By Jake, on October 30, 2009, at 10:56 pm | 11 comments
A few random thoughts about the Pirates move to Bradenton.
For one, you won’t see this kind of coverage in Bradenton, that’s for sure. The News Advance was typically blunt and to the point in its coverage of the Hillcats over the years but many view the Bradenton Herald as nothing more than a publication for retirees. Down the road is the more progressive Sarasota Herald Tribune (a part of the New York Times Co) where I have some good friends working and I’ve been told they are already in the planning stage to cover the Bucs games in Bradenton. I wouldn’t call them excited, but they seem willing to embrace the club as ‘their’ team since the Reds are gone. A few locals I spoke to down in the area told me they remain Reds fans but would attend some games nonetheless. A few years from now they will probably be following the Bucs instead, I’d guess.
Secondly, the organization is going to save some long-term money with this move which is a good thing even though it’s under the command and control of the Nutting family.
Thirdly, while I suspected the other day there might be a lower rate of injury with pitchers in the consistently warmer climate, I was advised today that isn’t the case and, if anything, the opposite may be true. I was surprised to hear that and will follow-up by asking a few folks who do that kind of research what they think.
My overall impression from the locals and media I contacted: it’s all good.
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Carlos Garcia was named first base coach and infield instructor today. First let me congratulate Garcia for the appointment and wish him well since he will have his hands full right out of the shoot.
The fact the Pirates went internally to fill this slot isn’t too much of a surprise but many thought Tony Beasley would be get a shot instead of Garcia being promoted over him. Perhaps that spells out Beasley’s future with the Bucs? Perhaps not. Maybe better put – the fact Neal Huntington seemed to make this ‘Cleveland’ pick might spell out more about JR’s future than Beasley’s? Maybe not.
Garcia, 42, spent the last two seasons as Pittsburgh’s Minor League Infield Coordinator. Prior to joining the Pirates, he spent three years (2005-07) as Seattle’s Third Base Coach and Major League Infield Instructor, where he made an immediate impact as the Mariners led the American League in fielding percentage in 2005, while also finishing in the top five in 2006 and 2007.
Immediate impact? I’m sorry but I don’t buy Pirates.com stretching the truth, at least in my book. Instead, I think adding Richie Sexson at 1B and Adrian Beltre at 3B is what made the immediate impact on the 2005, 2006, and 2007 seasons since they already had a strong defensive club. It wasn’t Garcia. If anything, Garcia was along for the ride plus he was singled out by some Mariners bloggers as a below average third base coach all three years.
Ironically, Garcia wasn’t even picked up by Huntington until December of 2007 meaning even Huntington passed him over to replace Perry Hill who had tentatively agreed to accept the position for the 2008 season but then ended up needing to stay close to family for the year instead. If you remember, Huntington hired Lou Frazier instead but handed the infield duties to Beasley. Garcia was then named the Bucs minor league infield coordinator about a month later.
Not only that but let’s take a different look around at what this move does to us in our bowels. So far our pitching coordinator was run out of the organization (Troy Buckley) in-season, our top player development consultant Rich Donnelly was run out also during the season (last week or so), and now we’re moving out our infield coordinator. That’s three of the most the most important roles in player development that, once again, will need to be filled (and I’m not even counting a couple of field staff that can’t wait for their contracts to end).
We have become consistently unstable in player development. Very unstable. Maybe that’s to be expected considering the ‘cultural’ changes and all, but man, come on.. there’s wayyyy too much turnover.
Anyway, so what should we expect from a guy who is going from being seemingly passed over (or rejecting our initial offer if one was indeed ever made) in 2007 to being our infield coordinator to now having to direct changes after infield-guru Hill walked out the door? Obviously if 29 other clubs didn’t want him over the two years he was in our minor league system then I suspect we shouldn’t be expecting too much from the man. But let’s figure anyway…
LaRoche is pretty athletic so if he’s moved to second next July he’ll probably be fine once he figures out footwork, throwing lanes, and league batters over a year (a lot of work there), Cedeno’s footwork was horrid until Hill seemed to get him uncrossed so I’m not so sure Garcia will have much left there to polish (haha), Young is going to be defensive trash no matter who coaches him so no big deal (LOL), Jones is not a bad defensive first baseman so there isn’t much to worry about there other than Doumit’s future in a platoon catching role while playing first (OMG), and when Alvarez comes up mid-season 2010 he’d be eating rawhide for a while no matter who was coaching him so probably no issue there either (.890 FPCT is .890, huh?).
In other words, you can believe the Pirates position on the difference between Hill and Garcia on paper doesn’t amount to much considering where we are right now, but I’m not so sure that’s a very realistic short-term vision. We’ll come back and relook at this next July.
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Would you offer Freddy Sanchez $12M/2, with his health history, to play in the NLWD? I sure wouldn’t have.
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I’ll be off Saturday night and will return Sunday eve.
By Jake, on October 29, 2009, at 9:29 pm | 14 comments
Quick post this eve as I’m traveling –
A reader asked in yesterday’s thread:
What is the over/under on Jake being able to go at least two weeks without writing a sentence advocating the demotion/trade/position switch for Ryan Doumit and/or another starting catcher?
I’ll put him out of his misery with this post. The Bucs have been discussing Doumit playing some first base next year. More on this over the next week after I speak to a few more people.
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It looks like we found our minimum wage situational lefty for 2010. Look for us to grab a few more minimum wage pros so that the front office can use that ever infamous statement: ‘there will be plenty of competition for positions this spring … ‘
By Jake, on October 28, 2009, at 10:28 pm | 11 comments
The big news of the day is the potential move of the Bucs high-1A affiliation from Lynchburg to Sarasota and, ultimately, to Bradenton that has been talked about for more than a year.
I personally love the move for numerous reasons, the most obvious being the consistently warmer climate which should help reduce pitching injuries over the long-term. Not all the facilities around the Florida State League are that great, playing baseball with temperatures at 90 degrees at 7 PM and a humidity level of 80% means field temps will feel well over 100 degrees in many games, and riding busses up the I-4 corridor leave a lot to be desired during the peak summer travel season in Florida, but I’m guessing the players will be happier and it sure will be easier to find good field staff down there.
A positive move in my book. Now I’ll have to sit back and figure out why Nutting allowed this – there has to be some positive cash flow out of the deal, huh?
There’s no reply from the Bucs before I posted this. I’ll update the post if they reply to my e-mails but I suspect it’s much too early for anyone to acknowledge it yet.
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Want to know how we can save 50+ runs on defense next year? I’m guessing you already know the answer … right, remove Ryan Doumit as the full-time catcher and replace him with a defensive oriented receiver, hopefully one that knows the league’s batters.
Sabermetric types will tell you there is no possible way replacing Doumit will reduce runs allowed by 50 or more runs – maybe 10. Maybe. Well, I’m not in that camp. I’ve long believed that a catcher influences the quality of balls in play more significantly than anyone realizes and in Doumit’s case it’s way easy to see. None of the defensive metrics can account for a noisy catcher, none of them can account for a catcher with a poor rapport with the men in blue, and none of them can account for pitchers who just don’t like throwing to a particular guy (and please don’t even attempt to throw CERA at me because I’m not a believer with limited time year-to-year that Doumit has been available).
Not only that but Ryan Doumit has a very strong personality which is likely to only be harnessed on club with a lot of veterans and leadership, some suggest. He’ll thrive in that environment and other clubs are sure to know that.
Now, does our front office have enough guts to move him? That’s another question entirely. Coonelly and Huntington would take a massive PR hit so the return would have to somewhat smooth over the fan base. But that’s just it – Doumit had a horrific year from numerous injuries and a poor offensive showing — can we even deal him for what he is really worth?
I say yes. He’s an injury risk behind the dish and a DH when he doesn’t catch so we’re not going to get a ton for him anyway, but he does have a very sweet contract.. one that makes it pretty easy to deal him.
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Search and Seizure in the Steroids Era: skip down to the latest gab on the United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing case. A very remarkable decision.
By Jake, on October 27, 2009, at 8:13 pm | 20 comments
The Pirates Blueprint - words in black are the Pirates, the words in red are my spoof.
The Pirates have made tremendous progress in their plan to build an organization that can compete on a consistent basis. Since new leadership assumed control of the Club less than 3 years ago, they have focused their energy and resources into the following core priorities:
1. Solidify core operations : The Pirates have made significant investments to solidify the core baseball operations systems, including adding more scouts, improving the evaluation system and improving the Club’s facilities.
Jake’s take: That statement is true. Pirates ownership has indeed made significant investments in baseball operations to insure the core Nutting cash flow remains healthy for years to come. As for facility improvements, let’s all send a nice cheer to the State of Florida for the funds to renovate Bradenton, pat yourself on the back for paying that extra 5% on every ticket you bought since 2001 for improvements at PNC Park, and please don’t forget George Steinbrenner’s welfare fund contributions for our new facilities in Latin America. Bravo! (PS, we won’t talk about the reduction in the average number of years of professional baseball scouting experience across the new scouts added.)
2. New approach to player development: We have completely rebuilt our player development system in the way we instruct, train and mold our players at both the Major and Minor League levels.
Jakes’ take: That statement is true. The Pirates have indeed completely rebuilt their player development system most notably in the way they brainwash their employees (players, coaches, rovers, etc) at both the Major and Minor League levels. In fact, the new system has been so well received that some have jumped ship in the middle of their contracts to get away from it, quite a few more can’t wait to run like hell from it, others have been run out of the organization because of it, and quite a few outside the game laugh daily about it.
3. Acquire talent through trades: In order to fill all Levels of our system with difference-making talent, we aggressively pursued talent in the trade market, netting 166 years of control.
Jake’s take: That statement is true. The Pirates did, in fact, clean house of nearly every single contract where they had to pay more than minimum wage thereby, once again, insuring the core Nutting cash flow remains healthy for years to come. As for the value of the ‘difference-making’ talent the Pirates have added, see Jake’s take under #5 below. Now please say a prayer with me for each of the players caught in the Pirates control net.
4. Aggressive draft investment and strategy: We have committed to signing high-level, impact talent in the First-Year Player Draft. To do so we have implemented aggressive draft strategies.
Jake’s take: That statement is true. The Pirates did, in fact, state a commitment to sign high-level impact talent in the First-Year Player Draft. Unfortunately outside of Pedro Alvarez, the fans are still waiting for that commitment to be implemented in the First-Year player Draft, as well as any real commitment in Latin America outside of buying land and building a building from money handed to them by other organizations.
5. Built the foundation: We have made significant progress in our plan to build a winning organization and are a much stronger organization than we have been in years.
Jake’s take: That statement is true. Sadly, the Pirates really do believe they have made significant progress in building a winning organization. The only problem is, the organization has been less competitive with them in control than at any time in decades.
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Kudos to the Pirates for throwing some humor our way during the ‘reason for parity’ World Series. I urge you to download the Pirates blueprint and read it because it’s chock full of imaginary fun.
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In 2009, the Pirates had five major corporate sponsors according to Forbes. Can you name them?
PNC Financial, which has a twenty-year stadium naming right agreement, Highmark (insurance) , Anheuser-Busch, West Penn Allegheny Health System, and … ??
Trib Total Media.
Think about it.
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Speaking of Forbes, a reader from Miami asked how the dickens the Pirates could claim to be $100M in debt, as reported by Forbes earlier in the year. My answer was simple, albeit a guess: $13.5M owed in deferred salaries to Giles and Kendall and the rest either new debt created from Nutting buying out limited partners and/or their financial obligation to the URA if the franchise should be moved before 2030.
Interestingly, Forbes has reported that the Pirates have only paid down $10M in debt over the last four years. Whether or not you chose to believe all that is up to you but it is noteworthy that even Forbes seems to be taken in with the amount of debt this club appears to have.
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The Astros, seemingly convinced the Pirates’ blueprint is the way to ski downhill faster, have hired their own virgin manager in Brad Mills of the Red Sox.
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If Frank McCourt doesn’t want Jamie, she’s certainly welcome to come East and drop stupid money on Ogden Nutting to buy the Pirates since nobody in this town seems willing to go there.
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Here’s some great out-of-the-box ideas for changing the game from Tom Bone at the Bluefield Daily Telegragh.
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Name the most traveled distance in American sports.
By Jake, on October 26, 2009, at 8:01 pm | 5 comments
Guess who is doing a chicken dance now?
Before we begin, let’s all give some love to Dave Littlefield who made the McCutchen selection, a little more love to Jeff Banister who Cutch singled out as helping him the most in the system, more love to McCutchen’s pop for standing up against the ruthless men of baseball in defense of his son, and even a little more love to a Georgia training facility that nobody ever hears about.
Oh, and sure enough give some love to Andrew McCutchen for all his hard work.
After all that, and if you still have any love left, then you can slap Neal Huntington on the back if you want for bringing this young man up a year too early giving him the chance to win this award.
Congratulations Andrew McCutchen!
Now let the debate start – did Baseball America choke on the award? Of course not – it’s an independent award and as far as they were concerned, he was the best. End of story.
But as badly as I want to put McCutchen there for the BBWAA ROY award, I don’t have him at the top of my card .. I have him third behind Tommy Hanson (who easily wins it all for me) and JA Happ. But that’s me. Garrett Jones? I had him 6th overall. But don’t get me wrong – McCutchen certainly earned this award by doing what he did on a struggling team and I have to believe that’s partly the reason BA went with him.
No matter, Cutch won BA’s and has to be one of the top three or four on every writer’s card so he has a good chance. Probably not enough PR love being that it’s the Pirates, but we’ll wait and see.
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Tyler Yates declares free agency. No sense talking about how bad this deal stunk from the onset and how I wish the young Redmond was still around.
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Mark this date down: April 5, 2010 — opening day at PNC against the Dodgers. Now write my prediction down:
Will Ryan Doumit be the starting catcher? Nope. Jaramillo? Nope. Diaz? Nope.
By Jake, on October 25, 2009, at 7:16 pm | 17 comments
The Federal Trade Commission has issued new guidelines for bloggers which require us to disclose any “material connection” to products which we openly endorse.
The only products that may stand to qualify over the years at Bucco Blog has been Major League Baseball and the Pittsburgh Pirates and their affiliates so I need to reveal any compensation I have directly received from those companies.
Here’s the list: – - – - -
Right, I have received nothing myself. I have received numerous gifts in the mail over the years including tickets, books, DVDs, golf passes, airline tickets, hotel accommodations, cash, and a bunch of other trinkets from numerous vendors around/within the game, but in each case I sent the item back on advice of counsel.
However because there has been some indirect connections, I’ve been advised that I should disclose them just to be sure I stay within the guidelines. The Pittsburgh Pirates provided tickets to one game in 2009 to a friend of mine who is a retired professional baseball player and who was interested in speaking to them about becoming an associate scout, and in 2008 another club, which I’m told can remain anonymous since I never write about them anyway, provided two tickets to a friend of mine who has a future interest in ownership.
It’s always been my intent to remain neutral in my coverage of the game and will remain that way.
By Jake, on October 24, 2009, at 11:11 pm | Comments are closed
You can’t be too sure about the standards applied, for instance, by the Pittsburgh Pirates. If you trade every established player you have, this doesn’t appear to be a Vince Lombardi-like commitment to victory. But you can say that among the current group of elite teams, nobody is happily settling for second best. — Michael Bauman, MLB.com
Bauman’s article was more about organizational attitude and a bit on parity than which teams are elite, but he certainly questioned the commitment level of the Pittsburgh Pirates plan. Fair enough – blowing up the roster and starting over isn’t exactly something Vince Lombardi would probably want to be a part of.
Perry Hill either, for that matter.
But Bauman’s message runs deeper than I believe he intended. For one thing, he said: ‘If you trade every established player you have’ … which, of course, the Pirates didn’t do. And two and more importantly for this post and my latest theme, he seems to mock the Pirates short-term plan .. sorry Mr. Milledge, Mr. Jones, Mr. Morton, Mr. LaRoche, Mr. Young, Mr. Cedeno, Mr. Ohlendorf, et al. A team that consists of your type of talent can’t possibly be considered ‘elite’ in this game and, therefore, settles to be second best.
I won’t argue the fact that every one of those players aren’t established major league ball players with credentials akin to Alex Rodriguez, and I won’t argue the fact that group of players lost a boatload of games, but do you think for one second Neal Huntington considers those players less than elite?
If he does, then why did he trade for them?
The answer to that question is going to roll off your tongue fast, probably too fast: because Huntington needed to replace the talent in Pittsburgh that he shipped out. But does that make any sense at all? I mean, why trade an apple with a worm hole for a return that eventually nets you an apple with a worm hole? Gorzelanny for Morton; McLouth for Milledge; Snell for Ohlendorf; Grabow for Hanrahan; Sanchez for Young; Wilson for Cedeno; and so on, and so forth.
Ah, I see the light go off in your noodle and you are going to tell me that we also obtained financial flexibility and a few more apples with some worm holes that may become edible down the road. I know you want to say it, so go ahead – we also had to ‘restock’ our minor league system talent. I see .. restocking with apples with worms from all our trades makes more sense to you than restocking with an infusion of new talent like, oh, say, Miguel Sano, Aroldis Chapman, or Yusei Kikuchi?
I don’t buy it.
No, I think the possible reason we traded apples with worm holes for apples with worm holes is closer to our noses than we all think – that Neal Huntington views many of the new crop of apples as worm-free even though some of us only see a different bag filled with the same old thing - apples full of worms.
I suppose that takes us full circle back to our post the other day where we asked others around the game to define the ‘elite talent’ phrase. I guess it’s to be expected that Huntington and his gurus have overvalued some of the talent we acquired down the road since it’s a common mistake in this game when you are limited to the trades you can make. If that’s true, then we should also expect that some of the talent acquired might have been underrated. Argenis Diaz is one that quickly comes to mind as a possibility.
Bauman may believe that our Bucs are settling for second best, but I’m not so sure Neal Huntington would agree with him.
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Talk around the club is that Jose Tabata is going to be the heir to the thrown in left. If so, where does that leave Milledge since he doesn’t have a right field arm? Trade bait?
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Pete Vuckovich and newly installed Assistant Pitching Coach (is this the first time in the game for this on a 90 loss club??) Ray Searage were together with the troubled Brewers in the mid to late 80′s and you have to wonder how close of friends they are. I assume they are tight. Vuch has come a long way since hammering me here a few years back considering he’s one of the survivors in the Huntington takeover.
Is it possible Searage is one reason why he’s survived? Just kidding Vuch.
Let’s hope Searage takes some animated training from Vuchovich this winter and that the players are then told that if they don’t perform, Searage will be sent to the mound instead of Kerrigan.
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I updated yesterday’s post to show the trendlines of some of the other clubs we are playing in the minors. Just three clubs have downward trends – the Pirates, Astros, and Braves with the Pirates claiming the cellar.
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Tim Neverett sucks as a play-by-play man. In fact, I’d rather listen to 162 games of John Wehner.
End of story.
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One upset accountant uses Ryan Doumit’s 2009 pay and performance as an example of why executive pay cuts don’t make sense.
Anybody else wonder if he holds the books for some of those executives?
By Jake, on October 24, 2009, at 1:06 am | 4 comments
UPDATED.
The name of the game is scoring more runs than you give up because that’s how you win baseball games.
Neal Huntington can take credit for at least one positive in the Pirates system in 2009 - the ratio of runs allowed to runs scored was reduced from near franchise high levels in 2008 at every level. Some might call that a remarkable job, all thing considered. Others wonder how the heck he allowed the system to tank so far in 2008.
But, whatever..
In the chart below I simply took runs scored per 9 innings and subtracted runs allowed per nine innings to get the difference each year and then plotted it at each league level. ( team RS/9 – RA/9 = run diff )
It’s not a pretty sight. Not in 2007, not in 2008, and certainly not in 2009. Big picture? If we are moving forward in this regard, it’s at a snail’s pace. Considering we are a rebuilding club, you logically expected to see progression forward from 1A (many of Huntington’s first draft class) to High 1A between 2008 and 2009 and, sure enough, it’s there from a -1.3 run difference in 2008 at 1A to 0.1 run difference in 2009 in high 1A.
In fact, the 2009 high 1A positive run value difference is the first time that has been achieved in our system below 3A since Altoona in 2006 when a bunch of guys 26 – 30 years old you probably don’t remember the names of all seemed to have career years at the same time, and they rolled up a scant 4.2 runs allowed average per game type of year. This year at least the age of the players was appropriate for the league making it a legitimate honor even if they were absolutely blown out in the second half (28-42).
Still, kudos to Huntington, Stark, and their rovers and field staff – they made it happen at one hop. It’s a small win for the fans. Very small, but still there. Now the million dollar question looms – will it continue forward to 2A in 2010 and, more importantly, will we see additional movement forward?
Anyway, the sad part about that chart above is that it’s all negative numbers, has been in negative numbers for years, and remains in negative numbers today despite two solid drafts. In fact, the two years Huntington and Stark have been in control of the system have yielded the highest combined run deficit across this organization since Bonifay days. Part of it is explained off by the level of talent they took control of, but that doesn’t explain it all by far. There’s a lot of work to be done yet.. a lot of work.
As a fan, I need to start seeing each club consistently improve year-by-year against their division opponents. It’s that simple. One ‘elite talent’ in Alvarez won’t win us a division – it takes a whole team. 2010 is going to show us if this FO is improving the system. Not in words like ‘we’re stronger and deeper today than we were’ but whether those ‘deeper guys’ are getting it done in the trenches.
Or not.
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Edit 10-24 at 1PM — lots of people e-mailed wondering how many of the other clubs were doing in the same leagues so I threw together a fast trendline chart to show you plotting only 1A, high 1A, and 2A runs scored minus runs allowed differences per team, per year.
Don’t look at the length of the trendline because it’s only determined by the number of affiliates that club has in the same leagues with the Pirates. Instead, look at the general direction of the trendline to get a feel for their system as each trendline starts at 2005 and runs through 2009. Not perfect science by any means but it does tend to show you how much better the talent is than in our system overall. Also notice the Pirates are at the very bottom, notice that only the Astros, Pirates, and Braves systems are not moving in an upward trend, notice the Nats have come out a major hole to being respectable, and look at the Giants and Yankees who always draft well behind us. That’s really embarrassing.
By Jake, on October 22, 2009, at 7:15 pm | 7 comments
I’m going to be out of the office Thursday eve so I put together a few collectibles I’ve found around the web for you to listen to or download if you like. Right click the link and click Save As if you would like a copy. Enjoy.
