By Jake, on November 30, 2009, at 9:21 pm |
Planning on spending a week in Bradenton next March 15th or so? If yes, act fast on some of these deals:
Motel 6 $199.99 ($28.67 per day week starting 3/15) motel room with fridge and micro in Bradenton
Days Inn Bradenton $483.29 standard motel room
Holiday Inn Express Bradenton $983 standard motel room
Haley’s Motel $699 Efficiency on Anna Maria Island
Bali Hai Motel $575 1B condo on Holmes Beach
Island Real Estate $995 2B 2B condo on Holmes Beach
Pelican Post $940 2B older Suite
Queen’s Gate $1450 2B house with garage
White Sands $1250 2B 2B on the beach at Anna Maria
Cedar Cove Resort $1580 2B on the beach at Anna Maria Island
Don Cesar $2100 King Suite on the beach – St. Petersburg Beach (30 min away from the park)
Allegiant Air $118 roundtrip – Toledo, Ohio to Orlando, FL
AirTran $205 Pittsburgh to Orlando RT ($335 to Sarasota)
Jet Blue $275 roundtrip Pittsburgh to Orlando RT ($387 to Sarasota)
American Car Rental in Orlando $280 weekly rate compact car
Orbitz last minute deals (usually around $20 per day) in Orlando
Dollar is usually the cheaper one in Florida
So a week on the beach watching spring training would be about $1k if you fly and cheaper if you split with another couple.
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Bucs just signed Wilfredo “If they don’t let me walk them, I’ll let them take me yard” Ledezma on a MiLB deal and gave him an invite to spring training. Yawn.
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Bucs said to be looking at soft-tosser Justin Duchscherer. Yawn. Later this week we’ll hear we’re in on Tom Gordon, Tomo Ohka, and Ken Takahashi too. OMG
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General manager Neal Huntington admitted it was a risk to remove Jeff Karstens from the 40-man roster on Nov. 20 and therefore give other teams the opportunity to snatch him off waivers. — Neal Huntington
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Huntington has obviously been sucking down too much holiday cheer or he’s really lost touch with player value in the game.
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The Mets are said to be in on Bako. That’s a shame because he calls a decent game and has a cannon and would have been a nice backup to Jaramillo if we absolutely refuse to play the free agent game or make a deal to get a better catcher than Doumit. Is Chavez still available?
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Your 2016 Pittsburgh Pirates roster via the Nutting family.
By Jake, on November 29, 2009, at 10:43 pm |
The worst franchise in pro sports:
2009: Pittsburgh Pirates .. Tom Jones, St. Petersburg Times
2008: Pittsburgh Pirates .. Dave Golokhov, Fox Sports/AskMen
2007: Pittsburgh Pirates .. Larry Dobrow, CBS Sports
What’s the difference between Dobrow’s annual ‘I hate the Bucs’ hammering, the 2008 award, and the one we just received this year?
Not much, you say? Think again.
Not only has Tom Jones been writing sports longer than the twenty-two years John Perrotto has covered the Pirates, that piece he just wrote is in one of the nation’s better newspapers which also happens to be in one of the other MLB markets.
Ouch.
Now consider some of his words:
Whenever they do draft and develop a star, they end up trading him. They’ve become almost a farm system for the big-market teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox. They’ve gone 17 seasons without a winning record, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see them go at least another 17. (emphasis supplied by Bucco Blog)
Thank you Mr. Jones – that’s good stuff. He’s right .. it wouldn’t be surprising considering the way we’re headed.
After the 2007 season the Pittsburgh Pirates had the 26th best farm system in baseball, according to Baseball America. Now after two years of intense salary dumping, trades, and other giveaways under the new regime, Jim Callis told me where we are ranked:
I really haven’t tried to break the organizations down vs. each other, but 20th or so is probably fair. They’ve added some depth but lost McCutchen. Really hard to say — I haven’t been impressed with many of the NL systems I’ve edited so far.
The only player who has graduated to a full-time job from our 2007 system is Andrew McCutchen and he was replaced in the system by Pedro Alvarez after the 2008 draft. In other words, after Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly gutted more than half of our 25-man roster they inherited by trading 14 players for 26 and netting 131 years of control, and after spending the most money in the game in the first year draft the last two years mostly on risky high school arms and Alvarez, we’ve barely moved up the stocked talent ladder.
Barely moved.
I hear you starting to form an argument – Baseball America ranks organizations by established impact talent instead of trying to decipher potential upside of, say, high school pitchers just taken in the last draft who may or may not ever amount to anything. That’s fair – I think BA does a good job of intermixing the two myself, but let’s take your argument one step further.
I pressed Callis where the Pirates would rank today if they had taken Maztek, Wheeler, or Green over Sanchez last year, signed Scheppers in 2008, and inked Sano this year:
Maybe the top ten.
And that is the crux of my argument here – we can’t afford to be making these kind of mistakes. Argue all you want that Scheppers wasn’t healthy or was only throwing 80% in his bullpen in front of Huntington, argue all you want about Rob Plummer’s tough policy on Sano, Rene Gayo’s flagrant aggressiveness with the family, or whether or not we knew he was 16 or 21, and argue all you want about the merits of filling a position of need instead of taking the best available in the first year draft. Those might be valid points.
My point is that we didn’t get take the right risks – we failed to give Plummer upfront what Sano wanted, we spent $4 million on Ramon Vazquez instead of using Bixler and taking a $1.5 million risk on Scheppers, and I don’t even have to tell you how ludicrous it was to take Sanchez over impact players in last year’s draft simply to fill an organizational hole. Failing to take those risks has left us just as deep in the hole as we were two and one-half years ago, although you could also argue the Nuttings can now field cheaper rosters for several seasons with all the years of control we gained.
We’re not getting the job done.
Where we failed – instead of confronting the fan base and telling them that there would be a six-year rebuilding stage starting in late 2007 regardless of the fallout, we focused on supplementing our short-term major league roster in our acquisitions instead of acquiring significantly higher rated talent in the lower levels of the organization aiding the long-term plan.
We failed to take the right risks.
That was a colossal error which the results from are just starting to be seen, like in BA”s organizational rankings. And while BA’s work isn’t proof-positive of anything, it’s the best information the fans have available. Ask Frank Coonelly – he cites them to us as well. And down the road it will be seen in mediocre win rates like we saw across our system last year because every other club in our division has something we don’t have – a better stocked farm system or money to burn.
We can’t continue these misses or what Tom Jones said above will happen – we’ll still be here 17 years from now wondering where it all went wrong.
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I am stunned that some of the Pittsburgh Pirates fan base participated in a chat at the Post-Gazette partially designed to give the newspaper a fleeting edge on what to put behind a pay wall to force the fans to pay for.
Why would anyone provide the means for another person to take money out of their pocket? D’uh. Maybe I’m just starting to understand the real reason the Pirates sold 1.6 million tickets last year.
I understand the industry is dying but instead of adapting they are trying to force change. What did I say last night happens when change is forced? That’s right, it inevitably fails. Counting on the remaining Pittsburgh Pirates fan base to help a newspaper survive is about as shaky a plan as it comes because you know who is going to beat them to the punch?
These guys, and these guys, and these guys, just to name a few.
Wake up people.
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Speaking of fluff that needs to go behind a pay wall so we don’t have to view it any more, what the hell was Smizik thinking in this piece? Maybe he should spend some of his time digging in Federal Street’s dumpsters instead since he’d probably get more information from that rat hole than he will from the Nuttings? Yeah baby, we need a pay wall up in Pittsburgh alright.
If it ‘aint fit to print, it ‘aint fit to read.
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Dejan reports we’re looking to add another Rule 5 pick.
Oh, happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So, Let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy times
Happy nights
Happy days
Are here again!
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Speaking of happier days:
PROFESSIONAL PITCHING LESSONS: Ex-Major League Baseball player with the Pittsburgh Pirates residing in Charleston [SC] available for pitching lessons. Contact Brian Rogers, ***-***-****.
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One happy dude. He loves the attention, obviously. But good for him, he’s earned the right to have it.
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Like the NEWS section above? Wish it had different links, more links, different stuff? It’s simply an RSS aggregator and many of the links are quiet right now like with our affiliates. But give me your ideas for a one-stop Pirates news hole.
How about the new comment rating system? I think it’s lame myself but several folks have asked for it and I’m willing to try it out. Let me know what you think.
By Jake, on November 28, 2009, at 10:29 pm |
At Thanksgiving dinner I was laughed at for being a Pirates fan by dozens of family members who mostly belong to the Atlanta Braves family. After I explained why I remain a die-hard fan, one philosophical member of the family asked me: what right do I have to expect change? I immediately went off on the Jason Stark/Bill Madden angle that because ownership was doing better than the fans were, I indeed had such a right.
Then it hit me what he meant — I had no such right.
That revelation finally explained to me the continuing paradox why hardly anybody seemed to care whether the Pittsburgh Pirates endured seventeen consecutive losing seasons or thirty-seven, whether the Nutting’s pocket $14 million each year or $40 million, or whether the Pirates drew two million through the gate or two hundred. Instead, they laugh at us for continuing to attach ourselves to an inferior product.
And they are right.. as fans we can’t force change, we can only become the change.
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We’re being linked to lots of third-tier names right now in the rumor mill and I don’t expect us to sign any of them. Not only do they degrade an already degraded roster, guys like Ankiel just take at bats away from prospects who at least have more upside left in their career. Now I’m not saying we won’t sign any of these guys because Huntington has shown us he’ll do the unexpected, but there isn’t a name we’re linked to right now that makes any sense at all.
And no, I don’t think we’re in on Mike Gonzalez albeit he’s the one ‘cheaper/better’ guys ($14M/3??) we badly need the services of. I mean, we were leading after seven innings in 61 games last year and blew a NL high 10 of them (6 at PNC!!). Worth it all day long if we don’t have to give up our second round pick to boot.
Forget about the rest of the names popping up – we’re not going to add a downhill trending aging veteran to our roster to take at bats from Moss who has more potential upside. Stay focused – shortstop is priority one, then a defensive catcher, and lastly bullpen help are our most pressing needs.
With the winter meetings upon us expect to hear Doumit’s name all over the place because he’s already out there once again.
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So Perrotto echoed what I said a few weeks ago that Duke might get dealt this year? I mean, as if we didn’t see that coming.
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Matt McSwain just got back from his honeymoon. Congrats Matt!
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How odd, Selig announced that he’s retiring after the 2012 season and one insider I spoke to said he didn’t expect to see Frank Coonelly’s name even whispered by the owners. “Not a prayer.”
No wonder Coonelly took over the role of Mother Nutting.
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Are you sick and tired of being spammed with pop under ads every time you go to any of the MLB.com or minorleagebaseball.com’s websites? If you are, then hop over to Casale Media and OptMD and opt out at both to stop the ads from appearing. Hilariously they feed you a warning that says:
WARNING: by choosing to opt out you are taking an active position not to support the publishers whose websites you visit and whose content you consume free of charge. In doing so you threaten the long term viability of their operations.
Screw them.
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Speaking of money-making schemes, Barrons reports that more pay walls are going up this time around some of MediaNews Group’s content and they specifically mention York, PA.
Along the same lines, Dejan over at the Post-Gazette wants to know what it will take for you to pay for Pirates-related content over there.
Have you had a chance to check out the PG+ pay site yet? If so, what are ideas for what we can do Pirates-related there? And, if there were something there, what would it take to get you to sign up? (At the moment, the Pirates are the only major beat not covered at PG+.)
And a rumor on the street has KDKA considering hiring Perrotto to write behind a pay wall over there.
Screw all that.
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Along the same lines, if you have ever made a reservation through Orbitz then you were offered the opportunity to enter your e-mail address right before completing the transaction. If you entered it, then the credit card you used to make the purchase at Orbitz may have been used to bill you $9 to $12 per month every month until you finally caught it and yelled like hell at your bank. Cnet has a nice write-up on the scam via the Feds - it’s something you should read because quite a few major retailers are involved in the practice as you can see from the list below.
Screw them too.
By Jake, on November 26, 2009, at 12:42 pm |
By Jake, on November 24, 2009, at 10:45 pm |
By Jake, on November 23, 2009, at 1:55 am |
If you happen to have an RSS Cloud aggregator on your desktop, then you’ll benefit from some new software I added to the blog today which will allow you real-time updates. The change was necessary for syndication.
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New York Daily News columnist Bill Madden sent a second shot across the bow of the USS MLB that Admiral Selig seems to be limping toward dry dock. Fortunately for Selig the shot was wide of the MLB but ended up striking Captain Nutting square between the eyes on the USS Pittsburgh Pirates. Madden said in part (I’m putting all this in the blog because links dry up):
“Now on to Manfred, the Pirates and Boras. It seems this past week, Boras and Manfred got into a little hissing match over a column I wrote back in August which reported that the Pirates received a total of $75 million in revenue sharing and central fund monies (shared national TV, marketing, licensing, MLB Network and WEB site revenue) before they sold their first ticket.
Unbeknownst to me, Boras, with whom I have not exactly enjoyed a warm and fuzzy relationship through the years, threw those figures out last week, only to have Manfred, baseball’s VP of Labor Relations, fire back, saying: “He completely made those figures up,” adding that the Avenging Agent was living “in a fantasy land.” Manford also told Foxsports.com’s Ken Rosenthal that “no one club is getting $80 or $90 million in combined revenue sharing and Central Baseball funds,” even though the Florida Marlins, in fact, got $40 million from each, to top all teams with $80 million., according to my sources. This prompted Boras to counter: “There is factual merit to the facts Madden reported and that is why Rob didn’t address it in August. Why did it take him three months to comment on it?”
In the meantime, Pirates President Frank Coonelly insisted that the $35 million Central Fund figure Boras is using is “inaccurate” – and to that I must confess Coonelly is right. When I first reported the $75 million booty the Pirates received, I broke it down to $35 million in central fund monies and $40 revenue sharing. In fact, it was just the opposite, but the bottom line is, it still adds up to $75 million.“ (Also see: Madden’s August 1, 2009 warning shot article and his first true cannon shot August 15, 2009)
But according to Ken Rosenthal:
Coonelly, however, said the Pirates’ income from Major League Baseball was “well below” that $75 million figure. He said his club received substantially less than $40 million in revenue sharing last year, but declined to say what the specific numbers were.
Madden continued in his latest article:
And here is another figure Coonelly will probably want to refute: According to my sources, the Pirates were one of the teams to make a profit this year – approximately $14 million, which is not bad for a team with 99 losses and 17 straight losing seasons.
What we do know is Pirates chairman Bob Nutting is not re-investing his revenue sharing in payroll, although there are disturbing rumors in Pittsburgh that he’s using the Pirates’ money to subsidize the hemorrhaging at his Seven Springs Ski Resort in Champion, Pa.
I mentioned here back in early October that perceptions in the area were that Seven Springs was having problems, so Madden’s news on that subject isn’t new to me. Nor is it new news that the organization took home a sizeable profit because it has been doing so for several years based on all the written reports (about $60 million by my guess last five years) without any real backlash from the local media or fans (except my constant hounding, that is).
But what is new is that Philly lawyer Frank Coonelly has been blatantly called out as a liar by Rosenthal and Madden’s insinuations. That is the last thing in the world the Nutting clan want to see happen right now because it also calls their credibility to the mat at a time they appear headed for a ‘one year grab as much profit as possible in 2010′ run.
This is far from over as even my phone is ringing from investigative research types now so sit back and wait for the next round to be fired. In the meantime, don’t expect any changes in the way the Pirates go about their business. But I am very pleased to see national media types and some inside the game start to openly question the financial motives of Ogden and Robert Nutting. It’s long overdue since local media has become too soft on the subject.
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I’ve brought all this up before and I think it is worth mentioning again now, how do you think the players in our system (from Pittsburgh to Bradenton) feel after reading these types of reports in the national media? Think hard about it.
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If you look at the chart on the left you can see that, since Ryan Doumit joined the Pirates in June 2005, when he started the game as a catcher the team has a .390 winning percentage over 259 games. When Doumit wasn’t the starting catcher, the team winning percentage was .413. That’s a 0.023 percentage difference and if you multiply that times a 150 game season that we would expect Doumit to start as a catcher, having him start cost us 3.5 wins per year.
No, that’s not perfect science by any means considering the magnitude of other variables, but it does hint at value. Now look what happened when he started at first or in right – we played almost .500 baseball over 78 games and his ‘value’ jumped 15.5 wins the other way. Wow. Again, splitting 78 games up over several years is hardly providing us with credible results, but still, there you go. If you are Huntington, how do you pass the chance to test the theory further?
Now look at our starters.. when Duke took the mound to start a game the team winning percentage has been .392 since he joined the club. That is a negative 1/2 win per year off the team’s actual winning percentage since he joined the club while also assuming he makes 35 starts.
Maholm? Over 127 games his starts have resulted in a .465 team winning percentage on a club that has gone .405 since he’s been in Pittsburgh. Ohlendorf had a good year but only started 29 games so it will take another year of starts to get a better handle on his ‘value’ to the club. But for right now, he’s the highest of the four pitchers listed at +3.4 wins last year. Realize the +/- wins are based against the overall team winning percentage during the time that player has been with the club and assumes 35 starts.
I think it’s clear Maholm is our best starter by far based on his consistent results and I think it’s equally fair to say he would provide an average or better than average MLB team with middle of the order expected results.
None of this proves a thing of course but it does point us in a direction.. if Doumit is going to be dealt then Huntington needs to consider more value than what he has produced as a catcher while hampered with numerous injuries.
And Huntington also needs to consider moving Duke. in fact, I’d move Duke to AZ for Snyder in a heartbeat and pick up some change along the way (too late now that they got Heilman?). Then I’d keep Doumit and stick him in right knowing he’d be a minus defender out there but also expecting him to be better than the ‘-3.5 win’ guy he was behind the dish.
We can’t lose because if we get 150 games from Doumit playing right, we’ll go past his run production over 75 games that we are used to seeing from him thereby reducing his poor defensive contribution. Sure, it would be ugly but I have to believe somebody on our field staff can kick his butt into gear so he hustles in right. Or maybe it would be better to work him in an effective platoon with Jones at first and in right based on who is on the mound to minimize his exposure on defense?
Just ideas.
 
By Jake, on November 21, 2009, at 11:30 pm |
Neal Huntington is said to be fielding quite a few calls on either Duke or Maholm but he obviously hasn’t been hit over the head with an offer than knocked him out yet. That’s almost certain to change after Lackey, Lowe, and a few others are off the market one source around the game told me today. But which one will fly off the shelf? I’m told Maholm is more likely to get moved.
Why?
One obvious reason is that it clears more than $10 million off the books but perhaps more importantly, Maholm and his agent Bo McKinnis refused to give the Bucs one second of his free agent time which Huntington fought hard for. Toss in:
– three consecutive years of improving stats despite three different pitching coaches
– combined with a measly $0.75 million buyout versus almost $10 million in salary in 2012
Clubs know that and see Maholm’s $6.7 million per-over-three price tag during his ’premium’ years (28-30) and start drooling as they look for a solid back-of-the-order innings eater. That’s not the case with Duke and his prior left elbow concerns, one person said. Still, Maholm is exactly the kind of player this club should be keeping around but I’m not so sure that’s going to happen.
Adding fuel to that is the bizarre waiver pickup of thirty-year-old Chris ‘I have options left’ Jakubauskas who was told that he’s entering camp with a chance to start after we released the much heralded twenty-six-year-old Jeff Karstens who happened to hit that magical super-two-and-you’re-out-the-door-in-Nuttingland status. You know the recent front office rhetoric, we just ‘picked up several years of control’ baby, but to hell with improving the talent. Karstens was eaten alive by off-speed hitting teams (ie: see the Astros) but held his own against other lineups. I have to believe there is an attitude issue floating around Kerrigan didn’t care for and why he’s being tossed out the door, but that’s a guess.
So with Jakubauskas around and Dumatriat, Hart, McCutchen, and Veal all able to throw the ball over the plate (remember now we’re not worrying about talent, just innings while reducing payroll and increasing years of control), it only makes Nutting-sense that Maholm and Duke are pushed out the door ..
.. along with Doumit, and Capps, and (is anyone else making more than minimum wage ?? ) ..
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Robinzon Diaz was also pushed off the roster like Karstens was. That also makes sense since he had the best batting average and lowest CERA (not a stat I’m found of, btw) of all our catchers. I suppose it was a toss-up between Diaz and Doumit for the worst catcher on our roster so it really didn’t shock me that he was released. I’ll be very surprised if anyone picks him up but I don’t expect Karstens to be around long. I’m guessing Huntington already has a deal in place.
One shocker to me was the refusal to add Shelby Ford to the roster over Sues or Cruz. I never did find out if he was 100% last year but I’m guessing not. I assume Huntington thinks this young man won’t get plucked in Rule 5 but I’m not so sure, if he’s indeed 100% healthy. Toss out his injury periods and his MLE’s suggest he’ll hit for average or better in the league so I wouldn’t discount a club scooping him up and using him as utility for 2010 (remember now, a Rule 5 guy can be on the DL too) since he has three options and solid upside.
Added to the roster was Morris, Lincoln, Aguero, and Hernandez — all as expected.
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Jeff Clement catching? I’m hearing the internal debate ended with a resounding no. Clement will be at first probably a month or two after camp breaks which should finally end the Steven Pearce lifeline.
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It was nice to see Huntington give Moss one final year. There are some scouts I talked to last year that think he’s close to figuring things out. Whether he ever does in Pittsburgh, I don’t know.
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The ultimate Neal Huntington f**k? LaCava and the Jays trading Halladay to an NLCD club. Funny thing though, the Reds and Astros look to be heading toward rebuilding this year, the Cardinals have some major roster problems that need to be resolved, and that leaves the Brewers and Cubs to load up and make a run for it all.
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Chase d’Arnaud missed out winning the Dernell Stenson Sportsmanship Award in the AFL.
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Still no word about a Neal Huntington extension. Those things typically happen in January or February though.
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Over the last two years I’ve taken a lot of heat in communications from many of you regarding the financial position of the Pirates. I stood firm using $75 million as our revenue-before-ticket-sales benchmark and now that it’s all coming to light in the press, we’re learning I was dead-on. Maybe even too low.
Fans in future generations are going to look back at our era and wonder why in the world we didn’t stand up to these clowns, I wonder all the time why business in the area doesn’t stand up and shout, and how can the taxpayers in the area be happy losing all the services they are knowing these owners failed to repay millions and millions to the city? But as the 1.6 million fans who paid to see a 99-loss product last year seem to indicate, nobody seems to care what the Nuttings do.
I. Don’t. Get. It.
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So I’m adding a news feed to the site today (see the ‘NEWS’ link in the nav bar above – it’s evolving but be careful with the video links as there are lots of viruses in videos these days) and decided to throw in Tweets from Twitter when I noticed many of the writers all trying to beat each other posting the same contents of a team press release.
How bizarre.
It’s no wonder newspapers are dying because the last place I’d want my paid reporters spending time is sending out a 140 word tweet that quenches the thirst of the general public. So why are media outlets/writers even using Twitter? And, will newspapers be stupid enough to spend money while tweeting? Better yet, will users be stupid enough to pay to use Twitter?
I. Don’t. Get. It.
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I’ll be taking some time off during this week so posting will be lite over the holiday period. I’ll be back to full strength next Sunday night. Thanks to everyone who e-mailed their support .. funerals are a drag.
By Jake, on November 19, 2009, at 3:54 pm |
Photo credit: Illustration by: Victor Juhasz, Men’s Journal
Warning Shot, as per FoxSports.
Count me on board the Boras ride! This should have happened years ago.
By Jake, on November 19, 2009, at 12:53 am |
* So McCutchen lost out on the ROY to Florida’s Chris Coghlan, huh? Like, what did you expect?
I read some bizarre arguments on why Cutch didn’t win (ie: see Rob Neyer’s McCutchen lost because he was a poor fielder drabble), found some utterly confused Pirates fans, one BBWAA writer who found the need to explain how he voted (not for McCutchen or Coghlan, btw), and even some kind of weird blogger alliance who threw their hat in for McCutchen. After consuming more than 50 articles, in the end the main focus of every argument was on the offensive and/or defensive statistics of either player.
Well folks, in my book there’s more to the argument. To me it came down to Mr. McCutchen simply not exhibiting burning passion down the stretch. Coghlan did, and he took the award home.
Now I’m not talking about better numbers in August or September because I’m not going to argue over a few runs saved, a few more stolen bases, or even a few more hits, extra or otherwise. Instead, I will argue over how reckless McCutchen’s play became as the season went deeper and deeper. When he first came up he made quite a few mistakes because he was learning, but by September he was outwardly cocky .. too cocky for a rookie.
How many times did you hear me say in my posts during those months something like ‘someone needs to check the times from first to home’ or ‘McCutchen’s attempting backhand catches when he could be in front of the ball’, or ‘he’s not using two hands anymore in his catches’, or, the one thing that irked me the most, ‘he’s become lazy backing up the corners’? In the box he seemed to be more respectful of the game and his position as a rookie, but that certainly wasn’t the case on the field. And I believe others noticed it like I did.
Coghlan wasn’t the consummate player but the young man respected every second he was on the field and played hard every out. I did not see that from Andrew McCutchen, especially late in the season. I realize he’s a clubhouse clown of sorts who loves and needs lots of attention – there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I respect him dearly because of that ability to stay loose. But he has to earn his keep in the game, not just in the stats he produces but also with the fans and his peers.
Failing to do that, in part, cost Mr. McCutchen the ROY award, imo. Although he could have played a tick harder down the stretch, it’s hard to blame him entirely because he really needed some better leadership. And that brings me to my next subject ..
* Neal Huntington added Steve Williams to the ranks as a special assistant. If there is one thing that was blatantly missing from the rank-and-file of Pittsburgh Pirates front office management under West Virginianite Bob Nutting, it was a black man. Now they have. One. It’s a hiring long overdue in Pittsburgh but considering we haven’t exactly had a roster that required the ‘extraordinary‘ skill set Williams can add to a club, it’s no wonder it never happened.
Having had the blessing to speak to quite a few players of color over the years in our system, I can tell you we were desperately in need a man of Mr. Williams’ credentials. And since it’s conceivable that by 2011 a majority of our starting eight position players will be of color, and looking at the current upper management and ownership group, you might be as hard pressed as I am to find anyone the players of color can relate to. I’m sure there is someone outside of Mr. God Chuck Tanner, but I certainly don’t know who they are.
Kudos to Neal Huntington. This is a HUGE step for this organization because where it pats itself on the back the most is where I believe it needs the most help - better communications flowing from the field level all the way up through Federal Street, for all cultures. Hopefully Mr. Williams will step up and take charge internally since nobody else seemed to want the job. But that’s all my opinion.
Ok so now that Williams is on, does that mean Milledge and Cutch need to put someone from Willie Tees on payroll? I hope to see ball players as part of a team on the diamond next year instead of loose cannons doing their own thing.
* For the record, I complained of McCutchen’s defense most of the year (or kept my mouth shut understanding he was just a rookie). Anybody who reads this blog also knows I hammered our front office for bringing McCutchen up in 2009 – he wasn’t ready, wasn’t prepared, and certainly didn’t need to be exposed to all the problems on the club. The only party I believe that benefited from Mr. McCutchen being in Pittsburgh so early was Bob Nutting because McCutchen sold tickets, and he’s helping to sell tickets for him in 2010. The fans perhaps lost one year of McCutchen when it should really matter .. when all of Huntington’s moves finally come together a few years from now.
* Jim Callis at Baseball America said the other day that Cubs have the best stocked talent in the NLCD. Yet just this week he said he would only rate them as middle of the pack in MLB. Ouch. I mean, if you look at some of the talent Callis considers to be the best in the division, then you can only assume the Pirates remain in the lower one-third tier of minor league systems even after all the trades.
Not only that but the Cubs have the ability to spend on top of loading up from within. How dangerous is that going to be a few years from now when we are supposed to be exiting from the cellar? Wow. And don’t overlook the Reds, Brewers, or Cardinals systems because they are stocked too. More on that later this winter.
Callis also echoed what I said all last year – Veal, at best, is a lefty reliever. I still don’t understand our decision to hold him on the roster all year instead of picking up major league talent to help the club. That blew me away.
* Is Miami stacked or what this year? AJ Cole is hot, hot, hot right now. That reminds me that a prestigious ex-UM manager who came up in the Yankees organization offered to scout for the Pirates for FREE and evidently wasn’t wanted. How do you turn people away like that, especially when we just moved one of our affiliates to the FSL???
* For all you legal beagles out there – The Justice as Commissioner: Benching the Judge-Umpire Analogy, draft, Aaron Zelinsky of Yale Law School:
Chief Justice Roberts has repeatedly compared the role of a Supreme Court Justice to that of a baseball umpire, and this analogy has assumed a prominent place in the contemporary debate over the appropriate role of a Supreme Court Justice. This paper traces the history of the judge-umpire analogy since its first judicial invocation in 1886, finding that it was originally intended for trial court judges. Moreover, courts historically invoked the analogy as an illustrative foil to be rejected because of the umpire’s passivity. In place of the judge-umpire analogy, this paper propose that the appropriate analog for a Justice of the Supreme Court is the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Here’s another fab read on The Coaching Carousel in Big-Time Intercollegiate Athletics: Economic Implications and Legal Considerations, Richard T. Karcher, Florida Coastal School of Law.
“[T]he average pay for a head coach in the 120-school Football Bowl Subdivision is up 28% in that time and up 46% in three years, to $1.36 million. Two weeks ago, the Knight Commission released its survey of bowl-subdivision university presidents in which 85% of the respondents said they felt football and basketball coaches’ compensation “was excessive” as well as “a key contributor to the (fiscal) ‘arms race’ in intercollegiate athletics” and “the greatest impediment to sustainability.” — Sports Law Blog
* Will John Perrotto be resurfacing at KDKA? Maybe .. maybe. Shhh, you didn’t hear that here.
* Mike Gonzalez back in Pittsburgh? LOL, he just changed agents to Scott Boras obviously looking for that big paycheck. It probably ‘aint gonna come from Pittsburgh. And how about a repeat performance from Oliver Perez? I’d love it myself, but it won’t happen either.
* The Pirates front office turned their lights back on yesterday and seem to be getting cranked up for Friday’s roster setting event. I know you can’t wait to hear who gets dropped.
* Maybe I shouldn’t mention this but, did anyone but me notice that McCutchen only received two first place votes in the ROY voting? And just HOW many BBWAA writers are there with a vote in Pittsburgh? I believe quite a few more than two.
Think about it.
* Thanks to everyone who donated so far to the Toys for Tots program. Everybody else please consider making a difference in a child’s life this Christmas by giving a few bucks.
* I’ll be back to full strength Sunday night.
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