Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

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 sur...

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 ar...

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 t...

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 proba...

I think that Joe Kerrigan is a really good hire as the Pirates' pitching coach, if we can get that out of the way. Charlie has a nice rundown of the pitchers he's worked with, and he did an especially nice job with the young pitchers in Montreal, then followed Pedro Martinez and Dan Duquette to Boston where he worked with, among others, Derek Lowe. It's nice to have a guy with a good track record, but I mostly like hearing things like this : Kerrigan, 54, will watch videotape of the final six weeks of Pirates games. "Then I'll hunker down and give each guy a profile of things we'll stress in minicamp [in January]," Kerrigan said. "For example, if [Ian] Snell had trouble with left-handers, I'll look at all the at-bats left-handers had against him." Sometimes, bringing in a guy that's an outsider to the process can be beneficial. He's got no history with any of these guys and that means that he's got no bias. Jeff Andrews had work...

Bucs win! Bucs win! Snell has come around a lot in the past month or so. Mildly encouraging. I know reading things like this can be terrifying because it paints the picture of Morgan as a starting corner outfielder, which is a nightmare of Tim Burton-esque proportions. After being promoted from Class AAA Indianapolis Aug. 19, Morgan batted .347 -- 41 for 118 -- with 11 doubles and 20 runs. He reached base safely in 25 of 27 starts. Because of that, he is being considered for starting duty next year. "He did some really good things," manager John Russell said. "He was exciting. He really added a dimension to our offense. His missing three games is not going to affect our evaluation." Consider, though, that Michael Bourn was the key piece for the Phillies in the Brade Lidge trade. And that it's John Russell making these statements, not the front office. And what I'm saying is that I won't be surprised to see Morgan somewhere other than Pittsburgh ne...

There is one comparison that's been made all over the place this week, starting in the Q&A and slowly growing like an ugly monster, that might actually drive me insane. I understand that Andy LaRoche has been disappointing and terrible and all other such things and if you choose to take the small sample size of this year at face value and ignore his minor league numbers, that's your prerogative. But please, please, please stop comparing him to Chad Hermansen. Hermansen was a guy with a lot of power that struck out a ton in the minors and showed almost no on-base skill in the upper level of the minors. It didn't take a genius to see that his power numbers might not translate to the big leagues because of this, and they didn't. Just because Cam Bonifay and Peter Gammons loved Hermansen for his minor league power doesn't mean he was ever nearly the prospect they thought he was. I'll admit that hindsight's 20/20 here. I was excited about Hermansen, but in my...

Adam LaRoche is now hitting .271/.343/.491. He's got more homers this year in 522 plate appearances than he did in 632 last year. That's not an exceptional line for a first baseman, but it is an acceptable one and he'll be worth the $7 million or whatever that he's paid in arbitration. I'd guess that he's a good candidate to hold on to over the winter and hope that he hits in April to make him a really good sell high guy in June and July when he catches fire. But more to the point is this: hitting is hitting, whether it comes all in a bunch in the second half or spread out evenly over the year. So wouldn't you rather have a guy that was utterly predictable in his slumps and hot streaks then someone that hit well in a randomly fluctuating pattern? We KNOW LaRoche won't hit in April, so we should bat him lower in the order then. As the weather heats up, we KNOW we can move him up in the lineup because he's going to hit better. In some ways, isn't t...

There is quite the debate raging on over at Charlie's site right now over the worth of Steve Pearce and Nyjer Morgan to the future of the Pirates. Though I haven't talked much about either of these guys this year, I feel like it's kind of incumbent on me to say something about this because I feel like a lot of the misunderstanding that's going on right now is based on something I said over the winter that, if I'm not mistaken, Charlie more or less agreed with me on. I'm talking, of course, about my suggestion over the winter that non-tendering Xavier Nady and going with Steve Pearce as the starting right fielder might not be the worst idea in the world, given what we knew about those players at the time. I took a lot of flack from a lot of people when I said that and I think that's where the idea of the "Pearce lovefest" originally came from. As things turned out, cutting Nady and going with Pearce would've been a poor choice. Nady had a care...

How do you properly couch another losing season for the Pittsburgh Pirates? The last time the Pirates had a winning season, I was seven years old. Seven! I'm in my second year of graduate school now. Second grade was a looong time ago. Somewhere in the depths of my memories, I remember going to class the day after the Francisco Cabrera game and asking a friend who was a year younger than me if he saw that the Pirates lost again the night before. He had and seemed upset about it, so in all of my endlessly optimistic seven-year-old wisdom I told him that we'd get to the World Series next year. This was the only logical conclusion for me because to that point in my life, I'd really only known good, playoff caliber Pirate teams. I couldn't have possibly fathomed a world in which sixteen years down the road, I'd still be waiting for next year. Somewhere, the losing seasons start to blend together. I remember 1993, because I started the year out with high hopes and had th...

Two new points to consider. From the PBC : Scott Boras phoned from California to give this quote: "The Pirates violated Major League Baseball rules and have issued a nearly 600-word statement, made their actions look to be my fault. I think it's time for the Pirates and Mr. Coonelly to come clean with the fans of Pittsburgh and let everyone know about their dealings with Mr. Alvarez." This from Baseball America : Several sources have confirmed to Baseball America that MLB extended the signing deadline by as much as 45 minutes to allow Eric Hosmer (another Boras client) to reach a deal with the Royals that included a $6 million bonus. Speculation in baseball circles was that Alvarez—who reached an agreement with the Pirates for a $6 million bonus—and Missouri righthander Aaron Crow—who could not come to terms with the Nationals—received similar extensions, though Baseball America has not been able to confirm that. A bit of a picture is beginning to emerge and I think I ...

It has been rightly pointed out to me that my "Pedro Alvarez will never play for the Pirates" statement below was a pretty bold and quick thing to say given the situation and the amount of things we actually know about this. So let's take some time to sort through this, piece by piece, and see if we can figure out what's going on and what might happen. If my reasoning is off from a legal basis, feel free to let me know. What do we know right now? As far as I can tell, we know two things: The MLBPA has filed a grievance with the commissioner's office regarding the time at which Pedro Alvarez signed his deal with the Pirates, contending that it was after midnight. In light of this grievance, Scott Boras has asked the Pirates to renegotiate the deal they've made with Alvarez, presumably for more money. The Pirates have placed Alvarez on the restricted list and contended that they fairly signed Alvarez, that this grievance jeopardizes the Eric Hosmer deal (suppose...

Dear Ian, I used to think you were awesome because you took every single bad thing that ever happened to you personally. You never made excuses when you sucked, but you didn't really suck very often because you were driven by every single perceived slight to prove people wrong. Then I opened up today's paper and read this : "They're not the best team in baseball for no reason. They adjust to you. I was throwing some good pitches, but they weren't swinging. But there's no excuse for giving away a three-run lead." I think I'm going to cry. I'm done sticking up for you, I'm done making excuses for you, I'm done making fun of you, I'm just done. When you get home, your stuff will be in a bag on the stoop. Get out. If you ever get yourself back together, call me. If not, have a nice life attempting to approximate Kip Wells' career arc. -Pat

While perusing DK's morning links today, I happened upon this post at Bucs Trade Winds making the argument that Pedro Alvarez was a PR move by the Pirates. It struck me that this is a pretty popular sentiment among the fans, specifically this part right here: Nutting is a shrewd businessman. He knows his product isn't going to sell in it's current form. He knows nearly every fan blames him and his family for the trials this franchise has endured since their ownership group took control in the 90's. A mere $6 million investment has put blinders on a majority of the fan base, for at least the short term. One small investment has restored his public image. Now, far be it from me to criticize anybody for being cynical or negative about the Pirates. At various points in the life of this blog I've been called "Captain Negative," "Way to cynical for a 23-year-old," "Eeyore," and a number of similar other things. A friend of mine at Duquesne u...

You could have probably guessed this from the tone of the posting last night, but I'm pretty excited by the events of the last week or so. There's a number of reasons why and I think that the reasons to be excited run a lot deeper than most people realize, so I'm going to try and lay them out here in a coherent and non-giddy fashion. Wish me luck. Pedro Alvarez is a very impressive young talent. By now you've probably seen the YouTube highlight reel and it's impressive. The kid has a left-handed power swing that I can only describe as "textbook." His stock was hurt a bit by his hand injury, but by all accounts it shouldn't be a long-term issue. He strikes me as the kind of talent that's not available in the draft every year and the kind of talent that the Pirates haven't had in their minor league system in years. Taken entirely on his own, the fact that Pedro Alvarez is a Pirate is something that's completely worth being excited about. Be...

With all of Snell's struggles this year there's been a lot of speculation about demoting him to AAA, especially since Tom Gorzelanny got sent down in early July. It was reported that he had no options left, but today's PG says that he does , in fact, have one left: It had been widely believed for nearly two years that starter Ian Snell was out of options, even by some in the organization, but that is not the case, a team official confirmed this weekend: He has one left. I don't think Snell's going anywhere for a couple of reasons. First off is that it seems incredibly unlikely that the people that are actually running the team and making those decisions now just learned that. Second is that Snell doesn't have anything to prove in AAA. His velocity's fine this year and his biggest problem is his inability to locate his pitches. John Van Benschoten's biggest problem is his inability to locate pitches and he puts up solid lines in AAA with stuff that's...

There are always downsides to trades. Anyone that's been a WHYGAVS reader for a long time knows that I've gone out of my way again and again to defend Jason Bay, so it's probably obvious that Bay's been one of my favorite Pirates over the past few years. When I really sit down and think about it, it's possible that I'll never get to more Pirate games in my life over a short span than I did from my sophomore through my senior year of college, and Bay was one of the few constants on that team. The thing that I liked the most about Bay was the thing that I think angered the most people; he was always even-keel and low-key, and that made it easy to forget that he was incredibly good at his job. Who can forget the time he hit ten homers in ten games in May of 2006? Or his MVP-caliber season in 2005? Or his 8-RBI game shortly after he got traded here? Or his sudden slew of clutch, walk-off hits this year? Or the only Rookie of the Year Award in Pirate history? Or the ...

I've seen a lot of reactions to this trade and I'm getting a ton of traffic, so I'm going to start this post way back at the beginning. If you're a regular reader and the first two paragraphs or so seem obvious to you, bear with me. One year ago, Neal Huntington inherited a wreck. He was handed a baseball team built for 75 wins through 2009, at which point it would be completely disbanded, and a minor league system that was so barren that Steve Pearce hit his way to being the #2 prospect in the organization with only one good season. Faced with a choice, he decided to try and let his players maximize their value before trading them off to rebuild the entire organization from square one. The key piece in doing that has to be the best player on the major league team. That is, of course, Jason Bay. Trading Jason Bay today is not a salary dump, because the Pirates can afford to keep him. Because of the sins of the past, the Pirates have no choice but to look to the future. ...

Apparently, the Pirates/Yankees trade wasn't nearly as set in stone last night as we thought it was. According to Ken Rosenthal , the deal is going to change from Marte and Nady for Tabata, Ohlendorf, Coke, and Kontos to Tabata, Ohlendorf, Daniel McCutchen , and Jeff Karstens . They're both 25, both in AAA, and both have decent but not great peripherals. I'd say they're both better prospects than Coke, but maybe not as good as Kontos. The change in the deal makes Huntington's intent incredibly clear. His goal with this move was two-fold; to get Tabata and too add pitching depth at the highest levels of the minors, where we very clearly have none. I have, of course, been spending a lot of time thinking about this deal since it happened. I've mostly been trying to talk myself into not hating it, then yelling at myself for trying to talk myself into another Pirate trade that I don't really believe in, then countering in my head that this is a much better trade ...

It's not terribly surprising that Scott Boras felt the need to address the Pittsburgh media after Frank Coonelly's comments the other day, and it's also not surprising that he didn't talk much about Pedro Alvarez. For all of the things people say about him, he's really good at his job and that's why guys with Pedro Alvarez sign on with him. Check his statement to Dejan today : "One thing that fans should understand about the draft is that we've only asked for 11 players, in my 36 years of doing this, to get bonuses that have exceeded $4 million or $5 million. All 11 of those players are highly successful in Major League Baseball," Boras said. "And we've only asked for bonuses that exceed $7 million or $8 million a couple of times, and those players are Mark Teixeira, J.D. Drew, Stephen Drew and people of that nature who are all either stars or coming stars. I think it's important to have that context of the work we've done in the ...