By Jake, on February 27, 2010, at 10:36 pm | 25 comments
Eight days left in the Pledge Drive to keep the paywall down. You can read about it here and here. So far $428 has been pledged toward our $1,000 goal. Pledges can be made here.
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Traveling tonight so short post.
Q: I usually keep my hopes for the Pirates in check. I fully expect them to lose 100 games this year, if not their usual mid-90s. But I will be paying close attention to their minor- league clubs. .. Truthfully, I think its extremely difficult to build an entire team from within.
Bob Smizik: I think you have the right approach, Nate. Low expectations for this season but increasingly higher ones in the years ahead. The Pirates have placed their bets on the amateur draft. It’s not a perfect way to build a team but it seems the only way they can do it. ..
The picture Smizik paints above shows, imo, one of the main problems the fans have in proper evaluation of the current regime. Simply put, he’s content waiting for higher expectations in the years ahead as we build via the draft. No matter where you go to read about the Bucs and ‘the plan’ that’s the message you are hit with.
The problem with that mindset is that there is no accountability for the last two years. For instance, the Nutting family has refused to infuse any of their own cash since 2007 to prop up our draft position during a full rebuild that Bob Nutting said he is the co-architect of.
One way the Nuttings could have done that is by keeping Jason Bay through his contract years which would have resulted in two additional draft picks in 2010 from Bay walking out the door as a free agent. All things being equal, that would have provided us with the 36th and 57th picks in 2010 for an additional $10M or so paid to Bay.
Obviously that $10M infusion would have ultimately been reduced some from Bay’s market value (ie: suite sales, corporate sponsorships, ticket sales, etc, etc, etc) and then wiped out totally from future value received if just one of the two draft prospects contributed as expected – if the second one was a hit as well, then Nutting would have actually banked a considerable profit. That assumes, of course, that Greg Smith and Neal Huntington properly identified, selected, and signed two solid players.
And perhaps that’s exactly the issue – maybe the Nuttings didn’t trust Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington and his staff enough to ultimately bring them that future profit? Instead of risking those personal funds (which we now know would have been at least been covered from the profit they stated the organization made in 2008 and 2009), they instead chose to dump Bay’s salary off the books.
Now going back to Smizik’s assessment and fan perceptions.. are we really committed to rebuilding through the draft if we haven’t leveraged our draft position opportunities considering 12% of the 2009 Type A free agents (three in Gonzalez, Grabow, and Bay), and two of the Type B (Nady and LaRoche), had been under our control when the new regime took over? By my count, that’s a potential for three additional first round picks or no less than three additional second round picks, plus no less than three first round sandwich picks but could be as high as five.
Imagine that a second.. we could have had no less than eight selections before the 82cd pick overall this year and possibly as many as ten of the first 82. Now THAT’s rebuilding through the draft folks. And we could be supplementing that while rebuilding by bringing in ’better bets’ over the next few years in signing free agents with high Elias ranks and giving them stupid money one-year deals. We couldn’t lose because the value of free agent compensation far exceeds any stupid money paid out unless it’s $10M over true value received.
We’re not rebuilding by the draft – all we’re doing is spending as little as possible to get by.
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Iwamura is evidently not 100% yet. Not that we believe he ever will be during his stay with us, but that’s a story for another day.
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Hilariously posted at Pirateball.com as if mocking Pirates ownership.
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Joe Blanton will pitch against the Bucs in Bradenton when the Phillies come in March 6th. They aren’t wasting any time, although it will be interesting to see how many pitches Blanton actually throws. How ironic is it that Coonelly’s old buds send a right-handed soft tosser over to get lit up. Make sure you place your bets on that game.
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“I feel like the most complete player I’ve ever been. I feel like I can be a threat on both sides of the ball. I’m excited to see what I can do.” — Lastings Milledge as said to MLB.com
I, I, I, I, I, I.. well, at least the I’s have it.
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Nyjer Morgan, the good corporate guy – he learned fast in Pittsburgh. Now he’ saying in Washington that there’s a “vibe” in the clubhouse that he didn’t feel in 2009. You know, like we’re hearing about the Bucs in 2010, and we heard in 2009, and 2008, and 2007, and 2006, and..
You get the idea.
Now I wonder if that vibe he’s feeling is a good vibe, or a bad one because they only have three starters?
By Jake, on February 18, 2010, at 8:56 pm | 12 comments
Short post as I’m traveling today.
I saw the reports on Hanrahan’s condition and as I said earlier this winter, I’d guess Neal Huntington knew about this all winter and why he ponied up for Dotel and Donnelly. As PNC316 mentioned in yesterday’s comments, I told the readers here after we acquired Hanrahan that the rumor was that Hanrahan was damaged goods when we got him, and it’s played out that way ever since. Bottom line, we gave up Sean Burnett and Nyjer Morgan – both pretty much garbage pieces – for two pieces of garbage in return. So far, Morgan has been the shining star in the garbage dump.
What is freaking ironic about this entire Hanrahan issue is that the lost value of Hanrahan’s services, combined with the additional value we had to cough up to bring in someone to cover his impending downtime, and sprinkled on top with Hanrahan’s future medical costs to the organization, far, far and away exceed the risk value we would have taken giving Tanner Scheppers the extra booty to bring him onboard.
THAT is the type of poor decision making that is plaguing this new regime.
Hanrahan is the first to go down but he won’t be the last as our pitching staff is littered with huge abuse flags. It’s just a matter of when. I’m just stumped why Huntington continues to put Evan Meek in the 8th inning mix knowing the kid is probably just as unhealthy as Hanrahan. Plus, we all know what typically happens when a pitcher adds mass weight over the winter like Meek did.. they end up on the DL. The kid’s got a double-whammy red flag.
Oh, and I guess this is the best time to mention this.. Brad Lidge is one player in recent history who pitched with the same condition and look what happened to him last year. Despite not knowing Hanrahan’s true condition, I’ll be stunned if he doesn’t go under the knife. If he doesn’t, I’ll be even more shocked if Huntington allows him to pitch.
My take? Just go ahead and cross him off your 2010 roster.
In the best-case scenario, Huntington said, the Pirates will have five starters who are dependable enough to keep them in games consistently. If the Pirates have that foundation, it is at least safe to say they will not lose 99 games again.
“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.”
Lord, we’re back to the Twins model now joining every other club not winning like the Brewers, Indians, Reds, Royals, and Padres. But there’s two problems with that premise in Pittsburgh.. Neal Huntington is no Terry Ryan and Huntington’s staff of development dudes and band of scouts couldn’t shine their MN peers shoes. And that’s before we talk about the huge differences of impact talent between the rosters over the years.
Coonelly said he’s “extremely happy” with the instruction and discipline occurring in the farm system. The system’s talent has gone from baseball’s bottom third to 16th, according to Baseball America. The ranking is respectable, but should be higher considering the major-league talent unloaded the past two years.
“I really thought that we would end up close to the top 10,” Coonelly said. “Our vision and goal is top 5 every year. Until we do that, we continue to have work to do.”
Top five every year. Well Frank, you better get Bobbie and Ogden to start digging in their pockets for prospects like Sano, Chapman, Scheppers, and Purke. If you had, you would have been in the top 5.
I’ll be long dead and gone before this organization ever ranks in the top five of prospects in the game with this ownership group and management team.
Connelly’s must be smoking crack.
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Here’s a fabulous article on Pirates scout Elmer Gray. I wonder if he has more voice than Tanner or Lajoie?
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This Pittsburgh Post-Gazette video on the 2008 Piratefest Q & A session tells every fan what they need to know about the credibility of Pirates management, imo. Listen closely to Coonelly about 3/4’s of the way in.
By Jake, on February 9, 2010, at 7:57 pm | 40 comments
I’m a Pirate fan regardless of the product on the field or regardless of who owns them. — Neil
This dude gets it. The only reason any of us are hanging around this pathetic team is because of our love for the organization – certainly not because of any love for the Nuttings. Now why any other fan would call this guy out because of his statement is beyond me. I refuse to see that kind of immaturity in my comments section and I’ll boot every fool who trashes another fans feelings without reason. I don’t mind seeing educated responses which run contrary to other people’s feelings, but I’m not interested in seeing childish bickering here. Do you hear me now?
That being said, Neil also asked another great question yesterday:
Jake, I don’t want to call you out or anything, but I’ve been reading your blog for years and I have never known you to hold back on a post because it was too “edgy.” I hope that this new place that bought the site isn’t censoring your posts because I really enjoy what you do and I know others do too.
First of all, nobody bought me out.. I just changed the name. As for my removing the post, as I said it wasn’t the post I intended to put up and it caught a few people off guard. It was not my intention to create drama for my readership or some of the parties listed in the post, but it did.
Since quite a few want to know what it was all about, here’s an abstract view. I called the post “edgy” because it mentioned some things only a few people knew about during the Huntington/LaCava GM interview process and when I wrote the article, I felt it was critical that the Pirate Nation had more facts at their disposal on why this management team are losers. Most of that article was written more than a year ago and then I started adding to it along the way. I discussed the contents of the post with a few people months ago and we all agreed it would be better that some things remained under the table.
Parts of the post I am willing to reveal today included a breakdown of Frank Coonelly’s career as seen from an anti-player, anti-union, and anti-umpire perspective. I felt his extensive work against labor made him a loser as CEO and I felt that his only motivation taking Nutting’s job was to try and get out from behind Rob Manfred’s coat tails so he’d have a better chance of becoming Commissioner.
I also stated that I felt Neal Huntington was a loser because it was clear to me his only motivation taking the job was for money. I listed several reasons why I felt his motivation was only money and I won’t go into those today other than to say Huntington was a member of LaCava’s camp, LaCava interviewed for the GM position first, and later Huntington agreed to interview and peer repercussions in the game for Huntington taking the position have not ended. That should tell you all you need to know.
Together these two losers represent a pro-ownership, anti-labor stance which, imo, isn’t exactly conducive for rebuilding an entire organization from the ground up. More evidence of my position can be seen in other events such as building one of the most rigid farm systems in the game which has caused distress amongst some field staff and players, labor fights from events like field staff calling out the GM as being dishonest, labor representation calling out Coonelly and ownership (Boras twice) or simply walking away from their demands like Sano and his agent did, and many, many other situations over the last two years.
That’s the basic version of that post.
Does this mean we’ll never see advancement? No, of course not.. even a blind squirrel finds nuts. Does it mean we’re in for a bumpy ride? Absolutely as we’ve already been witness to several times each year, year-after-year under their control. When will it end? After Nutting is run out of Pittsburgh.
It will be the result, not the goal.
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I had a great time during my Super Bowl break talking with some college coaches and a couple of scouts and Josh Spence’s name came up quite a few times. Some believe this kid is poised for a breakout season with AZ State which might catapult him into the first round. He’s not 1/2 stock but don’t be too surprised if you start hearing him as a possibility for our second round pick.
As for Harper and Taillon, some of the coaches were put off on his mechanics saying he’s a classic Dr. Andrews patient in the waiting and they seemed to like AJ Cole better. Everybody I spoke to loved Harper’s chances and three of them have seen him play extensively and think he’s likely to end up at third. Not one person said they would pass on Harper if he fell to the Pirates which really surprised me. The consensus “closest to the majors” pick for the Pirates was Anthony Ranaudo and the “best signability pick” was thought to be Christian Colon.
Great stuff.
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Has Neal Huntington done any Q&A’s for any publication/newspaper that isn’t owned or managed by the Nutting family. Here’s another one NH just did for the new guy at Pirate Report who I hear was run out of Chicago for being an idiot. Notice all the “absolutely” and “exactly” answers by Huntington meaning it was designed to boost ratings at PR and little else.
Did anyone notice this NH blurb:
I would like to see this thing through. This has been a labor of love. The reality is, we’re not through the toughest part yet. The building part is easy compared to the sustaining part of it. That’s where were headed now — how do we take that next step from building to executing to sustaining? That’s the challenge that I look forward to in the future. — my emphasis
Headed???? You mean, we’re not there yet??
C-ya Doumit. C-ya Maholm. C-ya Duke.
It’s a result, not a goal. Damn, I’m starting to like these Nutting PR slugs since they work two ways.
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Ready for some fantasy baseball? MLB.com’s system allows for a 12 team league with a live draft. It’s simple, simple, simple stuff which is perfect for most of us that don’t have enough time to devote to a hardcore league.
If you are interested in joining a Bucco Blog league, leave a comment below using your real e-mail and I’ll send you the login info to signup with.
If everyone prefers to do something else, or if you have any ideas for another game, let’s discuss it in the comments.
By Jake, on December 29, 2009, at 9:48 pm | 36 comments
In one of my recent posts I told you that I spent part of two days talking with ex-US Steel CEO David Roderick who had been associated with the Pirates in one form or another for decades through three ownership groups beginning in the seventies on John Galbreath’s board.
The man is a true legend in recent Pittsburgh Pirates history, and even a bigger legend in the city of Pittsburgh. Bluntly put, if there is a more powerful person in Pittsburgh over the last half-century, or a more knowledgeable person about the Pirates over the last thirty years, I don’t know who it could possibly be.
When Mr. Roderick spoke about the Galbreath family I could feel the love pouring out of his heart as he spoke. When Mr. Roderick spoke about the Pittsburgh Associates who bought out the Galbreath family, again I could feel the genuine care he had for the group and their mission. The same was even true when he spoke about Kevin McClatchy and his goals which he supported.
Then he stunned me when he said:
“The current group shouldn’t be owners.”
I swear it took me a minute or two to regroup after he said that.. my mouth went dry, my heart started racing wildly, and my brain instantly froze. When I became capacitated again I listened intently to him recite his reasons why and nearly went into cardiac arrest by the time he finished. All I wanted to do was to reach through the phone and hug the man for every fan who had felt the same pain I had felt watching this team recently.
As I held back my tears of joy, I rambled question after question at him and he gallantly answered each and every one of them. Toward the end of our conversation it dawned on my inexperienced journalistic mind that his intentions were for the city he cherished with all his heart, and to the organization he loved so dearly. The Nuttings weren’t the target of his discontent — their business model was. A model he was none to happy with.
I told you this simple story because I personally walked away with newfound hope knowing a person with his credentials was as concerned as I was as a fan. No, it won’t equate to more wins in 2010, I’ll grant you that. But his passion is so profound and his connections so deep, others are sure to listen to him and that’s all I can ask for as a fan in things I can’t control. I pray you walk away with that same sliver of hope I did.
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ESPN 1050 is reporting the Mets have signed Bengie Molina and that, ladies and gentlemen, starts the clock on a possible Ryan Doumit trade. I assume it’s going to take either a young major league ready power corner outfielder with a glove to get the job done, or a package of prospects and a free agent corner outfielder signing. Just wild guesses. I still don’t buy into the ‘we’ll hold him until July hoping to raise his value’ because Huntington has been burned too much with that game. Stay focused – if Huntington gets a package even close to reasonable, I believe Doumit is history.
I’m also starting to hear Paul Maholm’s name for the third time this winter. I don’t have any information other than his name is floating in so far unsubstantiated circuit rumors, but the fact his name is out there again tells me we must be getting some inquiries on at least a couple of our young starters.. Maholm being one of them.
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I keep saying things like ‘if Huntington gets’ but we all know the real deal. This is, and will remain, the Frank Coonelly Show.
That was the day I began a conversation at Piratesball.com that eventually lead to my relentless pursuit of the truth regarding the finances and mission of the Pittsburgh Pirates owners. It was a deep thread with a lot of good fan input even though some of the analysis was way out there at the time. More importantly, it signaled the start of fan awakening in Pittsburgh.
Several months later some of the material we discussed in that thread was covered in a Post-Gazette article on the Pirates finances which shocked the Pirates Nation. Don’t forget that the Post-Gazette was in bed with the Pirates as a limited partner via their parent company Block Communications Inc. from 1996 – through most of the 2003 season. Rarely was ownership challenged over those years and some of those who did simply gave up and walked away (ie: Mark Madden).
As fans, we had to educate ourselves, we had to dig for the truth, and we had to put all the pieces together. It wasn’t an easy task by any means considering we were so far removed from the inside of the game and had so little to go on. One year after that conversation began, I started Bucco Blog with this mission:
We are tired of losing.. we’re tired of listening to their con jobs.. we’re tired of watching these three fat cats [Nutting, McClatchy, and Beaver] bankroll their great-great-great-great grand kid’s college funds.
We’be been through all the ‘under construction’, ‘financial flexibility’, ‘rebuilding’, and ‘rettoling’ stages.. now we are in the ‘add a vet to supplement the kids’ stage *echo sound of a face slap is heard..thank you Mr. Nutting, may I have another?*.
We’re on a Mission from God.. to demand reasonably competitive play.
Now here we are four years later no better off than we were to begin with – our club is still broke, our team still stinks, and we’re still hearing the same old message that we will be better sometime in the near future.
With one difference.. ownership just opened their bank vault for everyone to look in. It’s the one goal many Pirates fans have wanted since 2004 and, thanks to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry, thanks to agent Scott Boras, thanks the Jason Stark at ESPN, and thanks to you fans, it finally happened.
Now it’s up the twenty-nine other MLB ownership groups, the player’s union, and the agents in the game, to decide if Coonelly’s revelation merits further discussion. I conducted an unofficial straw poll today of numerous economists, a few agents, and other club level executives in and around the game and I didn’t find one person who thought Coonelly would be challenged.
Not one.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be back-and-forth bickering because there almost certainly will be, but nobody believes any MLB owner or the union will come forward and admit that Coonelly’s figures aren’t accurate or that significant creative accounting was used. In fact, some of those I spoke to said every organization probably uses the same methods the Pirates used so if they call out Coonelly, they might get called out too. That surely isn’t going to happen and why Coonelly and Nutting probably rolled the dice. Bottom line, the game is too flush and the nation’s economy to fragile for it to happen right now.
Roger Noll, professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University, shared a fabulous observation with me:
The second worst team in baseball (W-L = .385) is profitable. In most industries, the second-worst firm would be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in the recession. I do not think the financial success of the Pirates is something to hold against them — just that it is not time to pull out the crying towel. Making money with a bad team is something of an accomplishment.
Such an accomplishment isn’t universally viewed as an acceptable practice in baseball, however.
While researching the Branch Rickey rebuilding years, I had the honorable pleasure to spend parts of two days talking with ex-US Steel CEO David Roderick who, as you may know, spent about twenty-five of the last forty years on the Pirates Board of Directors, from John Galbreath days all the way through the building of PNC Park in the McClatchy era.
Mr. Roderick explained to me that almost every year he was involved with the Pirates, the club reinvested its capital back into the product for the long-term viability of the franchise. To that end, and as you may remember, John and Dan Galbreath had considerable losses toward the end of their ownership years which others believe partially set the table for the new owners, the Pittsburgh Associates.
1985 was their first year of control and the team lost 57 games, but just three years later won the division. Then they won the division again. And then again for the third consecutive year, ending with that infamous Sid Bream slide in game 7 of the 1992 NCLS. Their finally tally over ten years: five winning seasons, five losing, and three division championships. In fact, their winning percentage never fell below .457 other than two times, the first year of control and their last. And please don’t forget that those were turbulent times for the Pittsburgh Associates because, not only did they have to deal with challenging economic times and the drug trials, they also dealt with division within their own rank and file at the executive level.
But all that came at a significant cost – the club had yearly financial losses which required some major hustling behind the scenes to extinguish. When Kevin McClatchy bought the franchise from the Associates, part of the purchase price included $29M in working capital debt and interest owed the Associates had borrowed against. As you know from reading this blog, McClatchy and now the Nuttings have never paid a dime on that debt.. it is being absorbed by the City of Pittsburgh.
So today when we hear that the Pirates had more than $10M in profits the last two years, I can only think back to Mr. Roderick’s concern and wonder why this current ownership group isn’t willing to reinvest back into its own product at the same level seen during the previous three ownership groups, including the early years under Kevin McClatchy? In other words, how could they possibly be satisfied having any profit when their product remains so poorly received?
That alone begs me to question the Nuttings resolve to ever field a competitive team outside of pure luck because they have refused to bring in additional investors which could increase the operations budget working capital, they have seemingly refused to inject any of their personal finances into the same since 2003 outside of gaining control, and while we have seen recent capital investments made like the Latin academy or buying a minor league club, all of which will certainly help the long-term budget, neither of those will yield significant results over the alternatives that were already in place.
And let’s face the facts — starting all over from scratch has been done many times in Pittsburgh and every single time it has failed, as one of the more intelligent men around this game once told me.
I totally believe in the message Mr. Roderick left me with – building a successful business at the level of the Pirates requires significant investment and reinvestment. Therefore, I remain in the camp who believe the Nuttings are still at home plate, now have two strikes trying to hide behind Frank Coonelly, and are about to strike out if they don’t stop hiding and start finding some working capital to infuse back into this franchise. I respect there are many others who believe the Nutting’s course of action will eventually lead to improvement of the team, but I don’t buy it myself. At least, not significant improvement to be able to compete in this lopsided game.
Rebuilding a new house on a crumbling foundation still leaves you with a crumbling foundation. How much profit they made, where they paid their money out, and what color ink they have at the bottom of their balance sheet doesn’t excite me one bit because of all the creative accounting practices that exist.
More wins than losses do excite me as a fan, but to get there the Nuttings are going to have to either jump in all the way or move over. Let’s hope and pray John Henry joins forces with George Steinbrenner and they start a steamroller heading this way to wake them up.
The game deserves more, Pirates fans deserve more, and the City of Pittsburgh deserves more.
By Jake, on December 6, 2009, at 2:33 pm | 6 comments
How easy is this one if you are a Pirates fan and want to see a competitive club in 2010? Adding Bay, Holliday, Lackey, Cabrera, Harden, Gonzalez, and Cameron at a cost of about $65M per would probably go along way making that happen while we wait for the “prospects” to show up, huh?
Did someone say the Nuttings own the club? Oh, well, then I guess I’ll have to settle for a simple Rule 5 pickup like Will Inman instead.
There is an immense divide between the old timers joined at the hip with this organization.. some believe the pitching is deep enough to allow a run at competition regardless of the below average offense penned in the short-term plan with a little help from the baseball gods, while the other side believes better men than Coonelly and Huntington, in better times to boot, have tried rebuilding ground up in this city and every one of them failed meaning, what we’re seeing is nothing but ownership abusing the rules for their own financial gain. No matter who you talk to they fall into one of those two groups and the deeper you dig into the hip, the more apt they are to say we’re witnessing rule abuse which is the side of the fence I sit on too.
The obvious debate: you’re not going to be very competitive in a six-team division scoring just 650 runs in a season if you don’t have at least a couple of the top one-third-tier pitching arms in the game on your staff and a solid complimentary bullpen and defensive unit to back everyone up. Unfortunately for the fans, the Pirates don’t even plan on opening the year with one-quarter of their short-term position players of the future in Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata, who will both return to minor league Romper Room and wait out the paradox of super-two status before being called up. See the abuser doctrine fellows above.
If you have been following the way Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington have forced the rebuilding show, you’ll have noticed that last year it was high A-ball that reaped the rewards of the ‘throw everything we have in one place and hope it wins’ doctrine, this year it looks to be 2A’s time, and in 2011 3A and Pittsburgh are said to be the focus. So if you buy into orderly progression without regression, then 2010 in Pittsburgh will be nothing but another summer camp for the youth with an emphasis on player development at the wrong level.
But who said rebuilding was fun?
Clearly there will have to be some fallout after what is sure to be another 90 loss season (remember, orderly progression) because club level executives have refused to utter the “R” word and what few loyal fans they have left are going to vocally demand accountability much like the old timers joined at the hip of this organization are already starting to do. Will John Russell be the fall guy? That’s certainly more likely than Neal Huntington.
So as we head to the winter meetings I expect Huntington to continue Frank Coonelly’s plan of allowing Nutting abuse under the guise of rebuilding and anyone on the roster owed more than minimum wage being shopped hoping they are able to wipe another $10M – $20M off the short-term books. Perhaps the latest media outcry on revenue sharing abuse backs them in the corner and makes them think twice about the timing, but I doubt it myself.
We’ve already heard the rumors that Joe Kerrigan wants a new catcher so Doumit is clearly the most obvious candidate to be dealt first. I don’t personally buy into the tagline that we’ll hold him to July to try and raise his value because everyone in the game knows the guy can rake and will play 140 games as long as he’s only catching 30 of them. In other words, he is what he is and four months won’t raise his value enough to make waiting to see if he gets hurt worth it. He’s history unless everyone tries to sucker punch Huntington.
Since Paul Maholm made it clear he wants out of Pittsburgh as fast as possible when he refused to include any free agency years when extended, it’s only logical he’ll be shopped too considering three consecutive years of improving stats under three pitching coaches. He’s a solid back of the order innings eater who is one of the more ’mature for his age and experience’ pitchers in the game, so he very well might end up being a 65% – 75% win guy on a tier-one club. Huntington has to sell high with Maholm and now is the time. I suppose the same could be said of Zach Duke – now is the time to deal him since he’s coming off a solid year.
I suspect Huntington won’t get the offer he wants for Maholm but will eventually deal Doumit, will listen in on Duke, Cedeno, Jones, Milledge, Ohlendorf, and LaRoche, and look for cheap pen help. Look for the Red Sox and Pirates to pull off a multiple player deal and look for a few rumors out of the D’backs and Rays camps with our names on them.
Most importantly if you are a fan of the team is that you don’t expect too much.
What’s the difference between Dobrow’s annual ‘I hate the Bucs’ hammering, the 2008 award, and the one we just received this year?
Not much, you say? Think again.
Not only has Tom Jones been writing sports longer than the twenty-two years John Perrotto has covered the Pirates, that piece he just wrote is in one of the nation’s better newspapers which also happens to be in one of the other MLB markets.
Ouch.
Now consider some of his words:
Whenever they do draft and develop a star, they end up trading him. They’ve become almost a farm system for the big-market teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox. They’ve gone 17 seasons without a winning record, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see them go at least another 17. (emphasis supplied by Bucco Blog)
Thank you Mr. Jones – that’s good stuff. He’s right .. it wouldn’t be surprising considering the way we’re headed.
After the 2007 season the Pittsburgh Pirates had the 26th best farm system in baseball, according to Baseball America. Now after two years of intense salary dumping, trades, and other giveaways under the new regime, Jim Callis told me where we are ranked:
I really haven’t tried to break the organizations down vs. each other, but 20th or so is probably fair. They’ve added some depth but lost McCutchen. Really hard to say — I haven’t been impressed with many of the NL systems I’ve edited so far.
The only player who has graduated to a full-time job from our 2007 system is Andrew McCutchen and he was replaced in the system by Pedro Alvarez after the 2008 draft. In other words, after Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly gutted more than half of our 25-man roster they inherited by trading 14 players for 26 and netting 131 years of control, and after spending the most money in the game in the first year draft the last two years mostly on risky high school arms and Alvarez, we’ve barely moved up the stocked talent ladder.
Barely moved.
I hear you starting to form an argument – Baseball America ranks organizations by established impact talent instead of trying to decipher potential upside of, say, high school pitchers just taken in the last draft who may or may not ever amount to anything. That’s fair – I think BA does a good job of intermixing the two myself, but let’s take your argument one step further.
I pressed Callis where the Pirates would rank today if they had taken Maztek, Wheeler, or Green over Sanchez last year, signed Scheppers in 2008, and inked Sano this year:
Maybe the top ten.
And that is the crux of my argument here – we can’t afford to be making these kind of mistakes. Argue all you want that Scheppers wasn’t healthy or was only throwing 80% in his bullpen in front of Huntington, argue all you want about Rob Plummer’s tough policy on Sano, Rene Gayo’s flagrant aggressiveness with the family, or whether or not we knew he was 16 or 21, and argue all you want about the merits of filling a position of need instead of taking the best available in the first year draft. Those might be valid points.
My point is that we didn’t get take the right risks – we failed to give Plummer upfront what Sano wanted, we spent $4 million on Ramon Vazquez instead of using Bixler and taking a $1.5 million risk on Scheppers, and I don’t even have to tell you how ludicrous it was to take Sanchez over impact players in last year’s draft simply to fill an organizational hole. Failing to take those risks has left us just as deep in the hole as we were two and one-half years ago, although you could also argue the Nuttings can now field cheaper rosters for several seasons with all the years of control we gained.
We’re not getting the job done.
Where we failed – instead of confronting the fan base and telling them that there would be a six-year rebuilding stage starting in late 2007 regardless of the fallout, we focused on supplementing our short-term major league roster in our acquisitions instead of acquiring significantly higher rated talent in the lower levels of the organization aiding the long-term plan.
We failed to take the right risks.
That was a colossal error which the results from are just starting to be seen, like in BA”s organizational rankings. And while BA’s work isn’t proof-positive of anything, it’s the best information the fans have available. Ask Frank Coonelly – he cites them to us as well. And down the road it will be seen in mediocre win rates like we saw across our system last year because every other club in our division has something we don’t have – a better stocked farm system or money to burn.
We can’t continue these misses or what Tom Jones said above will happen – we’ll still be here 17 years from now wondering where it all went wrong.
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I am stunned that some of the Pittsburgh Pirates fan base participated in a chat at the Post-Gazette partially designed to give the newspaper a fleeting edge on what to put behind a pay wall to force the fans to pay for.
Why would anyone provide the means for another person to take money out of their pocket? D’uh. Maybe I’m just starting to understand the real reason the Pirates sold 1.6 million tickets last year.
I understand the industry is dying but instead of adapting they are trying to force change. What did I say last night happens when change is forced? That’s right, it inevitably fails. Counting on the remaining Pittsburgh Pirates fan base to help a newspaper survive is about as shaky a plan as it comes because you know who is going to beat them to the punch?
Speaking of fluff that needs to go behind a pay wall so we don’t have to view it any more, what the hell was Smizik thinking in this piece? Maybe he should spend some of his time digging in Federal Street’s dumpsters instead since he’d probably get more information from that rat hole than he will from the Nuttings? Yeah baby, we need a pay wall up in Pittsburgh alright.
If it ‘aint fit to print, it ‘aint fit to read.
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Dejan reports we’re looking to add another Rule 5 pick.
Oh, happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So, Let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy times
Happy nights
Happy days
Are here again!
PROFESSIONAL PITCHING LESSONS: Ex-Major League Baseball player with the Pittsburgh Pirates residing in Charleston [SC] available for pitching lessons. Contact Brian Rogers, ***-***-****.
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One happy dude. He loves the attention, obviously. But good for him, he’s earned the right to have it.
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Like the NEWS section above? Wish it had different links, more links, different stuff? It’s simply an RSS aggregator and many of the links are quiet right now like with our affiliates. But give me your ideas for a one-stop Pirates news hole.
How about the new comment rating system? I think it’s lame myself but several folks have asked for it and I’m willing to try it out. Let me know what you think.
By Jake, on November 28, 2009, at 10:29 pm | 15 comments
At Thanksgiving dinner I was laughed at for being a Pirates fan by dozens of family members who mostly belong to the Atlanta Braves family. After I explained why I remain a die-hard fan, one philosophical member of the family asked me: what right do I have to expect change? I immediately went off on the Jason Stark/Bill Madden angle that because ownership was doing better than the fans were, I indeed had such a right.
Then it hit me what he meant — I had no such right.
That revelation finally explained to me the continuing paradox why hardly anybody seemed to care whether the Pittsburgh Pirates endured seventeen consecutive losing seasons or thirty-seven, whether the Nutting’s pocket $14 million each year or $40 million, or whether the Pirates drew two million through the gate or two hundred. Instead, they laugh at us for continuing to attach ourselves to an inferior product.
And they are right.. as fans we can’t force change, we can only become the change.
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We’re being linked to lots of third-tier names right now in the rumor mill and I don’t expect us to sign any of them. Not only do they degrade an already degraded roster, guys like Ankiel just take at bats away from prospects who at least have more upside left in their career. Now I’m not saying we won’t sign any of these guys because Huntington has shown us he’ll do the unexpected, but there isn’t a name we’re linked to right now that makes any sense at all.
And no, I don’t think we’re in on Mike Gonzalez albeit he’s the one ‘cheaper/better’ guys ($14M/3??) we badly need the services of. I mean, we were leading after seven innings in 61 games last year and blew a NL high 10 of them (6 at PNC!!). Worth it all day long if we don’t have to give up our second round pick to boot.
Forget about the rest of the names popping up – we’re not going to add a downhill trending aging veteran to our roster to take at bats from Moss who has more potential upside. Stay focused – shortstop is priority one, then a defensive catcher, and lastly bullpen help are our most pressing needs.
With the winter meetings upon us expect to hear Doumit’s name all over the place because he’s already out there once again.
Matt McSwain just got back from his honeymoon. Congrats Matt!
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How odd, Selig announced that he’s retiring after the 2012 season and one insider I spoke to said he didn’t expect to see Frank Coonelly’s name even whispered by the owners. “Not a prayer.”
No wonder Coonelly took over the role of Mother Nutting.
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Are you sick and tired of being spammed with pop under ads every time you go to any of the MLB.com or minorleagebaseball.com’s websites? If you are, then hop over to Casale Media and OptMD and opt out at both to stop the ads from appearing. Hilariously they feed you a warning that says:
WARNING: by choosing to opt out you are taking an active position not to support the publishers whose websites you visit and whose content you consume free of charge. In doing so you threaten the long term viability of their operations.
Screw them.
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Speaking of money-making schemes, Barrons reports that more pay walls are going up this time around some of MediaNews Group’s content and they specifically mention York, PA.
Along the same lines, Dejan over at the Post-Gazette wants to know what it will take for you to pay for Pirates-related content over there.
Have you had a chance to check out the PG+ pay site yet? If so, what are ideas for what we can do Pirates-related there? And, if there were something there, what would it take to get you to sign up? (At the moment, the Pirates are the only major beat not covered at PG+.)
And a rumor on the street has KDKA considering hiring Perrotto to write behind a pay wall over there.
Screw all that.
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Along the same lines, if you have ever made a reservation through Orbitz then you were offered the opportunity to enter your e-mail address right before completing the transaction. If you entered it, then the credit card you used to make the purchase at Orbitz may have been used to bill you $9 to $12 per month every month until you finally caught it and yelled like hell at your bank. Cnet has a nice write-up on the scam via the Feds - it’s something you should read because quite a few major retailers are involved in the practice as you can see from the list below.
By Jake, on November 23, 2009, at 1:55 am | 34 comments
If you happen to have an RSS Cloud aggregator on your desktop, then you’ll benefit from some new software I added to the blog today which will allow you real-time updates. The change was necessary for syndication.
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New York Daily News columnist Bill Madden sent a second shot across the bow of the USS MLB that Admiral Selig seems to be limping toward dry dock. Fortunately for Selig the shot was wide of the MLB but ended up striking Captain Nutting square between the eyes on the USS Pittsburgh Pirates. Madden said in part (I’m putting all this in the blog because links dry up):
“Now on to Manfred, the Pirates and Boras. It seems this past week, Boras and Manfred got into a little hissing match over a column I wrote back in August which reported that the Pirates received a total of $75 million in revenue sharing and central fund monies (shared national TV, marketing, licensing, MLB Network and WEB site revenue) before they sold their first ticket.
Unbeknownst to me, Boras, with whom I have not exactly enjoyed a warm and fuzzy relationship through the years, threw those figures out last week, only to have Manfred, baseball’s VP of Labor Relations, fire back, saying: “He completely made those figures up,” adding that the Avenging Agent was living “in a fantasy land.” Manford also told Foxsports.com’s Ken Rosenthal that “no one club is getting $80 or $90 million in combined revenue sharing and Central Baseball funds,” even though the Florida Marlins, in fact, got $40 million from each, to top all teams with $80 million., according to my sources. This prompted Boras to counter: “There is factual merit to the facts Madden reported and that is why Rob didn’t address it in August. Why did it take him three months to comment on it?”
In the meantime, Pirates President Frank Coonelly insisted that the $35 million Central Fund figure Boras is using is “inaccurate” – and to that I must confess Coonelly is right. When I first reported the $75 million booty the Pirates received, I broke it down to $35 million in central fund monies and $40 revenue sharing. In fact, it was just the opposite, but the bottom line is, it still adds up to $75 million.“ (Also see: Madden’s August 1, 2009 warning shot article and his first true cannon shot August 15, 2009)
Coonelly, however, said the Pirates’ income from Major League Baseball was “well below” that $75 million figure. He said his club received substantially less than $40 million in revenue sharing last year, but declined to say what the specific numbers were.
Madden continued in his latest article:
And here is another figure Coonelly will probably want to refute: According to my sources, the Pirates were one of the teams to make a profit this year – approximately $14 million, which is not bad for a team with 99 losses and 17 straight losing seasons.
What we do know is Pirates chairman Bob Nutting is not re-investing his revenue sharing in payroll, although there are disturbing rumors in Pittsburgh that he’s using the Pirates’ money to subsidize the hemorrhaging at his Seven Springs Ski Resort in Champion, Pa.
I mentioned here back in early October that perceptions in the area were that Seven Springs was having problems, so Madden’s news on that subject isn’t new to me. Nor is it new news that the organization took home a sizeable profit because it has been doing so for several years based on all the written reports (about $60 million by my guess last five years) without any real backlash from the local media or fans (except my constant hounding, that is).
But what is new is that Philly lawyer Frank Coonelly has been blatantly called out as a liar by Rosenthal and Madden’s insinuations. That is the last thing in the world the Nutting clan want to see happen right now because it also calls their credibility to the mat at a time they appear headed for a ‘one year grab as much profit as possible in 2010′ run.
This is far from over as even my phone is ringing from investigative research types now so sit back and wait for the next round to be fired. In the meantime, don’t expect any changes in the way the Pirates go about their business. But I am very pleased to see national media types and some inside the game start to openly question the financial motives of Ogden and Robert Nutting. It’s long overdue since local media has become too soft on the subject.
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I’ve brought all this up before and I think it is worth mentioning again now, how do you think the players in our system (from Pittsburgh to Bradenton) feel after reading these types of reports in the national media? Think hard about it.
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If you look at the chart on the left you can see that, since Ryan Doumit joined the Pirates in June 2005, when he started the game as a catcher the team has a .390 winning percentage over 259 games. When Doumit wasn’t the starting catcher, the team winning percentage was .413. That’s a 0.023 percentage difference and if you multiply that times a 150 game season that we would expect Doumit to start as a catcher, having him start cost us 3.5 wins per year.
No, that’s not perfect science by any means considering the magnitude of other variables, but it does hint at value. Now look what happened when he started at first or in right – we played almost .500 baseball over 78 games and his ‘value’ jumped 15.5 wins the other way. Wow. Again, splitting 78 games up over several years is hardly providing us with credible results, but still, there you go. If you are Huntington, how do you pass the chance to test the theory further?
Now look at our starters.. when Duke took the mound to start a game the team winning percentage has been .392 since he joined the club. That is a negative 1/2 win per year off the team’s actual winning percentage since he joined the club while also assuming he makes 35 starts.
Maholm? Over 127 games his starts have resulted in a .465 team winning percentage on a club that has gone .405 since he’s been in Pittsburgh. Ohlendorf had a good year but only started 29 games so it will take another year of starts to get a better handle on his ‘value’ to the club. But for right now, he’s the highest of the four pitchers listed at +3.4 wins last year. Realize the +/- wins are based against the overall team winning percentage during the time that player has been with the club and assumes 35 starts.
I think it’s clear Maholm is our best starter by far based on his consistent results and I think it’s equally fair to say he would provide an average or better than average MLB team with middle of the order expected results.
None of this proves a thing of course but it does point us in a direction.. if Doumit is going to be dealt then Huntington needs to consider more value than what he has produced as a catcher while hampered with numerous injuries.
And Huntington also needs to consider moving Duke. in fact, I’d move Duke to AZ for Snyder in a heartbeat and pick up some change along the way (too late now that they got Heilman?). Then I’d keep Doumit and stick him in right knowing he’d be a minus defender out there but also expecting him to be better than the ‘-3.5 win’ guy he was behind the dish.
We can’t lose because if we get 150 games from Doumit playing right, we’ll go past his run production over 75 games that we are used to seeing from him thereby reducing his poor defensive contribution. Sure, it would be ugly but I have to believe somebody on our field staff can kick his butt into gear so he hustles in right. Or maybe it would be better to work him in an effective platoon with Jones at first and in right based on who is on the mound to minimize his exposure on defense?
