The Road to 17: 1999

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 hit the seventh stop on the Road to 17: 1999.

Perhaps the analogy I'm about to use is a bit of a stretch, but it's predominate in my mind at the moment so I'm sticking with it. On Sunday, I left Hermitage at 8 AM for my 8-hour trip back to North Carolina hoping to get back in time for most of the Steeler game. Thanks to a wonderful combination of a huge travel day and horrendously crappy weather, my 8-hour trip took almost 11 hours. The only positive thing was that the dense cloud cover from Washington, PA onwards somehow carried the 1170 signal with Bill, Tunch, and Wolf out of Wheeling (one that my dad says he's never picked up south of Morgantown on I-79) all the way to my apartment. It was one bright light in an disappointing day.

Similarly, the 1999 Pirates had Brian Giles. Except for Giles, most of '99 was disappointing. We can get to the other parts later, but let's start with Giles. After Cam Bonifay acquired him in exchange for only Ricardo Rincon in the winter of 1998, he lead the NL in OPS with an insane .315/.418/.614 line that saw 39 homers and 115 RBIs from a lineup that batted Al Martin (.337 OBP) and an empty hole in front of him after Gene Lamont moved Jason Kendall out of the leadoff slot on May 1st. In 1999 (and later in 2000, 2001, and 2002), Giles was just about as good at the plate as anyone in Pirate history. That seems insane to say, but it's true. Had Giles spent his prime somewhere other than the Indians' bench and with the Pirates, he'd be remembered as one of the best players of the late 90s and early 00s. Instead, he's an All-Star and nothing else. It's a shame, but I guess it's how it works out sometimes.

Beyond Giles, though, 1999 will be defined by Jason Kendall's horrific ankle injury. The Pirates came into the 4th of July at a game above .500 and certainly in the thick of the NL Central and wild card race. Then, in the sixth inning of a game in which the Pirates trailed 3-0 (after two straight losses to drop them near the .500 mark), Kendall tried to make something happen with a leadoff bunt for a hit. As he raced down the first base line, he stretched out, hit the base funny with his right foot, and completely dislocated his ankle. The bone stuck out of his leg, his foot dangled off at a precarious angle, and his season ended. The Pirates lost the game, briefly went above .500 again at 42-41, and then fell off to a 79-win season, even though they had their best Pythagorean record of the 17 year losing streak (775 runs scored, 782 allowed).

The Kendall trade also went on to some disastrous reprecussions. After Keith Osik failed to fill Kendall's shoes, the Bucs traded Jose Guillen to Tampa for Joe Oliver and Humberto Cota. The Pirates mishandled Guillen in just about every way possible, from the way they called him up early, to keeping him up when he struggled, to giving up on him at the age of 23. They could have mishandled him worse, but the only way they could've done that was if his name was Aramis Ramirez. At least the Pirates had the sense to keep him in the minors for most of 1999 after his disastrous debut as a 19-year old in 1998.

Presenting Giles as the only redeeming factor of 1999 is a bit misleading. Giles was the difference between the awful 1998 offense and the respectable 1999 one. He was the reason that 1999 was disappointing and not disastrous. There was, however, another player that Cam Bonifay rescued from the scrap heap that was a key component to the '99: Todd Ritchie. He went from Twins castoff to 15-9/3.49/1.29 for the Pirates, leading what was again a very good Pirate pitching staff (except for Pete Schourek ... he was awful).

Good turns from Ritchie, rookie Kris Benson, and Jason Schmidt should have portended a good Pirate pitching staff for years to come. Instead, they were the last Pirate pitching staff to finish with an ERA+ of over 100 (though they did finish right at 100 in 2002 and 2004). A lot of this can probably be blamed on the decline of Francisco Cordova, who fell off in 1999 after 220+ innings in 1998 and was never the same again. He probably wasn't 27 years old like he said he was at the time, but losing him from the rotation was something the team never really seemed to recover from.

There are a million other mini-plots from this year we could talk about. There's the mystery of Warren Morris, who was a solid .288/.360/.427 rookie second baseman in 1999, then never hit ever again. There was the continuing awfulness of Brant Brown and Mike Benjamin, who spent most of the year in the starting lineup despite being awful. We also had Mike Williams' first disastrous stint as closer but a solid bullpen because of Scott Sauerbeck, Brad Clontz, Marc Wilkins, and Jeff Wallace -- a bunch of guys that mostly never came close to matching their 1999 seasons.

When you view the Pirates' 16-year journey as a full story, 1999 was the year that things finally hit the fan for good. In reality, the Kendall injury followed by the Guillen trade was what officially transitioned things from attempting to build a decent team for the future to the "Drive for 75." That's not to say that Bonifay didn't misstep here or there before the Guillen trade, but at the midway point of the '99 season the Pirates had guys like Kendall, Giles, and Jason Schmidt with young guys like Guillen, Ramirez (again, in AAA in '99), and Kris Benson. When they ditched Guillen for a poor-hitting veteran catcher with a good defensive reputation and a middling catching prospect like Cota was an attempt to finish .500 in a year when .500 shouldn't have been the goal. Leading up to'99, Bonifay was making his name by pulling guys like Ritchie and Turner Ward and Kevin Polcovich off the scrap heap and turning in reasonable production from them. After '99 he made some good moves, but mostly signed terrible players like Pat Meares and Derek Bell to terrible, crippling contracts. The focus of the front office shifted from trying to slowly rebuild to trying to put a superficially decent squad on the field in 2001 when PNC Park opened.

I've been in the car for too long today. Thinking about 1999 more than this is a bad idea.

Post-turkey links

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I am officially back in Western PA for a few days, goggling my eyes at the snow. We don't have that in the south.

With the Winter Meetings looming, Dejan's back at the PG. His first story updates the offseason to this point, mentioning that Grabow, Paulino, Sanchez, Wilson, and LaRoche are available while Huntington is looking for any and all pitching.

Rinku and Dinesh posted about signing with the Pirates. They're pretty excited. They looked up Pittsburgh on the internet.

Charlie had a good post about the Rule 5 draft earlier this week, based on this list of players made up by the USS Mariner.

Finally, Pittsburgh Sports and Mini Ponies found a video of Rinku Singh's motion, and there's also one on YouTube of Dinesh Patel throwing as well. They're embedded below, but if you're hoping to see something crazy, you won't find it. They look pretty traditional.

Links

Who's the Rockies' new bench coach? Well, if you look at the guy in the uniform you'll probably recognize him as former Pirate manager Jim Tracy. (via Bucs Dugout)

Keeping the Jack Wilson rumors rolling, the Dodgers are interested in Jack but not his current price.

The plans for the Marlins new stadium are moved back a year. Does anyone think this stadium is actually happening?

A weird effect of the economic downturn is that many of the companies the government's been bailing out are big advertisers of sports. First there was AIG, the insurance giant that advertises on Manchester United's kits. Now, there's Citi Field, which NY officials want re-named "Citi/Taxpayer Field." Because THAT makes everything better.

Stunningly, we can no longer joke that the Pirates will have a winning season when Axl finally releases Chinese Democracy (if you read one review of Chinese Democracy, read that one). This is one long losing streak we're mired in, folks.

A blast from the past

Google recently added the Life Magazine photo archive to its image database. I was browsing through recently and was absolutely blown away by this image of Bill Mazeroski turning a double play. The beauty of baseball is in the little details like this.

More on Patel and Singh

First things first, Patel and Singh officially signed. I thought it was important to note that news from a site that didn't need a babel fish to figure out what was going on.

Secondly, I mentioned their blog second-hand in my earlier post and I know that a lot of you checked it out through the Walkoff Walk post I quoted, but if you haven't read it yet you really have to do it. There are a million things I could quote, but to give you an idea of what these guys have been thrust into, read this post:

Tonight we were celebrating the Halloween Holiday here in America. we are not sure what the holiday comes from, but kids dress up in all kinds of crazy outfits and then go to houses asking for sweets. if people in the house no give the sweets then the kids put toilet paper in their trees.

I hope no one took the to a college Halloween party. Their heads might've exploded with all the naughty nurses and Playboy bunnies around.

I can't even begin to describe how weirdly surreal and awesome this whole thing has been. The bottom line here is that the Pirates saw some high upside 19 year old arms and signed them. That's good, whether these guys work out or not. But they won a reality TV contest. In India. And they have a blog. Can this even possibly be real? I mean, I know it is, it's just really hard to wrap your brain around.

One thing to remember is that even if Singh and Patel are awful, Neal Huntington just managed to make the Pirates the favorite team of a billion people, though it is unfortunate that it's in the one region of the world where piracy is actually a problem in the 21st century (as an aside ... does the rise in prominence of Somali Pirates mean that global warming is over?). If nothing else comes from this venture or the signing of Mpho Ngoepe, Huntington has increased the Pirates' presence in the world more in a year's work than Littlefield did in seven. Maybe nothing will come of it, but there's only one way to find out.

Pirates Sign Indian pitchers

Indian as in, "from India." I just got an e-mail from Rob Ircane at Walkoff Walk informing me that the Pirates have just signed Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, two Indian pitching prospects, to minor league contracts. I can't really put the weirdness of this news into proper context, but here's what Rob wrote at his blog:

As you know, Rinku and Dinesh won the Million Dollar Arm contest on Indian TV by displaying awesome arm strength and a desire to become baseball players. They've spent the last nine months in California learning the rules of the game and, most importantly, how to throw fastballs and brushback pitches. Their blog has been a constant source of amusement to us, and their recent audition for major league scouts even caught the attention of mainstream media publications.

Lest you think this is a joke, NPB Tracker has a post about it and I'm fairly certain that the truth is contained somewhere in this article. I present, for your amusement, the Google Translate version of the Japanese article:

First! Pirates pitcher who signed a contract with India
Daily Sports - 2008/11/24 10:39

Major League Baseball, Pittsburgh Pirates and the Indians pitcher who signed a minor league contract to 22, sources said.
According to sources, the two universities in India to attend a 19-year-old physical education. The right arm is 189 centimeters tall, thin links with the fastest fastball in the second half of the 80 miles (140 km), the tall left-hander's 180 centimeters DINESHU MAX92 PEITERU miles (148 kilometers) to throw a sharp slider. In the audition shows both the country's more than 30,000 applicants were selected from a "phenomenon", he said.
However, India has a thriving baseball than cricket country. Both of them close to the baseball novice, for a tryout in November, America in May. Arizona and a former major leaguer Tom House's leadership after a major 30 team earlier this month, the 11th of 19 teams showed off a pitch in front of scouts. Meanwhile, the Pacific have a strong interest in the military.
This season, including the United States in the majors, the players played in 17 countries, the official said, "is a minor player, but not Indian nationals. This agreement is an historic achievement," he said. Once the two, returned to India. MAINAKYANPU from April 01 to participate in the plan.

Add these two to Mpho Ngoepe and I guess we can really believe Neal Huntington when he says he's going to be looking everywhere for talent.

The Road to 17: 1998

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 hit the sixth stop on the Road to 17: 1998.

1998 was, without a doubt, one of the two most disappointing years during this entire debacle. The Freak Show in '97 was supposed to be the rise of a core of young players that would lead the Pirates back to respectability. '98 was supposed to be the year that that young core broke through and brought the Pirates back to glory. They won 69 games and finished in last place in the NL Central, becoming the first sixth place team in the history of the Wild Card era (in 1998 the Brewers shifted to the NL to make room for the creation of the D'Backs and D-Rays ... both of whom have made the World Series since). There's breaking your heart, and then there's ripping your heart out of your chest, stomping on it, and putting it in a doggy bag to take home. The Pirates are awfully good at the latter, and 1998 was just another incidence of that kind of disappointment.

In fact, in about three months, pitchers and catchers are going to report to camp and the Pirate PR machine will start cranking out stories about how this year will be different and the young players are coming around and so on and so forth. And some people will believe that. In fact, there's a good chance that something will happen that will make me pause and think about getting excited for the Pirates' chances in 2009. I won't do it, though because I know better. I take a ton of crap every spring for putting too much stock into projections, but if Pirate fans had paid attention to projections, we probably wouldn't have been as crushed by the 1998 team as we all were.

As far as I can remember, there's only one Pirate highlight from 1998; Turner Ward running full speed through the center field wall at Three Rivers Stadium to catch a fly ball. I want to say that the play defies description, but it doesn't. Turner Ward ran through the wall to catch the ball. That's exactly what happened. I haven't seen anything like it, because it wasn't a wooden wall like the famous Rodney McCrary catch, it was full bore through the fiberglass/padding/whatever else wall that populated those cookie cutter stadiums in the '90s. I don't know how he did that, beyond catching a seam in the wall, but it was amazing.

In all actuality, the Pirates' pitching in 1998 wasn't awful either. Of the six guys that made the majority of the Pirates' starts in 1998, only Jose Silva and Esteban Loaiza had below average ERAs and their ERA+ still came in at 99 and 97 respectively. Francisco Cordova was a horse in 1998, putting in 220 innings that probably ended his career. Jon Lieber, Jason Schmidt, and Chris "I swear to god I'm older than 12" Peters all did a nice job in the rotation as well. The 'pen got a lot of good work from Rich Loiselle before his injury, Jason Christiansen, Ricardo Rincon, Jeff Tabacka, and yes, Mike Williams. Their team ERA+ was actually 112 in 1998 and they were sixth in the NL in runs allowed.

What was the problem? It was the offense. Holy freaking crap, it was the offense. The Pirates only scored 650 runs in 1998. That was 17 runs less than the dismantled Florida Marlin team that lost 104 games. I remember being at Three Rivers for a game in early September against the Cubs in which Sammy Sosa hit his 58th home run. Check out the Pirates' starting lineup from that game, with each players' OPS at the time noted:

1. Tony Womack, 2B - .686
2. Adrian Brown, CF - .765
3. Jason Kendall, C - .874
4. Kevin Young, 1B - .841
5. Jose Guillen, RF - .709
6. Turner Ward, CF - .771
7. Freddy Garcia, 3B - .941 (though please note the career on-base percentage of .283 in 439 PAs)
8. Abraham Nunez, SS - .322
9. Sean Lawrence, P

Now, that list brings back a lot of memories and I'll get to them in a second. One memory it doesn't bring back? Sean Lawerence. Who the hell is Sean Lawrence?

Who remembers the Jose Guillen saga in 1998? After his promising breakout in '97, he got stuck in the Domincan Republic in the spring of '98 and missed a bunch of Spring Training. If I recall correctly, the situation had something to do with visa problems relating to his marriage over the winter. I could be making that up. More accurately, he could've been making that up. In the end, he ended 1998 with an OPS of .712, identical to his number in 1997. It was alarming, though, to see a guy so young (he was 22 at the time) make absolutely no progress at all during the year. The problem was, of course, that the Pirates had zipped him directly from A-ball the year before and he wasn't ready physically or mentally for the Majors. Unfortunately, as we'll see when we get to 1999, the Pirates didn't really learn from this lesson.

All told, the Pirates' team OPS+ in 1998 was 84. To give those of you who might not be as sabermetrically inclined an idea of what an OPS+ of 84 is like, Ronny Paulino's OPS+ in his massively disappointing 2007 was 83. The way Ronny Paulino performed relative to the National League in 2007 is how the Pirates performed relative the National League in 1998. It was seriously that bad.

I do have one other 1998 story to share that's only tangentially related to the Pirates. Despite growing up smack in the middle of Pittsburgh and Cleveland (Hellooooooooooo, Hermitage! I'll be home on Wednesday!) , I didn't make my first voyage to the Jake until late in the 1998 season. I thought I was at one of the Orioles/Indians games from August 13th-16th, but my brother remembers being at a Rangers/Indians game and after talking to him, the schedule shows that the Rangers were in town right before the O's and Esteban Loaiza started one of the games for the Rangers. This seems to ring a bell, so maybe he's right (this isn't as crazy as it sounds -- an acquaintance of the family gave us a bunch of tickets to a couple Indians games that week and I'm almost positive my uncle, grandpa, and a couple cousins were at the 12-inning Indians/Orioles game on Thursday of that week ... please don't ask why I remember that).

Anyways, this story is getting long and it's meandering away from the point. The point is that we saw a young outfielder that night play for the Indians named Brian Giles. The Pirates traded for him that winter, and I remember digging up my scorecard from that game and confirming that he did play. I was really excited by that trade, even though my dad didn't remember being impressed by Giles, because we were trading for a guy with decent numbers that just didn't have a place to play in Cleveland.

Somehow, even after the debacle of 1998, I was excited about baseball for 1999.

Fire up the Jack Wilson rumor mill again

Yes! It's finally time to talk about the Hot Stove! The Pirates aren't likely to do a whole lot of interest this winter, but they're probably going to do something and the past few weeks have been brutal in their absence of Pirate news. On Sunday, the Detroit Free Press reported on the long-running "Jack Wilson to the Tigers" saga, which is unsurprisingly being revisited again this winter. There's not a lot of new stuff in that story, but I found this quote from Neal Huntington interesting:

At the general managers' meetings this month, Pirates GM Neal Huntington said, "If we get the right return, then we'd move Jack.

In a perfect world, you trade Jack for a young shortstop, but there may not be that scenario out there. We have to accumulate talent right now."

How often do you hear a GM talk about a player by name like that when trades are being discussed? I'll be shocked if Jack's back in Pittsburgh next year.

Right now the rumor that's been floating around the Wilson-t0-Detroit rumor is that the Tigers are looking to add a catcher this winter. Ken Rosenthal shot down a three-team rumor that involved the Pirates, Tigers, and Marlins and had Matt Treanor going to Detroit. My gut reaction is to say that the because the Pirates have good catching depth they would be stupid to let at third team get involved here, but the Tigers don't have much to offer beyond Rick Porcello, who they certainly won't be giving up for Jack Wilson and Ronny Paulino, so maybe the Pirates are looking to shop someone else to Florida in order to pull a better return here. I doubt anything happens before the winter meetings, but it's always something to keep an eye on.

Let's talk about John Russell

About a week ago, ACTA Sports and the Hardball Times were kind enough to send me a preview of this year's Hardball Times Annual. The topic of the preview that they sent me was an interesting one-- quantifying managerial performances. If making a good fielding metric is hard, finding a way to quantify managerial performance has to be nearly impossible. They designed a "Manager of the Year Tool" that compares the team's expected record based on preseason projections (revised for playing time, trades, injuries, etc.) with their actual Pythagorean record and their actual linear weight runs, then compares the team's actual record with their Pythagorean record, then considers the number of wins generated by stolen bases. As a result, Cecil Cooper and Mike Scioscia come up as the best managers in their respective leagues, with John McLaren/Jim Riggleman and Bud Black coming up as the worst. It's not a perfect tool as it relies fairly heavily on projections, which aren't perfect, but it does put some thought into the process of picking the best manager, which is likely more than can be said for the writers who picked Joe Maddon and Lou Piniella without really thinking.

Anyways, I don't want to bore you with the sabermetrics of managing for too long, but I thought it was a good springboard to talk about John Russell, who scored a -3.9 on the THT's scale, good for fourth worst in the National League. Is that really fair? Was Russell terrible last year? Certainly, he had his maddening traits. He loved bunting in all situations, leading to the Jose Bautista debacle during the home opener. He often stuck with his young starters an inning too long, leading to some frustrating meltdowns. But does that make Russell a bad manager?

Take, for example, Joe Maddon. By all accounts, Maddon's done a wonderful job in Tampa with the Rays. He's a bit quirky, he does a nice job matching traditional and unconventional, and most importantly, he understands his team's strengths and weaknesses and managers accordingly. But last year, when the Rays pitching was disastrous and the hitting didn't come around quite as quickly as they needed it to, Maddon would have been the worst rated manager in the AL using the metric that THT came up with.

The difference, I think, is that the manager of a team that's full of young players has to manager differently then the manager of a team that's in contention. When he leaves a pitcher with a reasonable pitch count out for the seventh inning and he melts down and the Pirates lose, then justifies it with, "Our young pitchers have to learn how to pitch deep in the game," isn't that statement kind of true? I mean, what's the difference between 66 and 67 wins for the Pirates? Wouldn't their bullpen blow half those games anyways?

What I liked the most about Russell this year was his demeanor. I mean, yeah, I made fun of his monotone a lot, but an even keel is probably the best way to handle a team like the Pirates. With the caveat that in NC, I see a lot less post-game stuff then most people do, it seemed like he kept the respect of the players a lot better than Jim Tracy did. Maybe it seemed like the Pirates quit down the stretch, but I think that had a lot more to do with the circumstances surrounding the trades than Russell himself.

I think that two years ago, Russell would've driven me insane. This is mostly because I saw Nate McLouth square around to bunt several times this year and that's really something that should give smart baseball fans an aneurysm. But Russell is far from the only manager in the league that would have a "fast" player like McLouth bunt from time to time. That's how baseball is coached. It's wrong, but it's not going to change anytime soon. After years of watching baseball, it really seems to me like the most important thing a manager does is manage egos (I can't take credit for that alone, it's mostly what my dad, who coached Little League forever, thinks). Is it more important to a team that Nate McLouth lays down a few bunts or that Andy LaRoche gets comfortable in the batters box?

JR is far from a perfect manager, but I guess the point is that most managers are far from perfect. Kosuke Fukudome played most of the second half after he tanked in Chicago. Joe Torre was starting Juan Pierre, even in the playoffs. Joe Maddon and Mike Scioscia tend towards small-ball far more than their lineups call for. Russell's quiet intensity seems pretty well suited to a team like the Pirates. We'll probably learn a lot more about him this year then we did last year. Last year, he spent 2/3rds of the season with guys playing their hardest to get out of Pittsburgh, then the last 1/3 with a combination of young guys who were over their heads and old guys were pissed they weren't traded too. This year, he should have a much better opportunity to leave his mark on the team. And so long as that means he doesn't like Doug Mientkiewicz teach everyone how to run the bases like a moron again, I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.

Alex Ramirez is MVP in Japan

It's amazing how one headline can bring back a rush of Pirate memories. Over at Bucs Dugout, I saw this post about former Pirate Alex Ramirez winning MVP of the Japanese league with a monster year for the Yomiuri Giants.

Over the winter in 1999, the Pirate signed Wil Cordero to a contract. He came to the Pirates and mostly killed the ball, though his inability to field and off-field issues predicated a trade back to where he came from: Cleveland. He went to Cleveland and Alex Ramirez and Enrique Wilson came to Pittsburgh. Ramirez had a lot of pop, but not a lot of patience and the Pirates seemed to quickly get frustrated with him. After part of just one year and 123 plate appearances, the Bucs shipped him off to Japan. I distinctly recall talking about the move as a "current event" in our 10th grade goverment class, as our teacher was so lazy that we were allowed to give three current events a day, each worth a bonus point, so that she could just give everyone a 100% in the class (hooray, Kennedy Catholic!). My recounting of the transaction was something like this:

The Pirates sold Alex Ramirez to Japan today, probably because Cam Bonifay is so stupid that he forgot that 10 million yen isn't actually a lot of money.

Of course, no one knows what would've happened with Ramirez had he stayed in Pittsburgh. The history of international baseball is filled with guys like Tuffy Rhodes who raked in Japan but were average at best in Pittsburgh. Still, Ramirez has more than 250 homers and over 800 career RBIs with the Giants and Yakult swallows. It somehow seems appropriate that the Pirates' most significant transaction with Japan in the past decade hasn't been to acquire talent, but rather to give talent away.

The John Van Benschoten era ends

There have been a lot of casualties of the Pittsburgh Pirate organization over the past sixteen years. Countless fans have fallen off the bandwagon and there's been more than a fair share of players who have had their playing careers ruined by the Pittsburgh Pirates. John Van Benschoten can probably write his name down on the latter list, as he's filed for minor league free agency and informed general manager Neal Huntington that he won't be returning to the Pirates' organization next year.

Pirate fans give JVB a lot of crap and certainly, he's never performed well with the Pirates (save his monstrous home run against Arizona in one of his first few starts back in 2004. But his arm problems were never his fault, nor was the way his transition from first baseman/closer to starter was handled/botched. Watching him was like having teeth pulled, but it was never actually his fault. If he ever finds the strike zone, he might be a useful reliever some day. I'm not really counting on it, but I won't be mad at him if he ever pulls himself together.

Roster additions

With the winter meetings and the Rule 5 draft approaching, the Pirates had five spaces open on the 40-man roster to fill with players that need to be protected. They filled all five slots today, putting Neil Walker, Jose Tabata, Jeff Sues, Steve Lerud, and Ronald Uviedo. Jennifer Langosch makes it sound like these five are the last five additions before the draft. I don't know if that's the case (there's still some dead weight on the 40-man, if you ask me, though I don't know when the roster has to be set for the December 11th draft), but if it is, it means that Kyle Bloom and Jamie Romak will be exposed to the Rule 5 this year. It's a calculated risk, but given how raw Bloom and Romak are and how unlikely they are to be big-time producers in the big leagues, it's probably not a bad one.

The most interesting name on the list of people added to the roster is probably Lerud. He hasn't really hit well at any level and he's only got 47 AA at-bats after his age 23 season. Robinzon Diaz and Raul Chavez were both already on the roster to go with Doumit and Paulino. I'd guess that the Pirates will be shopping Paulino this winter given his nice AAA numbers, his nice run in winter ball, and the fact that the new management seems to want nothing to do with him. Still, I find it hard to believe there was a risk that Lerud was going to be picked in the draft, while I feel like Bloom might be.

Links

This interview with Nyjer Morgan has me laughing out loud, though I'm not sure that's the intended effect.

Don Wakamatsu was hired by the Mariners to be their next manager. He's the first Asian-American manager in big league history.

I fail to understand why a good player on a non-playoff team can't be valuable. Without Pujols, the Cardinals win like 75 games this year. You can argue that the Phillies wouldn't have made the playoffs without Ryan Howard, but they also wouldn't have made it without Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Pat Burrell, Shane Victorino, or Jayson Werth, who were either more or comparably valuable to Howard. Picking the guys with the most RBIs on a playoff team isn't the best way to decide who's the most valuable; it's lazy. All hail Albert Pujols, the best hitter on the face of the planet and therefore, the most valuable.

The lamest pun ever

I'm sorry for the lack of posts today, but I'm giving group meeting for my lab tomorrow and that has me really tied up. I did manage to wander over to Pirates.com today and see what a fantastic old man pun.


Nice work, headline writer. Pat yourself on the back for that one.

The Road to 17: 1997

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 hit the fifth stop on the Road to 17: 1997.

If you want to know how screwed up the Pirates have been since 1992, let's start with 1997. Technically the most successful year for the franchise since Bonds left, the 1997 Freak Show was the worst possible thing that could've happened to the Pittsburgh Pirates as an organization. In 1997 the Pirates were a below average team that hit their ceiling by playing .500 ball. Unfortunately, they were run by a very poor front office that failed to recognize a team playing over its head. This, however, isn't about 1998, 1999, 2000, or 2001 **shudder**. This is abou 1997. And 1997 was awesome.

I don't really know where to start with the '97 team. They weren't like the 2003 team that shot out of the box to 12-5, then slowly fell apart. After starting the year at 4-4 on a West Coast road trip, they dropped the home opener to the Dodgers 7-1, then had a rainout, then got drubbed 14-5 on a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon that was so ugly my friend's dad estimated the attendance in the eighth inning at "58" when they showed it on the scoreboard and I don't think he was off by much. The weird thing about 1997 is that the other shoe just failed to drop. The Pirates were around .500 in April, and they were still there in May, then June, then July. And when the Astros failed to run away with the division, well, we had something special on our hands.

The first time the wheels could've come off was in mid-May when Kevin Elster got hurt. He was about as big of an acquisition as a team with a $9 million payroll could've made and the Pirates picked him up because without Jay Bell they had no one to play short. Well, they had no one to play shortstop except Kevin Polcovich, the 27-year-old with no big league experience that had a .674 OPS in AAA in 1996 and was demoted to AA to start '97. On May 17th (the day after Elster got hurt), this was our starting lineup:

1. Tony Womack, 2B- A leadoff hitter with a .326 OBP.
2. Adrian Brown, CF- Or as I prefer to know him, Adrian f***ing Brown (that's how I distinguish him from f***ing Emil Brown in my head).
3. Al Martin, LF- One of the Pirates that had a career year (114 OPS+) in '97.
4. Mark Johnson, 1B- But only because Kevin Young had the night off.
5. Dale Sveum, SS- Won a ring in 1998, as the Yankees bullpen catcher, but in fairness put up big numbers off the bench in '97.
   
6. Jason Kendall, C- The best hitter on the team hit sixth that night while Adrian Brown batted second.
   
7. Jose Guillen, RF- Remember when Jose Guillen was a 20-year-old uber-prospect with a Roberto Clemente arm from right field? Good times.
8. Joe Randa, 3B- Gene Lamont may have been the worst person ever at assembling a batting order. Then again, Randa was hitting pretty poorly at this point.
9. Steve Cooke, SP- I met him in the Hermitage Giant Eagle in 1993 with Randy Tomlin. I still have his autograph.

LOOK at that lineup! It's terrible! Mark Johnson? Tony Womack? Dale Sveum? Adrian f***ing Brown!

Of course, that was what made their run so beautiful. Do you remember how awesome it was to see Rich Loiselle set down Frank Thomas, Albert Belle, and Harold Baines to hold a 3-0 lead? We started Jermaine Allensworth in center that night! He was the butt of the joke in an SNL sketch so obscure, I can't even find a clip of it on the internet. And what about the game in late August with the Pirates starting to fall behind Houston, only to have Loiselle nail down the save by striking out Barry Bonds?

The best part about the '97 team is that everyone has a few favorite memories like that from the season. When else in history can a player like Shawon Dunston be a franchise hero? He rode in on his white horse after Polcovich got hurt while doing a reasonable impression of an MLB shortstop, hammered two homers in his debut against the Indians on September 2nd (side note: when did interleague games ever happen in September?) and crushed the ball all month before becoming a free agent. Has any team in history ever had a more unlikely shortstop trio than Kevin Elster, Kevin Polcovich, and Shawon Dunston? I remember the Pirates being in first place at the All-Star Break that year and actually reading a feature story about them in Sports Illustrated. A positive story! All about the Pirates!

Of course, while ten different people might have ten small favorite memories about the '97 Pirates, all ten of them have the same big favorite memory: the no-hitter. THE no-hitter. In all of my years of watching baseball, I've only seen one play that I swore happened in slow-motion the first time I watched it and that was Mark Smith's home run. Francisco Cordova was probably the first iteration of the frustrating "Ace of the Future" for the Pirates. He great out of the pen in 1996, he was awesome in the rotation in '97, then even better in '98, and he didn't pitch again after the year 2000. July 12, 1997 was his night, though. How do you describe the pressure that builds during a no-hitter? It was July and the Pirates, who hadn't made the playoffs in almost five years at that point, were a game behind the Astros. Cordova had become the ace of the staff by that point in the season and he just kept stringing zeroes on the board. He struck out ten in his nine innings, but without a Pirate run, he came out in favor of Ricardo Rincon in the tenth. This is just an opinion, but that tenth inning was probably the highest leverage situation any reliever in Pirate history has ever pitched in. I still remember watching him pitch one inning that seemed to take three hours in my parents bedroom (I have no idea why we weren't in the living room, but we weren't). When he got out of the tenth, every Pirate fan thought the same thing: "SCORE A RUN, PLEASE!" In the bottom of the tenth, with two on and two out, Mark Smith, a journeyman who hit 32 home runs in eight big league seasons, delivered a monstrous three-run bomb. The no-hitter was preserved, the Pirates were tied for first place, and for one of the last times in recent memory all was right with Pirate baseball.

A flash in the pan starter, a journeyman pinch-hitter, and a career LOOGY combined to create the best memory the Pirates have given anyone since their last playoff appearance. No matter what happens to them for the rest of their lives, they'll always have that game. And Pirate fans will always have that game. And when you get down to it maybe the Pirates only won 79 games in 1997, and maybe they missed the playoffs, but it's hard to say that year was a failure.

Choose Your Own Manny-venture

I haven't done a lot of posting here the last couple days and that's because I've been busy, both with school/labwork and with doing my part in FanHouse's latest Choose Your Own Adventure epic:

Choose Your Own Adventure: Manny Being Choosey in Free Agency

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 individual posts, mainly due to Herculean efforts by Mullet and Josh Alper, who really pushed the idea through and churned out the storylines. Anyways if you're looking to kill time this afternoon there's plenty of content there, so I hope you enjoy it.

More on Nate McLouth's defense

I've been waiting for someone to do something like this. John Dewan, author of the Fielding Bible and creator of baseball's version of the plus/minus system looked at the -40 his system gave McLouth and decided to break down his play in center to see if a.) he really was the worst fielder in baseball this year or b.) he was worthy of the Gold Glove. It's a really interesting read and Dewan's conclusion is close to the one I came to in August while trying to figure out how to quantify Nate's defense (though mine was mostly based in opinion and his is based on much harder data):

All in all, I no longer think of McLouth as the worst center fielder in baseball. It means something that at least some of the managers and coaches think highly of him. And we see that two areas of his defense are above average: his ability to prevent baserunners from advancing on hits and his ability to make a play above and beyond the ordinary. But we also see that, despite this low error total, he has more than his share of defensive misplays. And the most important aspect of playing outfield defense is covering ground, and McLouth struggles here big time.

I really encourage you to read all of his methodology, if only because it's interesting. This is about my opinion of McLouth in center. As I am wont to do, I oversold the "he's a bad outfielder" point of view because I know it's the opposite of what people think. Seeing all of the big numbers in the negative metrics doesn't necessarily mean that McLouth is the worst centerfielder in baseball, but it does probably mean that he's not nearly as good out there as casual fans think. So let's hope McCutchen kills the ball this spring and it's not a problem anymore.

H/T- Bucs Dugout

More links

Sorry for no more "Road to 17" posts this week. I'll be back with at least two next week. For now, this is all I got:

Fire Joe Morgan has closed up shop. And an era in which Hollywood TV writers could semi-anonymously savage Bill Plaschke has come to an end. You might find what they now to be a little boring, since it's the same stuff they've been doing for years, but FJM really was one of the most important baseball blogs on the internet and it's sad to see them go.
UPDATE: Jeff Passan writes a far better eulogy for FJM and why it was important than I ever could.

The Reds hired Cam Bonifay as a special assistant to Walt Jocketty. Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha

Greg Schuler passed along this link about Kyle Bloom in the comments. What he does in AAA next year will be worth keeping an eye on.

Winter Ball Update: Tabata's starting to hit

Time for another look at the winter ball stats.

Jose Tabata's got his OPS up to .729 and he just hit his first homer. He seems to be slowly coming around since his slump that followed his hot start. Jorge Cortes is hitting well in Venezuela, but he's almost 30 and been in the minor leagues since 1998. Luis Cruz is coming around in the Mexican League and showing some nice plate patience. Ronny Paulino is mauling in the Dominican with four homers in 25 at-bats. Shelby Ford continues to be the only thing worth watching in Arizona, flashing some nice power (7 of his 20 hits are for extra bases including 3 homers). Brian Friday, Steve Pearce, Jim Negrych and Jamie Romak are still putting up ugly lines. Negrych is impressive in that his OBP is 40 points higher than his slugging.

On the pitching side of things, Kyle Bloom is dominating in Hawaii, Evan Meek is putting up some nice numbers in Mexico, and Romulo has thrown three nice innings in Venezuela. And try not to look at the other guys.

Link

My preview of the Pirates' off-season is up at FanHouse this afternoon. It's stuff most of you probably already know, but here's the link anyways.

Neal Huntington on free agency

From Pirates.com:

"The reality is we're just trying to acquire talent and deepen the talent level in the organization. That's our main goal," Huntington said in a discussion about the club's potential interest in free agents. "As we are looking at the 2009 Pirates, we'd love to upgrade the offense, upgrade our pitching and rebuild the bench. But ultimately, our focus is on acquiring talent."

[...]

"We're not going to play on the first tier [of players] and the first tier is going to establish the market," Huntington said. "We are in touch with a number of players that we are interested in, but much of their decisions will come after that market is set. We're not going to set the market at any rate."

I'm not sure, but I think "we'd love to upgrade the offense, upgrade our pitching, and rebuild the bench" may be my favorite quote from any GM in recent Pirate history. I feel like someone should make that into a t-shirt. Huntington's either being intentionally vague or hilariously blunt.

Anyways, there's not a whole lot to read into here. The team could certainly use more pitching depth to prevent a repeat of last year's disaster and provide injury insurance . And depending on how active Huntington's planning on being in the trade market, Huntington's likely interested in middle infielders and more castoffs to fill the Michaels/Mientkiewicz/Rivas roles on the 2009 team. This isn't exactly ground-breaking stuff here, but it should be interesting to see what exactly Huntington does this winter.

Salomon Torres retires

You may have heard the news this afternoon that ex-Pirate and current Brewer Salomon Torres has retired. At first glance there probably seems like there's not much there, but I think this is worth spending at least a few minutes on for one simple reason: there's not one person that's enjoyed being a Pittsburgh Pirate more in the past ten years than Salomon Torres.

Most people probably know the story of Torres now, but in 1993 Dusty Baker picked him to start the one-game playoff between the Giants and Dodgers and Torres was shelled on the way to a 13-1 Giants' loss, resulting in a 103 loss team missing the playoffs. Torres, who was a highly-touted prospect at the time, never seemed to bounce back from that blow. He struggled with the Giants and was traded to Seattle in 1995, then went to Montreal on the waiver wire in 1997. He was so distraught by the whole sequence of events that he retired in after the '97 season. In 2001 he decided to try a comeback and he went to Korea to pitch. From there, the Pirates signed him and while he struggled at bit at first, he found a niche in the bullpen at the end of 2003. He was always grateful to the Pirates for giving him his second chance and he was even a little disappointed when he was traded last winter, even though it meant a chance at the playoffs. You can't really find that kind of loyalty to a team anywhere these days, and I was always appreciative of it.

Links

John Sickels has a nice prospect retrospective on Nate McLouth, followed by a funny conversation about his glove in the comments along with discussion over what the Pirates would want from the Yankees for him in return (hint: a lot).

And since we're surfing SBNation, Beyond the Boxscore has their top 50 players of 2008 ranked. I bet you can't guess how many Pirates there are.

The Pirates do some more front office reorganizing. Ferrone worked with Huntington in Montreal. Shocking. I know.

Matt Holliday is going to the A's ... for now. What's really going to sting Colorado is when they swing Holliday to someone else for twice what they payed to the Rockies.

This shirt is amazing, though if it's really 9,000 yen it's awfully expensive for a shirt (from Big League Stew by way of Sports By Brooks).

The Road to 17: 1996

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 hit the fourth stop on the Road to 17: 1996.

While the early years of this losing streak all have fun stories about the strike or the All-Star Game or just being the first losing year in general, 1996 is momentous for something else entirely. 1996 was the first time in this unending losing streak that the Pirates front office looked at things and said, "Uh-oh. We're doing it wrong."

This move was of course brought on by the acquisition of the team by Kevin McClatchy. After the strike the Pirates lingered in ownership limbo while the businessmen that bought the team from the Galbreaths in the 1980s attempted to sell the team. They were almost sold to John Rigas, who's also known as "That guy that ran Adelphia that drove the Buffalo Sabres into the ground and is in jail now." His bid was turned down by baseball and McClatchy and his group sailed in at what was seemingly the last second, buying the team with the promise of a new ballpark and implenting the "Five Year Plan" to have the Pirates on a trail to success by the time this new theoretical park opened. As we all know, only the Five Year Plan was theoretical, but we'll get to that later.

As an aside, the new ownership nearly brought me my first brush with Pirate-related fame. At the home opener that year, which was absolutely freezing cold, I was interviewed by Jennifer Antkowiak from KDKA about the new ownership and how cold the opener was and how hopeful I was for the future of the team. I was rather sunnily optimistic then, but my interview never aired.

When the Pirates tore their club apart in 1992, the main goal was to rebuild around the group of players who played supporting roles on the division champs from '90-'92 with a few big prospects like Al Martin, Denny Neagle, and maybe Kevin Young added in. The guys that were supposed to grow into the void created by the absence of Bonds and Bonillia were mostly Jeff King and Orlando Merced. King and Merced were decent players and seemed to be nice enough guys, but they were entirely miscast in the role of the guys that would carry the team. King had a career year in '96, hitting 30 home runs, driving in 111 (something he almost did two years before with only 9 home runs, which I find to be kind of hilarious), and putting up a career best OPS+ of 116. Merced was a similarly solid player that just never quite lived up to the billing of a star in Pittsburgh or anywhere else. I'll always remember him for being the worst switch hitter in history. His inability to hit right-handed was so sad that it was funny.

With the new owner hoping to clear payroll and the plan of building around these guys clearly failing (even with King's career year the Pirates only won 73 games in 1996), it was time for the first true Pirate fire sale. King and Jay Bell were shipped off to Kansas City for Jeff Granger, Joe Randa, Jeff Wallace, and Jeff Martin. Merced was sent to Toronto with Carlos Garcia (a truly failed prospect who somehow hit like Chico Lind but didn't field anything like him and second) and Dan Plesac for Jose Silva, two guys who never made the majors, and three players to be named later. One of those players turned into Craig Wilson. One of them turned in to Abe Nunez. The third amounted to even less than Nunez. Neagle was sent to Atlanta for Jason Schmidt, Ron Wright, and a third player. And just like that, the Pirates embarked on a second wave of rebuilding.

To take things off on another tangent, Wright was supposed to be the future super-star of the Neagle deal, but he had bad back trouble and ended up with the most depressing stat line in the history of Major League Baseball. He never played for the Pirates, was eventually released, and ended up in Seattle. In 2002, he made his big league debut with Seattle as their DH in mid-April. In his first at-bat, he struck out looking. In his second at-bat, he hit into a triple play. In his third and final at-bat, he hit into a double play. And he never got in to another Major League game. And you thought being a Pirate fan was bad.

Anyways, the dismantling of an already bad team resulted in what was probably the enduring image of that year: Jim Leyland blubbering off the field in his last game as Pirate manager after he decided he didn't want to rebuild and would much rather go to Florida where a World Series would be gift-wrapped for him. Some Googling turned up this fantastic clipping from a Sporting News article:

"The thing that kept hitting home was owner Kevin McClatchy saying it would be another two or three years," Leyland says. "I believe in my heart that it's time for the Pirates to have a new manager, and it's time for Jim Leyland to move on. It wasn't a tough decision, but it was a sad decision."

Says former Pirates outfielder Mark Clark, who was traded during the pennant stretch: "He's the best manager in baseball. Now, he'll get a chance to show his ability. You can take a guy off the street and lose 100 games for you. A manager of his ability shouldn't have to rebuild a club when he can take a team to a championship."

Clark also says he wasn't surprised. "I had a feeling this would happen, knowing Jim and his personality. He got tired of losing. Everybody got tired of losing.... It's sad for Pittsburgh, and there will be sadder days to come."

Let's see, there's Jim Leyland talking in the third person, Kevin McClatchy telling Jim it would be "two or three years" until the Pirates were winners again, and Mark Clark babbling incoherently about how "the best manager in baseball ... shouldn't have to rebuild a club" Does that seem stunningly incongrous to anyone else? Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on Jimmy. He got out way back when the rest of us probably should've.

When you get down to it, 1996 was the fourth year in the losing streak, but it was really the first year of the rest of our lives. McClatchy got involved, pretty much everyone left that was involved with the early 90s team either jumped ship or was pushed off the plank in a fire sale, and the table was set for a very ugly stretch of Pirate history that just took a year longer to manifest itself than it should've.

So yeah, 1996 was as bad as you remember.

Perry Hill is the Pirates first base coach

This went down yesterday, but the Pirates rounded out their coaching staff with ex-Marlins coach Perry Hill. Neal Huntington says this about Hill:

"We are very pleased to add Perry Hill to our Major League coaching staff," Huntington said in a statement on Friday. "Perry is well respected and widely regarded as one of the best infield instructors in professional baseball, and his track record of teaching infield defense is second to none. His teaching abilities and 23 years of coaching experience will have a positive impact on our Major League players, coaching staff and our player development system."

The Pirates defense can ALWAYS use work. Although because his name is Perry, I'm probably going to imagine him berating Andy LaRoche and calling him by girls' names and remembering back when Scrubs was funny and John C. McGinley wasn't whoring himself out for Miller Lite. But that's just me.

Minor League Free Agents!

Today was the day for eligible minor leaguers to file for free agency and a number of them did so. Filing from the Pirates were Chris Duffy, John Van Benschoten, Marino Salas, Carlos Maldanado, and a bunch of inconsequential players. Josh Bonifay is also on the list, but that can't be right. Has he played since 2006?

Some of these guys will probably re-sign with the Bucs, but Pirates.com has an article about Duffy, which says that he basically quit his Mexican winter team and told the Pirates he was leaving. There's a joke here about how many times this has happened before, but it's probably a little too mean. It's a shame that Duffy's career has taken the turns that it has since 2006, but these things happen some times.

The article also mentions that Evan Meek was put back on the 40-man to prevent him from filing. This may seem insane to people unfamiliar with his work after the early season debacle, but he was quite good in the minors. I saw him pitch against Durham in August and was pretty impressed.

Anyways, the full list of minor league free agents is here. I've tried to skim through today but haven't had much time. Anyone see any diamonds in the rough?

The Road to 17: 1995

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 hit the third stop on the Road to 17: 1995.

Above and beyond everything else in 1995, the one thing that I remember is Spring Training. With the strike spilling over from the year before, the owners were ready to do anything to prevent another season from being lost. "Anything" consisted of replacement players. The reason that this memory stands out so vividly for me is that the Pirates' team of replacement players steamrolled through the Grapefruit League that year (I've been digging for stats, but they're nigh impossible to find) and looked poised to improbably return the team to their previous glory when the owners caved and let the players back in for a shortened 1995 season.

The reason that 1995 stands out to me is that I think it's the first time that it felt to me like the Pirates' losing streak had been going on for a long time. That seems ludicrous now. The Pirates were entering their third year of losing in 1995. Three years is peanuts compared to the epic proportions that we've entered now. But back then, it felt like a long time. You can understand why, I was ten and only really even saw the Pirates win. Seeing them lose for two straight years was painful. When the replacement players tore up Brandenton, I remember feeling that finally the Pirates would be good again.

They weren't, of course. That summer, I briefly flirted with the awesome Indians team that finished with the highest winning percentage of all time before my Little League coach (for Hermitage Kiwanas, we were 17-1 and won the league going away) saw my Indians hat and said, "American League baseball? What's that? You're a Pirates fan!"

He was right, of course. But it had been over two years since the Pirates were any good!

Of course, 1995 will forever be remember for something else. On April 26th, the Pirates finally opened the season up against the Montreal Expos. The Expos had been decimated by the strike, but mostly everyone was just happy to see baseball back. As I waited in the turnstile line for my first home opener, I was handed a small Pirate flag in a white tube. Being only ten, I didn't grasp the aerodynamic nature of this handout until much later in the game.

The Pirates and 'Spos were tied at one heading in to the fifth inning. Jon Lieber got into some trouble in the fifth (runners were on first and third and he'd already allowed one run), but he managed to get Roberto Kelly to hit a swinging bunt up the third base line to Jeff King for what should've been the final out of the inning. Instead, disaster struck. The erosion of time and the horrors of the play itself have blocked the exact memory of what happened from my mind, but here's how it's described in the box score:

R Kelly: Single to 3B (Ground Ball to Short 3B Line); Lansing Scores; Floyd Scores/Adv on E5 (throw)/No RBI; Kelly Scores/Adv on E9 (throw)/No RBI

That's right. The Pirates turned a swinging bunt into an inside-the-park home run on two throwing errors by Jeff King and Orlando Merced. The aforementioned flags became projectiles in their plastic tubes as they were hurled to the earth by fans who were completely fed up with some combination of the terrible play, the early part of this losing streak, and the strike. The two teams came off the field as the grounds crew attempted to remove the flags as more and more rained down from above. When they announced over the PA that the Pirates would have to forfeit if fans kept throwing things on the field, people booed loudly and someone almost nailed the third base ump with another flag. As they attemtped to clear the field, some of the players came out and helped. This was how a photographer caught Orlando Merced sadly waving one of the flags as he walked off the field (I would kill for a copy of that image but I can't find it anywhere).

Still, at least Pirate fans cared enough to get mad in 1995. If the exact same play happens during the home opener in 2009, fans are going to throw their hands up in an exasperated manner and say, "Same old Pirates. So really things were getting bad in 1995, but they could've been much worse.

The Fall Ball Blues

Looking for anything to post about on a slow day (tomorrow: Road to 17: 1995), I decided to look at the Fall Ball stats. Bad idea. Check out some of these OPSs:

• Steve Pearce (Mexico)- .638
• Jose Tabata (Venezuela)- .678
• Jamie Romak (AFL)- .772
• Steve Lerud (AFL)- .412
• Jim Negrych (Hawaii)- .640
  

The one bright spot? Shelby Ford is raking along at .899 in the AFL. It's a hitter's league, but at least he's hitting. Kyle Bloom continues to be the most interesting pitcher pitching right now, putting up great numbers in Hawaii. Jesse Chavez is pitching well in the Dominian Republic.

Of course fall numbers aren't the end of the world. More than anything, it's a chance for guys to work on things they can't during the season and keep swinging through the winter. Though I'd be really thrilled if Tabata started hitting.

Nate McLouth wins the Gold Glove

Let me start this post off by offering this: I think Nate McLouth is awesome. I was pumped that he had such a great year this year. The Pirates need more players like Nate McLouth. I'm happy for him that he won a Gold Glove today. Too often, Pirate players are overlooked by the baseball writers when it comes to passing out the yearly awards (see: Jason Bay finishing 12th in the 2005 MVP ballotting) and to see one of them win an award like this is a nice recognition that from time to time, good baseball happens in Pittsburgh.

On the other hand, McLouth winning a Gold Glove for his play in center this year is somewhat akin to WHYGAVS winning a Pulitzer Prize (someday, my friends ...). It's just not what we do here. McLouth is a great offensive center fielder who was qualified by almost every advanced fielding statistic as being wretched. I've already talked a lot about McLouth's defense this year, and my conclusion in August was this:

It seems to me that McLouth is probably slightly below average in center field. Even if most fielding metrics aren't perfect, they all seem to have him below average and even accounting for his high number of out of zone plays, it's hard to reconcile those other numbers completely when I've seen him break very poorly on balls hit over his head with my own eyes.

Now that the season has ended and more and more numbers are coming out, I feel like I was probably being generous to McLouth. Justin Inaz's total value system (using zone rating and revised zone rating) rated McLouth -16.8 runs in the field, one of the worst totals in the league. John Dewan's +/- system (which rewards a player a plus for making a play that at least one player at their position failed to make while penalizing them with a minus for failing to make a play that at least one other player made) rated McLouth as the worst center fielder in the NL, with his -40 rating bad enough to make his three-year cumulative -49 also the worst in the NL.
Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), which is one of the better fiedling metrics out there, rated McLouth as a -14 runs in the field (with even worse numbers in the two years prior to 2008). MGL, who compiles the stat, had this to say about McLouth's choice:

OF McLouth -14 (06 -21 in CF and RF, 07 -16 in all OF positions). UZR hates Nate the Great. Based on that, this is an absolutely terrible choice for the voters. I realize he has a good “rep.”

Now, I'm going to repeat what I said during the season when I wrote about this: fielding metrics are far from perfect. MGL himself says as much, if you bother to read the UZR write up. But it seems unlikely to me that so many metrics would measure a true Gold Glove centerfielder as a terrible fielder.

Now, you're probably wondering why I keep hammering away at this point, especially given the fact that I really do like McLouth. In the past, I advocated guys like McLouth and Doumit playing positions like center and catcher because their bats play very well in those positions, even if their defense isn't great. The Brewers and Rays both saw big turnarounds this year speared largely by improvements in defense. The Rays went from last in defensive efficiency in 2007 to first in 2008 and saw a huge reduction in runs allowed. The Brewers moved guys like Ryan Braun and Bill Hall out of positions that they could hurt the team in and saw a big drop in runs allowed, won seven more games, and made the playoffs. How much would a good defensive center fielder help the Pirates? Defense is one of the last great unexplored sabermetric frontiers, and I'm very curious to see how Huntington handles it, starting with McLouth.

But seriously, congratulations to Nate. He deserves SOME kind of award for the season he had.

Ticket Prices Go Nowhere

One of the benefits to never winning is that the team is terrified to raise ticket prices. After the 2001 debacle, prices are again staying the same for 2009:

"We do not take the support of our season ticket-holders for granted," Pirates president Frank Coonelly said yesterday. "We recognize the economy that we're all facing is a very difficult time. I think anybody in any entertainment business has to be concerned that the economy is such that you could see some decrease in certain areas of your business, so it's certainly a concern for us. It's one that we're proactively trying to get out in front of."

Could the tanking economy be the team's excuse for not raising payroll this year? I guess I should be clearer: I don't think the Pirates need to raise their payroll, but I thought they probably would to bolster their rotation after last year's disaster and to appease the more casual fans. But Coonelly mentioning the economy over and over again? Not a great sign for anyone hoping to see raised payroll in 2009.

The Road to 17: 1994

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 hit the second stop on the Road to 17: 1994.

1994 means one thing to baseball fans: the strike. The horror of canceling the World Series over a labor squabble. I certainly didn't grasp the entirety of the situation at the time. I remember political cartoons with Don Fehr and Jerry Reinsdorf lampooning both of them for not being able to get anything done. I remember holding Barry Bonds up in my head as the icon of player greed after what he'd done to the Pirates. I remember it all seeming strange that there was no playoffs or World Series, even if I'd only really been watching the playoffs and World Series for about two years (or maybe it was longer ... I was nine). And maybe it's for all those reasons that the thing I remember most about 1994 is certainly not the strike.

For me, 1994 will always be about the All-Star Game and the FanFest. I had wanted to go all year, of course, but didn't think there was any real chance of it. My dad didn't have season tickets at the time (we didn't start sharing the package with my uncle until PNC opened) and he'd told me as much early in the year. Shortly before the day of the game, my dad told me that not only had he happened to get two seats, but they were also in a luxury box. The only condition to go was that I never asked him where the seats came from. This wasn't because he'd done something to get them, but rather that they came from the dad of a friend of mine who couldn't be bothered to take his own baseball-loving son to the All-Star Game. Sometimes we don't know how lucky we are.

Anyways, we went to Pittsburgh early the day of the game for the FanFest, something that I was just as excited for as I was for the game. Probably my favorite part of the FanFest was going to the booth they had set up where you could announce your favorite moments in Pirate history. The line there was fairly long and they had TVs displaying the people in the booth doing their own announcements. As my dad and I waited, two guys who were probably about the age I am now were in there announcing Sid Bream's slide:

"They're waving Bream around third! This is crazy! Bonds' throw is up the line! Bream is out! He's out! Inning over! The Braves are pouring out of the dugout! They're beating Bream at home plate! They can't believe he ran! We're going to extra innings!"

It's good to know that Pirate fans were laughing at themselves after a year and a half of losing. After a few hours at the FanFest, we made our way from the Convention Center over to Three Rivers for the game. I remember the incredibly surreal feeling the strike gave the game; there was a story in a newspaper about the Indians being tied for first at the All-Star break in the first time in a long time, and we commented how weird it was that it might not even matter. It didn't seem real then, even though everyone knew it was probably going to happen.

The game itself was awesome. Carlos Garcia, one of the most terrible forgotten All-Stars of all time, was the Pirate representative, Three Rivers went wild when he managed to get a hit. In the bottom of the ninth, the AL held a 7-5 lead and brought Lee Smith in to close. Pirate fans all over the stadium, but especially my dad and I, knew what that meant. Lee Smith could never hold a lead in Pittsburgh. He gave up a two-run homer to Fred McGriff, which set the stage for Moises Alou's tenth inning double and Jim Leyland (who coached third for the NL that night) wildly waving a chugging Tony Gwynn home to score the winning run.

The Pirates that year? There really wasn't much memorable about them. Looking at their Baseball-Reference page, only Al Martin and Jay Bell had an OPS+ of over 100. Brian Hunter started at first base. Rick White made his first appearance as a Pirate and no one had any clue he'd be kicking around in #00 eleven years later. But they didn't actually do any worse than any other team in the league because no one won the World Series that year and hey, what's two straight losing seasons anyways?

So really, when you get down to it, 1994 wasn't all that bad.

Election Day

If you were expecting the guy that reminisces about Andy Van Slyke and Doug Drabek and debates the meaning of Andy LaRoche's terrible season and Nate McLouth's defense to tell you who to vote for ... you're probably beyond help already. All I can tell you is that you should vote. I'm waking up early to do it and if I can, everyone should be able to. There are plenty of websites out there for political discussion today, so instead I'll give you this:



Why can't the Parrot campaign remind everyone that Iceburgh is NOTORIOUS for palling around with terrorists?!?

Remember Brad Lincoln?

I wanted to do a "Road to 17" this morning and 1994 is probably halfway done, but I had an exam to work on all weekend and it didn't happen. So that should be done for tomorrow (I'm hoping to do two of those a week from here out), but until then let's spend some time talking about the latest minor leaguer to be featured in a blurb on Pirates.com -- Brad Lincoln.

There's not much terribly interesting about the article itself, your typical blurbs about how excited the team is about his recovery, how he pitched this year, etc. What did grab my eye was the part at the end about starting Lincoln at AA this year and fast-tracking him. I knew the Pirates were happy with how he performed coming off of the surgery, but his numbers were far from eye-popping at any level. Could they really be THAT happy with him?

I did a little digging to try and find the answer, and I think Stark's reasoning becomes a bit clearer if you look at Lincoln's splits with Lynchburg. On the surface, his 4.75 ERA there combined with a pretty low strikeout rate (29 in 42 1/3 innings is pretty low for a guy that was a power arm in college for A-ball) and the jump in walks from his stint in Hickory (from 0.83/9 innings to 2.34/9 inning is quite a jump). His splits in Lynchburg are much more interesting, though, as his second month in the Carolina League was much improved over his first. In August, he held hitters to a .230 average, saw his strikeouts jump to more than 7 per 9 innings, and only gave up one home run in 27 innings, compared with four homers in 15 1/3 innings in July.

Certainly none of this is ground-breaking stuff that I'm talking about here, but I think it is worth noting that there is at least a reason based in reality for Stark's optimism in the story. Last year was his first year back from Tommy John and he pitched pretty well in the Sally League and while he struggled with Lynchburg, at least there's reason to think that he adjusted after some time there. Both he and Bryan Morris are worth keeping a close eye on this year as they get back to full strength now that they've reached the full recovery time from their surgeries.

Talk about expanded scouting

I would rather read one story about the Pirates signing a South African short-stop prospect than a hundred about Doug Mientkiewicz, Chris Gomez, Jason Michaels, and Luis Rivas. From yesterday's PG:

The Pirates, trying to mine all areas to get prospects into their minor league system, hope they've found a diamond in the rough in Mpho Ngoepe from South Africa.

Ngoepe, 18, is a switch-hitting shortstop who signed with the Pirates about a month ago, then made a cameo appearance in the Instructional League in Bradenton, Fla.

"We need to find talent wherever it is," general manager Neal Huntington said. "It will be a great story if he makes it to the big leagues."

The Pirates scouted him in Italy over the summer for some European/African baseball showcase to watch Ngoepe and were impressed enough with what sounds like some very raw baseball talent to sign him. He's going to play for South Africa in the WBC this spring and though he'll likely be overwhelmed by that experience, it's something for hardcore minor league watchers to keep an eye on.

The main point to take from this story isn't that Ngoepe might be a future star or that he'll even make the big leagues. It's that the Pirates had scouts in ITALY this August, digging for talent from unconventional sources. In the past, the Pirates barely scouted the Bible Belt.