Pirates over Dodgers Monday; Bucs will win 73

I bet you didn’t know that not one home-grown player on the Pirates 25-man roster has ever lost their season opener when they opened at home.  Not one. 

How can you go wrong armed with that piece of knowledge? So, Bucs by two Monday afternoon.

I’m sure we’re going to cringe and cuss quite a few times each game because we don’t have a roster of polished professional ball players.  Indeed, we’re witnessing ‘The Rebuild, Episode 18″ this year.  I’m not any happier about that than you probably are but, considering the position we’ve been put in by Pirates ownership and management, we don’t have a choice if we desire to root for our beloved Bucs — that’s simply our destiny for 2010. 

At the same time I’m going on record as saying that I believe the Pirates roster has been horribly maligned as a potentially underachieving unit.  While I do see the same things every single columnist, beat writer, radio show host, national media icon, or other writer, broadcaster, or blogger has said about this team, and even my models suggest a 95 loss club on paper, but my gut says something else entirely. So..

I believe the Pirates are going to win 73 games.

That’s right, you heard it here first.. the Bucs will win 73.  And since I’m shocking the world with this prediction I’m going to go out even farther on a limb – I think it’s very possible they win 75. Notice I didn’t say probable, I said possible, but still…

Write it down.. 73 wins.  What is it that my gut feels that my brain can’t get a handle on? 

For one I’ve become a huge Joe Kerrigan believer. No, he’s no Leo Mazzone and, no, he doesn’t have one-quarter the resources Dave Duncan is probably furnished from the Cardinals front office, but that’s just my point – what Kerrigan has accomplished, Kerrigan did pretty much on his own. That’s impressive to me. Now throw in a more veteran staff who are all more likely to tell Ryan Doumit how many fingers he should be putting down every pitch, and my gut says we’re going to be witness to fewer well-struck balls from our pitch to contact staff than in recent past.  That alone will be huge.

Another gut feeling I have is that our offense is going to be less streaky than in years past.  Over the last few years our offensive output was much like riding horses on the trail.. when one went, they all went otherwise nobody went. That’s going to change with the higher contact hitters we have now. That isn’t to say that they won’t exhibit youthful tendencies of having to go when others go, because they will. But I believe you’re going to see a lot more going this year than in the past, especially in the second-half.  And no, this isn’t a 150 – 175 home run club.. but we don’t have to be to win baseball games. All we have to do is play smart baseball with good contact and speed.

I do have “brainy” concerns that my gut feeling can’t get past.. our defense is going to bleed runs, we have some young players who have exhibited very selfish play early in their careers and continued to do so this spring, and other teams have significantly more tools on the field and in their offices than we have, not to mention how advanced many of their tools are. Those are three deadly sins right there and hard to overlook.

Still, I’m going on my gut feeling this year.. 73 wins from our doubles-oriented offensive machine, backed up with a pitching staff unlikely to get hit as hard as many believe, and a defense that struggles at times but excites the senses other times.

Go buy your tickets and watch the fun.

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“In order for the Pirates to get better, the prospects have to get better first.” — longtime Bucs fan Jamey

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that the future of the Pittsburgh Pirates lies in who they select in the draft or obtain in trades, and how well those players are developed in our minor league system. Our current roster is full of young players being developed at the major league level and the next wave sitting in Indy and/or Altoona isn’t populated with names that will excite the senses outside of Pedro Alvarez, Brad Lincoln, and possibly Jose Tabata, so in order for us to rationally consider a future of consistent winning, we have to look to the second wave and below.

That’s why I opened the doors to Bucs Prospects.

Up to this point there hasn’t been any way to measure prospect growth in the minors except through journalistic products like Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, or in blogs like John Sickels minor league blog. All those publications see a few prospects, but none of them see them all – they rely on conversations they have with others in the game or media correspondents to rate and rank many of the players.

Bucs Prospects takes their concept one step farther – we are sending out amateur scouts to watch most of the players in the Pirates system this year and reporting our findings back to you. Not once, not twice, but as many as three deep looks at the prospects in each affiliate from the short-season through double-A. And even more exciting is that we’re combining looks.. one scouting correspondent will watch a series, the next time a different correspondent will cover the games for that affiliate so that by the end of the year you’ll have numerous views to better evaluate performance in the system.

As well as the ability to better evaluate those in charge of development too.

But we aren’t stopping there.. our roster in Pittsburgh is young too so Bucs Prospects has added tools that you can use to evaluate our player performance in the senior circuit designed and implemented by a professional scouting service most of the MLB teams use: Inside Edge.  For instance, the Inside Edge Scouting Reports at Bucs Prospects showcase weaknesses and strengths of every player on our roster using easy to look at charts like this one:

and the Inside Edge Report Cards (available to members) highlight and grade player performance as against their peers in the game much like you are used to seeing in prospect reports. Click any of the images to see a larger version.

The goal at Bucs Prospects is to keep the fans hope machine alive because we understand a true rebuild takes time.  Instead of scrounging the Internet looking for scouting reports on how well our players are performing or developing, we’re doing our own with polished scouting correspondents. You won’t find targeted minor league content like this at blogging giants like SB Nation, you won’t find minor league scouting reports like this at Yahoo, and you won’t find this deep of in-house generated Pirates minor league scouting reports in Baseball America.

You’ll only find it at Bucs Prospects, so go get involved.

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Speaking of paid content, the Post-Gazette mentioned the other day that Dejan’s blog is going behind a metered paywall model starting May 1st.  Those of you who have read this blog for years know I warned two years ago that paywall concepts were all but a sure thing.

I’m all in favor of the PG paywall concept and wish them well… three bucks a month shouldn’t hurt anyone who reads Dejan’s blog all the time.

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So we ended up with the worst spring record since 1985, huh? I think that says more about the prospects we have in the first wave than it says about our current team, but that’s me.

I also noticed we designated for assignment Ramon Vazquez and kept John Raynor and Hayden Penn around. I can understand a desire to try to harness Penn’s secondary pitches and try to keep him out of the middle of the plate with his straight four-seamer, but Raynor breaking camp with the team baffles me. He’s an intriguing young player with no less than ’4A utility OF tools’ written on the wall, and we absolutely needed a backup in center so I can partially see Huntington’s plan, but what bothers me is how we got to the position of needing a John Raynor in the first place. I’ll wait to pronounce the Penn and Raynor additions bad roster management but that’s what it looks like to me. Maybe we’ll get Penn through the wire and be able to send him down?

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I didn’t update you on 2010 draft prospect Chris Sale’s last two outings. All I can say is wow.. 28 total strikeouts.

I asked an ex-major league scout and a couple of amateur scouts if they thought there was any reason to knock Sale down a notch because of the level of talent in the lower division he is facing and I was told a resounding no. They said you prefer to see guys like him play big games as a measuring stick, but you project the tools.. not where or what he’s doing with them.

Chris Sale.. stay focused folks.

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Man I wish Perry Hill had taken control of Jeff Clement and would be around for Pedro Alvarez’s debut instead of Carlos Garcia. No disrespect to Mr. Garcia but Perry Hill is god and we need more god’s around this club.

Related posts:

1. Bucs body slammed as Cardinals win
2. Can the Dodgers bounce back from embarrassment?
3. Pirates end up being fish bait; Amazins heading in
4. New Bucs Insider takes root
5. First Place Bucs. No, really.