By Jake, on July 16, 2010, at 11:07 pm |
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that a few people around the game felt that the Pittsburgh Pirates were entering a critical organizational period between July 5th and July 15th. In short, they believed that if John Russell was going to be fired, that was the time to do it. As we now know, the Pirates management team didn’t make a move and Russell remains employed.
And the Pirates continue to lose.
Over the break I had a wonderful conversation with an individual well-known for his teachings on the mental side of the game who has been watching the Pirates play the last few years. While I had his attention, I first asked about Huntington and Coonelly’s cultural change ideology and whether or not the return value could ever exceed the loss of player value purged, but then the conversation took a surprising turn.
Player makeup.
It’s a term we – as fans – frequently think of as it relates to a player’s character but after a 20 minute lecture where I was schooled on the subject, I learned it’s so much more than just character. As a fan-scout, I had always known a few of the areas he covered like attitude, perseverance, mental toughness, confidence, leadership, and poise, but then it turned deep – so deep there was no way I was going to be able to possibly understand it all without a Ph.D. in Psychology. It was that intense.
As fans, we see organizational attempts to modify player makeup played out in simple terms – a starter is benched or platooned in an attempt to force his competitive drive to the next level, or an inconsistent defender is benched multiple games in an attempt to force him to concentrate more. Typically these types of modification attempts rarely succeed over the long-term with established players and good examples might be Ronny Cedeno’s lack of consistent focus at short, or Lastings Milledge’s overall reckless play. Where it has a chance of succeeding long-term is when the player is introduced to these ‘building block’ concepts from the day they enter the system. In the Pirates case, they have chosen to utilize a harsh military style modification system where other organizations use other approaches. Some clubs don’t use any.
When Neal Huntington brought in Jose Tabata, Ross Ohlendorf, and Jeff Kartsens from the Yankees organization, he knew those players had been exposed to a disciplined system that went well out-of-the-way to teach the mental side of the game to their prospects. And he counted on that. Look at the results.. Karstens and Ohlendorf have typical 7th inning type of stuff and look how much Huntington has been able to get out of them. The same should be true over time with Tabata. They are focused, they are relaxed, and they can visualize the game. Those are some of the traits that allow tools to play at the major league level, and why players like Ohlendorf get away with a little more than their tools suggest they should.
Going full circle, John Russell’s biggest failing point has been the inability to motivate his troops on a consistent basis and part of that can be blamed on the talent he has been forced to work with, part of that can be blamed on the lateness of the organization to implement the psychological dimensions of the mental game within their team building processes at the major league level, but the biggest part should be blamed on the man himself — he’s just not a believable motivator which is a distraction to the players.
And it shows game after game after game. As an example of the distraction, look at these quick snips from Friday night’s game:
Poorly executed fundamental rundown by Ronny Cedeno.
LaRoche picked off by Quintero’s throw-behind in a late-close game.
Poor fundamental late-game blocking by Doumit with two men on.
John Russell didn’t make these mistakes, the players did. But in each case, a Pirates player failed to visualize or focus on the game in front of them and John Russell, as manager, is formally charged with the responsibility of having his troops ready to play baseball each night. I’m not suggesting every player has to play perfect – what I am suggesting is that fundamental baseball is John Russell’s responsibility and repeated fundamental errors require that he be held accountable.
Especially since these types of fundamental errors have become more and more frequent.
I understand there are business decisions playing out here as well – like Huntington being forced to play Doumit every day or risk losing significant value because he didn’t obtain a veteran receiver like some around the organization wanted, or Huntington and his scouting staff having made some poor evaluation decisions on some of our acquisitions which has led to many of the problems, or even Bob Nutting’s refusal to input cash during the rebuild.
But in order to regain control of the farce known as the 2010 Pittsburgh Pirates, management has to show some compassion to their consumer base and I believe that has to start with a renewed focus on the basics.
We first need to start with accountability to the players and fans to get the internal mental game back on track..
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It was nice to see Zach Duke pitch a strong 5th inning. The game was 2-1 Astros, he had Quintero at second with one out, and he stepped up his game and struck out Bougerois and Bourn to put down the Astros threat. That should have swung momentum our way – it was huge. But we choked in the 5th and went right back out and gave up two more runs in the 6th which nailed our coffin shut. It was a game we should have won.
The Astros scored one run in the first on a swinging bunt single, two stolen bases (second and third) on Doumit, and a ground ball rbi. Their fourth run was scored on a walk in the 6th, a single, Doumit’s passed ball allowing both runners to advance, and then a sac fly. Their fifth run was scored on a single, a balk, and a two-out single that McCutchen misplayed into a double. That’s three runs scored from BS which is becoming routine. This was a game the Pirates should have won.
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Lots of talk about Peter Gammons report that Neal Huntington won’t entertain offers for Hanrahan. I mentioned back at the start of May that Hanrahan was becoming filthy and to watch him. Hat tip to a scouting bud of mine who was all over him at the time. He’s done a great job but there’s no reason whatsoever for Neal Huntington to not entertain offers on him. That’s just nuts.
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Nice to see Cutch starting to come back around.
By Jake, on July 8, 2010, at 11:18 pm |
The Pirates have refused to pack it in won just 8 of 47 games (.170) when their opponent scored first this year and that trend continued Thursday after Berkman hit a solo shot in the first inning and Oswalt went on to pitch a one-hit shutout.
The Pirates error-filled ways continued behind Ohlendorf who pitched fairly well considering he needed a little encouragement in the 4th. Berkman opened the inning hitting his second home run of the game, Lee crushed a line drive single into left, and Ohlendorf then walked Pence on four pitches. You could just feel the emotion kick up in Ohlendorf as if he was saying to himself – oh my gosh, here we go again as he was getting hammered facing the lineup the second time through. But Joe Kerrigan made a timely visit to settle him in and Ohlendorf never looked back from that point forward even when he got into jams.
So the trend continues with Ohlendorf.. as a starter, he can handle weaker lineups for the most part as long as he has a little support at the right times, but against average hitting or better MLB clubs he gets mauled for the most part from the second time on he’s seen. And even Thursday against the weaker Astros lineup, his outs from the fourth on were well-struck for the most part.
With that in mind, it seems apparent that the Pirates have a product whose value will never be higher with Ohlendorf than it is right now. Huntington and Kerrigan succeeded in transforming a 7th inning guy into a back of the order starter in a weaker division — but nobody can dispute his ability to get outs the first time through (career .670 OPS allowed and a scant .512 in 2010). More telling is that he has done exceedingly well in high leverage situations which shows he has learned to pitch within his abilities, instead of just throwing.
The Pirates should make Ohlendorf available right now and, if they are able to package him with someone like Doumit, Jones, or Milledge, they might be able to walk away with a younger power bat in a package.
Along those same lines, I would also make Evan Meek available. There’s no possible way this young man will ever bring more than he can bring right now and quite a few teams could use his services. We have Hanrahan and Dotel for 2011, and we have Moskos (and a slew of arms who may never be starters again) developing.
The short-term plan Huntington has in motion, absent obscene free-agent spending by the Nutting clan, doesn’t require us to have three potential closers, doesn’t require us to have 10+ starters around for 2011, yet has gaping holes in power and at short, to name a couple.
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Why is Bryan Morris still pitching every five days? I thought I heard the org was going to put him on slow mo the rest of the year. He’s already +17 innings over 2009 and heading to the Futures Game which will be extremely stressful for him.
While I understand the need to continue stretching him out, there also has to be a balance which recognizes his injury history and accounts for the possibility of future problems. If he was taken to 140 innings this year (say 8 more starts), he needs to then be shut down. We can’t have him racking up 175+ innings this year and then expect him to be healthy in Pittsburgh in 2012. That’s nuts.
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On to Milwaukee where we owe the Brewers some major payback. That’s the goal, anyway. The Brewers have been ice-cold lately managing something like 2-45 with runners in scoring position over their last four games — all of them at home. Word in the circuit is that all the talk about possibly blowing up that team has them disjointed.
But don’t let that fool you.
They have been winning at home at least until the Giants – who are on a mission right now – showed up. Now they see themselves 1.5 games behind the Cubs in 4th place in the division and I think they are about to come out of their funk on us this series.
When we play at Miller we have a poor habit of swinging long (for home runs) and that results in a lot of poor AB’s and a lot of losses. If we stay within ourself, I think Maholm has a good shot of turning the Bucs into winners Friday night as long as John Russell continues to feature McCutchen at the top of the order. I think Karstens is going to open the flood gates to the Brewers bats and then Lincoln will probably get mauled and exit early, the result of two pitchers with similar stuff throwing back-to-back.
Look for a lot of home runs allowed other than, hopefully, Friday night. And look for the Brewers to make a statement to ownership in this series. If, however, their ownership has already decided to be sellers and the players have witnessed game after game of scouts in the stands, then we might actually be able to walk in and snatch three away from them. Ok, maybe two and then Lincoln’s start.
This series has the potential to be a very ugly series with both clubs showing their heads in the clouds.
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All I can say is all the print and talk shows want is stuper MARIO and do not let the facts get in the way of getting stuper MARIO the team! — New Bucs reader Ron J in yesterday’s comments
I get a lot of e-mail and one thing I’ve noticed lately is that quite a few people seem to misunderstand my agenda here. I’m not anti-Nutting because they remind me of the Beverly Hillbillies.. I’m not anti-Nutting because they are penny-pinchers by nature.. I’m anti-Nutting because they have failed to step to the plate every chance they have had to improve the product on the field.
Everyone needs to understand my stance on this one subject — it wouldn’t matter if Mark Cuban or Mario owned this franchise.. they would also fail if they acted like the Nuttings have since 2002. And there is one very simple reason why –
You don’t rebuild a multi-million dollar corporation from the cellar up using management trainees. Instead, you hire seasoned professionals.
I’m anti-Nutting because of all the Duquette’ish type moves they have made.. they put together a baseball operations department which is significantly short on seasoned pros at the upper levels, allowed them to work understaffed, then allowed those understaffed upper management to hire more trainees in the core of its operation – including one who was assigned the role of overseeing all their asset development.
That’s not smart rebuilding, that’s utter stupidity.
But that didn’t bother the Nuttings because they knew no matter how mismanaged their product might become, their investment would continue to increase in value because that’s the way Major League Baseball’s rules insulated them. They knew from the poor seasons over the years they would still draw 1.2M through the gates no matter what, they knew they would continue to receive welfare checks that could help them to reduce their internal debt load, and they knew the franchise value would continue to climb little by little regardless.
And that’s why I am anti-Nutting.. and why I would be anti-Cuban or anti-Mario if they did the same things.
This franchise owes the City of Pittsburgh, it’s business district, and the taxpayers of the region – on top of the fans who pay their bills – a competitive product on the field. Not eight years from now when all these high school kids in the system finally get seasoned, but now.
As far as my agenda goes, I want to see a competitive product fielded.. simple as that. It’s time the Nuttings stepped to the plate and started allocating an additional $40MM per year on top of the current player salary budget and the higher draft budget they should be spending every year anyway. If the Nuttings honestly believe they have the best management team in baseball, then walk-the-walk.. let’s see what $65MM/per will do for three years along with $10MM in the draft.
But before I’d ever spend, I’d get rid of the trainees.. but what do I know?
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This could only happen in Pittsburgh.
Quoted from a press release at NBC Sports: “Baseballing legends Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, who became world famous after beating out thousands of other Indian cricket players in the ‘Million Dollar Arm’ competition to land contracts with the Pittsburgh Pirates, are going to have their miraculous tale transformed into a Bollywood Hollywood production. All thanks to Sony Pictures executives.
Singh, 20, and Patel, 21, entering their second season with the Class A Pirates of the Gulf Coast League, are making slow and methodical progress on the field and having All-Star seasons off of it. They were invited to the White House in May as personal guests of President Obama as part of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. They had their pictures taken with the president, met the D.C. United and AC Milan soccer teams and had breakfast with Indian-American actor Kal Penn. In the meantime, Sony Pictures signed a deal to make a movie based on the pitchers’ lives. Their assimilation into America culture has captured Hollywood’s imagination, with a movie scheduled to be released next summer.”
How much do you want to bet the Nutting family gets royalties in this deal? LOL
At least our players are succeeding at something.
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Some outstanding research on some of the Huntington ‘poor evaluation’ garbage that has been hauled into this organization: “What has become of all those pickups“
Then the same MLB beat writer comes back and wonders where Ryan Doumit’s power has gone.
True to the beat writers in Pittsburgh, one article hammers management, one article devalues another asset.
What a mess.
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Here’s a piece at Bradenton.com on all the injuries for the Marauders this year. I will say that one pro scout told me earlier this year he was surprised Sanchez wasn’t on the DL immediately out of spring training because when the team held infield practices, bats would be laying all around where Sanchez was trying to field. He’s lucky he survived that mess.
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The New York Times managed to get the Pirates in an article about the Tampa Bay Bucs. Don’t look – it will just upset your culture.
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Ubaldo Jimenez.. 15 wins already. Wow.
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The ( ** YAWN ** ) all-star game is coming up.
By Jake, on July 8, 2010, at 12:40 am |
6-3 Astros, top of the ninth, two outs, Walker at third, Jones at first, and up comes the Pirates hope of the future – Pedro Alvarez. He looks at a hanging slider for strike one, swings through a slider away for strike two, and then embarrassed himself with an off-balanced, open-shoulder swing at a slider well off the plate for strike three and the Pirates lost yet another game.
The Pirates media department quickly fired up the spin machine and spit out a press release indicating the Bucs middle of the order went a robust 6 for 11 with 2 walks and 3 runs scored, Daniel McCutchen pitched a four-hitter over 5 innings, and gonna’ be All-Star Evan Meek was hitting 98 on the stadium gun. In the morning the casual fans will read that crap and start thinking – hey, maybe we are getting better while completely ignorant to the facts that over the last 28 games the Bucs:
– have averaged just 3.07 runs per game – by far the fewest of any club;
– offense has the fewest total bases and second fewest hits in the game;
– defense has committed the most errors during that period (24 in 28 games but in reality is probably more like 54 in 28);
– pitching staff have the fewest strikeouts in the game and batters have the third highest.
Now you can argue that events like Alvarez whiffing with two on and two outs in the 9th is related to his youth and that down the road that may not happen so much.. ok, fair enough. But tell me why we are getting completely dominated from one end of the spectrum to the other. I hear you – you are saying it’s because we are so young and we’re developing at the major league level. I see.. so then, answer this question..
Then why is our total 2010 production just 25% better than what we expect from a 25-man roster made up of replacement level players? And to be more blunt, how is it that, in the last 30 days, the team’s production is barely sniffing that 25-man replacement level status?
If you thought we had problems after the trades last year while scoring just 3.6 runs per game over our last 73, well, you are now witnessing a 15% decrease in run production since that time and each thirty days that ticks off the clock we’re losing more and more production. Over the last 156 games we’ve scored just 531 runs for a 3.40 per game average, over the last 61 games 3.11 runs, and over the last 28 games 3.07.
If we assume the league average is 4.32 runs per game (700 runs scored per year), and we’re at 3.07, how much better can each of these player produce over the next three years as they develop? 2% per year? 4%? 6%?? And while these players continue to get better, should we also assume the league pitching will remain neutral during that period? By that I mean, should we assume none of the clubs will be improving their pitching over the next three years? If they will be, how much will that potentially retard our youth’s growth?
All things being even, the probability the current Pittsburgh Pirates general 13-man position player roster improves their yearly run production 20% over the next three years is probably close to one-billion to one. That’s especially true the way the roster, and short-term replacements, are constructed – we’re a doubles oriented system from Pittsburgh to the GCL. Everywhere you look we have speed and below average power, to save a few. In fact, we’re a doubles oriented system with mostly poor defensive skill sets and no impact pitching anywhere in the system to speak of. Morris might be an exception but he’ll have to prove to me he can pitch at this level before I believe it. Maybe one day Taillon will too, if he’s ever signed. And perhaps one or two come forward to meet expectations as middle of the order guys one day. Perhaps.
But there is no way Bob Nutting will ever go out on the free agent market and buy top shelf pitching. Forget it. Nor is he ever likely to spend for the big bop free agent bats. So the Pirates are taking as many pitchers as they can grab hoping to one day be able to trade arms for bats (think Rays plan that never worked). Problem is, they passed up a lot of impact pitching to this point. And impact bats. And impact development staff. And impact scouts. And, and, and…
I don’t care how much of an optimist you might be, you still have to look at reality. Reality says our run production is falling off the shelf, our error rate in the system is increasing at an alarming rate, our system wide injury rate is skyrocketing, and we don’t have any impact players left in our system save, perhaps, Morris.
And here’s another simple point to ponder outside of the poor evaluations and assignments (like Walker) this front office has made in the last 18 months. Let’s talk about basic organizational philosophy a second. John Russell recently said:
“I know a lot of fans criticize me for not yelling and screaming, but I can’t do that,” Russell said. “We’ve got a lot of young kids who are just getting their feet wet in the major leagues. The last thing they need is me yelling and screaming at them.” — my emphasis
WTF?
The entire minor league system is run like a Marine basic training camp preparing boys to go to war. They are yelled at, screamed at, every second they are under intense supervision, they have to put t-shirts in certain places in their locker, they have bulletin boards humiliating players who don’t meet standards, and they are forced to hear and do things they never thought possible. Then there is Russell’s philosophy in Pittsburgh where he babies his troops and look what happens – they do what they want to do. It’s gotten so bad in Pittsburgh that Varsho has become so frustrated he’s gone out of his way to let it be known he won’t tolerate the fluff any more.
Yet it continues on a nightly basis.
There is so much wrong with this organization right now it makes Dave Littlefield days look like Jimmy Leyland world series days. I agree we’re in a rebuilding stage, but not the kind you thing we’re in. No, the only thing we’re rebuilding is the Nutting’s bank account after they bought out partners.
Who. Is. Kidding. Who?
How the Player’s Association could ever give their stamp of approval to this rebuild is a disturbing revelation and bad for the game. Perhaps they did it knowing Nutting was finally spending every penny he could get a hold of to buy out all the partners leaving him in total control and debt free and ready to take on the world? Fat chance he ever spends it on this organization outside of Dana Eveland and Sean Gallagher types (Billy Beane rejects). And there is even a fatter chance guys like Alvarez and McCutchen will ever allow them to spend it on any more than one free agent year, if they get lucky enough to get even one.
Ok.. enough of the rant. The big picture? Our stats are tanking like a lead ball in water and even if everyone picks it up some, we’re only likely to just get back to July 2009 levels. We need talent, we don’t need any more talk out of the side of front office mouths. The only way to get talent it to go pay for it.. take a chance, go spend $20MM to a club needing cash and wrestle one of their big corner OF contracts away. There are opportunities.
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On the Sean Gallagher acquisition, it’s just another move by the Pirates who are desperately trying to find back of the order starters to fill in so they can deal the few chips they have left. It’s not a deal that will make any difference at all and you can expect to be just as frustrated when he pitches as with Ohlendorf, Morton, McCutchen, etc, etc, etc, etc,..
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We’ve now allowed 10 home runs in the last 6 games. Ouch.
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What’s wrong with this picture?
What you don’t see is Ronny Cedeno who just flew out of the picture to the right trying to grab an errand Doumit throw while Bourn was stealing second. What you do see is that Doumit threw the ball to the wrong player who shouldn’t even be anywhere around the bag.
That’s about as confusing as this play:
What the…
That’s Doumit trying to save his life on a Meek slider that he expected to be a fastball. These two were so out of whack during the entire time Meek was on the mound, Meek stepped off like three or four times and Doumit make at least one trip out to talk to him — right before Meek threw this pitch with the bases loaded.
We just rock on defense baby.
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So what’s up with Moskos getting stretched out again? I assume this means the Pirates front office feels he can be the next Lopez for us? What a disaster. Why remove him from closing out games if he was excelling at it? I’m not sure I see Moskos having value as a 7th inning pitcher, and I’m not a big believer in having a left specialist on an NL staff. Hanrahan has been filthy lately but he’s injury prone and I still say Meek looks rough around the edges.
But what do I know?
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Here’s yet another national media publication telling their readership the Pirates are a joke. What’s funny about this one is that it is written by a guy who covers tennis, so even national publications seem to be assigning the “PIrates suck’ stories to lower level reporters now.
And how about this FanGraphs post on the Gorzelanny giveaway? Ok, it’s written by a kid who doesn’t really seemed very dialed-in to everything Pittsburgh, but still he made a couple of good points.. Huntington did give up on him.
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Maybe Oswalt will blow a gasket and we’ll find a win behind Ohlendorf?
Had to make you laugh somewhere in this post.
By Jake, on July 6, 2010, at 11:45 pm |
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Brad Lincoln was going to have his hands full Tuesday night with the Astros. And right off the bat you wouldn’t know they were the weakest hitting team in baseball as they scored a run off a Bourn single off Lincoln’s glove, he then stole second, went to third on Keppinger line out to right, and scored on a Berkman ground ball to Walker at second with our infield playing back.
And it was all downhill from there.
Six of the next thirteen batters reached on him (.462 OBA) and four of those came around to score on two home runs, a walk, two singles, and a double allowed. The only outs he recorded during that stretch were from batters who chased his stuff mostly off the plate resulting in weaker ground balls to the left side.
I saw one good changeup thrown out of four, I saw several overthrown curves as well as a few tight ones, I saw a 90-92 MPH fastball that touched 93 when he threw the four-seamer, and I saw below average command on all his pitches. The only two games he even looked remotely competitive in were one against Huntington’s ex-club, the Indians (for whatever that’s worth), and the other against an extremely flat Cubs lineup at the time. In those two games he had a combined 2.84 ERA.
Away from Huntington’s ex-boss and the Cubbies who we must have agreed to play dead against us in 2010 as part of the Ramirez trade, he has a 7.04 ERA, allowed 20 runs and 18 earned runs, 28 hits, and struckout just 6, in 23 innings. He’s not fooling anybody.. not even the pitchers he is facing. Nobody. And that’s better shown by these numbers..
.. first 25 pitches thrown: batters have an OPS over 1 .. even more incredible, they have a 1.070 OPS against him the second time through the order. He’s making Ohlendorf look like Nolan Ryan in that regard.
What is so frustrating about all this is that any evaluator with a brain should have recognized Lincoln’s short comings in triple-a.. he had to develop another pitch, he needs to work on commanding his offspeed pitches, and he needs to work on controlling the game.. he lets it get away from him too fast. He’s simply not ready to be in Pittsburgh.
We’re ruining a Littlefield valuable asset.
And how about Alvarez? He opens in Pittsburgh with a strikeout every other at bat through his first 39 plate appearances while hitting a buck-fourteen, and then in came the Cubs and Coonelly’s Philly connection and he magically starts hitting at a .950 OPS rate striking out 50% less often. As soon as they leave, he’s back to striking out again every other at bat and hitting near the Mendoza line.
And it’s so obvious he flies open on offspeed stuff away that it’s amazing he doesn’t strike out even more often than he does now. Give film a little more time to travel around the league and he will.. go to the bank on it. I keep saying he needs to be developing in Indy and I can’t stress that enough – we’re risking failure with him just as we are with Lincoln. The only thing Alvarez has going over Lincoln is that he has some tools to make a difference if he gets better instruction, whereas Lincoln simply lacks the tools to be effective at this level.
And you know what’s really odd about all this? Bob Nutting is allowing these assets to be used and abused the way they are. We’re a rebuilding club developing at the major league level and the last thing in the world we need to be doing is shortening our time of control over these assets when they aren’t ready to succeed at this level. It’s like throwing a few million dollars on the street just for the heck of it. Why not let them simmer in 3A and push their development?
I. Don’t. Get. It.
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Put packages together that gets Steven Drew from the D’backs using Maholm. Let’s get a real shortstop who is a clutchy kind of guy and who can also glove the ball at reasonable levels. He’ll be expensive over the next few years, but so what? The only thing I don’t know enough about is his medical history but all that would do is drive the price down if he has some issues. This has to get done – the D’backs have been all over us for pitching since January and now that Drew seems to be available is the time to get it done.
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Ten strikeouts against Wandy frikin’ Rodriguez. PUH-leeeeaaasseee.
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Cutch needs to go back to the top of the order and then we need to build around him there. Drew would be an excellent number two hitter if we picked him up. I’m not in the camp that believes Tabata is ready to handle leadoff quite yet.. maybe he’ll be ok over time but he’s just not ready yet. Bury him in the six hole with Milledge behind him for a couple hundred AB and then let’s revisit the idea.
Or here’s another idea if we picked up Drew.. how about Cutch, Walker, then Drew? Go look at Drews leverage in clutch situations - he’s off the charts.. sort of how Milledge has been doing. Throw Alvarez in the four hole with Jones behind him then Milledge and BAM.. we might actually score some runs.
We badly need to think out of the box, like Alvarez batting #3 against right-hand pitching.
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I wish we had stretched Carrasco out and had him start this year. We missed the boat there. He could have taken up some innings over the first half and then settled back into a relief role over the second half.
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I remember hearing something lately about how Tim Alderson’s velocity was improving.. well, he was mauled Tuesday night: 8 runs, 9 hits, and 3 walks and couldn’t make it out of the 4th. Bad outing or just a bad pitcher? You know my feeling.
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Jeff Clement was back at first ending his one day stint as a backup catcher resting Kratz. Clement went 3-5 against a very poor Louisville pitching staff. Good for him.
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How about Nathan Baker’s work for West Virginia Tuesday?
Now that’s sad to see..
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“The group headed by Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan agreed to give up their exclusive negotiating rights so that bidding could be re-opened for the [Rangers].” — ESPN
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
I love ya Chuck but sometimes I wonder what the hell you are doing.
By Jake, on June 28, 2010, at 1:44 am |
I’m hearing that Frank Coonelly may have finally figured out he made a mistake in extending Neal Huntington and John Russell. That’s the possible good news. The bad news is, it doesn’t look like Coonelly is going to make any changes in the immediate future.
Now for my own opinion –
Bob Nutting and Frank Coonelly were the victims of a brilliant stratagem played out by Neal Huntington back in September 2007 which — in part – led to Huntington landing the GM position. It was such an oddball hire that many in the baseball community were surprised and, as word of the stratagem circled the game, quite a few people were shocked at how it all played out. A few even angry.
One thing that was odd about Coonelly’s GM selection was that Neal Huntington wasn’t exactly known as a “strong” baseball man… good perhaps, but not strong. One prior front office person told me during the GM search: “[Frank's] very likely to hire a strong baseball guy as GM to complement his own skill set, since that’s his greatest weakness.” So after Huntington was hired, Chuck Tanner was brought in as Huntington’s consultant and later Bill Lajoie was also added in the same role — both men being “strong” baseball men to help raise Huntington’s bar.
As the years have unfolded it has become clear that neither Tanner nor Lajoie enjoy a strong voice in Huntington’s circle and consequently many of Huntington’s decisions have resulted in staggering losses for the organization, as well as ownership.
When we look back to Coonelly and Nutting’s decision to hire Neal Huntington, you can’t help but to wonder how much the “John Hart influence” had on their decision to select him. For those that don’t remember or know, Hart had rebuilt the talent devoid Cleveland Indians in the 90′s and lead them to six division titles and two world series appearances. Among the men that had groomed under Hart during their run were Neal Huntington, Josh Byrnes, Mark Shapiro, and Paul DePodesta.. all very educated men and somewhat sabermetrically inclined.
And all of them catastrophic failures in a GM leadership role up to this point except for Shapiro, who was also the beneficiary of Dan O’Dowd (Hart’s top lieutenant) and John Hart’s network when he succeeded Hart as the club’s GM. As the story goes, when Shapiro was interviewed by Hart in 1992, Hart outlined his “Blueprint for Success” for rebuilding the Indians and Shapiro bought in and was hired. Seventeen years later, Huntington and Coonelly unveiled a similar plan – the Pittsburgh Pirates Blueprint in late 2009.
But there is a huge difference in the two blueprints — Hart surrounded himself with exceptionally strong baseball men and listened closely to what they had to say. In Pittsburgh, Neal Huntington surrounded himself with few good baseball men, many unproven rookies, others who are neither rookies nor ever been very good baseball men, some paycheck guys, and, it appears, all the while refusing to listen to the few strong baseball men he had at his disposal. But there is also one other huge difference… the stratagem Huntington played out in 2007 had come back to haunt him.
The Pirates Blueprint — to me — represents a public relations ploy instead of a meaningful set of goals undertaken to achieve a desired result. It’s pretty, it’s well thought out, but it’s unachievable with the personnel in place in development, in scouting, and in our front office.
Simply start by looking at the Pirates 25-man roster and their recent play.. it’s not that they are losing at historical rates, it’s the way they are losing.
“[John Russell] has evidently lost the respect of his players.” – as told to me by an ex front office person on June 27, 2010.
The problems began in the offseason when management, including John Russell, blamed the players for underperforming after the deadline trades. The players took exception to management’s account believing, as one person close to the players put it to me, they ‘never had a fighting chance’ with the roster they had to play with. The problems escalated when the players learned there would be no infusion of capital to bring in additional veteran talent – it was up to them.. a core group of guys who had never played together before. Even then the players took it all in stride and did the best they could but ran up against a mental and physical brick wall more often than not because every pitch of every game had become stressful.. their margin of error was too fine.
Then management started to come at them demanding a little bit more, next players who were obviously management ‘buds’ were starting to infuse their own opinions on the group, and it has grown to the point you see today. They are one very frustrated group of young men trying to perform day-in and day-out at levels well beyond their natural abilities while management wants even more. The team isn’t a ‘team’ anymore – it’s become a divided group.
Something has to change.. it’s broke, it’s busted, it’s out-of-order.
Frank Coonelly has a real problem. While it’s easy to fire John Russell and that might solve some of the immediate internal problems while also putting the fans at ease for a short period of time, it’s not going to solve the bigger issue he has of a rebuild that is out of control. He and Bob struckout in September 2007 and it’s taken too long to realize just how badly they missed putting the bat on the ball.
Coonelly’s first order of business has to be ownership’s interests and I think we see that playing out with Lincoln and Alvarez still in Pittsburgh. And perhaps that is exactly what woke Coonelly up - that his new development system was unable to take Lincoln and Alvarez to the next level forcing him to start their clocks to finish them off at the risk of failure? Ownership has given Coonelly a plan and all we can do is guess at what it says, but I suspect at the top of that list is the word ‘credibility’ because without it, there won’t be any fans.
Coonelly’s second order of business should be to take control and show the remaining fan base that he has enough vision to see not everything is going as drawn up three years ago. I would suggest that he start forcing Huntington to run all opportunities through Lajoie and Tanner with a majority rule type of governance, and the final decision then sent to his office for review. Once the August 15th signing deadline has passed, Coonelly needs to immediately terminate Huntington and start the process of finding a talented GM who passes the sniff test, not the Hart test.
In the meantime, the players have to be held accountable while at the same time be able to see light at the end of the tunnel too. John Russell should have been fired a month or more ago and having him held over like this only shows weakness by Coonelly and the Nuttings. Now isn’t the time to be showing weakness. Varsho is the obvious interim solution and then let him make his own decisions from there.
The worst thing Connelly and Nutting can do right now is continue their apathy. Striking out is one thing, refusing to get back in the box is quite another.
By Jake, on June 20, 2010, at 10:29 pm |
Random thoughts of a Pirates fan –
Ah, so Pirates fans are back with visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads having witnessed two straight victories. Long forgotten is the fired perogie, the 25-44 record, or lies from the altar.. they are all distant memories as the fans retreat back into ‘this regime hasn’t had enough time to be properly evaluated yet’ mode.
Just as Bob, Frank, and Neal hoped they would.
In the eight years I have been hammering this organization from the discussion forum at pirateball.com to the blog, I’ve never witnessed such disregard for reality by the fans. For instance, five of their top nine picks from the 2009 draft are either out on the DL, have been on the DL, or have or are experiencing significant injuries including their #1 pick Tony Sanchez and #2 pick Victor Black. Their highest rated high school arm in the 2008 draft, Quinton Miller, also on the shelf. In fact, more that a dozen young pitching arms bit the dust in one form or another over the last 6 months alone.
But the fans call that ‘normal’ — they have come to accept that pitchers routinely break down in the Pirates system.
It’s not normal at these levels, nor is it normal to make a trade for players with significant health problems and not subject the player to at least a physical like the Pirates did with Iwamura. I suppose you could probably add Morton, Hart, and Ascanio to the ‘no-health-check’ lost assets as well.
No, instead it’s too easy to look at the Altoona Curve and fantasize about the hope of the future since that club is 20 games above .500. Listen closely to the fan chatter and you might hear how Justin Wilson has magically found 4 MPH on his fastball and now he’s for real, or how Rudy Owens is the next coming of Nolan Ryan, or even how Derek Hankins has become the fans #3 starter possibility in 2012.
Never mind that Owens only has two-pitches worth talking about – an average fastball and an above-average hook; and never mind that Wilson’s command reminds many scouts of Oliver Perez, or that Hankin’s command brings back memories of Bruno Haas from old-time scouts. The fans don’t care – all they think about is that if a minor league team is 20 games above .500, they must be damn good.
Not once does it enter into their minds that the other teams could be that bad.
Feeding all these dreams are media reports like the recently released Pirates top ten prospect list at Baseball America where they listed:
1. Tony Sanchez C
2. Bryan Morris RHP
3. Starling Marte OF
4. Chase D’Arnaud SS
5. Tim Alderson RHP
as the top five guys. Imagine that, Tony Sanchez, who has allowed 52 stolen bases in the 38 games he has caught and had been shut down to a DH role with a shoulder injury, is said to be the Pirates top prospect. Funny thing about Sanchez, he has a .660 OPS away from his home park to go with the shoulder problem. Ouch.
And look who is the Pirates #3 prospect – Starling Marte who just had surgery to remove his hamate bone on his left hand. Maybe it all comes back for him in a year or two to be our next fourth outfielder one day, maybe it doesn’t. But there’s no questioning the problems #5 Tim Alderson has – his velocity has been in the mid-80′s lately, his slow hook had become more of a batter’s practice pitch, and, well, he’s just getting hammered by right-hand batters and has no projection at this point, much less as the Pirates fifth best prospect even considering his young age. d’Arnauld has a lot of problems on the field as well as in the box so he’s not a very likely top five candidate either.
The only prospect BA even remotely got right in my book was Morris and somehow they projected him below Sanchez. My gosh, if Morris is worse than Sanchez then this organization is in serious trouble.
That list seems crazy nuts, but you can see one reason why the fans are avoiding reality.. they aren’t listening any more. It’s as simple as that. This week they learned the President of the Pirates had lied to them in an online chat but most of the fans dismissed it as ‘internal policy’ and no big deal. Last I knew, the fans are the ones paying the bills on Federal Street – are they not owed the truth? And if the truth couldn’t be spoken, why didn’t Coonelly just say it’s against internal policy to discuss such matters. At least that’s understandable.
Busted, Coonelly and the Pirates played it off as if the fans didn’t matter to them. Like Bob Smizik noted in his Sunday column, not one of them apologized for deceiving all of major league baseball, much less Pirates fans. It’s an unbelievable story but the fans don’t seem to get it.. to them it’s ‘business as normal’ on Federal Street because that’s what they are used to – being misled.
Reality as a Pittsburgh Pirates fan means having to hope Bob Nutting will spend money to keep McCutchen before he leaves after 2015, Alvarez before he leaves after 2016, and all that two years before the high school pitchers recently drafted have any prayer of impacting the major league team – if they ever do. The sad part about that is, there isn’t a prayer in hell of this roster or farm system – in the condition it is in now – ever producing enough talent to compete before the young arms get here and the probability McCutchen and Alvarez will want to stick around on a losing club will be about as close to the odds of you winning the lottery next week.
I said this in 2003, said it again in 2005, hammered it in 2006, and I’m going to hammer it again now – the fans need to wake up. It’s not about how well Huntington may or may not be doing, it’s not about Coonelly either, it’s all about Nutting control and until that one aspect changes, there is little true hope for Pirates fans.
Go to the bank on it.
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Brad Lincoln escaped another catastrophic start thanks to some very poor approaches at the plate by the Indians. He’s going to get rocked down the road and has no business being in Pittsburgh. And the more I see Pedro Alvarez the more I realize how poor a decision it was to bring him up. Both these guys need to be in 3A. Now the question becomes, how long will it take the Pirates to figure out they made these mistakes? Or, will they ever and just leave them here no matter what happens?
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The Rangers series is a blow out on paper. They have a few pitching problems right now but those boys are swinging the bat so expect to see some high runs allowed games. Look for Doumit to be showcased at first in at least one game. Just a hunch.
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Anup Sinha over at Bucs Prospects talks about the potential cost of our first ten picks in the draft, if we can get them signed that is. His account mirrors what I am hearing too, that there’s already some talk that Taillon may not sign with the Pirates. Perhaps that’s nothing but leverage play but it’s the same type of chatter I heard about Sano which came to be true.
One account I heard last week suggested that the Pirates wanted to take Machado but the Pirates somehow got wind that the probability of signing Machado was next to nil so that’s why they ended up taking Taillon. I don’t know how accurate that account is but I’m betting it’s close. If it is, then Taillon and his advisor know it too so I’m guessing it’s going to take stupid-stupid money to get him signed, if they can.
Look for the Bucs to spend ridiculously high over-slot sums to get average guys signed at the upper levels. Not because the prospects are worth it, but because it’s the Pittsburgh Pirates.
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Fantasy league action? 3-0 on the week and have one team that’s running 10-1 now. Unbelievable.
By Jake, on June 18, 2010, at 11:39 pm |
“I’ve been keeping track, and the Pirates have yet to come back to either tie or win a game in which they’ve trailed by three or more runs. In other words, if they fall behind by three runs at any juncture of the game, they have yet to even come back and tie that game, however temporary, let alone win it.” – New Bucs reader from Pittsburgh
The Bucs certainly had a chance to bust that bad luck charm Friday night but, once again, failed to produce. Down 4-0 as they came to bat in the bottom of the 7th, Walker singled, McCutchen walked, and Jones singled thru the right side loading the bases with no outs. Church then crushed a line drive double into the notch clearing the bases and drawing us within one.
The Indians brought in southpaw Perez to relieve Carmona and I pulled out his pitching card and saw left hand batters are wailing this guy to a .390 tune this year. My heart started to beat just a little faster as Alvarez stepped into the box thinking it was his time and he hit a fly ball to medium depth center for the first out. Doumit came up dragging his .188 BA from the right-side and the situation screamed for Russell to go to Young, but it never happened. Doumit unproductively popped out meekly to short for the second out. The Indians then got a bit more serious and brought in Herrmann and he got Cedeno to fly out to left to end the inning.
Almost, but not quite.. but hasn’t that been the storyline of the year?
Tabata doubled hustling with one out in the 8th which provided another opportunity but Walker and McCutchen both made outs to end that opportunity as well.
Maholm pitched a good game keeping the ball down and had put together a two-hit shutout through six. It all fell apart in the 7th on a hot, muggy night with his pitch count nearing 90.
Peralta doubled opening the inning, Duncan flied out, and then Hernandez ground one through the right side that Church was quick to the ball on and that held Peralta at third. First and third and one out and Donald came to the plate. 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, the bench sensed a squeeze so they had Maholm throw to first and sure enough, Peralta was breaking for the plate, Maholm went out of the zone for 3-1, and then came in away and Donald hit it toward first. Jones saw it coming his way and did the best humpback whale dive impression you will ever see in your life which allowed the ball to go right under his glove into right scoring Peralta. Here’s the play:
So at this point it should have been two outs, one run in, and a runner at second then Maholm struck out Carmona for what should have ended the inning.
But, noooo..
With two outs after Carmona struckout, and two runners on, Crowe hammered a line drive through the left side for an rbi single, Choo smashed an rbi single through the right side making it 3-0, and then Hanrahan came in and Santana lined a 2-0 offering off the right field wall scoring Crowe while Choo got thrown out at home on the play.
Four runs scored – three runs after the Jones no-play. I mean, look at the play in the picture – you can see Hernandez has already taken at least two steps, Maholm has already landed and started to break towards first, and then there is Jones with his half-step lean job falling toward the ball in a quaint dive. Jones’ slow reaction on the play opened the door and the Indians took advantage.
Kerry Wood dragged his 8.03 ERA to the mound in the 9th to close the game out and Jones flied out, Church ground out, and Alvarez…
.. whiffed baby.
And so ends another tale of the hapless Pirates.
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McCutchen made a nice play in the 5th coming in hard and diving to catch Crowe’s falling liner. But earlier in the inning Donald golfed a line drive over McCutchen’s head and he nearly tracked it down but the ball went off his glove and Donald had a double. He was eventually stranded.
Neil Walker flashed some leather with a great far-ranging play to his right and throwing off-balanced in the air, he gunned down Crowe. Later in the 9th Walker had a chance to turn two but ate Cedeno’s relay when he saw Hafner sliding hard toward him. Crowe had hit that ball to short rather slowly so there might not even have been a double play chance, I don’t know. But you could see Walker was a bit preoccupied with Hafner coming at him and Walker not really having good technique yet receiving relay throws and getting out of the way while turning two.
Church and Walker also teamed up to nail Choo at home in the 7th to end the inning. It’s nice seeing Walker’s fairly decent arm out there as a relay. I’ve also said this a few times – it’s nice seeing Church patrolling right because he’s saving us some runs with his defensive play. Friday night he even had a clutch hit scoring three which makes it even better but if he gets consistent at bats, I think we’ll see his average climb back to the .260 range. While he’s not a fan favorite, he’s well worth the defensive runs saved in my book. DFA Milledge and send him down to Indy - nobody is going to claim him.
There were a couple of other great managing decisions in this game that stood out to me. In the fourth, Walker singled leading off the inning and then the bench ordered him to steal second with Carmona on the mound and McCutchen at the plate. He was out by a country mile plus another country mile. It was the second time the bench called for Walker to steal this year with Cutch up and less than two outs and both times he was nailed. I understand taking a little risk but when you have a team unable to score runs, you can’t run yourself into outs. Poor, poor managing.
In the 7th after Maholm gave up the leadoff double, I thought it was appropriate to pull him. He was pitching a good game but there had been some well-struck balls in the previous two innings indicating they were starting to see him better. As I noted above, Maholm should have been out of the 7th with just one run given up so it was one of those damn-if-you-do, damn-if-you-don’t type of decisions. But it was a hot muggy night, Maholm’s pitch count was climbing, and with the harder hit balls the previous innings, it just seemed to me it was a good exit time for him.
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I loved hearing this tidbit tonight after the game – the Pirates have lost eight of twelve by two or fewer runs. Yeah, but many of the teams fielded their “B” lineups during the stretch behind some good pitching which turned out to not be too good at the time. Plus, our starters have a 5.90 ERA last ten games and we’re hitting a season high .230 over that period but generating a season low 2.8 runs per game. We might have been close in the box scores but we didn’t deserve to be close in most of those games.
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Dejan Kovacevic spent a little time talking with Bob Nutting Friday and these two points stuck out to me:
DK: On 11-game losing streak, 20 games under: BN: “I’m frustrated but also shocked. Angry. Surprised at where we are…”
DK: If he’s frustrated, why no changes above the player level: BN: “I think it’s better not to discuss staffing changes as a public forum. I honestly believe that’s counter-productive. But I also believe that we have the right people in place, and I believe in the people in place so long as they are moving us forward in the direction we need to go. As soon as we don’t believe in those people, that’s when you make a change.” ( my emphasis )
I was impressed that Bob Nutting spent a few minutes with Dejan.. it was needed to clear the air. I was also impressed that he said he was angry because that’s not a typical Nutting word. But the fact he was surprised at where his club is at just reconfirmed that he remains too removed from baseball operations to ever be able to see outside the blinders he has always worn. The knock on the Nuttings in my book has always been that none of them have one iota of a clue how to manage a competitive sports team and they have been taken to the cleaners believing in the advice handed to them from poor baseball people.. people who have agendas the Nuttings didn’t see coming.
The problem with all that is, the man they picked to lead their organization is micromanaging their club to the ground and they refuse to open their eyes and acknowledge they made a mistake. When they hired Coonelly and agreed to allow him to hire Huntington knowing full good and well major decisions would be pressed through Coonelly, the Nuttings expected their organizational asset base to grow significantly larger than just through draft allocations.
No owner could possibly be happy with the short-term plan executed during the trades.. they were mostly unmitigated disasters and its left this club short on short-term talent which they didn’t expect to see happen. Not only that but the failed short-term plan now requires them to hold on to assets that obviously should have been dealt away because they can’t afford the losses trading some of these devalued players or the scrutiny of more salary dumping which should be done.
And that’s why we saw one simple article on a GM’s extension blow into a huge event requiring the chairman of the board to step up and issue what amounts to an apology for the organizational blunder.
Nothing has changed with all this, and nothing will change. The Nuttings seem content to run 1.2MM fans through the gates while praying their player development system starts to churn out talent in a few years. It’s not likely to happen because they don’t have the right people in place. It’s most likely going to come down to the players in the organization to – once again – take it on their own to force the change and that leads us right back to where we were when Leyland walked away.
This organization remains in a vicious cycle.
By Jake, on June 17, 2010, at 12:01 am |
“I’m admitting that, yes, Pedro Alvarez is striking out an awful lot and he does have holes in his approach. He may not be ready by early June (as I so boldly proclaimed) if he doesn’t make strides the rest of the month. But I’m also saying that this is what the minor leagues are for, they are for young players to struggle and learn. Alvarez is in AAA to polish his defense, of course, but also to learn how to hit junk. If it takes a few more weeks, a few more months, or even a year or longer, that’s fine, but perhaps we all, myself included, need to be more patient with his development so when he does come up, he’s raring to go.” — Pro scout Anup Sinha at Bucs Prospects May 11, 2010
“Right now, it’s hard for me to project him doing well at the major league level.” — Pro scout Al Phillips at Bucs Prospects June 6, 2010
I started Bucs Prospects with the goal of providing the fans with talent evaluations within our system and in the few months that site has been up and running, numerous people around the game have praised the concept and loved the scouting reports we have generated. What you don’t know about Bucs Prospects is that we also keep an intensive internal database on the players scouted. The fans are able to read general scouting reports at the site but behind the scenes we are developing what has to be one of the most intensive pro scouting databases on the web by the fans.
Granted this is the first year of our work over there, and granted we’ve only had a few looks at the main players in our system, but what many fans don’t realize is that good scouts can easily evaluate a player in just a couple of games. By the second time they see them, all they are doing is confirming their initial reports and looking for progress in the player’s weaknesses. That’s why we set the bar at three deep looks at each of our affiliates during the year.
Now I’m not going to tell you that the scouts we have employed at Bucs Prospects are the cream of the crop, but they are good evaluators who have all been recommended by others around the game. They will make mistakes just like anybody else, but that’s why we implemented a crosschecking type system where the upper level players are seen by more than one pro scout.. it helps to verify.
I mentioned last week that I believed it was better for the Pirates to leave Alvarez and Lincoln down in the minors to keep polishing their game because they both had significant flaws. I made that decision after reviewing the player database, after reading the scouts articles, and after watching some of their games myself. It was a no-brainer decision to me because the flaws they had were going to subject them to failure at the major league level and that’s not what you want to do with prospects.. you want them to have a better chance of succeeding than not when they come up.
That’s not to say Alvarez won’t play some good games and won’t go 4-4 here shortly – he very well might. But to ask Alvarez to debut on the hot corner with a soft tossing southpaw on the mound knowing he is a career 50% ground ball inducing machine, and knowing he was dragging a 8+ ERA into the game getting mauled because he can’t locate his pitches, and knowing the White Sox have been rolling, was just plain stupid. Alvarez was naked and vulnerable and, as you would expect, he made quite a few mistakes and missed quite a few balls his way.
Why he was called up at all is mind-boggling, but why he wasn’t called up to start with Ohlendorf on the mound – who is a flyball pitcher to get him settled in a bit better — just represents poor decision-making. As I’ve been saying all week, it’s the same type of ‘save-my-job-mode’ thinking we saw of Dave Littlefield in his last days until Bob Nutting finally woke up.
Alvarez will settle in fine – he won’t produce as quickly or as well as he could have if he had more seasoning and that’s all the scouts were saying he needed. Lincoln will eventually settle in too, although I’m a bit more concerned about him than I am with Alvarez. But what the Pirates are doing here is taking a risk that both these players can handle the stress of poor performances out of the chute and then rebound to finally become the player that everyone expects.
In my opinion, that was a poor risk to take because it was an unnecessary risk to take. The Pirates had no justifiable baseball operations reason to start the clock on those two players.. their short-term plan doesn’t demand it and their long-term plan benefited from these two players getting more seasoning in 3A. So the only other reason the Pirates might have needed the players to come up was to generate additional cash flow for the Nuttings. I respect the business side of the game but I believe Ogden Nutting is one smart cookie who would much rather have a long-term cash cow than immediate gratification which could also kill that cow.
Side note — here’s a quick look at the huge Alvarez debut draw:
And let’s be blunt honest here – if Alvarez and Lincoln fall flat on their face the rest of the year, which is a distinct possibility, the Nuttings will be looking at – potentially – less than 1MM walking through the gates in 2011 because there are no more hope cards that ownership can play on the fan base or on corporate sponsors. We’re talking a significant blow to short-term revenue streams which will significantly impact the growth of this franchise.
It was too big of a risk and I’m shocked Frank Coonelly allowed Neal Huntington to play this poker hand because it sure seems to me that Ogden Nutting isn’t a poker player.. he seems to want a more conservative approach which may not yield as high a reward but produces a decent return. The actions we’re seeing right now are akin to Huntington betting Nutting’s money on two 25-1 horses in one race hoping one of them wins so he can keep his job.
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As for the game, you have to question John Russell’s decision to start to inferior defenders on the left side with Duke on the mound. Perhaps Cedeno is hurt and he didn’t have a choice in the matter, I don’t know. But that decision cost the team several runs as ground ball after ground ball shot past Alvarez and Crosby and both created errors.
 When I saw this Rios ground ball scoot past Alvarez in the 6th it became apparent to me that Mr. Alvarez’s footwork is well below average. This was a ball that most third basemen field cleanly and even the below average third basemen in the game would at least knock down.
Alvarez didn’t do either and Rios eventually scored on a Konerko single and then Quentin hit a mammoth shot off the top of the center field wall scoring Konerko all the way from first.
But it really didn’t matter at that point because the Sox were already winning 3-0 before the no-play by Alvarez leading to the Sox fourth and fifth runs.
In the fourth Pierre flaired a single to left, Ramirez executed a perfect hit-and-run with a line drive into the right field corner and Milledge was a bit slow to the ball, then double pumped, and that was all Ramirez needed to take third on the play. Rios then ground one past a drawn in Alvarez to score Ramirez, Konerko walked, and then Quentin lined a sharp single to Tabata with Rios heading home but Tabata’s throw was weak and there was no play.
That put the Sox up 3-0, and Rios and Konerko scoring in the 6th put them up 5-1. Our lone run came from an Alvarez walk, a Milledge double over the third base bag, and a Crosby ground ball to short with the infield back which allowed Alvarez to score. We scored one more in the 8th when Tabata crushed one over the left field wall for his first major league home run. So it was 5-2 Sox after 8.
Side note — Konerko’s single in the 8th is below. You can see McCutchen taking steps back but he then had to come running in and the ball fell at his feet for a single. Cutch just ‘aint all there lately.
Mr. Personality, Brendan Donnelly, took the mound in the 9th and that’s when the Bucs came apart at the seams. Please note that this has been happening frequently to Donnelly much like we used to see happen to Roberto Hernandez who was another loveable guy in the clubhouse.
Nix opened the inning with a double past Alvarez who probably should have caught the ball but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one and say he at least should have knocked it down. He didn’t and the fire was lit. Jones popped out to second, and then Pierre hit a slow roller toward Walker who came in and tried to make the play but didn’t judge the bounces right and it ate him up. That put men at first and third and one out.
With Ramirez up, Pierre stole second and Doumit threw a low one to Walker which bounced a foot before his glove and the ball hit the hard dirt and shot up and past him into center allowing Nix to score. Pierre held at second. Ramirez then flied out. Rios came up and took ball four as Pierre took off to steal third and Doumit threw one to Alvarez who looked like he was a deer in headlights and scared out of his mind – Doumit’s easily catchable ball went past him as Alvarez backed away from the bag and Pierre turned the corner and headed home. Crosby also had a throwing error on the play but Pierre had already crossed the plate anyway.
One hit, one walk, four errors, and two runs scored in that inning and Mr. Personality walked off the field with glaring eyes at the White Sox bench.
There’s no question that the kids are pressing right now – they have been facing superior teams and they are 100% unstable with new guys coming in, old guys leaving, players out of position, pitchers pissed off on defensive alignments – we’re just all screwed up right now. Nobody is happy.
Except the Nuttings, evidently.
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Bucs are now 5-29 when the opposing team scores first. Ouch.
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Interesting tidbit – Duke’s change-up is being mauled this year to the tune of .346. Quentin’s flyball off the center field wall in the 6th was from a hanging change. Now think of that a second as you consider Lincoln’s inability to throw a change and the Pirates minor league system has de-emphasized learning the change-up in the lower levels.
Here’s another tidbit on Duke — in his June – July starts since 2008 he sports a 5.74 ERA, a 4-13 record, and allowed 167 hits in 130 innings of work. Some fans were wondering if he has been intentionally throwing bad leading up to the deadline. This year – the year he is almost surely on the block – he sports a 7.04 ERA in June. And his trade value now is what?
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Alvarez whiffed in his first major league at bat. A part of me was actually glad he got a little lifelong memory payback for being such an ass during the signing period after the draft.
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The Sox changed Thursday’s starter to Mark Buehrle since Peavy’s shoulder is still hurting. We should rack up some hits off him.
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Iwamura was DFA’d. Yawn.
“On paper, we do like our rotation, with Brad Lincoln coming up behind them,” said General Manager Neal Huntington. “You look at Charlie Morton, and he had one start in Chicago where he gave up 10 runs in one inning. Agents love to play that game and I hate it – ‘take away one game’ – but in Charlie’s case, it really is true. Take out that game, and he had a 3.66 E.R.A. in half a season. We’ll take that.” …
“When you have five guys who give you a chance to win every day, that’s the Minnesota Twins model,” Huntington said. “They don’t have that dominant starting pitcher, but their guys give them a chance to win a lot of games.” — New York Times, February 18, 2010
I wonder what page of the Minnesota Twins model says throwing $4.5MM down the toliet from poor internal evaluations makes sense? Or what page says the GM should understand what his pitching staff is really capable of or what health risks they are facing? I mean, when the fans get to the point of evaluating moves better than the GM does, it’s time for ownership to stand up and start thinking they have a major problem:
“[Signing Iwamura] is a two-thumbs down deal, not because of the players swapped but because of the position Huntington left us in where somebody upstairs on Federal Street felt we had to allocate ridiculous sums of money on a one-year stop-gap, not to mention too many people upstairs seem to be thinking we have more talent around than the rest of the world seems to believe.
Personally, I would have rather spent stupid money to get Sano and keep Hill than to bring in Iwamura. And, yeah sure, I’m glad Nutting is spending some money. It’s just not going where I personally think it should have gone considering the build up in the division and our rebuilding mode.” — Jake at New Bucs, November 4, 2009
And I wonder what page of the Twins model says not to play a player drafted by the previous GM, or else blow the internal evaluations so bad you just didn’t know what you had in the player?
“General manager Neal Huntington said Tuesday, upon placing first baseman Steve Pearce on the 15-day disabled list because of a sprained ankle and recalling Walker, that Walker “will be used as a corner utility player who can help us with his versatility and bat,” adding that “he will see playing time off the bench and in spot starts.”‘ — Post-Gazette, May 26, 2010
And just where the heck is Chuck Tanner and Bill Lajoie in all these ridiculous moves? Are they being silenced that much? Where are the media? Nobody is calling for Huntington’s job as if they all think this is normal and acceptable. How many poor deals, poor evaluations, and poor strategy moves does a GM have to make before everyone finally wakes up and goes – oh crap, this isn’t going the way it should be going? I mean, Bozo the Clown could have done the last three drafts and walked away smelling as sweet as Huntington – maybe even better.
So what, exactly, has Huntington really done except screw this organization up even more than it was?
“Signs grew more ominous as the ballpark came into view. Traffic around the ticket booths, described by a team official as an all-day trickle, was still just that: a trickle. I approached a 24-year-old fan named Alex Harrington and asked, “Are you buying tickets to see Alvarez?”
“Who?” he said.
Oh, boy. I said the name again, and while it seemed to ring a bell, Harrington wasn’t here for Alvarez. He was here to take a buddy from Chicago to see the White Sox and “to kill some time.”
Let’s Go Bucs!
Surely, the next person I approached would be pumped for Pedro-palooza, even if the Buccos had lost nine straight. But I swear this is what Mike Biosko, a middle-aged man from Cranberry, told me when I asked if he and his buddy had come for the Alvarez unveiling.
“No, we’re here to see if they lose 10 in a row,” he said.
Seriously? You drove in from Cranberry just for that?
“Yes,” he insisted.
At that point, I wanted to call up Pirates owner Bob Nutting and MLB commissioner Bud Selig and scream into the phone, “Do you see what you people have done to this fan base?”‘ — Joe Starkey, June 17, 2010
It’s not the losing. It’s The Plan.. the Blueprint. Garbage in, garbage out.
Kindergarten’s over.. let’s move the bean counters out and get some respected men in this organization that know what they are doing.
By Jake, on June 15, 2010, at 11:12 pm |
Brad Lincoln.. the Dave Littlefield draftee that Neal Huntington has set up to fall hard, is doing just that – falling hard. Rushed out of AAA throwing just two legitimate pitches, Lincoln is getting hit hard. Despite allowing 13 hits in 12 innings, even the outs he is generating are mostly well-struck balls. In his second start Tuesday you could see he has backed off challenging hitters as much as he did the first time out and that resulted in him walking more than he struck out.
I think I was the only Pirates fan on the planet that didn’t want Lincoln brought up. My personal quick scouting report goes something like this:
– unable to vary speeds on his breaking ball and fast ball enough to offset the fact he only has two pitches
– his fast ball velocity at the start of each game is in the 92 – 94 MPH range, falls off to 90 – 92 MPH around the 40 pitch mark, and 88 – 90 by the 70 pitch mark
– below average fast ball movement
– he hangs 20% of his breaking balls and is wild on 5% of them
– he started throwing a few change ups in his second outing but primarily to batters who were bunting. One of the few times he tried to throw the pitch for a strike to a batter not bunting, he hit him. The offering is so poor it can’t even be called fringe.
Simply put, Brad Lincoln has no business being on the major league roster. The Pirates front office said he was brought up to take his development to the next level but that’s a farce and a major knock on their player development system. We’ve already read professional scouting opinions that the Pirates are not emphasizing learning how to throw a change up until later in the development cycle but Huntington’s pitching coordinators and minor league field staff have had at least two-plus years to teach Lincoln how to master a change. They never did – Lincoln acknowledged he had to learn it from a fellow player in AAA this year after the season began.
What bothered me the most about his start Tuesday is that as the game went on his body language and pitch locations (missing the mitt) suggested all the rocket shots off him were starting to get to his head. He managed just one 1-2-3 inning this game and only two the previous game, but in all three of those there were well-hit outs.
And here’s the most troubling part about Lincoln’s immediate future – within a couple of games video will be around on him and batters will simply lay off the plus breaking ball and sit dead red and crush him. It’s the exact same thing that happened to Charlie Morton.
The Pirates front office is making strategic mistake after strategic mistake much like Dave Littlefield did in ’save-my-job’ mode.
Lincoln needs to be sent down to 3A to learn how to throw a change up, to learn how to vary the speeds on his pitches, and to build arm strength. If the Pirates don’t have anyone in the organization who can help him accomplish those goals outside of Joe Kerrigan, then they need to go outside and hire some help immediately.
The fans deserve better than players having their clocks started before they are ready. If Bob Nutting really wants to put a competitive major league baseball club together, then he either better start listening to the consulting voices he is paying, or if he doesn’t trust them, he better get new people.
This is a joke.
While I understand this front office has an upcoming July deadline problem probably wanting to push some pitching out the door and need to see if Lincoln can hold his own, that’s the front office’s knee-jerk problem for poor short-term planning – not the fans. Lincoln’s only here to throw three out of five games in front of the home crowd for Nutting cash flow.. who is kidding who? He wasn’t even put into the easier slot, for some bizarre reason.
Hat tip to the scouts at Bucs Prospects who projected Lincoln one year off and questioned the Pirates lack of development for an out-pitch against left-hand batters. Spot on.
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Walker and McCutchen.. 5-9 with four runs scored. Wow. It’s the two spark plugs we thought we were going to see with McCutchen and Milledge which never came about. They are feeding off each other right now and it’s fun to watch. Unfortunately, McCutchen’s head hasn’t exactly been attached on defense lately as he’s allowed too many runners to advance on poor relay throws. He’s either throwing to the wrong base or he’s airmailing throws over his relay man. Often. Too often. So often its cost us quite a few runs lately, like Tuesday night.
I hate seeing Church’s empty bat in the lineup but I have to be honest, his defense has been impressive in right and he’s saved a couple of runs as a result. Sometimes an 0-4 at the plate isn’t so bad if you are also contributing in other ways.
And what’s with this no-play by Garrett Jones:
Ninth inning, down a run with the top of the Pirates lineup coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth, no outs and a man at first – Dotel throws wide of the bag and Jones refuses to give ground and catch the ball and the runner ends up at third then eventually scores.
My-oh-my.
But that wasn’t as scary as this — McCutchen singled in the 9th and then…
seemed to develop a cramp in his left leg.
Whew!
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The big news circulating late Tuesday was Ken Rosenthal’s article at Fox Sports suggesting the Pirates are currently debating John Russell’s future:
“The Pirates are holding internal discussions about the immediate future of manager John Russell, multiple major-league sources say.”
While other media guys are suggesting Russell is on firm ground, I’m here to tell you Russell is not on firm ground and hasn’t been on firm ground since last September. The ground has just started to break up a little bit more lately.
There’s no question he’s lost his team – and some others around him - based on the things I’ve heard, and there’s no question Russell’s decision-making lately has been less than stellar, but what isn’t known is how much Neal Huntington has infected Russell’s decisions. I suspect its more than most people believe.
Regardless, Russell is not the man to take this roster to the next level so it only makes sense he departs asap. It won’t happen while they are trying to sign their upper level draft picks because it will make them look even more unstable than they already are, but it should happen. Gary Varsho has done all the right things over his career as a soldier to get the chance to be the interim manager, but before we start searching for a replacement, Huntington and his band of wonderlust paycheck gypsies need to be pushed out the door too and men who know the game brought in to get the job done.
Kindergarten is over.
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We’ve lost HOW many games in a row? Now we’ll probably see Alvarez come up and he too will fail on the diamond but be a number one hit at the box office. At least Alvarez will hit a few mistake pitches out of the yard along the way.
LOL.. go Nutting go. Play it all the way baby.
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