It's official. WHYGAVS now has a new official home. It's actually at WHYGAVS.com, which means that it's the same as the old home, but I'm off Blogger now, which means that this old link won't redirect. You'll have to subscribe to a new feed if that's how you read WHYGAVS, but beyond that things are going to be mostly the same.
For reasons that will become shortly apparent, I've been working on cleaning/updating the sidebar links. That means that I've got some new links to add to the sidebar, as well as some other things for your general perusal.
Cory Humes, Geeves, and Alan from Bucco Wire are all blogging again at MVN under the header Pirate Revolution.
There's also The Green Weenie and The 'Burgh Blues, two blogs I should've added some time ago.
Meanwhile, Dejan's series about the Pirates' presence in the Dominican is awesome. I'm sure most of you have been checking it out as it's been published, but if you haven't I can't recommend parts one, two, and three, Renee Gayo's list of the top 5 prospects yet to play in America, and everything else that DK's put on his blog on the subject enough. It's an awesome look in to the Bucs' international operation and how things have changed since Bob Nutting took the lack of Pirate presence in the region personally.
On a more depressing note, Wilbur Miller runs down the Pirates' drafts from 1999-2007 (via Bucs Dugout).
Jay Bell is eligible for the Hall of Fame this year. As the sponsor of his Baseball-Reference page, I feel like I have to mention this. His career highlights include a bajillion sac bunts in 1990 and 1991, a Gold Glove in 1993, scoring the winning run in the 2001 World Series, and hitting a grand slam in the exact inning some potentially clairevoyant lady said he would, winning her a million dollars.
There are a couple of possible reactions when reading that the Pirates are talking to Mark Loretta. The easy reaction is, "Well, so long as he's replacing Chris Gomez, I'm fine with that." That's true. Loretta's a useful utility infielder that can still handle a bat fairly well and can play just about every position in the infield in a short-term capacity. In fact, he's probably a better hitter than Gomez and he can't really be a worse fielder. That may make him more the successor to Doug Mientkiewicz, which is fine by me as well.
But then I started thinking. Aren't we trying to trade our shortstop away? Isn't "successor to Jack Wilson" a position that needs filled on the depth chart at the moment? I mean, I know Huntington's not looking at Loretta as a starting shortstop next year ... but what if he is?
This is how the offseason drives people crazy. You can go months and months without hearing any rumors, then as soon as rumors start show up, you project your highest hopes and biggest fears on to everything that you hear. After watching Huntington work for a year, I'm confident that he doesn't want Loretta for anything more than utility work, and yet, I still can't help but jump a little when I hear about the Pirates negotiation with someone like this. I suppose if Huntington keeps doing his job, I'll get over this in time.
Every year, David Pinto at Baseball Musings releases the Probabilistic Model of Range, his very good defensive metric which measures batted ball characteristics like velocity and location in order to determine how many outs teams should have made on those batted balls relative to how many outs were actually made. This year, he also gave the PMR for defense behind pitchers, which Beyond the Boxscore translated into runs and ERA.
If you doubt that defense can make much of a difference behind the pitchers, look at how the numbers ran for the Pirates. Ian Snell lost 0.63 of a run on his ERA, which would've brought his ugly 5.42 down to 4.79. Tom Gorzelanny adjustment is almost as big, while Zach Duke only lost about a tenth of a run to defense, according to this metric. Of course, looking at our pitchers' adjusted ERAs is still depressing because it really drives home just how poor our pitching staff was this year.
The other interesting thing that leaps off the page at me is that Snell and Gorzelanny, the two pitchers that induce the fewest ground balls, were hurt most by the Pirates defense while Duke, who's GB% is higher than either of the first two, saw little effect. Paul Maholm, who gets the most groundballs of the four by a pretty good amount, was actually helped by the defense this year. I guess intuitively that makes sense as the infield, save Freddy Sanchez, was actually kind of good defensively last year. On the other hand, we know there were issues in the outfield with just about everyone that played out there (we've discussed McLouth a lot, Nady consistently ranks as one of the worst right fielders by PMR, and Jason Bay doesn't usually score well either ... if you take the time to look through Pinto's data you'll see the Pirates ranked below average in all three outfield slots).
As with any defensive metrics, you can make of this what you will. Still, I think the disparity in the groundball and flyball pitchers is worth noting, if only for future reference when trying to figure out what the team is trying to do.
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