That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the new rumor floating around Pittsburgh circles is not about a Huff contract or a LaRoche trade.. it’s about new ownership.

I am early in posting this rumor so I won’t go into the details of what I am hearing. The last thing in the world I want to do is blow it if it is happening. But I will tell you this – if it comes true, Pirates fans will finally rejoice. No, I didn’t say Pirate fans could expect a winner anytime soon.. or the new ownership will sink half-a-billion into the franchise to get it back on track. Only that the principles in the rumor bring a lot more ‘fire to win’ credibility to the table than our current group has.

The bottom line to the rumor is this.. evidently there has been an offer made to purchase some stock and this time there wasn’t an automatic ‘the Pirates aren’t for sale’ response. That does *not* mean the current group will sell.. only that an interest to buy was floated.

One economist I spoke to yesterday after I picked up on the rumor said he believed the timing was right.. while there is a lot of cash in the game right now, that doesn’t mean a whole lot if you can’t put fans in the stadium or dig up up commercial sponsors. He also felt the franchise could use a financial boast right now to get commercial sponsors back on their side.

Understand this please – it is a rumor I heard. It isn’t the Holy Grail.. it doesn’t mean it will happen.. and we may not even hear about it if the current group decides to remain on. Some folks love to think rumors = fact.

The rumor came from an A+ source and that is why I am posting it. And yes, I continue to hear Littlefield is after LaRoche. So there you go – you can hammer me twice. 

If the offer is genuine and the current group decides to sell, I’m sure something will be leaked in the next few weeks.

I guess I’m in the middle-of-the-road on this.. perhaps my source heard something that already happened.. perhaps it never happened. Perhaps he only has half of it right but thinks he has the whole picture. I don’t really want to get my hopes up so I’m going to believe it isn’t happening with my fingers and toes crossed.

But there you go – it’s out there and it’s being talked about, albeit by only a few folks right now. We’ll watch and see.

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I suppose the biggest news lately has been the Pirates signing a new 30-year lease with the City of Bradenton for use of the spring training facilities. It’s a good move for the Pirates because they only have to pay $300k per year in maintenance and the Pirates get to keep all the revenues from the games – about $100k. I assume that means you can expect prices to be jacked up in the next year or two like they have been at every other field in Florida.

Of course the caveat to this entire deal is that the State of Florida has yet to authorize the City of Bradenton the funding. That isn’t expected until the first week or two of January. The second caveat is that the City is now allowed to use the stadium facility for events despite the Pirates requirement to maintain the facility.

Lastly, the Pirates have hinted they planned to use the facility for their own events as well to offset their costs so maybe they will be drawing some more headline entertainment like the Gimme Gimme’s during spring training for everyone to enjoy.

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While we’re on the subject of Florida, Orlando’s Mayor Buddy Dyer announced today that he is going to push a $1b sports package through the Commission next year that includes a very nice location for a new baseball stadium — right in the middle of Orlando’s biggest ghetto neighborhood, believe it or not. The area is so crime ridden they even have their own McDonald’s like sign on a pole that reads: "40 murders served in 2006".

I don’t know what Dyer was smoking when he thought of the site especially with all the wonderful open land surrounding the airport corridor that is right off three separate expressways that would be perfect for a stadium. Just think.. 40 minutes to the beach, 15 minutes to Disney, and 5 minutes to a flight.

Orlando is ready for baseball on a major league level easily. Every year thousands of folks litter Brighthouse Networks email boxes with requests they cover the Rays but they refuse to. It’s unbelievable. But a good minor league franchise could make a few bucks if they build an indoor stadium that can withstand hurricane force winds and double as a hurricane shelter. LoL

Hey Don Beaver – want to sell a team? Maybe Johnny Damon will join me in purchasing one from you to move down there. Email me – blog at bucco blog dot com.

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A quick look at the new ZIPS projections sheds some light on some possible breakouts in 2007 as well as some downturns.

Bucco Blog has been mentioning that we think Nate McLouth is due to breakout this year but ZIPS doesn’t seem to see it. ZIPS doesn’t see breakouts very good anyway so that’s no surprise.

One quick thing to look at with Nate is that ZIPS has him as the best run producer per at bat on the team at .171 runs per AB. To give you an idea how obscene that estimate is, Bay is only at .166, Nady at .138, and Paulino at .104. Duffy is at .156 so there isn’t any advantage for Littlefield to play McLouth over Duffy with Duffy’s decent defensive cover ability. But how do you spell trade bait?

Another quick observation was that our current rotation that includes Chacon is projected to allow 1.36 HR/9. That’s very high considering the rotation has three southpaws and how large PNC’s left field is.

ZIPS also sees a 0.020 improvement on the five starters winning percentage over 144 starts which is very discouraging, to say the least. As I mentioned the other day, and as Bill James has said for years and years, it is impossible to project pitchers with any accuracy so take the projected 0.020 improvement with a grain of salt.

However, ZIPS does do a good job with hitters and unfortunately the Pirates come up pretty short in 2007 projections on offense according to ZIPS. The current eight starters including Nady, Paulino, Duffy, Castillo, Bay, Wilson, Bautista, and Sanchez project out to a .274 BA.. some ten points lower than their production in 2006. Realize that the ZIPS predictions are based on median guidelines and some players will regress and some will improve.

ZIPS also sees a tad fewer K’s and walks in 2007 which is also a bit disturbing since we were so rank in both categories in 2006.

ZIPS had a correlation r-value of .524, between actual 2006 performance and their 2006 ZIPS projections, for seven of our eight potential position starters for 2007 (not including Nady) so they weren’t off so much it makes you think their estimates are worthless. Just not highly accurate. Unfortunately with the buildup of nuclear waste in the NLCD this year, I suspect the downturn ZIPS is picking up is justified. Perhaps even more of a downturn is warranted.

I’ll let you play around with the projections to get your own gut feelings because my stomach is upset just looking at them, to be quite honest.

Pirate fans keep hearing how Dave Littlefield wants to acquire one big bat – a lefty McThump, if you will. I continue to hear whispers that LaRoche will be a Pirate very soon – perhaps sooner than we all might think.

The Pirates ended up the year with a team batting average of .263 which was the best average we have had since the 2003 Reggie Sanders/Kenny Lofton days.

Because of that BA, I researched our schedule the last three years and ran correlation plots on our winning percentage against each team we played vs. that teams ERA at the end of the year for each of the three years, and here is what I found:

2004 r = 0.162
2005 r = 0.287
2006 r = 0.611

The overall r-value over the three years was just 0.273 meaning there was very little relationship between the opposing team’s final year ERA on our winning percentage against that team over the three year period.

But look at 2006.. 0.611 is a very high correlation. In fact, it is extremely high.

When you start seeing r-values that high it typically means opposing pitchers are dominating your batters more often than not. The most obvious reason that the correlation was so high in 2006 was due to the age of our batters. We’re young and inexperienced. And in 2007 we will still be young and inexperienced.

Now Littlefield wants to add some more youth with a Kotchman or LaRoche type of player. Without adding additional veterans to the lineup, that r-value will remain high again in 2007.. and probably still be in the 0.500 range in 2008 as we add even more youth like McCutchen.

I know – I hear you. A lot of you remember a great second half last year and want to believe that will translate into something good in 2007. Even I was hoping for "Good Times" in 2007 — before I did 30 hours of recent research.

I’ve heard many different reasons why the Pirates did so good in the second half from better defensive efficiency to better pitching to more clutch hitting.

I’m sure all of that played a part.

But so did other factors like who we played and whether that team was already out of contention, were easily sailing to win their division, or just wanted to get rid of a manager. And then there was Freddy’s hunt which surely fired our players up some too.

But consider this.. after the all star break the Pirates only played .400 ball on the road but yet swept four of ten series they played in Pittsburgh.

Four of ten.

Trivia time — when was the last time the Pirates swept four of ten series at home in the second half? Good luck finding the answer.

Do you know what the odds are of the Pittsburgh Pirates sweeping four of ten series after the ASG at home are? Off the charts.. probably in the same order of you winning the Mega Millions lottery next week.

Now are we to believe this roster can do that again in 2007 during the entire course of the year? Or, take it one step backwards.. are we to believe the Pirates can win a majority of their series over the year in 2007?

Fat chance.

Or was it more than a coincidence that the Pirates accomplished a feat on the same magnitude as a 100-year flood zone being flooded after hosting the ASG?

Probably.

But maybe not. Don’t forget, during that same period of time the Astros beat the Pirates in 9 of 10 games and the Padres swept us. Heck, even the Cubs took 3 of 7 from us at Wrigley and the Reds took 4 of 6 at Great American from us. Hmm..

Next years schedule presents some pretty tough bumps to grind out. For instance, over the first 45 games we play one stretch of 33 games with only two days off. True, only 14 of those games are away from home which helps tremendously. Unfortunately, our average winning percentage against the teams we play at PNC during that period of time is below .450. That’s not good.

Nor is it good that many of our starters are sinkerball pitchers who can’t get sink in cold weather. Their arms need to be toast before they will see a bite on their 2-seam fastballs and that won’t happen until well into the year. Just like last year.

Then we go another 26 games with just one day off – half of those games are on the road against the Yankees, Cards, and Reds, and the other half are at home against teams like the White Sox, Rangers, and Padres — teams we’ve only won 4 of 13 games against the last 3 years.

Then we get a break – 28 games with 8 days off including the ASG sandwiched in the middle. Then we do a few 6 days on and one day off type of series and then the last motherlode.. 28 games with one day off mostly against NLCD teams with a couple of road trips thown in for good measure.

I mean, we do not have a friendly schedule. And our winning percentage the last three-years is just .415 against the clubs that we play next year.

But we’re supposed to believe we can play like the last half of 2006? Even with adding one little bat?

Pleassee… I’m sorry.. I don’t buy it. I wanted to.. I talked like I did because there had to be some hope. But when you start running the models..

.. 2007 is not looking good.

Now combine all this with our potential rotation problems I mentioned the other day and, well, the Pirates could end up being a bigger whipping post to most teams than we were last year.. especially with all the upgrades in the divison.

Dave Littlefield acknowledged in his webcast the other day that he was looking toward 2008 and 2009, but I don’t see any reason for him to see anything different then than what we see today because there is nothing special to see with only one impact player in the farm system and he’s playing over his head in AA right now.

I’m going to go back to my original thought this winter that DL would have been better off making a bold move by trading Bay off for 0-3′s than to play the ‘I think we can win with what we have’ game and potentially allow Bay’s value to fall.

The other bold move I think he should make is moving Gorzelanny since his profile doesn’t match up to PNC Park and he is healthy right now where a team would take a chance on him.

Gorzelanny, Gonzo, Bay, and a couple of our younger relievers who have perceived value should all be dealt off for the best 0-3 packages we can get to build around McCutchen and company.

I think it’s time to stop the fantasy game — we have to break the dysfunction. Now is the time before we draft in 2007 so we know who to fill in with.