Traveling home for Easter so quick post.

It was nice to hear Morton have a solid outing before he packs his gear. He started the game having allowed 28 of 79 batters faced reaching and having surrendered the most long balls on the staff, and ended spring allowing 34% of all batters to reach. That’s not exactly what I would call a strong spring considering many of the batters he faced were of the 4A variety over his previous starts, but at least he seemed to settle in today.

The limited Sunday lineup we sent out there did very little damage against the Twins. In fact, three of the four hits came by way of guys who are said to be looking at starting the season in the minors – Ford, Grossman, and Jaramillo. Each spring I build up a bit of hope on Shelby Ford and then as the season goes on he’s let me down, most likely from nagging injuries. This year is the first in two years I had a scout tell me he as relaxed as he was in college so maybe he’s back in the swing of things? We can sure use his bat (can he cover the ball playing center?????).

John Raynor is intriguing but Neal Huntington needs to stop fantasizing about him being a leadoff hitter until the young man settles in. Obviously he either has a major hole in his swing or else he’s pressing too much (which is what I believe). If my memory serves me right, that’s now 6 strikeouts in 8 at bats leading off. Bury him in the order and he’ll probably relax. 

It seems more and more likely the Pirates want Raynor to stick around and break camp with the club, but we’ll see over the next few days. It seems the Marlins might have wanted MLB starter depth from Huntington for Raynor and perhaps that’s why Mickey White was floating around lately? Voss and Raynor for…..Virgil Vasquez??? McCutchen??? Karstens??? Doubtful. But put that one in the ‘what might have been” folder in case Voss ends up becoming a 20 game winner down the road.

Speaking of Raynor, do you realize he has hit more home runs this spring than Ryan Doumit? I’m telling you, Doumit’s swing is there but there’s very little power behind it yet (or so it seems).

Ryan Church:  25% strikeout rate in spring training.  OUCH.

And I see Lopez had command problems again.. faced five batters, walked three and gave up a hit. I’m not as worried about him as I am about Ohlendorf. 

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Good stuff from Jonathan Mayo at MLB on the state of the organization. I think he missed some talent myself, but hey, you can’t talk about everybody.

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Rob Neyer doesn’t think it’s time to call for Neal Huntington’s head quite yet (like Smizik seemed to do the other day), but he does believe there should be some accountability – one way or another – within the 2010 season. Personally I find it rather remarkable evaluators need to look at bad things for three years before finally saying it stinks.

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Oh Jonah!  Kerri pens a nice piece on Paul Waner for some investment mag.

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Alan Robinson, Pirates AP beat reporter, comes out of seeming retirement to write about the Legend.

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I’m working on finishing the new site feverishly – scouting correspondents are already posting. I have some coding errors creating problems and hope to have them worked out by Thursday which is when I’ll open the doors by posting a message here.  Members (those who pledged) can expect their e-mails Wednesday night.

So this guy was walking around Pirate City last Saturday pretty much unnoticed when all of a sudden I got an excited text message letting me know who it was and asking if I had heard anything on the trade front.  I told him I hadn’t and that ended that. Later in the day a scout called and mentioned who he saw at Pirate City and still the bells and whistles didn’t go off in my head. The writing was on the wall right in front of me – I just walked right past it.

Today we claimed Hayden Penn from the Marlins and I finally saw the writing with everything popping into place. Well, sort of.  You see, it was Mickey White, a scout with the Marlins and an ex-scouting director for the Bucs, who was looking over our players. I’m guessing Neal Huntington and Mike Hill had talked and White was down there trying to figure out a last-minute trade with Penn as the prize. 

Now I think it’s interesting to note here that Mike Hill didn’t give in to Neal Huntington in 2008 when the Bucs sought permission to free Perry Hill from his contract with the Marlins. Either Huntington didn’t offer a good enough prize, or Mike Hill wasn’t interested.. I don’t know which. But it’s more interesting to me that we didn’t get a deal done for Penn because that tells me either Huntington felt comfortable Penn would get past the Nats (holding Batista in the pen, no less), or he didn’t care if he was plucked first. I’m guessing the latter.

While the fans and media industry will probably rave about this pickup, I don’t get it myself after we passed up grabbing Yusmeiro Petit who at least seemed healthy to me. Sure, Penn throws a fastball about 10 mph harder than Petite does, I’ll give you that. But look at these FanGraphs charts a minute as examples:

How do you take Penn instead of Petit? You say because Penn throws so harder? Think again..

Well, if you can’t get batters out throwing that hard, what good does it do you? 

Ok, maybe there is more to the Petit story than we know as fans.. he might be hurt, he might have other problems, I don’t know. But Hayden Penn isn’t an answer to anything except how many more days we lose to time on the DL.  He’s had a bad shoulder, bad back, bad legs, he developed Steve Blass’atosis after being crushed by the Pirates in 2005, and when he finds the plate — and mark those words carefully – WHEN he finds the plate while throwing GOOD stuff (not often) he can be nearly unhittable. Unfortunately, straight fastballs get hit hard in the senior circuit as do loose curveballs up in the zone and that, ladies and gentlemen, is Hayden Penn in a nutshell.

I don’t get it.

Heck, this makes so little sense I have to wonder if maybe Raynor is somehow connected.. do the Marlins actually want Penn back? Or maybe Huntington decided to pluck him off the wire because a little birdie in Miami told him there was some interest in Penn and, perhaps, Huntington might be able to deal him for something more worthy than frequent surgery mileage with Doc Andrews? Or perhaps this is seen as a way to get Nutting a few more dollars? Or maybe, God forbid, Huntington and his pro scouts actually believe Penn is some kind of answer for us?

Vinnie Chulk or Hayden Penn? Virgil Vazquez or Hayden Penn? Chris Jak-u-something-or-another or Hayden Penn? You get the idea. This isn’t much of a pickup but how do we go wrong either considering how little depth we have?  Let’s hope I’m wayyy wrong on this.

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Moss on the wire in favor of Pearce or Vazquez being released.  Unbelievable. If Moss doesn’t make it through, which he probably will, Huntington is going to have major egg on his face.

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Monday’s game was fun to listen to even if the Astros only sent a few “A” players.

It started off as a comedy of errors when Keppinger hit a routine groundball to Cedeno and he threw a groundball type throw to Clement who stuck his glove out to try to scoop it while turning his head, if you can believe that. The ball obviously shot past him and Keppinger was safe. With Towles up, Maholm hit Doumit’s mitt on a 2-0 pitch and the ball bounced out and Doumit had to chase it allowing Keppinger second.

At that point I started to tell myself I was in for a long day.

But then Maholm seemed to settle in (not the right word.. better said, he took control) – he struck out Towles, seemed to give Pence an intentional-not intentional four-pitch walk, struck out Blum, and got Michaels to ground to LaRoche. Now it was our turn.

Up to plate came our “A” lineup against Gustavo Chacin which was a joke in and of itself because Chacin is a flyball pitcher whose stuff doesn’t compute much in the spring (slider/change guy who needs a bit of a tired arm to be more effective, although his stuff hasn’t computed much in a couple of years except against 3A/4A hitters anyway) and there was gale force wind bursts blowing out to right.

It only took a couple of pitches before all hell broke loose.. Aki crushed one into center, McCutchen homered to – take a wild guess - yep, right field, Chacin then walked Jones and Doumit probably fearing a couple more of his slow heaters would be launched into outer space, Milledge flied out allowing Jones to third, Clement singled through the right side scoring Doumit, LaRoche popped out, and Maholm - in the 8 hole – struckout.

WOOT! Our team scored three runs in the first!

From that point forward you just kind of felt that Chacin was ordered to take this start on his chin for the team. When he couldn’t record an out in the third having given up 7 runs to that point, he was finally dismissed.

WOOT! Our team scored multiple runs in each of the first three innings!

Fact of the matter is, field conditions were so poor the Astros outfielders looked like they were playing on a Super Slide most of the day I’m told.  I’m sure they just wanted to end the game as quick as possible once Chacin gave up the farm.

And you have to question the Pirates decision to start McCutchen and Milledge in that slop. Thankfully everybody seemed to remain healthy. And how about John Russell.. he’s winning by something like 10 runs after 3 and leaves his regulars in to play in the pond. I realize they are going to have to play in much the same conditions in Pittsburgh, but those games count.. this one didn’t.

Why take the risk?

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We’re told Neal Huntington and John Russell made the decision to bat the pitcher 8th this year.  Makes sense to me considering it’s highly probable some of our pitchers end up with better batting averages than some of our regulars. Maybe when Duke pitches he should hit second in front of McCutchen? LOL

Anyway, Russell went on to say that he wants McCutchen to bat second behind Aki and Jones behind Cutch.

It makes sense for a few reasons.. one, we need Aki to get on base, not be swinging long or swinging selfishly and two, Jones is going to need some help and the best way to get him some good pitches to hit is to sandwich him between two very high contact hitters in Doumit and McCutchen. I’ve said all winter Aki needed to leadoff so I’m glad to see this put in motion.

Now if they could just get Young’s bat in the game and have him hit second, then McCutchen, then Doumit, then Jones, then Clement, then LaRoche.. I think we’d be on to something.  Anyway, I ran this new lineup through my little modeling program and it spit out 0.0875 runs less per game so I’m guessing we’re not going to see much difference in runs scored as a whole.

The fans probably think Alvarez will slot in the three hole when he comes up in June but I’m guessing that’s not going to happen. Maybe 5th or 6th for the first year.

Let’s see how it goes and how often McCutchen is forced to throw his at bat away to move a runner. Considering he’s not exactly the best bunter in the world, this could get interesting real fast.

Here’s a little on Markov Chains if you are so inclined.

I was too involved in my son’s T-ball game Sunday to watch the Bucs/Rays game and it appears MLB is not going to put online the archived copy of it either. That’s why I pay them the big bucks, huh?  Jeez..  However I did listen to part of the Rays audio broadcast archive up until we fell apart and then turned it off. There wasn’t any reason to add more misery to my existing pain.

While sitting in the stands watching my son play, I had the opportunity to talk with a football agent who reminded me about the problems our young Bucs are facing. I’ve touched on this subject several times the last few years but it’s probably a good time to bring it up again.

What we are expecting from these young Bucs (go out and win half the games they play) is a daunting task considering how much the roster dynamics have changed over the last two years. Outside of a few old farts like Dotel, the 25-man is made up of 0-6 guys with many of them still under 0-3 years of service rules. More importantly, nearly every position player on that 25-man came from somewhere else, so this group hasn’t had a chance to form a bond.

Relationships can form fast but respect and trust between multiple parties take a lot, lot longer. And it’s probably not helping that the senior position player doesn’t even speak English leaving the younger position players floundering who to follow. Don’t forget that pitchers are pitchers and position players are position players in the clubhouse.. they each have their own way. It’s nice guys like Dotel are around but he can’t offer much help to guys like Milledge or Clement. Apples and Oranges, as they say.

So we’re going to break camp with a lot of unsettled business in many of the players relationships, on and off the field. While the younger players work toward building trust within the group, we’re likely to keep seeing a lot more mental mistakes than normal. It’s not that they aren’t trying – they are, it’s just they are facing a lot more adversity than a typical 0-3 player would face coming up and playing with a stable roster.

We’re going to see some ugly games over the next year but we’re also going to see times where things click too. It’s going to be up to John Russell, Gary Varsho, and Neal Huntington to keep these players focused on the big picture of working hard to win each day they take the field instead of looking back at, for instance, the last X number of insanely ridiculous baseball games that were played.

In my opinion, Lloyd McClendon was very good at doing that.. he was tough but fair and he always managed to get high productivity out of the payroll he was handed. I don’t get that same vibe from John Russell.. not that he isn’t doing it, just that I’m not seeing results from him. I saw results from Perry Hill, I saw results from Gerald Perry, and I saw results from even Bruce Tanner. I just don’t see much from Russell, but that’s me.

As the season opens just grit your teeth and hang on for a bit. We’ll win some and lose some, but – in my humble opinion – what you need to focus on as a fan are the fundamentals. The more solid our fundamentals are, the more likely we will be in that particular game. I’m not talking about errors, although that hurts too, instead I’m talking about whether players are being selfish or teammates. More on that as the season unfolds.

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Eight more whiffs today.. I’m telling you, we’re headed for a team record. That’s just unbelievable.  And another case of early low scoring.. in this case it was just one run and six hits through 8 innings. Ouch.

What happened to Ohlendorf? I don’t have a clue but I’d guess he was tweaked by Kerrigan during his side work and it didn’t work in the game for him. That’s just a wild guess but I’ve also mentioned how he didn’t seem to be taking things very serious this spring too.. just my own observation. We could make all the excuses in the world for him but the fact of the matter is, he didn’t get the job done for whatever reason. Will he next time out? Who knows.. I didn’t see any video to get a feel if it was mechanical, mental, his stuff was MIA, or if Tim Timmons (he seems to love AL clubs) had a pea size zone for us. I’d guess we’ll see some lame report come out about how he was “working” on things.

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Is Your Team Paying as Much as You? — from the Wall Street Journal

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Taschner a frontrunner for ‘pen spot. — Pirateball.com

“Jack’s done very well,” general manager Neal Huntington said. “He has shown quality stuff that, as you look ahead to April, July and August, it’s the type of stuff that can get hitters out and help [manager John Russell] run a bullpen late in a game.”

That is called player evaluation folks. Now, let’s watch and see if it holds up. I don’t think it will. In fact, I think Mr. Taschner’s going to be given a Matsumi Kuwata type of welcome to the NLCD. We’ll see who gets this one right after a couple of months fly by.  That is, IF he even makes the team.

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Was Reid Brignac being showcased for the Bucs Sunday?

We’re entering that dreaded dead-arm period as pitchers start to ramp it up to 80 – 100 pitches and they typically lose the feel for the ball so there’s no excuse going forward for our offense not to start clicking. But let’s also be realistic about a few of our players as we head down the road the first few miles..
 

–  Clement has to break camp with the club and as fans we have to realize he’s not going to hit the ball right away because he’s in way over his head developing at first which has to be priority one. 

I realize the media suggests Huntington wants to see if his bat plays before making a decision on sending him down but I don’t put any stock in that statement. Clement is our opening day first baseman in my book.  And he’s going to hit.. and hit well, but we’ll probably not see it until he gets about 50 games under his belt.  Until then, think Mr. Mendoza and if you get anything better, tip your hat to him because he earned it.  

–  Jones opens the season knowing quite a few people have question marks on whether he can repeat. I don’t know his makeup to say that talk all winter will or won’t show up in his mindset on the field, but how could it not? The closer we get to camp breaking the more we’re seeing some ugly swings from him so give him a little time to settle in too.  Personally, I think he needs to be hitting behind Doumit for a week or so. 

–  Doumit.. has anyone noticed that when hard throwing pitchers are scheduled, Doumit is on the bench? Ok, not all the time, but quite a few.  I don’t have any proof of this but from what I’ve seen and heard, I think he’s less than 100% – if not physically then mentally.  He’s going to put some rocket shots in play occasionally 100% or not simply from that sweet swing, but I’m having a hard time believing he’s going to be a meaningful contributor out of the gate.  Now that doesn’t mean he won’t go 4-4 against Kershaw or anyone else, just that I’m not buying that his mindset and heart are in the same stratosphere right now.  Look for some ugly streaks from him for a few weeks too. 

I think the rest of the offense will be as advertised with, perhaps, Milledge (if not too high in the order), Aki, and Cedeno the beneficiaries early on.  But my point is, about half our position players have more to deal with than just trying to see the ball out of the pitchers hand as they climb in the box so I’m not so sure everything is going to click consistently from day one.  After 10 or 15 games I think we’ll settle in offensively. 

In the meantime, we need our pitchers to step up big time and that’s probably asking too much of them considering three of the four main starters are sinkerballer-types who aren’t expected to excel early season.  I’ve said all winter I think Maholm is going to be a monster this year and next. What we get out of Morton, Duke, and Ohlendorf the first couple of starts is anybody’s guess. 

And that’s where our pen comes in. Don’t be too surprised if you see John Russell going out to get Maholm, Duke, and Ohlendorf a lot earlier this year for numerous reasons like the depth of his pen (including Indy), potential future and current contract negotiations, and the front office will to win more than 70 games. I don’t think Russell feels a lot of pressure because he’s in a lame duck year, but I think there’s a lot of pressure upstairs on Federal Street.  Again, look for early hooks. 

Considering the 15-day weather forecast now indicates opening day weather in the mid-60′s instead of the mid-40′s we saw a few days ago, and considering that Joe Torre is the ultimate professional, look for him to throw Kuroda against Duke in game one (come on, it is opening day for this club), Kershaw in game two, and Padilla in game three. That’s just a wild guess by me.  

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Just four runs and three of those came in off three longballs.  And sixteen strikeouts with eleven of them coming in the first six innings!  Wow.  And considering Beckett only had a few innings under his belt coming in, I can’t believe he was even throwing that hard or had great stuff yet.  Perhaps he did, I don’t know.  

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Dotel all over the place.  Scary stuff. 

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Nice to see Raynor get a long look in center, but I’d guess it was probably one of his last games in our senior team uniform. Look for Huntington to offer him back and try to work out a deal. We need someone like him in a utility OF role but we don’t need him clogging the roster forcing us to break with 14 position players.  That’s nuts as poor as our starters are throwing the ball.  

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I still think Carrasco should have been stretched out for the start of the season.  

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I hate to say this but I think the Pirates are drawing more fans in Bradenton than might show up in the stands in Pittsburgh for many games in April.  How sad is that? 

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We’ve won, what, 5 games all spring?  According to one of my posts from 2007 where I correlated spring wins to season wins, we could be in for a very, very long season.  Quickly figuring in my head I’d say that the 93% correlation without the Reds (bottom in the graphic) remains close.  Sure, it’s all a coincidence. 

Right? 

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Aroldis Chapman is out with back issues said to be spasms. Hmm… 

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Top Prospect Alert: 

Friday night Chris Sale pitches again in a conference game against Kennesaw State.  Two sources recently told me that this young man might not be as high on the Pirates radar as I had thought but don’t take your eyes off him.  The Miami big-stage game he was supposed to pitch was rescheduled to a Wednesday night game later in the month so it’s unlikely Sale with throw against them, but lots of people would like to see that matchup.

Listened to the game Tuesday where we fielded nearly our entire projected starting lineup against what amounted to be an Astros “B+” roster, albeit one that is absolutely raking the ball, and heard all kinds of defensive red flags:

Milledge freezing on line drives in left then unable to throw out slow man Michaels at home chugging from second base (!!), Doumit and Ohlendorf unable to contain their running game, Aki gloving balls with his head turned sideways (look what I found Ma!!), balls floating under Clement’s mitt from poor low throws from Cedeno, and Ohlendorf so out of whack on the running game he threw a pickoff attempt over Clement’s head into the stands.

And that’s just in the first three innings. 

Offensively even more red flags – Cutch picked off first before Aki even saw one pitch (!!), Aki striking out several times on heaters at his knees away as he did his best Suzuki Ichiro swing imitation, Jones nearly picked at first (someone at the game said he looked out despite being called safe), and LaRoche continuing his aggressive March swinging ways by trying to murder the first pitch thrown at him.

Again, all through the first three innings.

Then I turned it off.

Disgusted.

You know, it’s ok to me if we are a bad baseball team overmatched because of years of poor management.  What is not acceptable to me is that professional baseball players on that bad baseball team make the same fundamental mistakes over and over and over and over.  That’s unacceptable and there’s no excuse for it.

There needs to be some accountability.

Somewhere.

Sometime.

Soon.

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How many throwing errors did Cedeno have?  Man are we going to bleed defensive runs this year. Or, did I already mention that this winter?

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What’s up with Ohlendorf being so out of control on the mound that his hat can’t even stay on his head when he throws the ball?  I mentioned earlier this spring that Ohlendorf didn’t seem to be taking things too seriously and it continues to show in his work each outing. He very well might pull it all together before his first start of the season but my gut tells me that isn’t going to happen and Neal Huntington better be looking around for another starter.

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So Duke was anointed the opening day starter, huh?  Good for him.  He matches up fine for the month of April except in Arizona and perhaps Cinci.  But Ohlendorf throwing second is a bit of an oddity because, on paper, the Dodgers look likely to maul him even at PNC (but thankfully it will be cold possibly negating that), he doesn’t matchup well against the Giants, the Reds absolutely crush his stuff, and then he faces the Brewers twice which isn’t exactly what I call the best matchup for him (unless he pulls a 2009 stunt and just walks half the lineup to get to the easier outs).

On paper using the last three years of work, the scheduled rotation order makes a lot of sense. But when you look at the rosters this year and consider how many times each team has seen each guy, I’m not seeing the same thing Joe Kerrigan and John Russell seem to be expecting.

More on the April matchups next week.

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So Mike Lowell will play first base Wednesday against us? Now that should be fun to watch.

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Do we have an advance scout of the human variety out in the parks watching the next series opponent?  I’m thinking no.

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Here’s John Wehner talking to the Astros announcers in a pre-game chat saying he honestly believes this roster has a chance to surprise everyone making a run at 81 wins if a lot of things come together..

John Wehner, March 23, 2010

Now that’s a good corportate boy.. good corporate boy.

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Wishful thinking:

Send Dotel to the Twins for Sano Larry (Corrigan). We’ll pick up the extra money.
Signed, Pirates Fans