Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

I'm pretty sure this is how this went down: Jim Bowden: So, uh, Omar. You looking to trade Lastings Milledge? You know toolsy outfielders with big upside turn me on more than a prospective threesome with Jessica Biel and Scarlett Johnanson. Omar Minaya: Well, we do need a catcher and maybe an outfielder to take Lastings' place ... Bowden: You mean like Brian Schneider and Ryan Church? Minaya: Done and done. Bowden: Holy f$%#&%$* s#!t are you kidding me? I was just... places his hand over the receiver, yells to Assistant GM Mike Rizzo Hey Mike, you were wrong! I'm not the dumbest GM in baseball, Omar's going to send us Milledge for Schneider and Church! takes hand off of receiver. You know what Omar? Minaya: Dude, I could totally hear you talking to Mike Rizzo. Is that what you really think of me? Bowden: If I say yes, is the trade off? Minaya: Maybe. Bowden: Well then, no. I think you're a genius. Ryan Church is solidly average and that will be a big deal, espe...

The Cardinals signed Cesar Izturis to a one year deal today . I would say that relegates a Jack Wilson trade from "unlikely" to "really, really unlikely." Meanwhile, the Astros signed Kaz Matsui and only the Cubs and Brewers appear remotely interested in winning the division.

Interesting news from the PG this morning: the Pirates are shaping Matt Morris around, possibly to the Cardinals, and the same Cardinals are possibly interested in Jack Wilson. And maybe it's a bit late in the day, but man, what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't weigh in with my two cents here? Here's the deal- Neal Huntington should do whatever he can to get rid of as much of Matt Morris's contract as he possibly can. If the Cardinals are interested in Jack Wilson (and really, they should be because he's better than Eckstein and most of the other free agent/easily obtainable options left on the market) than Doogie should do everything he can to tack Morris on to that deal. That shouldn't be terribly hard because the Cardinals are looking for veteran pitching. Since there was some kind of legitimate interest in Wilson back in July, that package might actually elicit a decent offer. Anthony Reyes was mentioned in the article and I think he'd be an intrig...

Humberto Cota and Yurendell DeCaster are officially the Nationals' problem now , while Shane Youman is now the Phillies problem . How much dreck can come from one system? Buried in a Johan Santana Hot Stove story at CBS is a mentioned of Neal Huntington discussing trading Nate McLouth and Xavier Nady to San Diego for Chase Headley. Don't know how much there is to it, but it's an interesting rumor. Also, Delmon Young for Matt Garza ? Wow. Just wow.

In case you missed it, Jeff Passan at Yahoo wrote up the Pirates in Yahoo's Hot Stove Daily earlier this week. Here's a fun excerpt: I t's not so much that the Pirates are in a bad situation. Their new ballpark is beautiful, their fans still devoted, their history rich. It's just that the systemic losing has worn thinner than the enamel on the loyalists' teeth, ground down by the frustration of bad management and worse ownership. An overhaul of the front office ought to help in the first respect; the second is a horse pill without water to ease it down. The Pirates might increase their payroll, but not to the level needed to compete when the big league club is so downtrodden. New general manager Neal Huntington has already recused the Pirates from bidding on any of the high-profile free agents, so instead the focus turns to how Pittsburgh can improve itself with spare parts and trades. I love being reminded how hopeless my fandom is!!! It seems pretty fair to say ...

John Russell continues to round out his staff and this time it's with another name from the Phillies organization: new hitting coach Don Long . He's been the Phillies minor league hitting instructor since 1999, which means he's worked with a lot of the guys who made up one of the best offenses in baseball this year in Philadelphia. Of course, Gerald Perry was thought of as one of the best hitting coaches in baseball before he came to work for Lloyd McClendon's staff. After all the talk of remodeling the team after the Indians, Long is the third member of the coaching staff (after Russell and Varsho) to have spent significant time in the Phillies organization. That might be meaningless coincidence, but I kind of doubt it.

When you're a Pirate fan, you take what you can get. For example, the following might be one of the most positive quotes I can ever remember reading during any off-season: Reliever John Grabow and several other Pirates who ended the 2007 season with injuries all appear to be mending in plenty of time to be ready for spring training. And none of them, so far, has gone under the scalpel. An off-season where no Pirates are having surgery?!? How will the surgeons of the world survive?!? Think of their children!!!

The return of Dejan from his winter vacation coincides with two pieces in the PG today that actually have something to do with Neal Huntington's off-season plans. Imagine that. First up, we learn that the Pirates have inquired about Matt Clement . I've never been a big Clement fan, but it's probably true that he'd be a cheap option to fill the back end of the rotation since he's coming off of shoulder surgery. A sure thing? No. Cheap and possibly worth something in a trade if he comes around? Yes. Then again, the back end of our rotation is already plugged with a massively expensive option. Maybe Neal has something in mind for Matt Morris. I sure hope so. Next up is Dejan's first Hot Stove report . It's about Jason Bay and Jack Wilson and whether or not they're going to be dealt this off-season. The money quote: "No, none of our players is being actively shopped," he said. In the same breath, though ... "If a club calls and inquires abo...

You guys have no idea how happy I am to have kicked off a violent reaction to something I wrote that doesn't involve Nyjer Morgan, even if all of you are violently opposed to what I wrote. Of course, I think a lot of the reason you're violently opposed to what I wrote is that I did a terrible job of explaining what was really on my mind. Accordingly, let's look a little further into Zach Duke and see if I can make myself a little clearer. First off, I would suggest going back and reading my review of Duke's 2007 . I used it to try and figure out how to explain Duke's struggles and whether injury or general ineptitude were more to blame. Obviously that's something that we'll probably never know for sure, though if you read my post you can tell I'm leaning towards injury not being Duke's biggest problem last year. The one thing that I didn't believe then and don't believe now and won't believe even when I'm sitting at Milliways for the...

From today's PG : How Andrews works with one pitcher, however, will draw a lot of attention over the next several months. Specifically, can Andrews "untweak" Zach Duke and turn him back into the wunderkind left-hander he was as a rookie in 2005? "He can pitch," said Andrews, announced by the Pirates as their pitching coach yesterday. "I think he's going to come out of it." "It" is the funk Duke fell into in 2006-07 beginning with former pitching coach Jim Colborn's decision to tweak his delivery in spring training 2006. The quotes around the word "untweak" suggest that it was Andrews' word and not Meyer's. So, the way he's going to fix Duke is by MAKING MORE CHANGES. The name of the article is "Andrews' No.1 priority-- Duke." The problem is that Duke is, at the absolute best (and I think this is up for debate) the third most talented starter on the team. Andrews' #1 priority should be figuri...

Jason Kendall is continuing his tour of the NL Central by signing with the Brewers for a year or two. And now you can pencil the Cubs in for an NL Central repeat. Blue Jays' pitcher Joe Kennedy died this morning of a possible brain aneurysm. Awful, awful news for the day after Thanksgiving (or any day, for that matter). RIP, Joe. So, let's get this straight. Last year, the Angels signed the terribly overrated Gary Matthews Jr. to a 5 year/$50 million contract. Apparently, they weren't happy with that bit of ridiculous overspending, so they went out and inked Torii Hunter to a 5 year/$90 million deal this week . Mark my words, they will regret that deal. Hunter is overrated at the plate (he's slugged over .500 twice in his career and NEVER had an OBP of .340) and already declining in the field at the age of 31. Still, the Angels are paying him like a super-star. Bad idea. Worse idea? 4 years and $19 million for Scott Linebrink . Umm, Doogie? TRADE RELIEVERS NOW!!! The ...

Happy Thanksgiving, guys. Today, I am thankful that Dave Littlefield is fired. Seriously, how amazing is that?

As anticipated, Gary Varsho and Tony Beasley were hired to be the Pirates' new bench coach and third base coach. Jim Leyland is cursing himself for letting a Pirate from the early 90s evade his staff. We also hired a bullpen coach. I used to think I knew what a bullpen coach did, until Lloyd McClendon was hired to do it for a year in Detroit. Now I'm clueless Today we added one more coach to the mix by promoting Jeff Andrews from the pitching coach slot at Indy to the same job on John Russell's staff. I don't know how I feel about promoting from within, but I guess that's not fair to Andrews because he can only work with the talent that the former front office gave him. More interestingly, we did some shuffling of the 40-man before setting it for the winter. We dropped Josh Sharpless and Shane Youman off the 40-man, which isn't terribly surprising or interesting. We also dropped Josh Phelps, which seems stupid to me as he's not actually a bad hitter, but ...

According to Paul Meyer, the Bucs are going to name some of their new coaches today . I think it's a bit strange that Doogie is announcing the hirings and not Russell, but what do I know, I'm just a blogger. Meyer names three names and the one that jumps out at me is Gary Varsho , who was a backup outfielder/pinch hitter on the 1990 and 1991 teams. He's coming from the Indians system, though he's also worked with the Phillies in the past. That's only interesting to me because I'm trying to ascertain who's hiring who here. Anyways, there's no official announcement yet, but I've gotta hit the road back to Western PA for Thanksgiving, so if they do announce it, go wild in the comments until I can post.

This afternoon the Angels traded Orlando Cabrera to the White Sox for John Garland . If you're curious, Wilson and Cabrera are actually pretty comparable players. Wilson is usually a worse hitter, but his two best years and better than anything Cabrera's done recently. Cabrera is a few years older, more expensive, and, using David Pinto's PMR , not as good with the glove as Jack. Of course Cabrera has a couple Gold Gloves to his name and he's got a World Series ring, which puts his "intangibles" through the roof when trying to figure out his value in a trade, but I suppose if Huntington is trying to trade Jack, he should be looking for at least John Garland type value (which, actually, isn't terribly much).

So I missed this over the weekend, but the Pirates unsurprisingly declined Cesar Izturis's option for the 2008 season. Even if we had a deal with Jack Wilson set in stone, Cesar Izturis wouldn't be worth more than $5 million, so it's hard to quabble with this move. I know people are wondering if we'll try and bring him back cheaply if we do trade Wilson, but that's kind of unlikely in a world that David Eckstein is potentially worth $9 million. Oh, and plus he's terrible. I can't believe we actually traded someone for him. Damn you, Jim Tracy. Meanwhile, the Pirates are expected to name John Russell's coaching staff this week . I know you're as excited as I am to see what kind of people will actually work for a guy that finished 30 games below .500 in AAA last year. Too harsh?

So, there's this whole Arizona Fall League going on that I've been kind of ignoring, mostly because the only player there I'm mildly interested in is Andrew McCutchen. Let's see how the Bucs are doing on the Phoenix Dirt Dogs (who've made it to the finals): Andrew McCutchen: .286/.381/.378 You know what's a bad sign? A slugging percentage lower than an OBP in the Arizona Fall League. After showing some surprising pop in 2006, he's shown none of that in 2007. He's still very young so it's hard to hit a panic button on him as a prospect yet, especially because he's doing a good job of getting on base in Arizona, but let's just say it's not surprising when Pirate prospects don't live up to the hype. Nyjer Morgan: .258/.355/.355, Super Speed Rating: 1,098,762 Somehow, Nyjer Morgan has become the most polarizing player in the Pirates system. That's sad. I wish we had someone better to argue over. Just remember that the AFL is always a...

Barry Bonds was indicted today on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. There goes the Wild Things contract, his Major League career, 3,000 hits, and probably his records. That or Bud Selig is spineless.

See, the reason someone needs to fix Pirates.com is right here . That's a nice article about how hard Doogie is working now that he's the GM and how excited he is to turn the team around and really I'd be pretty heartened by it if I wasn't such a cynical jackass. But I am and at least three other articles on the main page feature Nyjer Morgan's name in the title, which casts doubt on everything else on the site, in my eyes. Oh well.

In news that shouldn't surprise anyone, it looks like A-Rod is going to re-sign with the Yankees . In news that should shock the hell out of you, it looks like he may have ditched Scott Boras and is taking a considerable cut from what his market value probably is (the rumored deal is 10 years, $275 million and crazy as it is, I'm certain he could get $300 million on an open market) to do so.

So I'm patrolling the Pirate internet looking for some Pirate news to talk about because it's painfully scarce right now and the fact that I've barely been writing makes me feel really bad because there are still lots of people reading and commenting (incidentally, we're only 98 comments away from the 10,000th comment in WHYGAVS history, I'll be monitoring the situation). So I click on over to the team page and what do I read? First, I get the following headline: Morgan speeding through Bucs system Now there is a statement which is technically true and intentionally misleading. Remember that a lot of you were surprised when I mentioned that Nyjer Morgan was 26-years old. Now, I can't speak for everyone, but I tend to assume that anyone that spends their day reading Pirate blogs and leaving comments in October (which was when I did the post about Morgan and McLouth and Duffy and talked about their performances relative to age, etc.) is a pretty freaking hardcore...

By know most of you have probably heard that the Washington Wild Things have offered Barry Bonds a contract as a PR stunt . As someone that spent a lot of time in WashPA last spring, I find this to be particularly hilarious. Imagining Barry at various spots around town- the Mexican restaurant, the VIP club/bar/dingy basement, on W&J's campus by the hilariously phallic statue of Washington and Jefferson (imagine the view of this from the side ... yeah) with Mayor Luke, staying with a "host family" somewhere in town- wow, it would all be too good to be true. I wish there was some way to make this all happen outside of my head.

The Pirates announced today (or yesterday, or somewhere in there) the hiring of Larry Corrigan as another special assistant to Huntington. I like this hire much more than the Tanner hire, to be honest. He's been in Minnesota's system for a very long time and most recently worked as a special assistant to Terry Ryan. Since the Twins are one of the teams I hope the Pirates are modeling themselves after, it's hard not to like this news. He was the Twins scouting director for two years in the early 90s and worked with Russell when he was the minor league field coordinator (whatever that is) in the mid-90s. According to the same article, he's already at work helping John Russell fill out his coaching staff.

Chuck Tanner was hired as a special assistant to the GM. I'm sorry, but this seems like the same type of PR crap the old front office loved so much. It's nice to see him back with the club and all, but he's almost 80 years old and I can't imagine he's going to be much help to Huntington. Neal Huntington apparently is shopping Jason Bay . So apparently we'll find out what kind of GM he's going to be pretty quickly ( via Bucs Dugout and Honest Wagner ). Base coaches will wear helmets in light of the Mike Coolbaugh tragedy this summer. Thor would like to come back . Unfortunately for him, we have about 8 guys that play his position(s) and they've sucked a lot less recently than he has.

There's a fairly good chance that I'm going to be out of blogging range until Sunday afternoon. That means I can leave you with two things to do. The first is jump in on my favorite thread of all time, here . You'll know what to do when you get there. Next up is something you'll be familiar with if you've been around a while. It's time for me to crack open the WHYGAVS Jukebox. That's where I write out a list of Pirates, fire up iTunes, hit shuffle, and apply the songs as they come up on the list. Then it's up to you guys to figure out how they apply. The thread in the post doubles as an open thread to plot world domination as well or discuss free agency or semi-obscure movies, or whatever until I can get posting again. Today, let's welcome the new members of the front office with some choice selections: Frank Coonelly: One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds (the live version, not the Five version, if you're curious). This is perfect. Co...

Ugh. It's November 8th and that means it's time to wrap this meandering season review up. Beyond the four big starters, I don't care much about the pen and everyone so these are going to be mostly quick hits. Matt Capps- In theory, Matt Capps should suck. He's a guy with a straight 94-mph fastball that is only exceptional because of his ability to put it over the place, and that's his out pitch. In actuality, Matt Capps was one of the few Pirates that didn't underperform in 2007. 1.01 WHIP and 64 K's to only 16 walks in 64 innings? That's just silly. I was happy to see him not get abused by Tracy again this year because really, he's our one bullpen stud. Not that you need a bullpen stud when you suck, but hey, they're nice to have. Salomon Torres- This is what happens when you sign a 34-year old reliever to a big extension (the Pirates did this for Torres in '06). Now we're saddled with him for at least one more year. I'd trade him no...

I said that I thought that the guys Doogie hired to fill out his front office would be more important than Russell. Today he hired a scouting director, a director of player development, and a director of baseball operations . These are the men that will shape the future of the Pirates. So who are they? Kyle Stark, director of player development: He's coming from an assistant farm director position in Cleveland. He's 29, I think he's got a law degree, and three years ago he was a pitching coach for St. Bonaventure. So he's really young, which means he's either incredibly motivated or just incredibly unqualified for his job. I will choose to believe the first one until I have reason to think otherwise. Greg Smith, director of scouting: Coming from Detroit. This one line from the PG terrifies me: Smith, 41, worked the past three seasons as a special assignment scout for the Detroit Tigers. For the eight years before that, he was Detroit's scouting director ... Ahh...

In the comments on the post below, Emma points out this link , which is a couple days old but worth sharing: The Pirates upper management has widely ignored OBP (on base percentage) in the past. How important will OBP be in player evaluation under your leadership? -- Eric S., Pennsboro, W.Va We are going to utilize several objective measures of player performance to evaluate and develop players. We'll rely on the more traditional objective evaluations: OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) , WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), Runs Created, ERC (Component ERA), GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio), K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts to walks ratio), BB%, etc., but we'll also look to rely on some of the more recent variations: VORP (value over replacement player), Relative Performance, EqAve (equivalent average), EqOBP (equivalent on base percentage), EqSLG (equivalent slugging percentage), BIP% (balls put into play percentage), wOBA (weighte...

Now that the papers have had a day to gear up and cover the John Russell bonanza (or something like that), we've got some stuff to talk about. Go to the PG and watch the video of Neal Huntington introducing Russell . First impressions: He doesn't sound like a moron. This is huge. The day we hired Tracy my dad called me and said, "I dunno, maybe it's just the first impression, but I think Tracy is really, really stupid." I don't get that impression from Russell (though he did promise to "bring the proud" if I heard correctly) Neal Huntington really thinks he got the right guy for the job. Well, that or he's a good liar. But could a face like that lie to us? Also, I like Huntington's black and gold suit and tie combo and all I could see from Russell was that he had on a gold/yellow tie, so we can probably assume he was dressed similarly. On a slightly unrelated tangent, things like that were what immediately impressed me about Mike Tomlin when ...

Now that Russell is official , let's take some time to talk about what his hiring means to the Pirates. First off, it's unfair to him to characterize him as "being fired by the organization" in the past. In most cases, coaches work more for the manager than they do for the organization itself. When McClendon was fired and Tracy, a guy who loved everything about his LA team, was hired, it was pretty much a death sentence for McClendon's staff, no matter how good they were at their jobs. Likewise, nearly all of Tracy's staff found jobs pretty quickly once Jim was let go here in Pittsburgh. Russell worked here as a third base coach for two years and when McClendon was let go, he got a gig managing a AAA team with a pretty decent organization. I wouldn't read any further into it than that. I can imagine that a lot of people's thoughts today run along the lines of, "We looked for a month and we ended up with this guy?" The truth is, most managers...

2006: 4.47 ERA, 1.50 WHIP, 117 K, 68 BB, 255 H in 215 and 1/3 innings 2006 rate stats: 4.89 K/9, 2.84 BB/8, 10.66 H/9 2007: 5.53 ERA, 1.73 WHIP, 41 K, 25 BB, 161 H in 107 and 1/3 innings 2007 rate stats: 3.43 K/9, 2.10 BB/9, 13.50 H/9 Counting hits is a dangerous way to measure pitchers, especially on a team that isn't terribly good at fielding. A lot of how many hits a pitcher gives up is made of luck (simply where the hits fall) and the defense (what they're capable of fielding), that just saying "Zach Duke gives up a ton of hits and that's why he sucks" isn't a complete statement, even if it's technically an accurate one. Duke's problem is that he doesn't fool anybody. Three strikeouts per nine innings is a painfully low number. I'm serious, it actually hurts me to look at it. That's a big problem when you pitch for the Pirates because, despite what a lot of people say, the Pirates aren't very good at fielding the ball. They were thi...

I know that John Perrotto's not exactly the most reliable source, but with an announcement coming on Monday regarding our new manager, I'm willing to believe that someone other than Neal Huntington, Frank Coonelly, and they mystery man know the identity of our new manager, so I'll link to Perrotto's article that says John Russell is that man . I'm completely with everyone that says it's not worth getting worked up over whoever ends up getting the job. Huntington and Coonelly's work that has to be done is in the front office and with rebuilding the organization from the bottom up. Russell is just the guy that has to try and keep the ship from sinking too far in 2008. I know he's been here before (he was Mac's third base coach from 2003-2005), which makes him a part of the "culture of losing", but I've heard his name come up in conjunction with other jobs before and it's not like he's a Pirate lifer (like, say Jewett, who's be...

So, with nothing happening on the managerial front besides Huntington's supposed #1 choice not being terribly interested in the job, Kenny Macha has decided to let the Pirates know he's still in Western PA and not employed at the moment . "I do have interest in managing again, and I've lived here my whole life," said Macha, who makes his home in Murrysville, Pa., just east of the city. "I know Pittsburgh as well as anybody. It obviously wouldn't be coming to Pittsburgh, it would be being here." [...] "One of the things that was a luxury about not managing this year was that I was able to see a lot of [Pirates] games on TV," said Macha, who interviewed for the Pirates managerial opening back in 2005, before Jim Tracy was named the franchise's 37th manager. "I probably saw 40 games or so and am very familiar with their personnel." I'm trying to not be overly cynical here because Macha does have experience managing a young ...

Man, I don't know what to make of this guy most of the time. Most of the time I'm convinced he's garbage, but every once in a while he puts together an extended streak of competence that makes me feel like he could be a pretty good starter this year. You'll notice that I didn't put his yearly stats up. That's because there's a couple things I want to focus on rather than the broader picture. From a subjective perspective, which is where everything starts, I felt like Maholm was a lot better in 2007 than he was in '06. So I looked at the splits and mostly everything was the same, except for two stats that are directly related. Maholm threw almost the same number of innings this year as he did last year (177 and 2/3 this year compared to 176 last year). You can see on his BBRef page that strikeouts, homers, hits, and even runs are pretty comparable from year to year. Walks, and by extension, WHIP, are not. He cut his walks down from 81 to 49 in 2007, whic...