 2008. I would say that we wouldn't miss Wilson that much, but I think Bixler's projection is waaay too optimistic I'm not going to make that leap. Trading anyone else will create a decent sized gap in the offense, but it's worth noting that the difference between the highest seasonal run total here (694) and the lowest (665) is only three more losses. Trading any one of Sanchez, Bay, or LaRoche isn't going to do much but drop us from a 70 win team to a 67 win team.

A full fire sale, however, would make for a historically bad offense. Lineup #8 is Morgan (CF), McLouth (LF), Pearce (1B), Nady (RF), Bautista (3B), Paulino (C), Wilson (SS), Bixler (2B), Pitcher. That gives us 3.802 runs per game, which is only 616 runs for a season and is probably at least a 100-loss team. Again, remeber that none of these things are set in stone and the full-season numbers are for fun and comparison's sake only. Ryan Doumit will probably tear the cover off the ball for a month of the summer before his hammy goes kaplowie. Bay could destroy the ball at a high clip and get shipped off in June. We could certainly get major-league ready players I don't even know about yet in trades for any of these guys or for a guy like Snell. One thing's for sure though- if any of the ZiPS are even close to accurate this year the Pirates may have a tough time matching the 724 runs they scored in 2007, and that's a bad thing for anyone that's hoping to see a competitive team in black and gold this year.

I'm still here

Sorry for the long gap in posting, but between the Super Bowl yesterday and lame school excuses, I've been a bit busy the last couple days. I'm totally still here and counting down the days until pitchers and catchers report, which feels like it might as well be tomorrow now that the NFL is done. All I've got for now is some links and hopefully I get post something of substance tomorrow. I'm going to launch into a season preview soon, but to be honest those posts take a long time and I don't like half-assing things like that, so I'll have them running just as soon as I have enough time to get them right.

Anyways, David Pinto at Baseball Musings did one of my favorite exercises of the off-season: taking predictions and plugging them into his lineup analysis tool to see how the Bucs might look next year. He concludes that the Pirates aren't actually terrible at getting on base, they're just kind of powerless to drive those guys in. His solution is one that's certainly been kicked around in Pittsburgh before, even though it's something that will never happen. I'll be honest, my next long post will almost certainly be a riff on this theme.

Nice to see Jose Bautista hitting well in the Caribbean World Series.

This is seriously kind of blowing my mind. The Cubs and Brewers will be among the best two teams in the NL this year and will likely fight for first place/a wild card. The rest of the division will probably continue to be awful.

I know this is a baseball blog and everything, but man, I had to watch the Super Bowl with like 4 Pats fans yesterday and sometimes, schadenfreude is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Long post with substance is coming tomorrow, I promise.

Extend Freddy?

The Pirates and Freddy Sanchez are reportedly close to a three year extension. I've said a ton about this already, so I'll just re-iterate that I think this is a bad idea and leave it at that.

Just a few links

BP releases their top 100 prospects. We've got Cutch at 24, Pearce at 43, and Neil Walker slips in at 93. Brent Lillibridge (#63) and some other familiar names sneak in, as well.

Sean Casey: mayor of Boston.

Pirates claim Ray Olmedo and DFA Sean Burnett. Since he was out of options, this one was coming from a mile away. Well, except the Ray Olmedo part.

Johnny Estrada never meant to offend you

Earlier this week, Johnny Estrada almost signed with the Pirates, then signed with the Nationals and said simply that he "didn't want to sign" in Pittsburgh. Today, his agent wants to make sure that you know that he didn't mean to offend anyone.

"Johnny was very excited about coming to Pittsburgh and playing for the Pirates and Gary Varsho," Schwartz said, referring to the Pirates' bench coach with whom Estrada has a history. "The reason he didn't come had nothing to do with the city or the team. It was simply because we couldn't work out a deal with the club."

Aaaand you've officially hit rock bottom when Johnny Estrada's agent feels bad enough for you that he feels like he needs to patronize you. Being a Pirate fan is great, isn't it?