Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

Time for a fall ball update. AFL stats are here . They are depressing as Eldred, Walker, and Stansberry are all struggling mightily at the plate. Our host of middling relief prospects, Shortslef, Chavez, and Rogers, are all pitching well, though Dave Davidson is not. Hawaii Winter Ball stats are here . Brian Bixler is kind of hitting, Nyjer Morgan is hitting pretty well, and Steve Lerud is hitting very well, though in limited action. Wadrell Starling is getting shelled over there. Ryan Doumit is still hitting well in Mexico. Ed Eagle gives a full list of players playing in the winter here . I'm not going to run down all their stats because I don't really care about most of the guys we've sent off for winter ball. A quick rundown on guys that do matter: Jonah Bayliss and Shane Youman are pitching for Caribes in the Venezuelan League. Well, at least I think Youman is, his name hasn't shown up on the stat grid yet. If you click around their site you can get the offensive ...

I was going to get a post ready tonight about potential free agent starters that might be on the Pirates' radar for tomorrow morning, but apparently DL is acting quickly. The BCT is reporting that the Bucs have signed Cuban defector Yuslan Herrera (link via Bucs Dugout ). I've been Googling Herrera like crazy and can only come up with two Baseball America articles about the guy. One is the same as the one that Charlie links to about him from August, in which an unnamed scout projects him as a fourth starter. He is 25 year old right-handed starter with a high 80s/low 90s fastball and a good splitter and a good curve. The consensus seems to be that he could pitch in the bigs right now. This BA article is from the same time period and has most of the same material about him, but mentions that the last time he is believed to have pitched in Cuba is the "2003/2004 season," which meshes with Perrotto's report that he defected after the 2004 Olympics. That, of course,...

As the old saying goes, you've got to trade something to get something. If Dave Littlefield is serious about adding some left-handed pop to the lineup, he's got to trade for something because the free agent market is less than promising. So who should DL give up? My candidates, in order. Mike Gonzalez- After I wrote my bullpen review , Charlie pointed out that decent-to-good left handed relievers brought us Brian Giles, Jack Wilson (when he was a top prospect in the Cardinals system), and helped bring us Freddy Sanchez . It can be argued (rather easily argued actually) that Gonzalez is better than Rincon, Christiansen, and Saurbeck. He should be fairly easy to replace from within. It's very unlikely that he'll match his 2006 again because of tendency to walk a ton of people. Trading Gonzalez now would be selling high. I think the Pirates have to seriously consider doing this. Damaso Marte- For all of the same reasons above, only Marte is less valuable to us than Gonzo i...

I've taken a couple days off with my updates being done and the World Series being over. Regularly scheduled posting will resume Monday. Until then, enjoy the play written by dak at FJM about the ridiculous statement that "David Eckstein may not be the best player in the World Series but he's the player most likely to play for the winning team." I had to link to it because it features the one and only Andy Van Slyke. UPDATE: Via Bucs Dugout , here's an article where Andy Van Slyke talks about coming up short yet again . He's pretty serious (as he should be), but as usual he's a great interview.

Frick. This is probably some kind of karma biting me in the ass for getting to see the Steelers win a Super Bowl. It's no secret how much I dislike the Cardinals so we won't even get into that. Let's look at the fantastically prescient things I've said about the Cards this year. June 13th- I know I'm upsetting the baseball gods just by posting this, but these are not your typical St. Louis Cardinals that are limping into PNC Park for an early week series. October 4th- St. Louis is lucky to even be here with the way they finished the season and I don't think they'll stick around for long. I'm an idiot. Oh holy hell, David freaking Eckstein just won the MVP trophy. I'm gonna go barf. FJM is all over this revolting development . Back to the task at hand, this team is better than people gave them credit for. They won 205 games in '04 and '05 and after their defeat of the Pirates on September 1st, they were 72-61 which is an 88 win pace. If they...

Apparently part of the new labor deal is an agreement by the owners to pay the players $12 million for collusion during the 2002 free agency period ( via Baseball Musings ). I will admit that I am unsure if the 2002 free agency period refers to the period before the 2002 season or the 2003 season. The only reason this catches my eye is that it is roughly (or exactly, again, depending on the definition of "2002 free agency period" the same time period that Dave Littlefield signed Jeff Suppan, Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, and Matt Stairs cheaply to play productive baseball for the Pirates. So the one offseason that Dave Littlefield is constantly trying to recreate when he signs these over the hill veterans took place either during or shortly after a period when teams were conspiring to keep the prices of free agents down . Sounds about right. I'd bet this is what Kevin McClatchy meant by his "funny water" comments a few years back, a couple of the owners had gon...

...are going to move to Monday or Tuesday. The reason behind it is simple, Charlie does fall ball updates on Thursday (or at least that seems roughly what he's doing) and me doing it on Friday seems redundant.

Or so says Gene Collier , in a rather fantastic analogy (I'll assume that everyone reading a baseball blog knows who Wendy Peffercorn is, but if your memory fails you go here ). As usual when Cuban shows up in town (he was here for the Cavs/Mavs game at the arena a couple nights ago), the topic was buying the Pirates. As usual, Cuban's response (to Collier this time, after he's given the same answer to Smizik and Cook) as to why he doesn't own them is: There is no other answer than that they're not for sale. I've let it be known through back channels that if they ever were, or if they ever were interested in taking on another investor, I'd be interested. Whenever Cubes answers that question like all I can think of is the scene in Batman Begins where Alfred tells Bruce Wayne that billionaires like him buy things that aren't for sale. We can only hope.

I'm considering a couple of things to do with the blog until the Winter Meetings start and things get interesting (or at least until the Series ends and moves start getting made), but until then I can pass along some links. Charlie notes that the Pirates have more minor league free agents than any other team and that 23 of the 2006 Altoona Curve, the only affiliate to make the playoffs, are going to be free agents. That is bad news. The A's are interviewing Orel Hershiser for their managerial opening. I'm pretty sure that Beane fired Macha in order to hire someone he wanted and didn't think would be available next year. Could it be the Bulldog? I suppose it would make sense to bring him in to work with Haren, Harden, and the young staff there. It may be that Beane wants to hire a glorified pitching coach instead of a manager since managers are mostly a nuisance to him anyways. Game 4 was rained out tonight and it might be rained out again tonight . If tonight is a no ...

I'm going to make one post to link to all of the 2006 reviews in case anyone missed anything and so that I can put one tidy little post in the sidebar. Team Review Jason Bay Freddy Sanchez Ronny Paulino Jose Castillo Chris Duffy Xavier Nady Jose Bautista Offensive Odds 'n Ends Zach Duke Paul Maholm Ian Snell Tom Gorzelanny The Bullpen Pitching Odds 'n Ends

In news so unsurprising that the Post Gazette hasn't even covered it, the Bucs are buying the second year of Jeromy Burnitz's contract out for $700,000. This is what Dave Littlefield said about the whole thing: When we originally signed Burnitz, we felt that we wanted to sign someone to a one-year contract -- in his case with a club option -- with the idea of giving some other players time to see how they developed. Right now, our feeling is that we're going to look in another direction, whether that's internal or through a trade or maybe through another free agent. What he meant was this: Oh, damn. I should've listened to everyone that told me signing Burnitz was a bad idea. I mean, we offered him the same contract as the Orioles and he chose ours because our physical was less rigorous. That was a big red flag that I just kind of ignored there. Anyways, now that the fans know that Burnitz sucks, we can't really fool them into thinking he'll hit 30 homers n...

This week's poll deals with what you, the reader, thought of the drawn out season review I did, taking a player or so a day and trying to get a deeper look at them. As usual, voting is on the right and you can discuss in the comments. Last week's results: What are you most excited about right now? The Steelers- 34% The Pens' group of goal scorers that can't even legally drink- 44% Watching Dave Littlefield try to do an impression of a good general manager and likely fail miserably- 21% I was surprised by the result a bit, but then I remembered that the Pens actually have more wins than right now. Ouch. As an aside, who saw Malkin's goal last night? That was damn impressive.

Chris Carpenter vs. Nate Robertson tonight. I saw on Sportscenter that in the last 39 series tied 1-1, the team that won game 3 won the series 29 times. That stat clearly bodes well for the Cardinals as they'll put a guy out on the mound who's probably been the second best pitcher in the majors the last two years (behind Santana, of course). I don't have much else to offer on this one other than the fact that I'm sure that no pitcherswill be putting pine-tar on their hands tonight. Anyways, Deadspin has a great Jim Leyland related post today, if you haven't seen it yet, check it out.

Here's the final player review of the offseason, the pitchers that I didn't do a full profile on or make the main bullpen cut. Ryan Vogelsong- After what was arguably the best performance of his career, his five innings against the Astros in the 18 inning game , Vogelsong had the lowest WHIP in the Bucco's bullpen. Less than a month later he'd been christened the White Flag . After that he was DFA'd, except no one else wanted him. He went to Indy and pitched very well. Rumor has it a Japanese team wants him. I think he's too damaged to ever be a Pirate again, though he might be a decent middle reliever for someone. Marty McLeary- Functioned as a good story after making the first two starts of his career in September and looking good on the mound. Don't let that fool you, he's like Vogelsong but worse. Victor Santos- We got pretty much what we expected from Santos. Actually, he was worse than his career numbers this year , so we got even less than we expe...

I was sent this: Among the disappointments in Arizona has been a Pirates prospect, C Neal Walker. "This poor kid is way, way behind with his catching," a rival scout says. "He's so far from being big-league ready it isn't funny. His lefthanded swing certainly is going to play, but it's ahead of the righthanded swing. I just don't know what you have here. If he can't catch he's a whole different animal. He could be another Ryan Doumit ." about a day ago with no link to go along with it. Charlie has the link at Bucs Dugout , along with wondering how reliable it can be given that Walker's name is spelled wrong (it's Neil ). It's certainly true that his offensive stats have taken a dive in the last week ( down to .259/.286/.333 ) but he's only played in six games, so it's still a small sample size. Still, it's not encouraging. Also, I'm a moron for taking so long to post this, but apk has designed a FredEx shirt an...

The World Series takes a day off today at a point that it hasn't been at in a while, tied at something other than zero. It's tied because of Kenny Roger's masterful performance last night, which is all anyone wants to talk about today. Of course they're not talking about the game, but rather about the strange, poop-like substance that FOX's cameras found on Rogers' hand last night. The problem is that there's not much to talk about. The facts are pretty clear. Kenny Rogers had something on his hand last night. In all likelihood it wasn't a mixture of dirt and rosin like he claimed. Tony LaRussa asked the umps about it, but Rogers wasn't on the field at the time, meaning there was nothing they could do. He washed his hands off in between innings, getting rid of the crap. Maybe he put it somewhere else on his body, maybe he didn't. Regardless of what happened, no one caught him with anything on the field. That means that while people can speculate ...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: the bullpen I'm running out of things to review. The bullpen can be done two ways, both as a whole and individually. Before this season started, everyone raved about how great our bullpen would be. They were terribly in the early going, but by the end of the season they had evolved into the strength everyone thought they would be. This must've made DL incredibly happy, as per his genius plan to make us a winning baseball team . Let's take it individually from here. Mike Gonzalez- He had some control trouble early in the year and 31 walks in 54 innings is high, but 64 Ks and only 42 hits in those innings helps balance that number some. His ERA was low and he converted all of the save chances he was presented with, but ER...

Let's think about something other than football for a little bit here. Detroit, who just about every major national pundit predicted an easy World Series win for, is playing an absolute must-win game tonight. Yes, people throw that term around way too much (especially when talking about the NFL), but I'm serious. The Tigers simply cannot afford to lose the first two games at home with Chris Carpenter and the on-fire Jeff Suppan waiting for them in St. Louis. They will not bounce back from a loss tonight (OK, the might, but it really doesn't seem likely, does it?). The pitching matchup seems to favor them with Kenny Rogers being the best pitcher to take the mound for anyone this postseason (Suppan included) and Jeff Weaver toeing the rubber for the Cards. Still, I think weather is going to be a factor in this one. It's under 40 degrees in Detroit tonight. It may even be snowing before this one finishes . That could be a huge disadvantage for Detroit with Rogers being 41...

This is a relatively straightforward series to preview. The Tigers have gotten good hitting and fantastic pitching in the playoffs to beat the A's and Yankees quite easily. The Cards have overcome a severe lack of talent to reach the World Series, mostly thanks to the fact that the Mets made Jeff Weaver and Jeff Suppan look like two very excellent pitchers. In theory, the Tigers should have no trouble making quick work of the Cards. The talent gap between these two teams would seem to be greater than the Astros/White Sox and Cards/Red Sox gaps of the past two seasons, both of which resulted in easy AL sweeps. In practice I don't think it's going to be so easy. The Cards just have this feel about them right now, that somehow they're going to get done what their two more talented predecessors couldn't. Also, every team I root for in major sports championships seems to lose (minus the Steelers, of course, which is a trade I will take every day of the week and twice on ...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Tom Gorzelanny 2005 key stats: 8-5/3.26 ERA/1.23 WHIP/124 Ks/46 BB/129 and 2/3 innings in AA 2006 PECOTA: 6-9/4.96/1.49/87 Ks/58 BB/123 and 2/3 innings 2006 key stats: 6-5/2.35/0.94/84 Ks/27 BB/99 and 2/3 innings in AAA, 2-5/3.79/1.31/40 Ks/31 BB/61 and 2/3 innings in Pittsburgh Gorzelanny's stock rose through the roof at the beginning of this year with his dominant stint in Indy. He got off to a rough start with the Buccos, but turned things around quickly. Through his first four starts he'd walked 16 and only struck out 12. Over the next seven he struck out 28 and only walked 15, which is a much better ratio his full season numbers of more than 4/3. All in all, he made a pretty decent appearence in the bigs for a guy that...

Lots of stuff going on in the Fall/Winter leagues. I'm going to try to do this more regularly (read: at least weekly) while the leagues are going on. Perhaps we will call it "Fall Ball Friday." The AFL stats can be found here . Walker seems to be off to a pretty good start (remember, he's still younger than most of the guys out there), Eldred is doing what he does, which isn't particularly impressive against AFL pitching, and Craig Stansberry is struggling. Jesse Chavez, Josh Shortslef, and Dave Davidson (seriously, who names their kid that?) have all made a couple appearences on the mound, but nothing very extensive. Commenter Will directed me towards stats for the Hawaiian Winter League. The leaders can be found here , and some clicking around can get you individual team stats (I can't get a permalink to the team stats page). The Pirates in the league are all on the Honolulu Sharks. Nyjer Morgan is off to a decent start, which isn't particularly interes...

Perhaps my memory is failing me, but we are about to witness the most manager-centric World Series coverage in history. Immediately after the Cards won game 7 tonight, Kevin Kennedy mentioned that LaRussa and Leyland are friends and that it would be an interesting matchup of managers in the Series. For the next seven days, everything that happens will directly be credited to one of the two managers. We will hear about how Leyland saved the Tigers franchise and how LaRussa did his best managing job ever to take a team less talented than his last two to the Series. These games will not be discussed as baseball games, but rather as chess matches between two grandmasters, and no matter who wins in what manner, the managers are going to be credited for leading whichever team to victory. There is nothing any of the players can do to prevent this save Albert Pujols and maybe Kenny Rogers. Brace yourself, we're going to have a full week of inane statements, mindless praise, and FJM fodder...

We are less than three hours away from what may turn out to be one of the strangest nights in post-season history. Oliver Perez is starting a Game 7. On top of that, his mound opponent tonight is Jeff Suppan, making this game Dave Littlefield's crowning achievement as GM of the Bucs (besides that Worst GM award he took home in June). Rob Neyer talks about Perez in his ESPN Insider column about Game 7 . Most of you probably don't have Insider, so here's the key line: Perez is almost certainly the worst pitcher who's ever started a Game 7. Well then. The thing with Perez is that it's impossible to know what to expect of him. The Mets know as well as the Pirates that he can be Sandy Koufax one day and Jimmy Anderson the next. The thing is that, as Neyer points out in his column, Perez is the best option available for the Mets tonight . But here's the thing about Ollie, he always seems to pitch in big games and when people think he can't do it. In a pride gam...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Ian Snell 2005 key stats- 11-3 3.70 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 104 K, 23 BB in 112 innings at AAA, 1-2/5.14/1.60 with 34 K and 24 BB in 42 innings in Pittsburgh 2006 PECOTA- 6-8/4.61/1.39 with 91 K and 43 BB in 121 and 2/3 innings 2006 key stats- 14-11/4.74/1.46 with 169 K, 74 BB, and 29 HR allowed in 186 innings And so we get to the righty. He's a little bit more of an enigma than the first two guys we've talked about, I think. Some nights Snell would be dominant, others he'd be exceedingly human. He's got a great fastball and curveball, but lefties absolutely killed him this year. He was also the only pitcher of the three that spent the whole year in the rotation to not make huge strides in the second half (his ERAs were al...

Sorry, I'm a bit behind schedule with this week's poll. It's up and running now, though. Last week's results: What do you think of the new layout? Like it- 24% Starting to like it- 29% Fear change, bring back yellow- 23% Really fear change, bring back black- 24% In total, 53% indicated that they liked the new layout or that it was growing on them, which means I can continue claiming that this is a blogocracy instead of a blogtatership.

While digging through statistics to write up my pitcher's season review, I've kind of stumbled upon something that I can't believe I didn't notice sooner. Let's see if anyone can identify the following splits: 5-2, 3.59, 1.47/3-8, 6.14, 1.77 9-4, 4.19, 1.43/1-11, 4.77, 1.57 7-7, 5.60, 1.53/7-4, 3.94, 1.40 Any takers? They're the home/away splits for Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, and Ian Snell, respectively, this year. We could go a step further. Maholm and Duke had HR/9 of .85 and .48 at PNC vs. Snell's 1.60 number at home. On the road those numbers Maholm and Duke jumped to 1.12 and .95 while Snell fell to 1.22. I said it a while back , Charlie has said it recently , and now there are some numbers to back things up, it's foolish to make a pitching trade based on what hand a guy throws with. In fact, left-handed pitching seems to have an advantage at PNC Park. Pirate fans have spent the better part of the last couple months speculating which pitcher Dave Litt...

The Nuttings have dropped their slots bid for Seven Springs at the request of Major League Baseball. For some reason, some thought that the Nuttings would sell the Pirates rather than drop their bid for the slots. This is obviously not the case. Pirates.com has a Q&A with Dave Littlefield up . It's mostly worthless, but Charlie takes a deeper look . I'm personally more intrigued by Freddy Sanchez replacing Jose Castillo on the homepage . Speaking of Charlie, he recently did some thinking outside the box with a suggestion for Dave Littlefield . Meanwhile, Bones at HW grades the only part of the Pirates' front office that did any work this year . And as you probably know, the Cards are only one game from making this the most manager-centric World Series in years. In other NLCS links, J eff Passan writes about Albert Pujols (though I'm more interested in the lead-in on the Yahoo! MLB page that refers to Pujols as "mercurial"), Cards fans can taste victor...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Paul Maholm. 2005 key stats: 12 starts above AA. I can't think of anything more important than that. 2006 PECOTA: 8-10, 4.49 ERA, 1.48 WHIP, 96 K, 66 BB in 147 and 1/3 innings 2006 key stats: 8-10, 4.76, 1.61, 117 K, 81 BB in 176 IP I could take the easy way out on this one and say "take everything I said about Zach Duke and say it again for a guy that is slightly less talented" and we'd have our Maholm review. Maholm made an even briefer 2005 cameo than Duke and had a lot of success, though he outpitched his peripherals by a mile (3-1 with a 2.18 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP but a 4.26 PERA, see the Duke post for a PERA explanation). Like Duke, he had an awful first half, and he was hurt all year by bad defense (evidence...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Zach Duke. 2005 key stats: 8-2, 1.81 ERA, 1.20 WHIP 58 K, 23 BB in 84 and 2/3 innings at Pittsburgh 2006 PECOTA: 10-10, 3.87, 1.31, 117 K, 53 BB in 176 innings 2006 key stats: 10-15, 4.47, 1.50, 117 K, 68 BB in 215 and 1/3 innings So what happened here? First off, we can probably throw ERA out, it's a very misleading stat. Baseball Prospectus put Duke's peripheral ERA (a complex stat, but lets just say it's his ERA based on his ERA, hits/9 innings, BB/9, K/9, and HR/9 that have all been adjusted for park, league, etc. ) from his stint at Pittsburgh last year was 3.25, meaning he was lucky last year. Still, 3.25 is a good PERA (it works the same as ERA only its not as dependent on things a pitcher can't control), so ...

It is very strange to think that the ex-Pirate who may end up having the biggest impact on ends up in the World Series could be Oliver Perez. He started the most important game of the season for the Mets last night and had to give them 5 or 6 decent innings after John Maine and Steve Trachsel combined for only 5 innings in the Mets' losses in games 2 and 3. Anyone that's watched him this year knows that's no small task for Perez, but he managed to do it last night. His line wasn't great, 5 and 2/3 innings, 9 hits, 5 runs, 3 homers, but it was enough for the Mets. He kept a consistent motion, he threw hard (fastball mostly at 94 all night with a couple pitches topping out at 96), had a good slider working, and only walked one batter, throwing 52 of 96 pitches for strikes (it should be noted that his last game appearence was September 26th). If it was a regular season outing for the Pirates we would've probably called it "encouraging" because besides the hom...

Today for the season in review we're going to hit on everyone I haven't talked about yet. None of them merited their own post for various reasons, which I'll get to as I talk about them. Played the whole year but not coming back We've got three players in this category, Joe Randa, Jermomy Burnitz, and Humberto Cota . Not much to say about Randa or Burnitz, in the long run they ended up producing just about how we (we being the pessimistic internet Pirate fans, see Charlie's community projections for them) thought they would. They were both bad ideas when we signed them, and that didn't change. Cota is a bit of a different story. Using BP's VORP rankings for 2006 (since I've been asked to explain my sabermetric stats, VORP is Value Over Replacement Player, BP's measure of how many runs a player is worth at the plate when compared to a replacement level player, the typical AAA call-up, at their position) Cota finished 1008th out of 1030 with a VORP o...

First off, congratulations are due to the Detroit Tigers, your 2006 American League Champion. There's lots of talk going around right now about how the Bucs blew their chance by not hiring Leyland in the offseason, but I don't think that's necessarily true. That, however, is a discussion for another day. Right now we should just focus on how well the Tigers are playing and the fact that it now seems possible that Andy Van Slyke will get a ring before Barry Bonds, and just how sweet that would be. We should also be focusing on the fact that it's entirely possible that the team that finished with the best record in the majors this year will hang their entire season on Oliver Perez today. Maybe that's a bit strong, but 3-1 deficits aren't overcome all that often. It's true that I give Dave Littlefield a ton of crap for everything he does, but the fact remains that Omar Minaya has put his team in a situation in which they must win a game with Oliver Perez on th...

Josh Shortslef has been added to the 40-man to fill one of the three (I think there was three) open spots on the roster. He had decent numbers at Altoona this year but only made 12 starts and is going to be 25 before the season opens next year. Neither of those are particularly good things. Pirates.com has an article up about all of the Pirates' "prospects" that are playing Winter Ball in Arizona or Hawaii (which curiously omits Shortslef, I might add). I only use prospects because they do, somehow I don't feel like 26 year old Nyjer Morgan (who is a less talented version of Rajai Davis, who is a less talented verision of Chris Duffy, who isn't really all that talented to begin with) who spent this last year in Altoona is much of a prospect. Regardless, you can find the AFL stats here and you can't find the Hawaii stats anywhere as far as I can tell. Also on the Grand Canyon Rafters (the team the Pirates' players were assigned to) is Joe Koshansky, men...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jose Bautista 2005 key stats: .283/.364/.503 with 23 HR, 90 RBI, 48 BB and 101 K in 505 PA at Altoona (also had 86 PAs in Indy and Pittsburgh) 2006 PECOTA: .244/.315/.389 with 12 HR and 53 RBI in 486 PA 2006 key stats: .235/.335/.420 with 16 HR, 46 BB and 110 K in 446 PA Jose was one of the more pleasant surprises this year. He had a good year mostly at AA last year, but 24 is old for a "prospect" at that level (he missed 2004 because some moron left him unprotected in the '03 Rule 5 draft, leaving him to sit on 4 different rosters while getting less than 100 PAs on the full season). He started the year off at Indy, but was quickly called up for one reason or another (I don't really remember why, I'll be hone...

Sean Casey is out for the rest of the ALCS , but Jim Leyland didn't miss a beat by adding Alexis Gomez into the lineup. Gomez proceeded to drive in four runs in an 8-5 win for the Tigers. If you're curious as to who Alexis Gomez is you can check out his Baseball Cube page . Let's just say his performance last night was... unexpected. Oakland has now lost the first two games of the ALCS at home, something no one has ever recovered from to win a series. Get ready to hear about those damn '04 Red Sox non-stop for the next couple days. The NLCS will finally get underway in New York tonight. The pitching matchup certainly favors the Mets; Tom Glavine will face off against the one and only Jeff Weaver tonight. Yeah, that Jeff Weaver. The Cards would be in trouble in this series except that I picked the Mets to win, which pretty much dooms them. I've been like the anti-Midas this post-season.

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Xavier Nady. 2005 key stats (SD)- .261/.321/.439 with 13 homers and 43 RBI in 355 PA 2006 PECOTA (for NYM)- .274/.332/.447 with 11 homers and 56 RBI in 335 PA 2006 key stats- .280/.337/.453 with 17 homers and 63 RBI in 498 PA The projections for Weapon X were just about dead on. In his 2 months in Pittsburgh (55 games, 214 PAs) X's numbers were .300/.352/.409. The average and OBP are higher than you would expect, but the slugging was much, much lower. Where that power goes isn't really an X-File. It's mostly a function of PNC Park, in around 120 PAs at PNC Nady is only slugging .314, which is x-ceptionally low. If he's going to be any kind of player for the Pirates, that simply has to come up. Nady's time in Pit...

The NLCS game tonight is rained out but the ALCS will play on. Tonight Justin Verlander and Esteban Loaiza take the mound. This is a huge game for the A's, no one wants to lose the first two games at home.

Wow, just wow. This is terrible .

This week's poll deals with the new layout around here. I'm curious what everyone thinks after a week or so of it. I'll be up front, I'm probably not going to change things back even if the new layout gets crushed in the polls (no one said this blog was a democracy), but I'm always interested what everyone thinks. Last week's results (it was one of the closest polls to date): Your reaction to 67-95 Disappointment- 28% No expectations, thus no disappointment- 32% Disappointed buy angry for being disappointed- 23% Relieved that the '62 Mets are still "The '62 Mets"- 17%

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Chris Duffy. 2005 key stats: .308/.358/.464 in 338 PAs at AAA Indy and .341/.385/.429 in 135 PAs at Pittsburgh with 4 doubles, 1 3B, 1 HR, and 2 steals in 2 attempts. 2006 PECOTA: .287/.340/.405 with 21 2B, 4 3B, 6 HR, and 16 steals in 21 attempts in 444 PAs 2006 key stats: .255/.317/.338 with 1 HR, 14 2B, 3 3B, and 26 steals in 27 attempts in 333 PAs Duffy is another tough one to figure out. He was hitting .194/.255/.276 when he was sent down to the minors in mid-May. Tracy and company had every reason to be upset with him at that point, they rightly wanted to turn him into a Freddy Sanchez type hitter that sprayed the ball all over the field. Duffy was not pleased by this and on top of things had 26 strikeouts and only 3 walks be...

I haven't done a link dump in a while, so maybe now is time for one. The Tigers won easily last night. Unfortunately for them, Sean Casey (who's been one of their better hitters this postseason) injured his calf and will miss at least one game. Casey and Jason Kendall were the only two ex-Buccos in action on the field last night and they both went 1-for-3. You know how Sports Illustrated always does their "Signs that the Apocalypse is upon us" bit every week? I'm pretty sure that this is a strong candidate to make the cut one of these weeks. The Arizona Fall League has started with several Pirates in action for the Grand Canyon Rafters. Imagine Dave Littlefield in other occupations . Scary. In the wake of the Yankees debacle, Fire Joe Morgan has been delightfully shredding newspaper writers who are writing about it but have no idea what they're talking about. It's really quite fun to read. Murray Chass gets his here and Richard Justice gets his here .

Barry Zito and Nate Robertson take the mound in Oakland tonight to kick off the ALCS, which I can only assume is the series that Pirate fans will care the most about in the coming weeks. If you're looking for team specific blogs to follow for this series, the A's of course have Athletics Nation , one of the most famous baseball blogs out there, and for the Tigers I'd recommend The Detroit Tiger Weblog . First pitch is at 8:05, feel free to use the comments to discuss.

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jose Castillo. It's time to suck up and get this one over with. 2005 key stats: .268/.307/.416 with 11 homers, 16 2B and 3 3B with 53 RBI and 59 K in 397 PA 2006 PECOTA: .273/.321/.409 with 11 homers, 24 2B, and 3 3B with 56 RBI and 80 K in 509 PA 2006 key stats: .255/.317/.338 with 14 homers, 25 2B, and 0 3B with 65 RBI and 98 K in 550 PA So, umm, what happened here? After the Brewers game on June 1st, Jose was hitting .311/.359/.500. He had 30 RBIs and had just hit his 8th homer the day before. He had walked 19 times and struck out 28. All of this was in around 200 PAs, about 50 games into the season. Those are some sparkling numbers for any position player, much less a second baseman. From there on out, things were disastrou...

Here's what each team has going for them in their upcoming series: Detroit: They're better than Oakland in pretty much every quantifiable manner. They definitely got a wakeup call when they lost the division on the last day to the Twins. They seem to have that "team of destiny" thing going on after the Yankees series. They have Andy Van Slyke. Oakland: We all know that team of destiny stuff is horseshit. Then again, Oakland fans are probably feeling like this is their "team of destiny." Both teams that won in the AL Division Series' were underdogs, just as Oakland is in this series. Didn't Detroit kind of look like a team that had just won their own personal World Series when they were spraying the crowd with champagne and partying like it was 1999 on Saturday? They may be out of gas. They have home field advantage for the series. Think about what happens in LCS's when Van Slyke, Slaught, McClendon, Lamont, and Leyland are all involved. New York:...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Jack Wilson. Let's churn one more of these out today. 2005 key stats: .257/.299/.363 with 8 HR, 52 RBI, 24 2B, and 7 3B 2006 PECOTA: .270/.312/.377 with 8 HR, 57 RBI, 28 2B, and 4 3B 2006 key stats: .273/.316/.370 with 8 HR, 35 RBI, 27 2B and 1 3B If Freddy Sanchez provides us with a clear reason not to trust the computer projection models, Jack Wilson gives us a compelling case that they can be quite accurate. Jack actually had a rather interesting year, one that the numbers may not completely bear out. He put on his much ballyhooed 20 lbs of muscle in the offseason and charged out of the gates with a .326/.384/.562 April in which he hit 5 homers and seemed to be back in 2004 form. He injured his hamstring in early May, missed...

Now is not a fun time to be a Pittsburgh sports fan. The Pirates are done, the Steelers are raising blood pressures to unsafe levels, and it's still too early to know what to expect out of the Pens. But since the League Championship Series' are beginning, we can always pick a team or two and cheer them on. Here's how I'm breaking the remaining four teams down, in terms of palpability. Detroit Tigers- We're free to cheer for Sean Casey just for being a nice guy from Pittsburgh now that he's off the team. He had a great Division Series against the Yankees and seems to be peaking after a bunch of injuries this year. Their coaching staff also includes Leyland, McClendon, Sluggo, and the namesake of this blog. Throw in the fact that just three years ago these guys were worse than the Pirates and have pulled themselves out of things, well, you can consider me a Tigers fan this week. Oakland A's- The ALCS is great for Pirate fans. Oakland is a close second behind t...

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Ronny Paulino. 2005 key stats: .315/.372/.538 with 13 homers and 42 RBI in 301 PA at AAA Indy and .292/.350/.435 with 6 homers and 20 RBI in 183 PA at AA Altoona 2006 PECOTA: .265/.321/.415 with 12 homers and 55 RBI in 452 PA 2006 key stats: .310/.360/.395 with 6 homers and 55 RBI in 476 PA Baseball Prospectus may have been the only people that saw this 2006 coming for Paulino. One of the comparables the PECOTA system spit out for him was Sandy Alomar, a pretty good outlook for a young catcher. They also guessed that the Pirates' love for his defensive skills might put him ahead of Ryan Doumit on the depth chart. They hit pretty closely on his final OPS, though he ended up with a higher batting average than they guessed and acc...