Eligible players can start to file for free agency today and Chris Gomez and Doug Mientkiewicz have both taken the opportunity to do so. Gomez was decent enough with the bat, but not nearly versatile enough in the field and I'd be surprised if he comes back. Mientkiewicz was decent at the corners and got on base a lot and I'd assume he's going to try to find a job with a contender somehwhere, though I guess if he can't he might be open to coming back to Pittsburgh.
Spooooooooooooooky!What role do you project Nyjer Morgan to play on the big league club next season?
Morgan's progression throughout the summer and his performance the last two months of the season has made him a candidate to get regular at-bats next season. He brings tireless energy, and his speed impacts the game on offense and defense.
-- Todd P., Pittsburgh
Ken Macha will manage the Brewers.
I thought this model of how a pitcher's fingers affect his fastball and curveball was really cool. I remember back when Pedro Martinez was in his Sandy Koufax phase, I saw a bit about him on ESPN where he showed how the tips of his index and middle fingers naturally bent back, allowing them to stay on the ball longer and give his pitches more spin.
The Phillies won the World Series last night. The most horrendous substitution of a "ph" for an "f" happens in the title of this article.
Ken Griffey Jr. is a free agent. Thank god Dave Littlefield is gainfully employed by someone else right now.
Ex-Pirate Leo Nunez, traded away for one month of Benito Santiago, was traded by the Royals to the Marlins today for Mike Jacobs.
Wow, this is like a landslide of Pirate news coming in today. The Bucs named Jim Benedict a special assistant to Neal Huntington today. He comes from the Cleveland organization, where he worked as a scout, and also overlapped with new pitching coach Joe Kerrigan in Montreal (and possibly Huntington as well), where he worked with minor league pitching. I'd assume both of those connections are significant to this hiring. They also shuffled around the front office a bit, moving Jesse Flores from special assistant to West Coast scouting supervisor.
They also dropped two more pitchers from the 40-man roster today (the PG reports four, but we already knew about Salas and Herrera). They are, with my reaction included in parenthesis:
Pedro Alvarez is down in the Florida Instructional League right now while the Pirates get their first look at their top draft pick of 2008. All reports are good (of course they are, what are they going to say? "Damn, this guy sucks, why did we pick him?") but apparently he's not going to be able to play winter ball anywhere, which is a little disappointing. Still, they're saying he worked out during his hold out and I honestly don't think this is going to delay his rise through the minors as much as people say it is (see David Price as an example ... unless I'm misremembering and Price pitched in the fall last year).
As for the rest of the fall/winter ballers, you can find their stats here. Many of the hitters, including Jose Tabata and Steve Pearce, have cooled off after fast starts. Kyle Bloom is still putting up awesome numbers in Hawaii on the mound (he should get a roster spot before the Rule 5). The rest of the pitchers? Nothing too exciting unless you're interested in John Van Benschoten.
I'm very mad about this. I am probably going to write more about this for FanHouse later, but doesn't it sicken you that the way baseball is presented and, by extension, played in the playoffs doesn't even resemble the regular season sport? Playing baseball at the end of October is like watching an X-Files episode without Mulder and Scully. It's technically the same idea as the regular season, but nothing's the same. Bud Selig allows the season to go far beyond its natural end, and FOX's presentation of the games just pisses all over everything else.
Hey! Game 5 is delayed again! I bet that decision has nothing to do with FOX wanting to show House at 8 PM tonight instead of baseball. Nope. Nothing at all.
I know that the lack of any Pirate-related news recently has made us incredibly news-hungry, but I'm not sure that Yoslan Herrera and Marino Salas being removed from the 40-man roster is news or "something that was incredibly inevitable." I guess it's less inevitable than the release of Franquellis "Wreck Specs" Osoria, because I didn't even mention that (hat-tip to Charlie for finding that link, which I would've never noticed on my own).
I don't actually have a lot to say about this move, except to note that it's made possible by Huntington increasing the pitching depth at the trade deadline last year. Of course, he also traded for Marino Salas, so I guess that mitigates things a little bit. By my count, there are 38 guys currently on the 40-man roster with Doug Mientkiewicz, Chris Gomez, and Jason Michaels (potential free agents) all coming off shortly and Tom Gorzelanny and Phil Dumatrait (on the 60-day DL) likely having to be re-added sometime soon. That allows for three roster spaces without having to shuffle anyone around, as well as guys like JVB and Dave Davidson, who can be removed without any problem. There are a few guys (Jose Tabata included) that need to be added to keep them out of the Rule 5, but the Pirates should have no problem doing that with the roster configured the way it is right now.
The Road to 17 is a longer-form look at each losing season that the Pirates have had since their last playoff appearance in 1992. The object is not to wallow in the misery of the Pirates, but instead remember just what it is that makes us Pirate fans in the first place. Every team has their great moments, the Pirates' are just fewer and further between. Today, we kick off the Road to 17 with the first year of the lot: 1993.
I'm going to be sparse on the authentic memories from these early years. I was eight years old in 1993. I probably remember much more about my own youth-league team from that summer than I do about the Pirates. I played on a minor league (that's machine-pitch) team named "Joseph's Paint" that summer and we finished second in the league during the regular season and won the league playoffs, defeating our rival The Medicine Shoppe in the finals. In an odd and ultimately meaningless bit of foreshadowing, Joseph's Paint wore Carolina blue. Joseph's Paint actually plays an important role in this story, but that doesn't come until later.
I know I've told this story before, but maybe my clearest memory of 1993 is the Home Opener. I didn't go that year but I do remember my dad going, Tim Wakefield pitching well, and the Pirates going on to a 9-4 win. When I asked my dad about it the next morning (this was a morning ritual of mine as a kid; I would wake up, walk down the hall, find my dad and immediately ask him, "Did we win?") and found out that we had won, I felt like somehow the Pirates would be OK, even though I knew that Barry Bonds and Doug Drabek had left the team. In reality, the '93 wasn't all that terrible. They hung around .500 until Van Slyke got hurt and their 75 wins equals the best win total since the Pirates have moved to PNC Park. They weren't terribly young, though, so they were fairly similar to the Pirate team we had this year before the trade deadline ravaged the team; not awful, but not getting any better.
I also have a vague memory of Andy Van Slyke's injury that year. I was definitely listening to the game on the radio and remember him chasing a fly ball to the fence in St. Louis, failing to rob the hitter of the home run, and having to come out of the game. I have a strong feeling that this memory is apocryphal, because I remember it being an afternoon game and it was not, but that doesn't really bother me. As I google the play, immediately the name Erik Pappas rings a bell. Because of the injury, Van Slyke wasn't able to start in the All-Star Game, even though the fans had voted him into the lineup. Jay Bell took his place. Whenever I read the words at the top of this blog and really ask myself, "Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?" I'm fairly certain that the real answer is slumped over on the Busch Stadium warning track in pain. In my search to read and remember more more about the play, I came across this quote:
"We can't lose him," pitcher Denny Neagle said. "That's the worst thing that can happen."
Oh, young Denny Neagle. One day you'll get caught with a hideous hooker and I'll laugh sadly, but in 1993 you were just one of the guys from the John Smiley trade.
I don't remember the details of any specific games that I went to in 1992, but there is one Three Rivers Stadium-related memory that stands out. The coaches of Joseph's Paint were fairly well connected guys who managed to get a bus together for the entire team and take us down to a Pirates' game with our parents. The game was some Sunday afternoon game in which they had a ton of youth baseball players take the field, though I can't remember who the Pirates played or why there were hundreds of kids on the field. I just remember getting to walk through the tunnel under the stadium, walking out through the center field wall (which opened like a gate in Three Rivers) and getting to stand on the AstroTurf in front of what seemed like, but likely was not, a huge crowd. When we were done on the field and went back to sit with our parents, I found out that my mom had spent most of the time that we were under the stadium at the railing getting players to sign my autograph ball. I don't remember all the names on the ball (it's in my bedroom in my parent's house, perhaps that's a post all to itself) or who the Pirates played or if they won (I think they lost), but it's one of two times that I've actually stepped foot on a Major League field in my life.
See? 1993 wasn't so bad after all.
After attempting to fix WHYGAVS so that WHYGAVS.com redirected to www.WHYGAVS.com, I accidentally crashed the site for around 16 hours. This is partly my fault, and partly because GoDaddy and Blogger apparently hate each other and even though I finally had all the settings right around 7 PM last night, I still had to bounce everything back to back to default and then re-enter the right CNAME stuff (and the redirect from WHYGAVS.com still doesn't work, but I am at least working on fixing that right now). I'm really sorry about this and hopefully none of you panicked and assumed that I had closed up shop completely, because I did not. Again, a thousand apologies for this. A website's not much good to anyone when no one can see it.
Is a boring off-season better than one that involves lots of motion, like last fall? Player movements are never going to start until after the World Series ends, so the fact that there's been on Pirate news since the end of the season, save a few coaching changes, indicates that the coaching staff and front office aren't changing a lot. And that means that we don't have a lot to talk about. Instead, I looked up some Jose Tabata clips on YouTube.
Here he is striking out against Justin Masterson in May (this was the longest clip I could find).
Here he his getting a hit and running to first:
And here he is playing catch in June:
And that's about it. Nothing from his time in Altoona yet. He's a little bigger than I imagined and seeing him handle himself in the batters box, it's a bit easier to see where the Manny Ramirez comparisons come from. He's still a long ways from there.
With almost no Pirate news coming in the past couple days, let's take a look at how the Bucs' young players that are playing right now are doing. For a complete list, you can check here.
Jamie Romak looks awful in the Arizona Fall League with his .182 slugging percentage in seven games. Shelby Ford, on the other hand, looks quite good with his .308/.426/.462 line, though the standard caveat about the AFL being an extreme hitter's league applies. Pitchers are harder to judge in these leagues because even the starters only throw a few innings, but Jeff Sues has had four nice outings in the AFL.
In Hawaii, Jim Negrych is continuing to do what he always does, which is get on base, with his .390 OBP. He may miss some time with an injury, but it doesn't seem to be all that serious. Kyle Bloom also has a nice line after four starts and 15 innings in what is also, if I remember correctly, a pretty extreme hitters league.
In the foreign leagues, Steve Pearce has 11 hits and 6 doubles in 33 at-bats in Mexico (.303/.425/.515), Jose Tabata still has big numbers in Venezuela, though there hasn't been much of an update since I mentioned him earlier in the week, and John Van Benschoten has made two good (but short) starts in Mexico.
Obviously you can't make a lot out of the numbers from these leagues, but sometimes they're a good indicator of a coming breakout for a young player (Matt Wieters destroyed Hawaii last fall in his professional debut). I don't think anything here is worth getting worked up over in either direction, but it's always good to keep tabs on things like this.
The Rays and Phillies kick off what should be an interesting and virtually unnoticed World Series tonight at 8 or 8:30 or whenever FOX feels like getting things started. I've done a video preview and a guide to the potential hyperbole in the Series at FanHouse already today, and we'll be running a chat tonight during the game.
We also did a roundtable where I gave some analysis and a prediction, but I'll go a little more in to that here. I just don't think the Phillies match up well with the Rays at all. After Hamels, their rotation has nothing on the Rays rotation. Their lineups might be a push with Howard hitting, but he's been rendered impotent by the Jason Bay pitch in these playoffs and the Rays have several lefties in the bullpen (Miller, Howell, Price), as well as Kazmir in the rotation to deal with him. The Phillies have an edge in the bullpen, but Lidge hasn't looked great and if Price takes some innings from Wheeler and Balfour, I think the Rays will be much improved over their near-debacle in the ALCS. As I said at FanHouse, I'm going with the Rays in five in this series. Agree? Disagree?
The World Series starts tonight. If you're still uncertain of who you're rooting for (but, really, who's undecided at this point?) I'd just like to point out that Rays' manager Joe Maddon is a pretty cool dude.
Also, Baseball Reference asked for shout-outs from media members that use their site and I guess I'm a fringe qualifier there. BBREF is an amazing resource that's where 98% of the stats I use on this site from from and quite frankly, I have no idea how I ever managed to get by without it. Since my endorsement is not terribly meaningful to them, I also sponsored a couple of pages. Special bonus points to whoever manages to figure out which pages I snagged.
I think that Joe Kerrigan is a really good hire as the Pirates' pitching coach, if we can get that out of the way. Charlie has a nice rundown of the pitchers he's worked with, and he did an especially nice job with the young pitchers in Montreal, then followed Pedro Martinez and Dan Duquette to Boston where he worked with, among others, Derek Lowe. It's nice to have a guy with a good track record, but I mostly like hearing things like this:
Sometimes, bringing in a guy that's an outsider to the process can be beneficial. He's got no history with any of these guys and that means that he's got no bias. Jeff Andrews had worked with most of the Pirate pitchers in Indianapolis, which gave him a bunch of preconcieved notions of what the pitchers should be doing based on what they did in the past. Kerrigan can come in fresh and tell the pitching staff what they need to do based on what they've been doing, not based on any thing else. I think this is a good thing and given Kerrigan's track record, I think he's a good guy for the job.Kerrigan, 54, will watch videotape of the final six weeks of Pirates games.
"Then I'll hunker down and give each guy a profile of things we'll stress in minicamp [in January]," Kerrigan said. "For example, if [Ian] Snell had trouble with left-handers, I'll look at all the at-bats left-handers had against him."
I'm all for Jayson Stark's "Five reasons to embrace the World Series" article up at ESPN.com. Honestly, I'm way more stoked for the Phillies and Rays then I would've been for the Dodgers and Red Sox. These are two good, likable (or, as likable as a Philly team can be ... gotta throw that in there to keep my Pittsburgh Card) baseball teams that should play a good World Series. But there's one part of his story that I'm not down with:
This is the Phillies' 126th season on Earth. They've won one World Series. That's one fewer than the Cubs have won. That's three fewer than that team across the state, the Pirates, have won. Sheez, that's even one fewer than the Marlins and Blue Jays have won.Now, I know that not everyone can have encyclodpedic knowledge of Pittsbugh Pirate history and I know it's an editor's job to check the facts on Stark's column, but say it with me now, everyone: 1909, 1925, 1960, 1971, 1979. That's five World Series rings, four more than the one the Phillies have. Sweet Jesus, the present is bad enough without people short-changing the past, too.
Could it be? A third post today? Perhaps I am finally out of my bad-baseball induced funk that knocked me down to a post a day or less in the early parts of this month. Anyways, in Kevin Goldstein's Monday Ten Pack at BP today, he talks about how Jose Tabata is playing for Caribes de Anzoategui in the Venezuelan Winter League (subscription required for the whole article):
Sent to his native Venezuela for winter work, at 20 he is once again one of the youngest players in the league. Tabata has nonetheless continued to rake, going 4-for-4 in his first game, and batting .400 in his first five games. The jury is still out, but the potential for the deal to look like a steal for the Pirates is absolutely there.And now I will spend the rest of the day digging through Venezuela web pages trying to figure out if his stats are listed on the internet.
In a story that literally popped up on the PG's website minutes ago, Paul Meyer is reporting that veteran pitching coach Joe Kerrigan has been tabbed for the Pirates' open position. Kerrigan's been the pitching coach in Montreal, Boston, and Philadelphia. I wonder if his history of working with a hard-throwing, short-tempered pitcher named Pedro Martinez and the problem the Pirates have with Ian Snell have any correlation.
If you're a long-time WHYGAVS reader, you know that I love off-season player projections. No projection model is perfect, but I think that canvassing the best of them can give you a fairly good idea of what's going to happen next year. Accordingly, I was excited to get an e-mail from the publisher of the Bill James Handbook telling me that they would send me their projections early if I was willing to review them and write about them on my blog.
I don't know how to "review" projections, exactly, but I suppose it's fair enough for me to say that James' projections are certainly not my favorite. That distinction goes to the system that I'm fairly certain is the best: BP's PECOTA. Still, I like the projection section of his book, even if the projections in it are a bit unadventurous (more on that later) and even if my favorite parts of the book are John Dewan's Fielding Bible Awards and Plus/Minus defensive ratings. Every year James takes a look at the previous year's projections and discuss the ones they got especially right or terribly, terribly wrong (this year: Andruw Jones). It makes for interesting discussion about what caused the breakout or the drop in production which is always interesting given that James is one of the better baseball writers out there, even if people only give him credit for being a stat geek. And I do enjoy the level of transparency that allows him to say, "And Andruw Jones ... man, that has to be the worst projection we've ever published."
James' projections did quite well with some of the Pirates this last year. He picked Jason Bay for .276/.374/.498, accurately calling his bounce-back (actual: .282/.375/.516). He came close on Adam LaRoche too, calling .275/.350/.494 (actual: .270/.341/.500). He even did a nice job nailing down Ryan Doumit's breakout (projected: .280/.354/.484 in 103 games), actual: .318/.357/.501 in 116 games. He did miss on some of the Pirates. His predictions were a bit optimistic for Jack Wilson, didn't see Freddy's drop-off at all (to be fair, it was more severe than even I expected and I did think he'd fall off a bit in 2008), whiffed incredibly on Steve Pearce (.314/.366/.514 was James' projection there), and missed pretty badly on Nate McLouth (.255/.332/.429). That's fine, projecting baseball stats is an inexact science and James himself would tell you that. The goal is to get a feel for what a player's going to do, not write his performance in the coming season in stone.
It is interesting to note that the players that James' system seemed to miss by the most on where the players that did something significantly different in 2008 than they had in the past. This fits James' described model of "We just predict that players will mostly continue to do what they've done in the past." I don't know exactly how he does his projections, but it makes sense that basing things more on the players' past record than that of similar players would make drop-offs and breakouts harder to foresee. Of course, that means it might be hard to get a read on the projections for the one guy that I'm going to be keeping an awfully close eye on this winter: Andy LaRoche.
What, exactly, does an awful season at the age of 24 do to a guy that the computers loved coming in to this year? Last year, James had LaRoche pegged for .265/.367/.458. That would've been a great rookie year. After his 2008 stinkbomb, James' projection for him drops to .252/.347/.401. The projection still loves his plate discipline (74 walks and 83 strikeouts) and sees some home run power (18 dingers), but it basically sees him as Jose Bautista. That would be a huge improvement over what he was this year, but not particularly great as they key return on Jason Bay. It's strange, because the peripherals on the LaRoche projection are quite good. If he hits 18 home runs next year and walks 74 times with 83 strikeouts, I feel like he's going to be putting up numbers we're all pretty happy with. Still, the rate stats that James has him projected for are pretty bad, mostly thanks to the low batting average and not many doubles.
Anyways, keep this all in mind for the future because I'm going to be revisiting the Andy LaRoche projections when PECOTA and ZiPS and CHONE and the Hardball Times all come out with their numbers for 2009 as I try to get a handle on what the Pirates enigmatic (a nice way of saying, "I can't figure out why he can't hit") new third baseman and what we might be able to expect from him next year.
If you're interested in James' book, you can pre-order it here.
Watching the game tonight? Of course you are.
In search of a group of highly talented, smart, good looking baseball bloggers to discuss the game with in real time? Of course you are.
I'll be moderating the FanHouse live chat during the game tonight with a number of other FanHousers, so if you get the chance, drop on by join in the fun.
I mean to post this last night, but I think many of you will still appreciate the win probability graph from last night's Rays/Red Sox game. The Rays were like a pixel away from winning in the seventh inning with two outs last night. 
Friggin' Red Sox. I hope you guys saw Jason Bay draw those two clutch walks. On the bright side, at least there's baseball this weekend and we don't have to wait until Wednesday because of baseball's stupid refusal to reschedule the World Series when the LCSs end early.
With no actual Pirate news for the past couple of weeks, I guess this qualifies:
"[Michaels and Mientkiewicz] have both played well for us in the field and they've been great for us in the clubhouse," Huntington said. "They are the type of people that we would love to bring back. And it's our hope that we'll be able to provide a situation for them that they feel is the one that they want."Jason Michaels had the quietest awful year of anyone I can remember. People in Pittsburgh loved the guy for a couple of big hits he had early on in his time with the Pirates, but his final line was .228/.300/.382. There's just no reason to bring any of that back. I don't care if he had 52 hits and 44 RBIs, I wish he had a lot more freaking hits. The Mientkiewicz intangibles debate is one for a different time, but at least he can get himself on base and has had an average OPS+ the last two years and woud have some value in returning to the team. I still hope Huntington isn't wasting his time worrying too much about these two.
Was anyone extremely depressed after the Phillies clinched last year to hear ESPN and FOX repeatedly note that "THIS IS THE PHILLIES FIRST WORLD SERIES SINCE 1993!!!" like 15 years is such a long time to not go to the World Series?
And if the Rays win tonight, that means that since the Pirates last had a winning season, four franchises will have been created in Major League Baseball and all of them will have been to the World Series. Talk about your all-time depressing stats.
Well, at least we're not Expos fans.
A long time ago, during the first off-season that WHYGAVS existed (nearly three years!), I wrote this:
... Dave Littlefield set out in the offseason with the goal of building a team that wouldn't actually compete, but instead appear to be improved enough to get the average, typical Pirate fan interested in the team. He doesn't care what I think, I'll probably be at games next year no matter what. He probably doesn't care what most of you readers think, because let's face it, if you live in Pittsburgh and take the time to read Pirates blogs in the offseason you're probably going to games next year as well. If you don't live in Pittsburgh, you probably aren't going to the games either. His goal this offseason was to reach the typical late March-early August Pirate fan whose ears perk up every spring for baseball, then get disillusioned by the time the Steelers break camp, the ones who won't come to games if the team isn't playing well.That was written after Littlefield had acquired Sean Casey, Joe Randa, and Jeromy Burnitz. Through the course of the piece, I actually gave Littlefield too much credit and attributed "minimal improvement" to the 2006 Pirates thanks to his signings. In reality, Casey, Randa, and Burnitz offered no improvement over the players the team already had. Littlefield rode a wave of hype around big-name, low talent signings and an energized crowd of Pittsburghers to probably an extra season of employment. That was what Littlfield did. It's what he was good at.
Just when it looked like Jason Bay had "best post-season by an ex-Pirate" all locked up, Matt Stairs goes and wallops a two-out, pinch hit home run to give the Phillies a 3-1 lead in the NLCS. Who saw that one coming? Make sure you check the FanHouse feed in the corner, as I've been doing a LOT of writing over there during these playoffs, which is why WHYGAVS has been so sparsely updated. Though I do have a post coming here probably for this afternoon.
After looking at the hitters a couple of weeks ago, Charlie from Bucs Dugout and I discuss the state of the starting rotation as we head in to Neal Huntington's second winter.
Paul Maholm
WHYGAVS: Maholm did a great job increasing strikeouts and cutting down on his hits and as a result, he was by far the best pitcher the Pirates had in 2008. Still, I think that the terribleness of the rest of the Pirates' staff kind of obscured the fact that he's still no more than a middle of the rotation guy. He seems perfectly able to give the Pirates 200 decent innings, but counting on him for more than that is raising expectations too high.
Bucs Dugout: Maholm is already better than I ever thought he would be, but he also had a .273 BABIP this year. Given the Pirates' horrid defense, his ERA will probably take a hit next season. Still, I can't complain.
WHYGAVS: I absolutely think he'll probably take a step back next year, but I think the most important thing to note is that his strikeouts this year increased from 5.3 per nine innings to 6.1 per nine. Which is to say that while we're both saying things like "middle of the rotation guy" and "ERA will probably take a hit," he really did show a lot of improvement last year and I'm certainly not denying that.
You know what's certain to make you feel better about the playoffs? A celebration of the 48th anniversary of Maz's homer. Some day, the Pirates will be in the playoffs on October 13th and that celebration will be kick ass.
I've been putting most of my free time this week in to FanHouse posts because of the League Championship Series starting. We should be liveblogging just about every night and I'm going to helping out with a lot of those. We've also got previews, game wraps, etc.
Anyways, what's everyone think about these series? If you look through our roundtables at FanHouse, you'll see I picked Dodgers and Rays and I'm not changing that pick, even with the Dodgers losing last night.
Perhaps because I am a glutton for punishment, I took the numbers that Adam LaRoche put up in 112 games after May 1st this year and extrapolated them for a 152-game season. If Adam were healthy all year and able to hit in April, this is what we might've seen from the guy this year:
.291/.358/.551 with 33 home runs, 108 RBIs, and 39 doubles.
Of course, it's unfair to Adam and to everyone to run the numbers like that because there are a lot of factors involved, but it really does underscore just how damaging and maddening LaRoche's April struggles truly are. One bad month a year is all it takes to change him from a borderline All-Star first baseman to a borderline average one. This is what maddens me when people make Hall of Fame arguments for borderline cases like Bill Mazeroski with things like, "Well, if he just had two more hits per month over his entire career, he'd be a .280 hitter!" He didn't and that's why Maz was a .260 hitter (who deserves to be in the Hall based on his glovework and the greatest home run in the history of baseball, don't get me wrong). Similarly, LaRoche doesn't hit in April and wondering what he'd be like if he did is pointless.
LaRoche's April swoons madden me for other reasons, too, though. In general, I'm a pretty analytical guy and I enjoy having explanations for things. The year that Jason Bay got almost no hits with runners in scoring position, many people brushed him off as "not clutch." Instead, it seems more likely that it could be explained by the one weak spot in his swing (breaking pitches low and away) and his terrible average and slugging percentage that year in any situation that involved runners on bases that weren't first base. With people on base the pitchers hammered away at that spot and either got him out or walked him, which was fine so long as first base was open. That's a much more satisfying answer than "he's not clutch." That's the reason I did that long post about Ian Snell the other night, because "he lost it and maybe he found it at the end of the year" just doesn't sit right with me.
For LaRoche, "He can't hit in April" is literally all there is and I find that maddening. I've made guesses about his big, looping swing taking a long time to adjust to big-league pitching, but it shouldn't take that long. And he hits in Spring Traning. And he hits in May. In April, he's a bad hitter. That's all there is to it and I can't figure out why and it drives me at least a little nuts. Should he see a shrink to convince him the season starts a month late? Should he put all of his change into his left pocket, tilt his hat left, untie his left shoe, and bat cross-handed? Should he just keep plugging away and hope that he finally figures it out? I don't know. I wish I did.
Pirate news has been pretty slow the past couple weeks, but Lanny Frattare found some time to sit down and talk to Bob Smizik about his decision to retire:
"I hope this doesn't sound trite, but I'm deeply indebted to the fans for giving me a chance. When I first joined the team after the firing of Bob, it was difficult. But the fans gave me a chance and that means the most to me.
"I hope I haven't let them down. I hope through these 33 years I gave them what they wanted even though my style was so different from Bob's."
This is pure speculation on my part, but a lot of the story really reads like all of the losing the Pirates have been doing recently just wore Lanny out. He mentions that he might work with the new MLB Network that's launching soon, though I suspect that he's likely too worn out to be a play by play guy right now, it's going to be weird seeing him in a different capacity.
Living vicariously through others ...
Jason Bay hit .412/.474/.882 with two big homers and a ground rule double in the bottom of the ninth last night that resulted in him scoring the series winning run. I don't think any "vicarious fan" moment tops seeing him slide in ahead of the throw coming from right field and the Red Sox celebrate around him. If anyone deserves it, it's him.
Jason Kendall hit .143/.143/.143. That's two singles in 14 at-bats. That's awful, I was impressed seeing him catch the whole series after playing 151 games during the regular season at the age of 34. Salomon Torres picked up a save in the Brewers only win and threw two scoreless innings, despite giving up four hits. One of my favorite playoff moments was Torres going nuts after the Brewers Game 3 win, then he and Kendall walking off the field together in celebration.
Daryle Ward had an RBI single in three pinch-hitting appearances. Joe Beimel made the Dodgers post-season roster but didn't pitch. Aramis Ramirez went 2-for-11 with a double and a run scored. Dale Sveum likely lost his job as Brewers' manager after failing to advance, though he made a solid call by arguing a runner's interference play that took a run off the board for the Phillies in the ninth inning of the Brewers' lone win.
Am I missing anyone? I feel like they can't be terribly relevant if I am.
For my 2008 season review, I'm going to try and answer questions that arose in 2008 that apply to the future of the team. Today, Ian Snell's frustrating season.
When Jeff Andrews was canned last week, the main reason that it happened was that Ian Snell and Tom Gorzelanny took major steps back this year. I'm not certain that was justified in Gorzelanny's case, because I thought he pitched like a guy that was injured all season (but that's for another day). Snell is a different story. After he came off of the disabled list, his problems seemed to be mostly mechanical and when he did eventually fix them (his last seven starts were really quite good; we'll get to them later), he credited watching CC Sabathia on his iPhone instead of the pitching coach.
So what happened with Ian Snell? In his last seven starts, he rolled off a 3.79 ERA, which is a decent figure. More importantly, he rung up 35 strikeouts in 38 innings while walking 16. That walk rate (3.79/9) isn't great, but it's not terribly out of line with his rate from his two years prior to this one (3.23/9 in 2006 and 2007 combined) and much better than his first 24 starts (5.2/9). After his great start against the Cardinals on August 19th, which started his nice stretch run, Snell said this:
"Watching CC, he used his fastball command to set up the slider, rather than vice versa," Snell said. "Well, I put my fastball where I wanted, and everything else happened."Was there a real difference in the way he pitched down the stretch? Or did he simply throw better as he got more comfortable in his return from his injury? With that question in mind, I decided, to look through the PitchFX and see what I could find. For simplicity's sake, I figured I'd use Snell's starts on August 14th and August 19th to see if I could find anything interesting.
I'm going to start season reviewing in earnest next week, but until then you're going to have to bear with me. Until then, links!
Charlie's got a good community projection going on at his blog.
It was only a matter of time until this happened.
I've been in lab for both of the Phillies/Brewers games. That means that I've been listening to them on the radio. That means Bob Uecker. The Brewers need some Harry Doyle magic.
If you build it, they will come. (via Baseball Musings)
FanHouse posts of mine that may be of interest if you haven't plucked them out of the sidebar yet: who to root for when your team is out of the playoffs and my Penguins season preview.
I meant to do this yesterday, but forgot. How 'bout that Jason Bay last night? I feel pretty good about all the time I spent upholding his clutchness a couple of years ago. Today, the Rays play their first playoff game ever (they're already winning!), CC Sabathia tries to keep the Brewers from falling deep into a 2-0 hole, and the Cubs try to avoid throwing most of Chicago into a panic over falling behind 2-0 to the Dodgers. I could be wrong, but I think the list of ex-Pirates in action today is Jason Kendall and Salomon Torres with the Brewers, Aramis Ramirez and Daryle Ward with the Cubs, and Joe Beimel with the Dodgers.
This is sad news. More to come later.
MORE: What can a guy like me say about a guy like Lanny? For as long as I've watched and listened to the Pirates, his voice has been the one calling the games. I guess someone else will become the "Voice of the Pirates" next year, but it's always going to be Lanny in my head. I'm struggling to even find the right words to describe why it is that I'll miss Lanny so much, but I know that Pirate games aren't going to be the same.
Maybe that's what it is about Lanny that was so comforting. While some announcers are a nightly roller coaster of blind homerism and histrionics, Lanny has always been even keel and positive, but never so overtly positive that you felt like he was a robot controlled by the front office. Instead, being positive was just something you could hear in his voice; every night was a "good" night, every home run was urged on, "GO BALL! GET OUTTA HERE!" and no win in the 33 years he's called the Pirates has ever been in doubt.
Ever since I was a little kid, I've imagined the Pirates winning the World Series with Lanny exclaiming, "THE PIRATES WIN THE WORLD SERIES! AAAAAND THERE WAS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DOUBT ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!" and it makes me genuinely sad that that's a line that I'm never going to be able to hear, even if the Pirates win the World Series. Now, all I can think of are hot summer nights when I was a little kid, when my parents would put me to bed and my dad would turn the Pirates on the radio so that I could listen as I fell asleep. There are some voices that were meant to call baseball games, and Lanny Fratarre's is one of them. So thank you, and good luck, Lanny. When this team is finally good again, there's not a Pirate fan that's alive right now that won't celebrate the biggest wins with a "No doubt about it."
If you read one thing about Pedro Alvarez this winter, I'd recommend that it's the Q&A he did with Colin Dunlap in today's PG. Very interesting stuff. And people can say what they want about him, but he seems like a good kid to me. I hope Huntington finds a way to get him in to Hawaii.
Lots of playoff stuff going on at FanHouse. We've got blogger predictions, debate-style series previews, and Mullet is going to be liveblogging the entire marathon session of games today, with help from most of the supporting FanHouse cast (I should be dropping in and out).
I'm also writing the Penguins preview for NHL FanHouse and that should be done tomorrow morning. And I'll also have a playoff column up tomorrow morning. Which means I'm going to be rather busy the next day or so and might not get a lot posted here.
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