Anytime my site analytics start showing more Fortune 500 company hits than residential hits, I immediately know something is blowing in the wind around the Pirates and today was no exception. Evidently it started when USA Today ran an article by Bob Nightengale in the Daily Pitch: Hot Seat is Cooking for Pirates GM Neal Huntington and manager John Russell.

Nightengale had received an e-mail from Coonelly which said:

“I have been extremely disappointed in the team’s performance,” Coonelly told the Daily Pitch in an e-mail responding to whether Huntington and Russell would be retained. “We are evaluating every aspect of our operation in order to determine how we can get the club moving in the right direction immediately.

“While we have made tremendous progress executing a sound plan to overhaul a broken system and return this once-proud franchise to its tradition of winning baseball, we have only one benchmark by which we measure ourselves and that is wins and losses at the Major League level. By that benchmark, we have badly underachieved.

“Our sole focus is determining why that is the case and making the decisions necessary to achieve our goal of giving Pirate fans winning baseball again as quickly as possible. ”

As we know, Coonelly address the Pirates Nation Wednesday in his monthly chat and one of the questions asked and answered was this exchange:

dj324: How does it feel to be president of the losingest team in baseball and what are you going to do to change it?

Coonelly: dj324, given that we have many young readers of this chat, I will keep my answer G-rated. It stinks. It is embarrassing, painful and incredibly aggravating. I never expected us to sit with just 44 wins on September 1, 2010. We have more talent than that and I expect us to play much better during this last month of the season. While the losing this year has been painful from a personal perspective, what hurts the most is to see the pain and disappointment on the faces of our great fans who rightfully expected much more from us. The losing is unacceptable and will change. While we will not deviate from a solid plan of building a winning organization through outstanding scouting, player development and significant investments in talented amateur players, we will look to add to a very talented core of young players currently in Pittsburgh and continue to evaluate everything that we do in order to finish strong in 2010 and make significant progress in the win/loss column in Pittsburgh in 2011.

I assume Nightengale read that chat and then e-mailed Coonelly asking if Russell and Huntington’s jobs were secure which resulted in Coonelly’s e-mail response above.

Nightengale clearly has a very large, and obviously influential, following which I’ve evidenced in the last six-plus hours here. And since everyone seems to be coming looking for more content, I’ll throw in my two cents.

Frank Coonelly had the chance to reshape the front office of this organization earlier in the year and he declined to do so. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe he is going to make any immediate changes now. When John Russell purportedly went to Neal Huntington with concerns about Gary Varsho and Joe Kerrigan, Frank Coonelly had to have given Huntington the green light to dismiss those men under the guise of a loyalty problem.

I don’t personally believe Coonelly would have allowed Huntington to make those moves if Huntington wasn’t still his man because, if nothing else, Gary Varsho is a solid baseball man who is very respected around the game and for the club to even lightly suggest (or better put, to allow a local media report to state this without ever making a public declaration or correction) Varsho had been unloyal was an alarming event. To this day the Pirates have yet to ever squash that local media suggestion.

Now, does that mean John Russell is safe? Hardly. There have been rumors of John Russell doing his own backstabbing of his field staff for months and months, and there have also been rumors that he lost his clubhouse once the initial backstabbing report surfaced late last year, and further lost it when Kerrigan and Varsho were fired.

That said, who knows what this ‘new regime’ will do. I don’t think they even have a clue what they plan to do five minutes from now. I’ve personally called for Russell’s firing here since late last year and again three times during the season. I have not called for Huntington’s firing since 2008 because it had become pretty obvious to me that Huntington was simply executing Coonelly’s plan with a lot of oversight.

For now, I’m guessing Frank Coonelly and Bob Nutting hope all this blows over with a few wins over a holiday period and by Tuesday, everyone will have moved on to a new subject. That would be my guess.

But I’m not so sure this is over just yet. As Nightengale said,

Stay Tuned.

With the season pretty much a wash, we might as well start looking at what went wrong and see if there is any way to avoid the same problems in 2011.  First, let’s look at our pitching and, more specifically, on base average allowed:

(Note: WHA is well-hit average of at bats or of strikes thrown)

That’s an ugly picture  and, obviously, one of the worst pictures in the game this year. We have exactly four pitchers who are at or below the major league average in on-base average allowed of .333 – two are right at the ML average, and the other two are well below. That’s totally unacceptable, especially because we play half our games in a historically proven pitcher’s park.

But let’s not stop there.. I went back and looked at all starting pitching in the majors from 2008 thru yesterday and, for every pitcher who had thrown at least 1500 pitches (roughly 18 starts) in a season, I wanted to know what the major league average on-base allowed was, and how many Pirates pitchers fit in the group.

The major league mean was .326 OBAA and 394 ML pitchers qualified in the nearly three year period.

One standard deviation improvement from the mean was at .287 OBAA or lower and 87 pitchers over the three year period qualified. Not one Pirate was in that group. The Cardinals had 5, the Brewers had 2, the Reds, 1, and the Astros 1. Obviously, Carpenter and Wainwright dominated the Cardinals efforts as you might expect.

Between that one standard deviation improvement and the actual mean (.287 – .326 OBAA), the Pirates had three pitchers qualify.. Ohlendorf’s .315 in ’09, Maholm’s .324 in ’08, and Duke’s .325 in ’09. As you can see, Maholm and Duke were at the three-year mean one time each in the last three years. Ohlendorf’s ’09 was much better. Only the Reds and Brewers had as few to qualify from the mean up like the Pirates over the three years, and only the Brewers failed to have any player qualify in 2010 like the Pirates.

Making things even worse is that only four Pirate performances qualified for the first standard deviation below the three-year mean (.349 OBAA).. Karstens and Ohlendorf in 2010, and Maholm and Karstens in 2009, who were both at the very bottom of that group.

Playing half our games at PNC, I would expect to see no less than two starters per year in the top 40 performances each year (1500 pitches or more). That should be our first goal and to get there it’s going to require some talent being brought in or brought up.

Unfortunately, we only have one pitcher in the upper levels of our system who has the polish, makeup, and tools to fit that bill and that’s Bryan Morris, but he’s at least a 2012 candidate, if not later depending on health. Rudy Owens doesn’t qualify, McDonald, Hart and Morton don’t qualify, and neither does Lincoln.

So we have to go outside the organization next year if we want to improve our pitching and I’d recommend at least one starter who has shown the ability to perform at league average rates (OBAA) or better the last few years should be targeted, and I’d expect us to seek a three-year deal. If we could get two starters, or one above the first standard deviation off the mean, I’d drool. 

That said, let’s take a quick look at how well our offense is getting on base now:

Just three guys at league average rate or better, and two of those are rookies who are likely to regress in 2011 and on. That’s not good considering Neal Huntington has put together a higher contact, doubles-oriented offense and that’s one reason we’re struggling to score runs. But shouldn’t that also be expected since we have so many young players? Sure it is, but there are some red flags in the table too. Bust Alvarez in with gas and he’s a likely out, throw Tabata junk away and he’s a likely out, go upstairs with gas and Doumit and Jones are likely outs.

The table suggests there is solid contact being made across some of the group, and it also suggests we’ve been a bit unlucky when you bring in other data, but we’ve also been extremely lucky too. Consider this, if Alvarez didn’t have twelve of his 55 hits fall in as bloops, he’d be hitting .180 instead of .229 and that’s one reason why he’s likely tanking hard lately.. he saw a lot of luck on balls in play early on.

McCutchen and Walker are the only real-deals on that chart and, although Tabata is doing well too his ball in play data suggests he’s a regression candidate down the road while Clement looks to be a bigger sleeper than any of us realize. Perhaps for him its a matter of if and when he ever gets healthy.

Bottom line from the chart – we have one player excelling (and he’s playing through an injury) and two players a tick above average.. the rest of the lineup is suspect. When you combine the lack of offense by some of the players with the overall defensive view:

man, we really have some major problems and no wonder we’re losing like crazy. Side note, notice four of the five worst defensive teams are AL clubs which is what you might expect given the difference between the leagues, but also consider that Huntington came from an AL mentality club who are, btw, exhibiting even worse defense than the Pirates this year as per UZR (which I don’t put a lot of credibility in anymore, but there you go).

How do we turn the offense/defensive game around? That’s not easy because we have even fewer position player prospects in the upper levels of the organization. Clearly, one of two things need to be addressed this offseason – more power, or better defense. Both would be nice, but at least one has to be a priority. If we start hearing statements from the Pirates FO that our roster underachieved or things like that, than we’ll know they have no intention of upgrading. Instead, they are going to run with what they have and hope that youth start to come into their own. Unfortunately, the signs point to even more regression across the board.

2011 doesn’t look any better than 2010 does other than we hope lingering injuries are healed and this group learns to adjust to a grinding 162 game schedule better. We’ll see some natural improvement, but so will every team in the game.

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State College Spikes have lost seven straight after Taillon and Allie joined up with them.

Welcome to the ship, guys.

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Tony Sanchez still isn’t playing for Bradenton. Considering their playoffs start here shortly, I’m going on a limb and thinking he’s not going to be available for the playoffs and I’m starting to wonder if he makes it out of instructionals to the AFL. I’m guessing not.

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In come the fighting Nats. Just what we need.. a reunion of Nyjer Morgan and Andrew McCutchen with Lastings Milledge hanging out. Wow.  Here’s hoping Huntington assigns a PI to follow the group…  LOL

We suck on Friday’s. Always have, probably always will. And we really, really suck in Friday night games with Duke on the mound (4-22 last 26 Duke Friday night starts). We can’t hit right-hand pitching, the Nats can’t hit southpaws and suck on the road about like we do, but they have beat us the last 5 games we’ve played.

Game one is a rematch of the June 10th game where the Nationals won 4-2.. Hernandez vs Duke. On paper it looks like a low scoring game one but something tells me the house is going to rock. Now, who plays where for John Russell is probably the key.. does he start Young in right and Doumit behind the plate? Or does he start Snyder and put Doumit in right? Flip a coin.

I’d guess the Pirates expect big crowds all weekend and that’s absolutely going to play into this series because teams who are out of the hunt have a habit of giving ground to struggling home teams during big weekends.. that’s MLB.

So, look for the Bucs to take two.. maybe even sweep as a Nats goodwill gesture.. before the Braves come to town and throw us all back into reality.

As for Morgan, I hope he’s tossed the rest of the year.

Just a few rambling comments looking forward…

I keep being asked about the Nutting’s loan. I wasn’t there, I don’t know what the loan was for, and I don’t know the terms of the note. In other words, I haven’t a clue. In my own mind, the loan was the tool they used to squeeze out McClatchy. I assume since the team was unable to pay all their bills in a timely manner the year before, MLB probably wanted additional cash reserves infused and at the time the Nuttings were the only partner willing, or able, to come to the table.

Argue all you want whether or not the Nuttings ever wanted to be in the position they were thrust into, the fact remains they positioned themselves to be richly rewarded from the use of their capital because it was a higher risk. I don’t see anything wrong with that because Don Beaver and Frank Brenner were clearly the only other partners able to make the same play (based on McClatchy’s board vote, theirs, and Allens) but it appears they backed off in favor of the Nuttings. I won’t deny that the Nuttings enrichment partly put a damper on the franchise’s competitive growth from the end of 2002 through 2008, but at the same time, somebody had to step to the plate to get the franchise back on a financial track.

Bottom line, control was either going to shift to Beaver/Brenner or the Nuttings. Don Beaver is a great guy but unless he was going to have his daughter run the club, or one of Frank’s kids, I don’t know who else it would have been unless they hired a top gun or put one of the other partners in control, or their sibling (like the Brooks boys). Beaver and Brenner don’t operate that way so I’m guessing that was a discussion that never occurred.

Now, if you want to ask questions the questions I think that should be raised are:

a)  how in the world did the club get to $100MM in debt when the purchase in 1996 was just $67MM of new money and they weren’t paying interest to the partners? If anything about the Pirates smells, that’s the part that does to me. I believe much of it is in the notes and interest they are carrying from the URA loans which — for the most part — never have to be repaid and are, to me, a fantasy-type debt. I would guess those very loans are the ones that put McClatchy behind the eight-ball to begin with because of the club’s accounting of them.

b)  I think I know the answer to this question but I’ll state it anyway, why didn’t Kevin McClatchy approach the Pittsburgh business community in 2002/2003 to find the additional $20MM that had to be put on the books?

c)  how much time did MLB give McClatchy to raise the $20MM they wanted to see? Maybe better put, did MLB thrust upon the ownership group an immediate demand for an infusion of capital?

d)  how did the Nuttings purchase limited partner shares over the years? What capital did they use? I assume their personal funds, but…

Those are a couple of the lingering questions I have as a fan about the entire ordeal. I’ve followed all this pretty close since 2001 as a fan and this blog began because of the lingering stink around ownership, but I don’t see a smoking gun in all this other than – perhaps – the timing in the way MLB forced the franchise to perform, what the debt consists of, and why it continues to grow when the CFO of the organization came out and said in the 2004 era the club had paid down a majority of its debt (if I remember that article right).

The unfortunate part about all this is that, even though the Nuttings look a little better in my own eyes, I think it’s pretty clear they have lost their credibility with many of the remaining fan base and I’m not sure even winning will change that now. In the past, everyone second-guessed that the Nuttings had been telling fibs (either via their comments or by their hired gun in Frank) but now every single pure optimist I know admits they feel they have been lied to about profits. I’d guess the same is pretty much true outside my circle too. Time will tell how much of an impact it takes on the club, if any.

Lastly, if there’s more to all the reports then I’ll let Nuttings peers take them to task on it. I doubt seriously that’s going to happen while Bud Selig is in office which raises an all together new problem for another day. Clearly, the Pirates are making enough money to compete under the current system – they have just made some selfish decisions over the last decade preventing it.

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I hope they keep Morton and Lincoln in 3A for the rest of the season. No sense adding more pressure to their plates.

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I was very discouraged to hear Ohlendorf approached the club with concerns about his health before his start but was told to take the mound. And does anyone think all these pitchers going down all of a sudden have anything to do with Kerrigan being booted? Naw… can’t be.

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Word has it there are some very unhappy campers in the clubhouse that some of the players are playing for personal stats. Evidently John Russell is pretending to have deaf ears.

And don’t look now but Snyder is getting sideways looks from his teammates already. That didn’t take long.

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Best wishes to Dan Zangrilli. He was a Littlefield Greenberg guy so this wasn’t unexpected. I just wonder why it took him so long.

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Lots of former players coming out saying they wished the club had spent while they were here. I guess that’s understandable since they were being asked by the AP.

But does anyone wonder what Pirates AP beat reporter Alan Robinson’s agenda is lately? He used to work for Ogden Nutting and all of a sudden he’s blasting both barrels at the guy. Something’s clearly going on behind the scenes with local media and the Pirates.

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I believe there might have been more than one leak regarding the financial data because Nutting owns his own insurance company (Cappers) so I assume he would have written all his exec policies there with Lloyds or whoever. Just a guess.

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McDonald toes the rubber in Milwaukee. Oh boy, this should be fun to watch. Anybody want to guess the over/under on home runs allowed? The Brewers have been absolutely mashing the ball lately but in gulps, and then they sputter. Over the last 6 games, their OPS against opposing starters has tanked each game and Dodger rookie Carlos Monasterios held them to an .069 Thursday at their own yard. Their pitching has been horrid outside of Capuano’s return which has led to four straight defeats at home. My guess is that they have some problems in their clubhouse as they sink in the Central.

Flip a coin this series. If you are the betting type, Friday night’s game might be the one to lock and load in since the Bucs have only won 3 Friday night games out of 20 played all year. Long odds to be sure. Just don’t forget that the mental game takes over at Miller – these boys think they own us and there’s some bad blood that’s been spilled in the last couple of series so expect to see a little more. Our guys are walking in with a skip in the beat but..

I see us taking one of the three.

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Alvarez was left off of the NL Rookie of the Year ballot and some are now saying he’s likely to be a solid #5 complimentary hitter and defensive liability, and that’s about all. I’ll take that, and his 30 home runs.

I’ve started this post twenty times over the last few days and even finished a couple of drafts that I sent out for review. But the more I think about everything, the more I’m bothered. In a nutshell, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the fallout yet. So with that in mind, I’m going to hold my thoughts on the subject. As I was told by several writers and people around the game, I need to pick my battles and this just isn’t the right one. However, I will briefly state a few opinions.

First off, I’m incensed as a fan that neither Frank Coonelly nor Neal Huntington have yet to step to the plate and quell the loyalty issue brought up by one beat writer. I don’t care what happened or how or why, but for management to allow such a statement to remain credible speaks volumes to everyone around the game about our management team. I pray we’re better than that.

Second of all, I’m proud to have witnessed Kerrigan and Varsho’s work both on the field and off, and I’m well aware that many players continue to be in support of them. Say all you want about the seeming regression of our pitching or the blown out of proportion call outs by Varsho, the fact remains both these men worked extremely hard to accomplish the goals of the organization but were also subjected to the limitations placed on them by management and ownership.

Lastly, obviously what we just witnessed was a power play based on insecurities within the organization. While I don’t believe the fans have the right principals, there’s no questioning the continuing pattern of discontent and lack of continuity under Huntington control. Until this organization can become stable from Pittsburgh to China, there’s no reason to believe it will ever achieve its goals.

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Pirates swept in San Diego.. who would have thought? John Russell with one of his best managed games of the year, I’d say. And please don’t ignore the hard work the players put into the game, the pats on the butts they received when they hit the dugout each inning, and the harsh stares on the bench.

Oh my. We have some major, major problems developing.

I’m guessing most fans are thinking the team is floundering trying to nail down the #1 pick in the game next year but by all accounts, we just have a roster of 4A guys who aren’t worthy of sustained winning periods. The old saying is, you know you are going to lose 54, you know you are going to win 54, it’s what you do with the other 54 that matters. In the Bucs case it’s more like, we know they are going to lose 74, we know they are going to win 54, so it’s a matter of what they do with the other 34 that matters. That’s not much of a margin for error.

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On to.. oh heck, just where are we going now? Oh, Houston.. that’s right. Let’s see, Ohlendorf is a Texas native and the Astros are well out of the picture, so can we assume Ohlendorf gets his second win of the season on Friday? I’d put my money on that one.

Oh wait.. he matches up against Brett Myers (Astros are 9-0 last 9 when Myers starts at home) and we’ve only won 10 of our last 60 road games when a right-handed starter had the ball. Geez.. do we have a prayer in hell?

Yep – this is the time of year ‘feel sorry’ games start to take root and Myers was a Philly guy, so don’t be too surprised if Ohlendorf and the Bucs have a miraculous game Friday night. Just a gut feeling.

As for Saturday and Sunday, well, that’s a different story. The Astros have been hitting southpaws pretty good lately but Figueroa is the kind of starter the Bucs can punish so is it possible we take advantage of the Astros pen late in the game to win our second in the series?

Sunday’s game should be an old-fashioned shoot out but it’s possible both managers may send out Sunday-Sunday lineups. Who knows?

On paper they take two of three but I’m guessing we take two.

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Lots and lots of e-mail about draft prospects. I haven’t the faintest idea how negotiations are going folks. By all accounts, I suspect Taillon signs simply because he may never get the same amount of money again the rest of his life. This is a paycheck game anymore, isn’t it?

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Sad to hear about Chipper Jones tearing his ACL. I assume LaRoche has made it through waivers so maybe Huntington can dump off another guy he probably perceives as a problem?

Just ridiculously hilarious crap in San Diego.. 1-0 Pads in the 5th with two outs and a man at first and McDonald gets Tejada to fly to right to end the inning. Problem was, Doumit never broke to catch the ball, stood there waiting for it to drop and bounce off the turf to field it, and Tejada had a single. Then Gonzalez singled, Ludwick doubled and out came McDonald unable to finish the 5th. So Russell brings in ‘can’t find the plate’ Gallagher to face the team that just dumped him and he promptly walks two straight forcing in yet another run.

One Doumit misplay = 3 runs.

The first Pads run came in the 4th when the Padres had a man at third with two outs and McDonald snapped off a power hook that Snyder didn’t get his body in front of.

Oh Lord, now Park has come out to pitch the 6th.

** click **

Between the poor managing and the poor defense, this game is over. In the old days I’d hope for a rally but from what I’m hearing inside right now, I sincerely doubt that’s going to happen.

I should be able to post my story on the Kerrigan/Varsho BS Thursday. Thanks for holding on — youngin’ is doing great for all those who have asked. Bruised up, but smiling.

9:50 AM Sunday — I’m on it but I want both sides before I post anything since there’s more to this story than has come out. Stay tuned.

6:40 PM Sunday — the pieces are starting to come together but I’m waiting for a couple more calls before I go live with it all.

8:30 PM Sunday — more and more people are coming out freely talking about these moves which is stunning, all things considered. That said, I’m going to wait until Monday to post so I can speak to a couple more folks who won’t be available until then.

2:00 PM Monday — I’ve fielded all the calls I need and will start working on the post. Give me a few hours.

11:35 PM Monday — had a slight emergency.. my son fell off his bike and we spent the afternoon and evening down at the hospital. All is fine but I won’t have a chance to write anything until Tuesday.