Romo Phone Home

Bucs out of the cellar

2006-09-06T06:34:00.000-04:00

Today is a day to stretch out and enjoy the dizzying heights of fifth place. The Pirates suffer from chronic incompetence, but our rivals the Cubs this year are showing what acute incompetence looks like. It's fitting that the winning run came on a wild pitch last night; so many of these games have not so much been won by the Pirates as they have been surrendered by the Cubs.

Remember one-run losses in the first half? The Pirates were 9-25 in one-run games before the All-Star break and are 12-2 in such games since, for a record of 21-27 overall. If you accept as a premise that luck is a greater factor in determining the outcome of one-run games than it is in other games, then what we're seeing has something to do with the tendency of luck to even out over time, as small-sample anomalies disappear. Following that premise, it's possible to believe that the Pirates were not as bad a team as they appeared to be in the first half of the season. However, they are also not as good as they appear to be now. 21-27 is closer to their true abilities than 9-25 or 12-2. Charlie at Bucs Dugout gets it right--the thin air of fifth place should not intoxicate us into thinking that this team is close to contending. It isn't.

That is exactly what the Pirates public-relations machine will assert in the off-season, though. Tracy beats the drum to the press every day, but his relentless optimism doesn't really bother me; as a leader, conveying optimism is central to his job. Littlefield, on the other hand, is a shameless and cynical purveyor of untruths for the purpose of distracting the public and his bosses from his record of incompetence. He is the worst general manager in baseball at building a team and at judging, acquiring, and retaining talent, but when it comes to self-promotion through subterfuge and guile, he is a master without peer.

"Better days are definitely ahead...

2006-09-03T13:53:00.000-04:00

and they're coming soon." So ended Dave Littlefield on today's Dave Littlefield Show, in response to Greg Brown's question about McClatchy's vote of confidence.

Other notes on today's show:

Paulino has definitely won the catching job. Littlefield stated this explicitly. Doumit is now the new Craig Wilson, a good hitter without a position.
He said, "Freddy has shown us that he can play all three positions." Something about the way he emphasized "three" makes me think that they would now trade Jack Wilson in the off-season if they thought the deal made sense.

Some love for Salomon Torres

2006-09-03T06:37:00.000-04:00

It's a shame that game wasn't on TV last night, because it was a good one. Torres was brilliant in the last two innings. In the eighth, after giving up singles to Pujols and Rolen followed by a sacrifice and an intentional walk to Molina (the wisdom of which was debated by the Cardinals announcers), Torres struck out Ronnie Belliard and Preston Wilson, then got Pujols to bounce out harmlessly in a Pujols moment in the ninth, poised for a walk-off two-run homer but decisively denied.

Torres is a freak. How do you lead the league in appearances and still seem to get stronger as the year winds down?

Freddy was 1 for 4 at the plate, but played inspired defense at short all night, drawing raves from the Cardinals announcers. We don't lose much on defense if anything with Freddy at short and Jack on the bench. What a player Freddy is.

Fooled again

2006-09-03T05:57:00.000-04:00

When I read John Perrotto's speculation that Dave Littlefield was going to be fired at the end of the year and reported it here and here, I again allowed my emotions to cloud my reason. Dejan Kovacevic emphatically puts an end to any cause for optimism about the Pirates situation in an interview with Kevin McClatchy this morning.

Dejan's skepticism, clearly evident in the article, makes a line-by-line refutation of McClatchy's blather unnecessary. But I can't resist at least a few additional observations.

...anytime a sports executive goes so long without winning -- and, in Littlefield's case, the Pirates' record likely will have regressed each of the past four seasons by the time this one ends -- some doubt tends to be raised about whether the team will honor that contract in its entirety.

Yes, one would think.

McClatchy added that he is not satisfied with the outcome to date, though.

Well, that's a relief. A patient man, that McClatchy.

"Obviously, there's one piece that we have not accomplished, and that's to win. And Dave would tell you the same thing. His job is not done successfully until we win. But I think we're starting to see what I think is the framework we need to do that."

Whenever I hear the word "framework," my bullshit detector starts to beep. Dejan's seems to be beeping too, as he immediately examines the framework and finds it a bit rickety.

In addition to being the National League's worst team this season, the Pirates have a minor-league system nearly depleted of prospects at the top two levels, Class AAA Indianapolis and Class AA Altoona.

But of course, you know where this is going:

Littlefield's explanation has been that, because the Pirates have moved so many young players to the majors the past two years, a temporary void at those levels was inevitable. It is a view shared, apparently, by McClatchy.

That view simultaneously overvalues the young talent on the major league team, which does not appear to be strong enough to form the core of a winning team, and excuses Littlefield's staff for its desultory record in assessing talent, drafting, and developing players. But McClatchy shares that view not on its merits, but for a much simpler reason: 14 losing seasons are an insufficient motivator for change as long as the partnership is profitable. And it is.

The spinning and obfuscating will continue for another year, at least.

Target practice

2006-09-02T20:52:00.000-04:00

The Pirates are target practice for the Cardinals. Weaver hit Duffy tonight. Isn't it time a pitcher on the Pirates sent a message to Mr. LaRussa?

Wishful thinking

2006-09-02T07:10:00.000-04:00

Suspending disbelief for a moment and accepting as an axiom that McClatchy and/or the Nuttings are unhappy with Littlefield for his off-season profligacy and are contemplating firing him, his failure to unload Burnitz and Randa before the August 30 deadline won't help his case.

Back from the Dead!

2006-09-01T18:32:00.000-04:00

Yes, Mr. Randall Simon is back in the big leagues. His abilities aside, Simon was highly entertaining, and I confess to some residual fondness for the free-swinging sausage mauler.

Here's cause for hope for those so inclined: The Tigers were so bad in 2002, the year before we acquired Simon for the first time, that he was their team MVP for the season. And just look at them now! Ed Eagle, take note.

I also miss Josias Manzanillo and Mike Fetters. If you're going to lose, do it with some flair.

Via OnlyBucs.net.

Separated at birth

2006-08-31T22:49:00.000-04:00

Jolly Roger, the new Pirates mascot:

And the Burger King King:

Attention Mets clubhouse staff

2006-08-31T22:23:00.000-04:00

Secure all laundry carts.

Ollie: seven runs in four innings and a strikeout at the plate with runners on second and third.

Minimalist baseball

2006-08-30T22:03:00.000-04:00

I had meetings all afternoon at work today, so I had to give my tickets to a friend. I try to monitor the afternoon games when I can, which I mostly did on my phone today. Bucs bats looking good early, coming back from an unsurprisingly poor outing by Santos. Then watched as the Cubs started chipping away, chipping away, chipping away...

Walked from my office to the CMU campus--about a 25-minute walk--for another meeting at 4:00, following the 7-7 tie on the phone as the game went into extra innings. Put the phone in my pocket during the meeting, keeping it open, figuring I would catch the final score when the meeting was over.

Meeting over...damn, 11th inning, and the Cubs have gone ahead. Walked down to the bus stand on Forbes to wait for a 67. Hmm, looks like we have a little something going on. Cota up again, with a chance to redeem his reputation as Mr. Clutch. Funny how we don't talk about that much anymore. Hey, now it's 9-8.

Bautista. Another key late-game walk. Freddy up with the bases loaded! 1 for 5 today. Even if he gets a hit and goes 2 for 6, his average still drops a little. Come on, Freddy!

Shit, 0 and 2. Come on, damnit, reload. Reload, damnit. Come on, reload. Agh, we probably lost. I know we lost.

At last, the display changes:

Interlude

2006-08-30T11:29:00.000-04:00

Let's pause from other weightier topics for a moment to appreciate the engaging goofiness of last night's game, ably described here by Charlie at Bucs Dugout.

My favorite moment was the reaction by Zambrano after he personally blew his second opportunity to get an inning-ending double play. The always-expressive Zambrano exhibited a perfect amalgam of levity at the absurdity of it all and purple rage, which ended in an outburst of what appeared to be Spanish obscenities. I was wishing I understood Spanish and could read lips.

Escape from the ethical dilemma?

2006-08-29T12:56:00.000-04:00

If they fire Littlefield, I could probably renew my tickets in good conscience without exposing my spinelessness to my son.

Perrotto, who floated the first rumor, is not relenting, despite many categorical refutations from Kovacevic (like this one). I consider Kovacevic to be more reliable than Perrotto (great guy, but a bit of a rumor monger). But hope springs eternal in the heart of a baseball fan.

Elitism

2006-08-28T22:26:00.000-04:00

Pirates management's exploitation of the poor downtrodden Pirates fan is shameful, immoral. The evil capitalist owners enrich themselves on the disposable incomes of the fans.

Yet the poor slobs are too dimwitted to know that they are being exploited. Instead, they wander around PNC Park trancelike, hypnotized by its seductive beauty. They cheer, if at all, for their favorite pierogies, while the team on the field bungles its way toward another loss. They patiently wait in line, missing three innings of the "game," for the privilege of eating overpriced soft ice cream or Dippin' Dots ("The Ice Cream of the Future"). The owners give them false hope, bobbleheads, and fireworks, and they think they are happy. Their docile acceptance of their lot is nearly as contemptible as the cynicism of their masters.

To summarize the argument:

Those in power are evil and exploitative.
Those whom they exploit are stupid, gullible, and brutish.
If I, or some other wise blogger like me, could seize the means of production in the society of baseball and allocate them in a wiser and more equitable manner, the great unwashed would be better off (even though they don't know it).

This kind of elitism poisons the soul of the man who expresses it and accomplishes nothing; if this is what I really believe about baseball in Pittsburgh, it would be better for my mental health and that of those around me if I were to find another way to spend my disposable time, which is what I have mostly been doing during the past two weeks.

We used to say, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." There is a small, largely symbolic action that is available to deeply disgruntled Pirates fans like me. My son, the estimable ezekiel2517, has been urging me to show some integrity, to live my principles by giving up my season tickets next year. I have 1/6 of a plan, and I tell myself that I hold on for the day when Littlefield, McClatchy, and Nutting are gone. The seats are great, and I'd hate to lose them.

But any compromise that includes sending a check to the current incarnation of the Pittsburgh Pirates, says my son, feeds the ravenous beast and perpetuates the outrage. Spewing the kind of venom that I've been spewing online all year and then mailing that check a few months later represents exactly the kind of hypocrisy that I despised and railed against when I was 17 years old. Unlike impotent rage, and unlike wearing a fan-protest t-shirt while munching on an overpriced sandwich in the $25 seats, refraining from writing the check is a tangible action that has some tangible result.

Is he wrong?

The forbearance of the Pirates fan

2006-08-28T12:14:00.000-04:00

My keyboard player and I did an unplugged gig at Atria's next to the stadium after Saturday night's game, and after we were finished, I engaged in a friendly but heated discussion with a Pirates fan who disagreed with my propensity for going on the radio and berating Pirates management. To this guy, it seemed patently obvious that the Pirates are now doing things right, that they have finally distanced themselves from the mistakes of the past, and that with the young players now on the field, they are poised to contend in 2007.

I find this point of view startling. It seems that, by now, I should hardly have to verbalize a statement such as "We have the worst general manager in baseball," much less justify it with examples. That we have the worst general manager in baseball should be obvious to anyone paying the least bit of attention. 14 losing seasons. Craig Wilson for Shawn Chacon. Ed Creech. Brian Bullington and B.J. Upton. Tell me when to stop...

I have a sick sense, though, that what is obvious to me and, I suspect, to most everyone who reads this blog, is far from obvious to a lot more people than I would ever imagine. Littlefield bloviates on his show every Sunday, Tracy struts and gushes, Lanny prattles on about Chester A. Arthur and Rutherford B. Hayes to avoid describing the disaster that unfolds in front of him, and many of the consumers of all this hot air are intoxicated by it.

I don't claim any superior intelligence here. At best, what I have is a higher level of interest and engagement with the game of baseball than the average person, which may have as much to do with pathology as it does with intelligence, and the interest and engagement, I daresay, result in my paying closer attention and therefore being better informed than the average fan.

I had a similar experience at a preseason event at Atria's in March, in which KDKA ran a marathon pre-season talkfest in which I was asked to participate. The room was abuzz with optimism resulting, as near as I could tell, from the acquisitions of Burnitz, Randa, and Casey, and the consensus was overwhelmingly in favor of the notion that the Pirates were about to end their long run of futility. When I got up to the microphone, like Tobermory in the short story by Saki, I silenced the room when I said, "If the Pirates play .500 ball this year, I'll walk from here to Philadelphia."

If the Pirates continue their post-All-Star-break run of mediocrity (when compared to abject ineptitude, mediocrity impersonates success), look for the post-season optimism to arise again, defying all sense and reason.

A bracing splash of cold water

2006-08-15T12:37:00.000-04:00

From Dejan's Monday chat:

14-years___counting: Are you hearing anything about Jim Tracy's future with the team? Is it safe to say that if Littlefield is fired, Tracy will probably go as well?

Dejan Kovacevic: Safe and sound. Tracy is not going anywhere. And neither is Littlefield, from all I have gathered.

Bloodless

2006-08-13T16:20:00.000-04:00

Top of the eighth, Bucs up 6-0, men on second and third, Capps vs. Miles. A hit puts the Cardinals back in the game. Miles fouls off a bunch of pitches, then Capps strikes him out with a fastball outside the plate. "Yeah!" I yell, clapping my hands and irritating my wife who is blogging next to me.

Camera pans to Tracy, watching from the bench as Miles strikes out. Nothing. He sits there chewing his cud. Cerebral guy, that Tracy.

Today's radio gem, from Steve Blass

2006-08-13T15:45:00.000-04:00

Re. Mark Prior and Kerry Woods: "It's a double albatross around the neck of the Chicago Cubs."

Greg and Steve also treated listeners to a lengthy discussion about Mike Douglas's hit record, A Song for My Daughter on Her Wedding Day. The KDKA research staff even succeeded in locating a sound clip and playing it on the radio.

The Pittsburgh Pirates: Product on the field notwithstanding, We Will Entertain.

UPDATE: Product on the field isn't too bad the past few days, though. Why can't this team ever play like this on the road?

This is good news

2006-08-13T15:40:00.000-04:00

From the Beaver-County Times via a post by Wilbur Miller at onlybucs.net:

1 A source close to the Nutting family indicates that Pirates ownership is losing patience with General Manager Dave Littlefield and may fire him at the end of the season, even though they extended his contract one year through the 2008 season on opening day. If Littlefield is let go, his waterloo will have been acquiring $18.5-million worth of declining veterans in Sean Casey, Joe Randa and Jeromy Burnitz last winter and getting little production

2 The Pirates' payroll in 2007 almost certainly will be less than this year's opening-day figure of $47 million. Part of that has to do with the fact that the Pirates figure to have a younger team and part stems from ownership realizing the only thing raising the payroll got them this year was a 14th consecutive losing season.

1. This makes sense and seems credible. If it were my money, I'd be unhappy too.

2. I'd be fine with a lower payroll next year. Let the pitchers build on a year of difficult experience and keep playing the young guys until they clearly establish themselves as either players or pretenders. And hire a general manager who can tell the difference.

This deserves syndication

2006-08-09T23:17:00.000-04:00

This post, from a comments thread at Honest Wagner, deserves whatever additional attention I can give it here:

You know what? All sarcasm and wailing aside, whatever happens in the rest of his career, I hope we always remember Freddy Sanchez' performance this season. 12-0 and he's working Roy Oswalt, and he gets a double out of it. How long do you think Aramis Ramirez would have worked that count?

We have turned Craig Wilson into an icon here. His greatness in our minds has far outgrown his actual performance. Part of that is because his performance is compared to other Pirates, part of that is because he's a goofy, likeable guy, part of that is because he was marginalized by the Littlefied regime. None of this is to say that he shouldn't have gotten loads of at bats, and that Burnitz and Casey should not have blocked his path; just to say that, like Obi-wan Kenobi, having been struck down by Darth Littlefield, Craiggers has become more powerful than DL could have imagined.

The legend of Craig Wilson represents the darkest part of the Dave Littlefield Era. Craig is an unhappy ending for everything awful that this regime is.

So is Freddy Sanchez. Sure, he can flat hit -- but he doesn't have any POWER! How can he be a third baseman? Better to bid against ourselves for Joe Randa. Yeah, well. Freddy Sanchez, too, is a symbol of this regime's malfeasance -- but a happy ending, and maybe even a sign that hope is a good thing, and like all good things, hope never dies.

All hail Freddy.
KPatrick | 08.09.06 - 10:11 pm | #

Beautiful.

Tracy and McClendon

2006-08-09T22:17:00.000-04:00

I think I like Tracy better than McClendon as a game manager, and I like his decisions about who plays and who sits better too. He bunts less frequently, calls fewer pointless hit and runs, and issues fewer intentional walks (I think)--all of which are positive qualities in a manager, whose team is better off when he does as little as possible to intervene in the natural flow of the game (because most in-game managerial moves are counter-productive).

But--and I can't believe I'm about to write this--McClendon was a better manager. And the reason he was better is because of qualities that are intangible. This is an odd assertion for me to be making, because when it comes to performance on the field, I tend to dismiss the notion of intangibles--if you can't measure it or quantify it, I usually don't want to hear about it.

Managers are different, though, because it is the job of managers to be leaders. The in-game moves they make have little to no effect on the outcomes of games--all managers are basically the same--so the ethereal qualities of leadership are all they have to offer that could be of any value. Confucius said that the people in a kingdom naturally assume and mimic the spiritual qualities of the ruler. With baseball managers, or any other kinds of leaders, people have a natural tendency to look to the person at the top as a model of how to behave and then to behave in a similar way. They don't do this consciously; it just happens.

McClendon didn't have much understanding about how teams actually win baseball games and what skills contribute to wins, and as a result, he frequently made foolish decisions. But what I realize now and didn't realize then is that the consequences of those decisions were less destructive than I thought they were. The more important point is that he was a good leader of men. He had a quality that is important in a baseball manager: passion. And his teams had it too. Other managers who have it or had it are Jim Leyland, Billy Martin, Lou Piniella, and Earl Weaver. Gene Lamont didn't. Neither did Danny Murtaugh; but Murtaugh had the benefit of having an extraordinary collection of great players.

The decision by Tracy not to argue bad calls like the non-homerun last night is important not because arguing would have changed the outcome of the game, but because of what it represents--a passive acceptance of losing that now permeates the Pirates organization from the owners to the general manager to the manager and down to the players. McClendon was one guy who swam against the tide. Now everyone swims in one direction: downward.

McClatchy apologists often make statements such as, "Oh, Kevin hates to lose, believe me." Well, I don't believe them, because I have never once heard him evince passion about anything. Littlefield either--he lies, spins, and obfuscates, but he never loses his temper or expresses genuine, recognizable emotion about anything. Littlefield inherited McClendon, but he now has his man in place. The results speak for themselves. The McClendon teams were bad, but they were never this hopeless, this spineless, this pathetic.

Jeffrey Loria is hardly a guy I would hold up as a positive example of anything, but I invite you to look at the recent friction between Loria and manager Joe Girardi and realize that this passion erupted on a team that had, in effect, given up on this season by trading away most of its established players and making the decision to field a team of guys most of whom had no business being in the major leagues. Such a team could be excused for not caring much about winning games--this was declared to be a year dedicated to experience and growth, not to winning. And yet, this team is engaged in a real baseball season while the Pirates barely go through the motions.

Truth in advertising

2006-08-09T20:45:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's true.

Chacon stinks.

Artificially sweetened cotton candy

2006-08-08T21:31:00.000-04:00

from our general manager, Dave Littlefield, at the Baseball Digest audioblog, in which he provide "rationale" for most of the bizarre, indefensible moves he has made since the end of last season.

Littlefield is an awful general manager, but he is one of the most skilled interview subjects I have ever heard--he is an absolute master of evasion with an uncanny skill at crafting reasonable-sounding explanations for indefensible actions. It is this skill above all others that has enabled him to keep his job for as long as he has.

But let's remember...he is an awful general manager, and every year that the team continues to lose is going to make his act harder and harder to sustain. He will be gone one day.

News flash: Confidence Grows in Clubhouse

2006-08-08T20:34:00.000-04:00

I'm glad to read that confidence is growing in the clubhouse, because it sure as hell isn't growing anywhere else. The source of this growing confidence is the increased ability of the young, inexperienced Pirates finally to understand the subtle, advanced baseball concepts that their new manager, Jim Tracy, has been working all year to convey.

"Today is an interesting day because we've been here a number of times this year, where the series is 1-1 and here you go with the rubber game," Tracy said. "There has to be an understanding that these games here, in series like this, this makes the difference in your season right here."

Of course young and inexperienced players will naturally have a hard time grasping the concept that, when you win one game in a series and lose another, it's important to try to win the third. But Tracy perseveres.

Failure to grasp his advanced teachings is a common theme of Tracy's when he is interviewed.

"There was newness all over the place, and then the season begins and they find themselves involved in a game where they have a chance to win virtually every day, and they just weren't quite prepared from an understanding standpoint, to carry that completely through," Tracy said.

To the untrained eye, the problem appears to be more one of talent and skill than of understanding; but those of us who have never played the game should know enough not to trust the evidence of our senses.

As we know, the biggest problem this year has been the performance of our young starting pitchers, particularly Snell, Maholm, and Duke. It's not easy for young pitchers to understand that their job is to pitch well and to prevent the opposition from scoring runs whenever they take the mound, even in September. Fortunately, Dave Littlefield has hired a wise and patient man to instill this understanding into their young, impressionable minds.

"I'd like to see all three of them get that done, so that they know what that feels like," Tracy said. "So that they understand that, 'Hey, I've got to take a start here in the mid- to later-part of September and keep going and keep pushing,' because you're very hopeful that September of 2007 is going to be a very special month for the Pirates."

I can barely wait for the arrival of September 1! What a special month that is going to be!

Duffy

2006-08-08T20:32:00.000-04:00

I think it would be a good idea for someone to work with Chris Duffy and try to improve his approach at the plate--take more pitches, try to get more walks, hit the ball on the ground to take advantage of that speed--that kind of thing.

Oh wait...

Epitaph for the dearly departed

2006-08-03T18:34:00.000-04:00

First, go right over to Bucs Dugout and read Charlie's finely detailed summary of the Pirates career of Craig Wilson. Charlie's tribute chronicles the Pirates' systematic mishandling and failure to appreciate and utilize Wilson's skills from the day he came to the Pirates organization from Toronto in 1996.

It seems that nearly every truly awful decision that the Pirates have made during the past 5+ years has somehow intersected with the mishandling of Wilson:

playing Kevin Young at first base long after his skills had obviously atrophied;
the first acquisition of Randall Simon (bad enough);
the second acquisition of Randall Simon, which was as baffling as, say, trading Craig Wilson for Shawn Chacon (the day that Simon was reacquired was the day that I lost all faith in Dave Littlefield);
Mondesi; and
the winter just past, in which the only purpose to acquiring Casey and Burnitz seemed to be to ensure that Wilson would have no place to play

The way the Pirates handled Wilson also neatly encapsulates many of the erroneous beliefs that lie at the root of the team's consistent inability to judge both its own talent and the talent of other organizations:

overvaluation of speed and defense
undervaluation of offense (specifically power)
belief in the influence of defense behind the plate on pitching success (which is statistically unverifiable)
preference for "aggressive hitters" who "go up there hacking" instead of hitters who show patience and selectivity at the plate
underappreciation of the contribution that the ability to get on base makes to scoring runs and winning ballgames
preference for "productive outs" over strikeouts
belief that a hitter who frequently strikes out, especially by taking called third strikes, is somehow morally inferior to a hitter who swings at a pitch outside the strike zone and bounces to the second baseman

Craig Wilson was my favorite Pirate for many years, and at the ballpark last night, I realized how much I'm going to miss him. As people say at funerals when they can't think of anything else to say, he's in a better place now.

Prodigal son

2006-08-02T05:59:00.000-04:00

Duffy is back and, the bizarre report from Will Carroll at Baseball Prospectus notwithstanding, everyone is making nice now.

Batting Duffy leadoff is still a bad idea, especially when Wilson stops hitting, which should happen soon (it pains me that I can now write "Wilson" without a first name, but that's another topic). However, I'm prepared to accept the argument that defensive improvement could help pitchers like Duke and Maholm who rely more on the defense than pitchers who strike a lot of guys out. Bay-Duffy-Bautista will make more plays in the outfield than Bay-Bautista-Burnitz. There is no available solution, though, to the decreasing range around second base from Wilson and Castillo, which affects pitching success at least as much as outfield defense does.

Pirates bloggers on Oliver Perez

2006-08-02T05:55:00.000-04:00

Here are some thoughts from me, Pat/Van Slyke, and Charlie/Bucs Dugout on Oliver Perez over at Mets Daily.

Rosenthal: Pirates = trade deadline losers

2006-08-01T05:25:00.000-04:00

Ken Rosenthal:

So much for the talk that Pirates GM Dave Littlefield was too unrealistic in his asking prices to complete a deal. Littlefield made four trades on Monday. Two of them, unfortunately, were horrible.

None of Littlefield's veterans was anything more than a complementary part, but there's simply no way to defend trading outfielder Craig Wilson to the Yankees for right-hander Shawn Chacon.

Littlefield almost certainly could have gotten more for Wilson, a potential free agent, last off-season. Obtaining a mid-level prospect from another club would have made more sense.

Outfielder Xavier Nady, acquired from the Mets for pitchers Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez, is Wilson with less service time. As one rival executive notes, the Pirates could have obtained three or four prospects for those pitchers.

One more quibble: Littlefield failed to deal from strength with his surplus of left-handed relievers, any of whom might have brought a decent prospect in return.

Not only is Littlefield incompetent; he also is stubborn to a fault, never learns from his mistakes, and never changes what has proven to be a failed approach. And so the failure will continue until the day that he is no longer in the job.

Oh, by the way, there's also this little bomb in the Post-Gazette:

One potentially ominous footnote: He is playing through a cracked bone in his right wrist.

Jody Gerut. Armando Rios. Welcome to the club, Mr. Nady.

Duffy piles on

2006-07-31T18:08:00.000-04:00

This, from Baseball Prospectus, via OnlyBucs.net, is amazing:

How bad is it in Pittsburgh? Chris Duffy, who took a month off after getting sent down, was angry to be called up! He was expecting to be traded. "I don't like it there," he told Pirates officials. "I did all this hoping to get traded."

Duffy is a doofus, an ingrate, a punk, and by the way, not such a good ballplayer. But if this represents the beginning of a player revolt (coupled with an odd earlier report via Honest Wagner that Jack Wilson has demanded to be traded), I say, bring it on!

This reminds me of

2006-07-31T17:03:00.000-04:00

the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon fired Archibald Cox, Elliott Richardson, and William Ruckelshaus. You watch something like this the way you watch an automobile accident--astonished that what is actually happening is worse than anything you could have imagined in your darkest, most paranoid fantasies. As it happens, you think, "It really is as bad as I feared it was."

Craig Wilson for Shawn Chacon. Just stop and ponder that for a moment.

The only hope: If you really believe that regime change is the only possible hope for the Pirates fan--and I do really believe that--then what happened today can only hasten regime change. This makes the team worse in the short term and worse in the long term.

I am going to start eating sensibly and exercising. I want to be alive in 2008 so I can root for the Pirates when they have a new general manager.

Blogger attacked by baseball announcer!

2006-07-31T12:34:00.000-04:00

I was on Pirates Sunday yesterday with Rob Pratte on KDKA and opined that Ryan Doumit, if he were ever able to stay healthy, could potentially contribute more to the Pirates behind the plate than Paulino because of his power (while still acknowledging that Paulino is a huge upgrade over Cota and that Tracy was admirably quick to relegate Cota to a backup role).

Later, half watching the game and half eating a sandwich, I heard Lanny and Walk talking about Paulino and Doumit, and this morning a friend confirmed to me that Lanny had been talking about listening to a "blogger expert" in the car radio on the way to the game saying that Doumit was a better catching package than Paulino, an opinion that Lanny clearly thought was bordering on insanity. Walk was a bit more conciliatory, saying something like, "I guess some people think hitting home runs is the most important thing."

Guilty as charged. I think that the potential difference between the offense we would get from a healthy Doumit (were there such a thing) and Paulino would outweigh whatever advantage Paulino might have over Doumit defensively. The argument is probably moot, though, since (1) it's starting to look like Doumit will never play a full season without being injured, and (2) Paulino has made the sale with everyone in the organization who matters.

I got a kick out of Lanny's dismissive use of the word "blogger" as code for "pointy-headed, pimply geek who has never really seen or played in a baseball game but prefers to crunch numbers in his bedroom on his computer."

Hey Lanny: I'm Billy Price!

Dukes

2006-07-30T13:48:00.000-04:00

Zach Duke:

Duke Robillard:

Nate McLouth, American Patriot

2006-07-27T20:31:00.000-04:00

From the hard-hitting interview by Ed Eagle on the Pirates official site:

MLB.com: Who would you most like to meet, past or present?

McLouth: Probably George Washington. He got things going in this great country and I'd just like to chat with him.

I would think that that chat would sooner or later come around to the subject of a certain cherry tree and the importance of not telling a lie. I'd sure like to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.

To find out what Nate's first car was, just follow the link.

America is losing its fascination with bobbleheads

2006-07-27T20:15:00.000-04:00

according to this article, which also confirms what you already expected, that the Pirates' 12 bobblehead promotions are more than twice the number held by other teams.

It's been seriously suggested that the Pirates will wait until after Friday night's Sean Casey bobblehead promotion to trade him, and based on the criteria that this team uses to make decisions, I have no doubt that this is true. If Casey is traded between Friday and Monday night, I'm guessing that it will be the quickest change in status from bobblehead honoree to former team member in the history of Major League Baseball.

Wisdom from our Buccos

2006-07-27T05:36:00.000-04:00

Great day for quotes in this morning's Post-Gazette.

"I think we have a number of players who are very conscious of the things we didn't do well enough in the first half," Tracy said. "There is an awareness of what went awry."

And as we all know, awareness is the first step toward solving a problem. This guy is so positive, he makes Chuck Tanner look like Patti Smith. At least one player, though, professes to have given up on thinking at some time earlier in his life.

"...I realized a while back that the world doesn't make a lot of sense, so trying to understand it doesn't make sense," Burnitz said. "I'm not judging it. It just is what it is."

I would guess that a statement like that would effectively end a conversation with a reporter sticking a microphone in your face. So rather than interpreting Mr. Burnitz's comment as a reflection on the essential inscrutability of reality, I take his odd statement to mean, "Please go away now, Paul."

The Royals are leaving us in the lurch

2006-07-26T12:45:00.000-04:00

Don't miss this column by the estimable Joe Posnanski about the early tenure of new Royals GM Dayton Moore.

“The important thing is not the system. Lots of different systems work. The important thing is your commitment to your system.”

What is Dave Littlefield's plan? What are his goals for the Pirates? He never says. Dayton Moore can articulate his vision in 19 words:

Power on the corners, speed and defense up the middle, consistent starting pitching and power arms in the bullpen.

More impressively, he is already taking action to realize his vision with a palpable sense of urgency:

“We’ve got to be aggressive,” he says. “We really don’t have a choice … I’ve been careful not to put a timetable on this, but we need to go as fast as we can.”

Compare that to the bizarre aura of complacency that infuses all of Dave Littlefield's public utterances, replete with phrases such as "with where we're at right now," and "that's one of the things you look at going forward," and the like.

I never thought the day would come when I would be envious of a Royals fan, but that day has come.

Read the whole thing.

Jeopardy answer: What is "masochism"?

2006-07-23T22:58:00.000-04:00

Question: Rooting for the Pirates an exercise in this quality.

Gonzalez, whom I once described as my favorite Pirate (I love that conquistador flair he displays on the mound when he has it all working for him), has been lousy this year; lousy but lucky, exactly like Mike Williams was before it all came apart on him. Unlike Williams, Gonzo strikes guys out and doesn't give up a lot of homers, but the walks are killing him, and today the walk to Amezega*, who was something like 1 for 23 batting righthanded so far this year, killed us.

In the first game of the series, Gonzo was awarded a save after loading the bases with one out and then wriggling out of trouble. The fact that he was awarded anything at all for that pitching performance demonstrates how misleading the "save" statistic is as an indicator of effective pitching. Matt Capps, our other untouchable in the bullpen, at least throws strikes. The trouble with throwing too many strikes, though, is that opponents sometimes hit them, as happened today. As everyone else in the Pirates blogosphere has been saying, including my angry and passionate son, a team in a state of ineptitude such as ours should not have any untouchables, particularly not relief pitchers.

Is Gonzo the new Rod Scurry? Nah, not that bad. Scurry was wild, but it was the uncontrollable and frequently uncatchable curve ball that was Scurry's undoing. Scurry was the last lefty reliever I can recall who was christened The Closer by a Pirates manager, with disastrous results. I distinctly remember at least two games blown by the Scurrdog when runners scored from third on game-ending wild pitches--distant echoes of Bob Moose resonating in the caverns at Three Rivers.

RIP, Scurrdog.

* I'm too lazy to look up the spelling of this, so if this is wrong, please blame it on the player, who has no business having a name like that.

Casey's double in the fourth

2006-07-22T19:20:00.000-04:00

Casey runs like that now, and we're considering whether to sign him for three more years? In 2009, he will barely be able to walk.

Zen masters

2006-07-22T08:40:00.000-04:00

I had the privilege of listening to Vin Scully call the first three innings of the Dodgers-Cardinals game last night on XM, on my way back to Pittsburgh from a gig in Reading. Jeff Suppan eliminated one of the few of the beat-up Dodgers still capable of hitting the ball from the lineup by hitting J.D. Drew on the knee in the first inning. The Cardinals then went on to dominate the Dodgers to the extent that you can dominate another team in a 2-0 game, because despite the closeness of the score, the game never seemed close or even competitive. The Dodgers cannot hit. Garciaparra, the only decent hitter on the team who is still standing, has been in a horrible slump since the All-Star break and no longer threatens Freddy for the batting title lead.

Scully is 79 years old and has been announcing Dodgers games for 57 years. He does the first three innings all by himself with no color man, and he effortlessly spins out informative, thoughtful, articulate commentary and background information about the players while describing the game in flawless detail. He was talking about how Tony LaRussa instituted the modern-day use of closers, which began with LaRussa's use of Dennis Eckersley with the As in 1988. So, we can blame Jose Mesa and Mike Williams, among other things, on the arrogant and unpleasant Mr. LaRussa. Only in baseball would the fact that someone is a lawyer be cited as evidence that a guy is a genius. One of the few things I liked about Lloyd McClendon was that LaRussa didn't like him. When Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan referred to Lloyd and Gerald Perry as "thugs," I briefly forgot about what a bad manager Lloyd was and felt defensive. Sure they were thugs, but they were our thugs. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Speaking of wise men, Rick Monday later in the broadcast relayed an amusing anecdote about a wise man who got away from the Pirates, Jim Leyland. He said that he and Leyland were in the dugout talking baseball one day when one of Leyland's players--Monday wouldn't say who--came along and attempted, unsuccessfully, to contribute to the conversation. After the player wandered off, Leyland said to Monday, "The trouble with him is that he ain't smart enough to know that he ain't that smart."

More of the same

2006-07-22T01:49:00.000-04:00

The Pittsburgh Pirates are *this* close to losing a fan. Honestly, articles like this one via OnlyBucs make me consider finding a new team to root for. This organization is just clueless from the bottom to the top.

The Dodgers are one of several NL West teams interested in LHP Mike Gonzalez, though the Pirates would have to be blown away by an offer before dealing their closer...
The Pirates likely have fallen from the pack of teams trying to pry 1B Ryan Shealy from Colorado. The Rockies are believed to be seeking a young relief pitcher for Shealy, but the Pirates are unwilling to pay that price, especially in the form of rookie RHP Matt Capps.

When will Littlefield realize that relief pitching is the most expendable part of a team? For him, it's the most precious. I mean, it's obvious we need to DO SOMETHING. The only way we're going to find talent is by trading talent, and it's always better to trade relief pitching talent than other talent. The fact is, relief pitching affects a game much, much less often than the starting lineup, the starting rotation, or the defense does. And relief pitchers are much more erratic than other components of a team-- they're failed starters. So far this year, it looks like we may have plenty of those. So why not trade our talented failed starters (read: Matt Capps and Mike Gonzales) to other teams for talented starting players, and replace them with failed starters inside our system (read: John Van Benschoten, Kip Wells, Oliver Perez), without losing a penny? This is a process that Littlefield shouldn't even think about. Billy Beane has proven that it's how small market teams get ahead. DL has yet to win more than 75 games with his strategy of building from relief. Give it up, you dumb son of a bitch.

The Pirates are thought to be interested in Dodgers SS Cesar Izturis, who could replace Jack Wilson if the current Pirates shortstop is shipped out of Pittsburgh at or before the trade deadline or during the offseason. Izturis was a favorite of manager Jim Tracy when Tracy managed in Los Angeles.

Let me start off by saying that Izturis is three years younger than Jack Wilson. And yes, dad, think of the vast number of times we can do our cheesy,

"Hey, is this guy from around here?"
"No, he Izturis."

dialogue! But his career OBP (.296!) is 8 points lower than Jack Wilson's (.304!). There's no defending that. This is an example of classic Jim Tracy idiocy. He's the most complexly stupid man I've ever studied, and his man-love for players he's managed before is all too familiar to fans of Tracy's teams. But, even with one of the highest payrolls in baseball, he only won one division title in one of the worst in baseball. So why should the Pirates sign players he has managed before? Perhaps if he had some kind of a track record of, let's say, 10 STRAIGHT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS, then maybe it would make some shred of sense. But, no, he doesn't have that kind of track record. Once his contract is up with us, with a little luck on his side, he'll have a track record that will ensure him a bullpen coaching spot somewhere.

And all of this aside, if we deal Jack, why wouldn't we just START THE MAN WHO LEADS THE LEAGUE IN BATTING AVERAGE -- AND WHOSE NATURAL POSITION IS SHORTSTOP -- AT SHORTSTOP? *throws chair threw window*

Colorado also remains interested in RHPs Salomon Torres and Roberto Hernandez and LHP Damaso Marte, but any possible dealings with the Pirates have apparently been put on the backburner.

Juxtaposed with stories of the Yankees organization's absolute weariness with Littlfield, this is almost comical. When major league GMs see "Incoming call from David Littlefield" on their cell phones, they send it straight to voice-mail.

I'm thinking about taking my number out of the phonebook.

Attaboy Jeromy

2006-07-20T21:37:00.000-04:00

Damn fine pinch hitter that Jeromy Burnitz. Let's detach him from Ramon Hernandez and Craig Wilson so we can actually get something for those guys and let Jeromy keep on pinch hitting.

Update: Not much of a base runner, though.

The Onion is incredible

2006-07-20T15:35:00.000-04:00

Hysterical stuff. Be sure to note the obviously intentional use of "Pittsburgh fans were irate."

The Rockies are coming

2006-07-15T09:56:00.000-04:00

And it looks like we may be catching them at exactly the right time.

Remember the Nationals last year? Many surprise first-half teams don't sustain their success over 162 games.

The opposite is also true. Sometimes a bad team performs horribly in the first half, then less horribly in the second half, enabling its management, with the help a skilled staff of PR spinmeisters, to claim that the improvement is the result not of a shift in capricious good fortune, but of design. Those who don't watch carefully--the vast majority of the customers of this enterprise--are inclined to believe the spin. This explains the tendency to believe that one- and two-month periods of apparent success (i.e., high batting average) by speedy, free-swinging center fielders during the waning days of a baseball season (A. Brown, T. Redman, C. Duffy) represent just cause for optimism in the subsequent season. It also explains the inevitable disappointment that results when reality confronts fantasy the following April, May, and June.

Because luck and random chance regularly affect the outcomes of individual games, excellence can be inferred only by looking at a number of outcomes that is sufficiently high to normalize the distribution of good and bad luck. 162 is a number that works pretty well in baseball. It's possible that a team that wins 80 games by winning 30 in the first half and 50 in the second half may be no more entitled to optimism than a team that wins 50 in the first half and 30 in the second half.

That this pattern is not widely understood offers a ripe opportunity for exploitation by Marketing. There is nothing particularly wrong with that. There is something wrong, though, when the management team itself regularly gets fooled by small sample sizes and makes decisions accordingly. Observation of the Pirates management during the McClatchy years indicates that that is exactly what has happened.

New look Buccos

2006-07-14T19:17:00.000-04:00

If we're going to "shake up the lineup" for the drive toward mediocrity in the second half, how about doing the one thing that might actually help and that clearly needs to be done: move Jack Wilson down in the order?

Abandon all hope

2006-07-14T18:05:00.000-04:00

The information reported by VoodooLounger in this thread at onlybucs.net, from the Pittsburgh Business Times, effectively kills all hope that there will be an end to the misery any time soon. I wasn't able to find an online version of the story that is referenced, but will keep looking and post an update if I find one.

I don't see any possibility that McClatchy would say any of this to the PBT if he didn't believe it. The most puzzling thing McClatchy says in the article is "We have to finish our plan." Unless the plan is to systematically and utterly destroy the Pittsburgh Pirates, it's hard to comprehend what that plan might be.

Ogden sighting at the ASG

2006-07-12T22:11:00.000-04:00

Zeke and I were in our seats in Section 114, Row A last night, wearing our official Irate Fans t-shirts--more on that later--when I noticed a bent-spined little old man in the middle of the Hoi Polloi section in front of us who was being treated with a deference befitting royalty. I realized in a flash that it was the Great Man himself, the mysterious, reclusive Mr. Ogden Nutting. His son Bob was in the same section, both last night and during the Home Run Derby, and was in the stands for much of the night, but Ogden appeared in public only briefly during the National Anthem last night before disappearing into his lair beneath the stadium.

It was odd to be no more than 5-10 feet away from the man who has been the source of so much of my animus this season, and the subject of the polemics emblazoned on the backs of both me and my son ("Best Park, Worst Owner"). Had one of us chosen to do the Michael Moore Roger & Me thing with Mr. Nutting, we could easily have done so, and he would certainly have heard us before we were whisked out of the stadium by his goons. It was like wearing a t-shirt that said, "Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot" and then coming face to face with George Bush. It was positively surreal.

As Nutting headed for the exit directly in front of us, Zeke--younger and more prone to action than I--appeared to be about to say something. I leaned over and gently reminded him that we really didn't want to get thrown out of the All-Star Game. And so we weren't.

Unlike what Charlie reported in this comments thread, we did not see many Irate Fans t-shirts in or around the stadium: we saw one guy outside the stadium with a real one, and one guy inside the stadium with a knockoff. But it was amazing how many people noticed the shirts and commented on them favorably, including a lot of people from out of town. We got in about five fairly lengthy conversations with strangers over the course of the evening about the sorry state of the Pirates, including one with a couple from Sacramento who knew the McClatchy family and agreed that young Kevin had made a mess of things in Pittsburgh. The husband, an apparently well-heeled gent, assured me, as if he were revealing privileged insider information, that McClatchy was not the real power in the ownership group. He also counseled resignation: the owners, he said, "aren't going to be selling anytime soon."

The reason I'm so despondent about the Pirates lately, and the reason I haven't been able to bring myself to write a post in a week or so, is that I'm convinced he is right. I sit in helpless, impotent anticipation of the inevitable signing of Sean Casey--sitting with three home runs at the All-Star break--to a three-year, $18M contract, announced with great fanfare at a press conference at which McClatchy, Littlefield, and Tracy enthusiastically catalogue the many intangible assets that Casey will bring to the 2007-2009 Pirates.

All-Star week

2006-07-11T15:55:00.000-04:00

Well, my father and sister went to the Home Run Derby last night, so I'll let BP weigh in on that himself, but from a television viewer's standpoint, the event was pretty sweet. Watching Ortiz and Howard tear the Allegheny up was certainly entertaining. I'm also glad Howard won... it kind of exposes the Pirates' desperate need for a lefthanded slugger that doesn't have a .277 on-base percentage.

BP and I are attending the ASG tonight in our OFFICIAL Irate Fans shirts. We'll boo Tracy, cheer Bay (and Sanchez if he gets an AB), and maybe start some "Cuban, Cuban, Cuban" chants. It's gonna be a blast, no doubt.

And then when the break's over we can go back to our masochistic habit of watching actual Pirates games.

Duke curses the fates

2006-07-05T05:50:00.000-04:00

Zach Duke got dinked in the fourth yesterday. "When that happens, you can't get frustrated," Duke said.

This is going to happen to pitchers who rely on finesse and who don't throw hard enough to miss opponents' bats. There's a big difference between Duke and Maholm and the 2004 version of Ollie Perez.

The Pirates talk a lot about their great young pitching, but they don't have young pitchers like Liriano or Verlander who can just blow opposing hitters away. That's why Gorzelanny may be the most promising of the guys currently on the staff.

No more Mr. Nice Guy

2006-07-04T15:05:00.000-04:00

I like the new, angry, feisty, argumentative Sean Casey better than his predecessor. Let's see more of that!

David beats Goliath

2006-07-04T09:01:00.000-04:00

From today's New York Post:

There was no shame, or reason for grave concern, when the Mets were swept by the red-hot Red Sox in Boston.

There was no shame, or reason for panic, when the Mets lost two of three to the Yankees in the Bronx.

But when the Pitiful Pittsburgh Pirates came into Shea and punished the Mets as they did last night, there is reason for embarrassment and consternation in Queens.

Ha! Loved those shots of the outraged Mets fan sitting behind the Pirates dugout on the broadcast last night, too.

PNC: the new Wrigley Field

2006-07-03T18:57:00.000-04:00

In his previous post, Zeke wrote, The more this team loses, the closer we are to seeing change. It's a common assumption in the Pirate-fan blogosphere that if this team repeats its failure in the second half, the effect would precipitate major changes such as the firing of Littlefield or even, we dare to hope, the sale of the team to more enlightened owners. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this assumption is incorrect.

After attending last Saturday night's sell-out and listening to the Littlefield show on KDKA the following day, I don't think that anyone in management at the Pirates perceives any serious problem that needs to be solved. With the exception maybe of McClatchy's recent interview, there is no detectable sense of urgency or consternation anywhere to be found except within that small segment of the fan base represented by blogs, message boards, and fan-protest movements.

Here's what I think the bad guys think:

We're making a profit.
We have a very young starting rotation. Teams that have young starting rotations often struggle but eventually improve.
We have a lot of other young players--Paulino, Doumit, Castillo, Sanchez, Duffy, Eldred, Bautista, McLouth--who are going to get better, and when they do, we will too.
Because of (1), the worst thing we can do is to panic. We need to stay the course and be patient.
Our new manager is the perfect leader to implement a strategy of patience. (UPDATE: Tracy articulates his philosophy, such as it is, here. Via Bucs Dugout.)
We have a great PR/marketing staff that is adept at accentuating the positive.
While the signings of Burnitz, Randa, and Casey may not have worked out, they did show the fans that we are willing to spend money and are not simply shameless profiteers.
Our success and profitability don't depend on wins and losses. We have the best stadium in baseball, and the fans love coming to it. We are selling something larger and more sustainable than just the fortunes of one baseball team; we are selling The Baseball Experience in Pittsburgh's Field of Dreams.
This strategy is working, and there is no need to change it, because
We're making a profit.

The Cubs have been failing forever. They're Chicago's lovable losers. The fans still love to go to Wrigley, and they love their Cubbies. As a business plan, owning a team of lovable losers that plays in a beautiful facility is every bit as viable as a plan that is built around on-field success. Maybe more so, because it is more predictable.

Should the fates ever allow the Pirates to blunder their way into a post-season, all who read this are reminded not to be too quick to lunge for souvenirs and not to interfere with foul balls while they are still in play. Chances in the post-season for lovable losers are extremely rare.

The accolades continue

2006-07-03T18:05:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Jeromy Burnitz for being named to the "Baseball's Worst of the Worst" team (via onlybucs.net):

OF: Jeromy Burnitz, Pirates (.226/.274/.426)

In his first full major league season last year, Freddy Sanchez hit a promising .291. Craig Wilson missed most of the 2005 season but hit as well as ever when he played, posting a .387 OBP. Coming off a 95-loss season, the Pirates needed to give their young, cheap, talented players a clean shot. Instead, they spent $10 million on Joe Randa and Burnitz. Randa has been both injured and terrible; Burnitz has simply been terrible. It's not as if the Bucs couldn't see that coming -- Burnitz was a below-average player last year, and he's now one year closer to 40. Meanwhile, Sanchez is tearing up the league in place of Randa and Wilson is crushing the ball on the rare occasions when the Pirates let him play. Just another example of a team that equates signing bottom-of-the-barrel free agents to showing a commitment to the fans.

Well stated.

The path of the righteous man...

2006-07-03T11:05:00.000-04:00

Hey guys.

I realize I haven't posted in over a month, so I thought I'd check in with a few thoughts on recent events.

Obviously, this team is in the shitter. But in some ways, I'm not complaining. The more this team loses, the closer we are to seeing change.

However, I couldn't be happier for Bay and Sanchez. Despite Bay's suspicious rise to the top of the OF charts, he really did deserve to start. He's been one of the best offensive players in the game since last year, and no one has really given him due credit.

And Sanchez has to just feel so good right now. For one, he's on the All-Star team. But more importantly, he showed everyone in this organization who doubted him that he can play at an All-Star level. As Jules from Pulp Fiction loves to recite, "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men" (Ezekiel 25:17). For Sanchez to reach his current level of stardom and success, he had to withstand the doubt of coaches like McClendon and Tracy. These are the "evil men." But now Sanchez "shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness", delivering key hit after key hit, or hell, we might as well say hit after hit (the man can hit, I don't care what they say about him). He's keeping us in games against incredible opponents, though the bullpen and select lineup-mates aren't making it easy for him.

Anyway, congratulations to both guys. You are "truly your brother's keeper and the finder of lost children".

I've been taking classes at CMU this summer and unless I get in the shower I'm gonna be late for my first one of the day. So, Buccos keep losing. Sanchez and Bay keep fighting the good fight. Castillo, grow the f*** up.

Man bites dog

2006-07-02T22:32:00.000-04:00

Reacting to Freddy Sanchez being named to the All-Star team, Jim Tracy admits fallability:

"Shame on me for saying Freddy Sanchez is a utility player for what this guy has done," said Jim Tracy. "Freddy Sanchez is a winner."

Welcome to the human race, Jim. And congratulations to Freddy!

The legacy of Rusty Staub

2006-07-02T10:52:00.000-04:00

Chris Shelton, Brandon Inge, and Jeremy Bonderman look like they could be Rusty Staub's three sons.

Notes from last night's 9-2 win

2006-07-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

We were surprised by the sellout crowd. The first tipoff was that almost all the spaces were taken by 6:15 in the lot on Stanwix across from Max & Erma's. The next was the large number of Tigers fans on Ft. Duquesne Blvd. and the Clemente Bridge on the way into the stadium.

Our usher told us that there was an unusually large walk-up crowd last night. We know that the fans aren't motivated by the competitiveness of the team. Could it really have been the bobbleheads that were given away last night, a triumverate of Duke, Doumit, and Duffy? Really, who would want that thing? One of the problems with the need to get these giveaway items made in advance in China or wherever is that doing so doesn't allow for late-stage contingencies, such as when one of member of the triumverate rips his hamstring or another fails to perform and disqualifies himself from competition for a month (the bobbling head taking on an unintended irony in this case).

Speaking of Tigers fans and bobbleheads, we were with my stepson and his friend from New York, and as we were filing in, I told them to hang on to their bobbleheads even if they didn't want them because they could be sold on eBay. A Tigers fan standing near us overheard us and said, "You mean Pirates stuff is actually worth money?" Had I not been with my family, I might have gotten chesty with him, but I managed to control myself. My irritation was built on a similar experience I had at Thursday's game, when a White Sox fan in the seat directly behind mine spent the entire game loudly cheering on his White Sox heros and insulting the Pirates ("Hey Castillo, you stink!"), not seeing any reason to behave any differently than if he were sitting at U.S. Cellular Field.

Would a Browns fan ever dare to act like this at Heinz Field? No--because their team is competitive, Steelers fans have something that most Pirates fans don't have: passion. It was more of the same during the early innings of last night's terrific ballgame--Tigers fans starting "Let's Go Tigers" chants and strutting through the stadium with an aura befitting the fans of a first-place team playing the worst team in baseball.

The Pirates in general were lucky in the early innings, with lots of their hits coming on bleeders through the infield. Gorzelanny was okay. The rader hit 97 a few times in the early innings, and he escaped serious trouble by striking out the side in the second. His control was a little off, probably due to jitters, but he put in a credible five innings.

Bay and Jack Wilson are both in horrendous slumps. The worst moment in the game was when Leyland chose to walk Casey in the fifth and load the bases for Bay, who promptly struck out. Bay will be all right; like many great run producers, he is streaky, and his streakiness is magnified by the scarcity of other run producers in the lineup who might mitigate the effect of his bad streaks on wins and losses. Wilson, on the other hand, is reverting to what he always has been, a poor offensive player who doesn't get on base. On a team whose first baseman has three home runs and whose third baseman has five, a defensive specialist at shortstop or center field who contributes little to the offense is an unaffordable luxury, and batting him second in the lineup is madness. It was also madness to extend his contract unnecessarily before making a sober assessment of just what sort of an offensive player he is likely to be for the next three years.

The at-bat of the game, and for me, maybe the most entertaining at-bat of the season, was the battle between Marcus Thames and Matt Capps in the top of the seventh. Despite the final score, this was a taught nail-biter until our breakthrough--or rather, the Tigers breakdown--in the bottom of the seventh. But everything hinged on Thames vs. Capps. The Tigers had men on second and third with two out after another lucky break for the Pirates when Carlos Guillen's double went into the seats, preventing I-Rod from scoring from first (maybe things are starting to turn). After going 2-2 on Thames, Capps threw strike after strike as Thames kept fouling them off, 11 pitches in all, never allowing himself to lose the advantage by going 3-2, and finally retiring him on a long fly to center.

Whatever else has happened this year, we've found two players: Freddy Sanchez and Matt Capps.

When the Tigers coughed the game up in the seventh, I was able to successfully start a "Let's go Tigers" chant in our section immediately following the third error, and the appearance of the stands in the eighth--much more like what you normally see when you scan the stadium--was evidence of just how many Tigers fans had contributed to this sellout, and just how many had left with their tiger tails firmly tucked between their legs.

The Pirates fans who were there, on the other hand, had a ball. It really is a great stadium and yes, it's fun to be there even when the team plays poorly. This may be the reason that the fan base continues to support the team and to be remarkably forgiving despite the egregious mismanagement of recent years.

Pirates fans deserve better than what these owners are giving them. Maybe in my lifetime, they will be rewarded with a decent ballclub on the field, and maybe then, fans of opposing teams will think twice before openly disrespecting them.

"Don't give him anything he can hit; but don't walk him."

2006-06-30T22:46:00.000-04:00

Wells has to be thinking, "The hell with this. Next time, I'm going back to gutless nibbling."

It's official: Our starting pitching is now a complete disaster. Wasn't this Colborn fellow supposed to be a great pitching coach?

Regarding the ninth inning: I hate the sacrifice bunt. Let Bautista swing the damn bat.

Dejan on the propaganda machine

2006-06-30T12:53:00.000-04:00

Corroboration in today's Q&A for what I wrote about--and what many readers commented about--earlier in the week.

Increasingly, since you raised the subject, Ian, this team is engaged in all kinds of unusual behavior off the field lately. Without going into details -- since I would not know precisely where to point the finger -- management very clearly has recently begun pushing some in the organization, particularly those who have a public voice, to put a brazenly positive spin on what is nothing less than the most miserable stretch of play in the franchise's 120-year history.

That goes from some of what you hear over the air -- "We will persevere!" -- to suddenly ultra-happy press releases to asking what type of questions might be asked of Robert Nutting in an interview to the sudden absence of negativity in the daily game notes distributed to the media.

Information you might have read in our paper about the history of the Pirates' various losing streaks, for example, came as the result of a long stretch of clicking away, year by year, at a baseball reference site. It did not come from the team, as it has in the past on such transparent matters. Apparently, some in the Pirates' front offices must have thought that they could suppress an 0-13 slide into secrecy. ("Quick: Someone knock out Leno's transmission tower!")

Never mind what this sort of behavior does to lessen the public's trust in the organization.

And never mind, for that matter, that there is no such thing as negative publicity in sports. When your fans are angry in Pittsburgh, it means they care. When your fans no longer care, you become irrelevant.

It's a great point: The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The Pirates don't know how fortunate they are to have an active community of passionate fans who write about them on blogs and who organize and conduct fan protests.

Great moment coming in the All-Star Game

2006-06-30T12:46:00.000-04:00

I am looking forward to the individual introductions on the field before the game. There may not be too many Pittsburghers in the crowd, but when Jim Tracy is introduced, I expect that at least half of those who are in the crowd will boo heartily, and the rest will be quiet. That should give the announcers something to talk about.

Regime change is the only hope

2006-06-30T12:19:00.000-04:00

You would think that abject failure of the sort that earns an "F" in a midyear assessment by the top baseball sportswriter in a city might lead a general manager to reconsider strategies that have clearly not worked.

This response about Dave Littlefield in Dejan's Q&A today suggests otherwise:

Q: Hi, Dejan. I'm wondering what shape the much discussed changes that might take place. The obvious answer is that the Pirates will, as always, unload players in the last year of their contract for marginal prospects, most of whom will never smell the majors. This group would include Jeromy Burnitz, Joe Randa, Jose Hernandez (Ha!), Roberto Hernandez, Damaso Marte, Kip Wells (if he can win a couple games before July 31) and Sean Casey (if he doesn't sign an extension).

Do you see the Pirates looking into trading anyone else? What about Jack Wilson, Freddy Sanchez, Jose Castillo or -- gasp! -- one of our young pitchers? As you've mentioned many times in this space, it takes talent to get talent. If the Pirates are serious about a personnel shake-up, it would seem they have to offer more than rent-a-players.

Ryan Duchene of Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh

KOVACEVIC: Well, this one can be cut off quickly: The Pirates apparently have no intention of a personnel shakeup of the "serious" type, as you describe it. Right or wrong, Dave Littlefield and management are of the mind that they have a core they do not want to disperse. The three players you mentioned there are very much part of that, as are others.

The other players you mention are the ones that are or will be getting offered. In fact, of all the veterans on the team 30 or over, only Casey and Salomon Torres are likely not to be placed on the block. Casey, as you mentioned, could be signed. Torres is signed long-term and considered part of the core group despite his age.

You are right on about this: Trading prime chips is the only way to acquire prime, young talent. We have seen it all over baseball, most recently with Cleveland and Florida.

But there no indication of that coming, and there is no indication, in fact, that any aspect of how the Pirates have done things is on the verge of changing. Witness Littlefield's recent comments that he hopes to acquire talent that is "major-league ready."

That, my friends, is not Hanley Ramirez. It is J.J. Furmaniak.

As long as the "major-league ready" requirement remains in place, nothing will ever get better. Littlefield is going to stubbornly cling to his failed strategies until he loses his job. Even after a 13-game losing streak, there isn't anything to indicate that that day will be here anytime soon.

The Wilsons

2006-06-28T20:37:00.000-04:00

After a strong start this season, Jack is reverting to the offensive liability he has been for much of his career (so let's bat him leadoff).

And Craig, whose only remaining value to us, thanks to years of misuse and disrespect by the Bad Guys, was as trade bait, was just injured in a nasty-looking play at first base.

The Bay campaign

2006-06-28T08:42:00.000-04:00

Charlie is taking a bit of heat from his normally respectful readers for his admonition to stop voting for Bay. I wouldn't go as far as to tell anyone else to stop voting for a favorite player--doing so is the reason why we have fan voting for the All-Star Game--but I have to agree with Charlie that the PR campaign being conducted by the Pirates is cynical and unseemly. And the motivation for it is transparent.

The Pirates held a press conference yesterday about the phenomenon not only of Bay moving into first place among outfield candidates, but also the high standings of Jack Wilson, Castillo, Casey, and Sanchez. In the midst of what is now the worst losing streak in modern Pirates history, accompanied by an increasingly visible and viable fan revolt (kudos to iratefans.com for that, by the way), the Pirates PR/Marketing staff is actively diverting attention away from the bad news and promoting this feel-good story about our dedicated fans and their love for our players.

And are they ever promoting. We've all heard the non-stop admonitions from the announcers to vote as frequently as possible, but in addition, Bay revealed in the post-press-conference interview that the Pirates have a campaign going in Canada to get Canadians also to vote 25 times a day for Jason Bay. Is it just me, or does the vigor of the PR campaign somehow taint the achievement? So how real is this feel-good story if the phenomenon being described is not so much a groundswell of support from loving fans as it is a creation fabricated by a PR department with the sophistication of the government of Kim Il Jong.

I am a big fan of Jason Bay, but if I were to participate in this exercise by hitting "Send" 25 times a day, I think I might feel like taking a shower.

Fielding

2006-06-28T08:19:00.000-04:00

After reading The Stats Geek's article yesterday, I realize that I need to add The Fielding Bible to my reading list this summer. Brian's article offers an entirely different explanation for the Pirates' underachievement than the Wall Street Journal article I cited here. Both explanations are persuasive when looked at separately, but both can't be correct.

What is it that we are looking at here? Is it poor fielding, evidenced by the team's poor defensive efficiency rating? But defensive efficiency rating is neutral with respect to the phenomenon discussed in the Journal article--the fact that sometimes, randomly negative events, because they are random, don't get distributed equitably and end up affecting some teams and some players disproportionately. If you accept that life is sometimes not fair, then that unfairness could show up in defensive efficiency ratings and represent not bad fielding, but bad fortune.

I understand that this is an emotionally unsatisfying argument--just look at the comments thread on the original post. But if you're going to base decisions on performance, it's important to know whether the performance you're looking at is genuinely bad or is the result of a disproportionate number of bad breaks. And from what I've seen, fielding stats are still too imprecise to allow you to answer that question with any certainty.

As with any of these kinds of questions, there's always a danger in drawing conclusions from a sample size that is too small. Last year at this time, everyone was raving about the success of the surprise team of the year, the Washington Nationals, in one-run games. Today, I can't even remember the name of the closer who was being credited for the phenomenon. As things often do, they evened out over the course of the year, and we now remember the 2005 Nationals as an unsuccessful team.

Stupefying

2006-06-25T08:40:00.000-04:00

Of all the nonsensical articles published in newspapers about the Pirates this year, this one has to be the worst (so far): Bucs' decision on Casey a no-brainer, by Mike Prisuta of the Tribune-Review.

The first half is the usual recitation of the Pirates' annual miseries with a superficial recap of Littlefield's best and worst deadline deals. At the end of this comes the first stunner:

And Lofton reached the postseason in 2003 and '04 and is hitting well for the Dodgers this season, while the Pirates continue to grope for a center fielder.

So Mike, you are seriously saying that you'd prefer to see Kenny Lofton in center field for the Pirates over Jose Bautista (or even Nate McLouth)? Tike Redman I'll grant you.

Then it's on to the thesis: It's a no-brainer--the Pirates must sign Sean Casey.

But some of the guesswork can be eliminated this time if the Pirates heed the Opening-Day advice of Michael Keaton and write at least one check to at least one player whose contract is about to expire.

This is a perfect illustration of the fallacy that what ails the Pirates is that they are cheap. Yes, they are cheap, but they also spend the money they do spend foolishly, with no sound, unifying plan for spending it to achieve any clearly defined goal.

The Upper St. Clair product is having a disappointing season, by his standards, mostly because of a potentially devastating back injury that contributed mightily to Casey playing in just 33 of the Pirates' first 75 games.

He had a disappointing season last year too, by anyone's standards, a season in which he also was injured and also demonstrated that he has lost any power that he ever had (he has three homers in 125 at-bats this season). Potentially devastating injuries have been happening with increasing frequency to the Upper St. Clair product in recent years. A key factor has contributed mightily to these injuries. It's called "aging." With the passage of time, the importance of this factor has historically tended to increase.

But with his 32nd birthday fast approaching (July 2), Casey remains all ballplayer.

(Putting aside for a moment that it's impossible to know what the phrase "all ballplayer" actually means) Evidence please? The evidence I'm looking at, something known as "statistics*," shows a guy playing first base--a position that on most teams is occupied by one of the two or three most productive offensive players on the team--who has so far this year produced three home runs and a mediocre slugging percentage of .448.

But now, the fun really begins.

And beyond that, Casey's MVP intangibles make him much more of an asset than his career averages of .305, 18 home runs and 91 RBI suggest.

1. Please, please, please**, let me not see the words "intangible" and "character" in print in reference to the Pirates ever again. "Intangibles" are the refuge of lazy thinkers who lack the integrity, commitment, and energy to make a substantive argument. And tell me, what value has Casey's intangibles contributed to the 2005 Cincinnati Reds or the 2006 Pittsburgh Pirates? Do intangibles ever have any effect on actual wins and losses? And if the answer is "no," why are they even pertinent to this argument?

2. If the Pirates sign Casey to a three-year deal, the evidence suggests that it is a virtual certainty that those career averages will degrade considerably. They were produced by a younger, healthier ballplayer than the guy we will be signing. It happened in the past with Kevin Young (among others), and it will happen again.

Casey is such a unique and invaluable presence that a three-year, $21 million deal would constitute a bargain, especially considering what the Bucs are paying Jeromy Burnitz, Joe Randa and Kip Wells this season.

I see. So mistakes that were committed in the past provide license to commit more egregious mistakes in the future. And so it goes...the cycle continues.

The Pirates remembered heading into 2006 that you have to pay someone.

Uh, no. The Pirates realized heading into 2006 that they would not be able to bear the reputational damage that would have resulted from taking too excessive a profit without increasing payroll. So they directed their highly compliant GM to sign contracts with a few overpaid players in the twilights of their careers, crafted a cynical PR campaign around their purported "commitment to winning," then rewarded the GM with a contract extension.

If they've learned anything from this debacle, it should be the value of paying the right guy.

On that, Mr. Prisuta, we can all agree.

* statistics: arcane, obscure trivia that is of interest only to pasty-faced geeks who sit around in their underwear poring over books and web sites and who have never been to a baseball game or played the game themselves.

** Famous Flames: Please, please don't go.

The Luck Factor

2006-06-24T12:47:00.000-04:00

Fascinating article in today's Wall Street Journal about luck in baseball. I can't link to it because the link requires registration, but it's titled "Baseball Confronts the Luck Factor" by Russell Adams. You can get a free two-week registration at www.wsj.com if you want to read the full article.

The article is about efforts to quantify "the ethereal quality of luck" in baseball using insights into randomnesss from other fields. The Journal asked ProTrade, "a startup co-founded by a former M.I.T. math whiz and staffed by engineers and former executives from companies like PayPal and eBay," to figure out which teams have been the luckiest and unluckiest this season.

ProTrade analyzed detailed data about each batted ball in every Major League game, including speed off the bat and the exact spot where it landed. Based on typical results seen over the past four years for batted balls with similar characteristics, ProTrade approximates the number of runs a team would have recorded, excluding "lucky" and "unlucky" plays. ProTrade then plugged those numbers into a formula (created by Baseball Prospectus) to predict each team's overall wins.

What ProTrade found is highly relevant to us:

The unluckiest team in baseball? The Pittsburgh Pirates, who, if you subtract chance as a factor, would jump from last to third place in their division.

ProTrade asserts that, if luck could be extracted from the results this year, we would be ahead of the Astros, Brewers, and Cubs in our division, 6 1/2 games behind the league-leading Cardinals. They also found that bad luck has inflated Ryan Vogelsong's ERA by about two full runs. Vogelsong is considered by ProTrade to be the 9th unluckiest pitcher in the National League. Mike Gonzalez, on the other hand, is the 10th luckiest--good fortune has lowered his ERA by about one and a quarter runs.

Of course, bad luck is not what we've seen at least during the last five games. That has been bad baseball (an understatement). But this data does seem to correlate with the large number of one-run losses we've experienced and with the vague sense that for as bad as this team has been, it is not quite as bad as its results would indicate.

"A Cheat and a Fraud"

2006-06-23T23:26:00.000-04:00

Great essay by Wilbur Miller at iratefans.com (via Bucs Dugout):

Read the whole thing.

Dejan at the Post-Gazette and, surprisingly, Rutter at the Trib (which is supposed to be the Pirates' Pravda), have covered some of this story. But no one has yet nailed it the way Miller--not a "professional" journalist, just an articulate, passionate fan--does here.

A while back, I posed the question, Evil or Just Stupid? Miller makes a well substantiated case for the former.

Vive la revolution!

How it all began

2006-06-22T21:46:00.000-04:00

It started with those three strikeouts in the ninth inning on Monday to Burnitz, Sanchez, and Castillo. Zeke and I were there. At the time, it was rough, sure; but how could we anticipate the suffering, shame, horror, and degradation that were soon to follow?

It was like being present at the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

I'm issuing a "buy"

2006-06-22T18:14:00.000-04:00

on shares of iratefans.com.

Just when you think it can't get any worse

2006-06-22T17:36:00.000-04:00

along comes today's game.

Is this what it looks like when a team quits on its manager?

True devotion

2006-06-22T12:18:00.000-04:00

I am doing my best not to overreact to the past three games. After being one of the thousand or so eyewitnesses to The Big Choke, I had a rare Tuesday night gig with my band this week, so I was fortunate enough to miss The Worst Baseball Game Ever Played--at least the most painful parts of it.

I wasn't so fortunate last night. Had I written something after the game, it might have looked something like this. Pat is younger and, presumably, has a stronger heart than I do; I'm just glad that someone wrote it.

The definition of a fan is "an enthusiastic devotee (as of a sport or a performing art) usually as a spectator." When applied to a sport, this implies that, in almost all cases, the fan of any particular sporting contest wants his team to win. I call myself a Pirates fan, but now, today, I want the Pirates to lose. I want them to be swept by the team that people used to think was the worst team in baseball. Then I want their blowhard of a new manager to be humiliated and embarrassed in his former place of employment by the team he used to manage. Then I want the Pirates to be swept by the White Sox (can't wait to see those games), Tigers, Mets, and Phillies, so that they host the All-Star Break as the owners of a 24-game losing streak. I want that losing streak to be the focus of stories by every good baseball writer in the country, so that they all can investigate and describe in depth to the rest of the country the mendacity and ineptitude of those responsible for this mess.

Change at the top is all we can reasonably hope for. Anything that hastens that change is good.

(It's a good thing you're not overreacting. - ed.)

Today's debacle

2006-06-19T22:04:00.000-04:00

Cal and I were there. The weather just before the game and the fact that it was a previously unscheduled makeup game kept almost everyone else in the city away. Foul balls rattled around in unpopulated parts of the park and sat unclaimed. Rhythmic applause from three fans could be heard throughout the park. A lunatic right behind us yelled something incomprehensible everytime the ump called a strike against us when we didn't swing. Everyone in the park heard him too.

Yes, I took the day off from work, and all I have to show for it is a bad sunburn and a stomach full of bile. The most horrendous, gut-wrenching, hopeless, despair-inducing game of an already lost season, and I was there!

I don't have words to describe it that you haven't already read or will read tomorrow. You know what happened; you know about the nearly incomprehensible depth of the failure by Burnitz, Sanchez, Castillo, Bautista, and Wilson to win the game when doing so would have been so easy. It was a collective choke by a team that competed valiently until the bottom of the ninth only to give itself that opportunity to choke so thoroughly. What a tidy little game it would have been if someone--anyone--had been able to just punch one through a drawn-in infield, hit a ground ball, draw a walk, get hit with a pitch, or get a fly out of the infield.

It was like watching an automobile accident or a natural disaster. There's just not much you can say. It happened, and it was horrid.

Lucky? Not us

2006-06-19T06:20:00.000-04:00

Lest you think that the health of the pitching staff this season has been one area in which the Pirates have been blessed by good fortune, our esteemed field general would like you to know the truth:

The Pirates are the lone team in the National League to use only five starters all season, a run that will end tomorrow when Wells rejoins the rotation. The Seattle Mariners are the only team in the American League to have used five. "We've done a terrific job in that regard," Tracy said. "A lot of that has to do with the way we've handled these pitchers."

Oh, and the nice weather we have had this season, with relatively few rainouts? We did that too.

I guess when you are 26-44, in last place, and 17 games out of first place two and a half months into the season, there's not a lot you can take credit for.

"Err" is the root of "error"

2006-06-19T06:05:00.000-04:00

Dave Littlefield:

"Right now, we're stronger pitching-wise than with the whole group of position players," he said. "You've got to make the philosophical decision, knowing the resources we have in pitching, at what point do you whittle away at that depth to improve your position players? My strong belief is that we've always got to err on the side of pitching."

Looks like anemic offense, an identifying characteristic of the once-proud former Lumber Company during the Littlefield era, will continue indefinately.

Dejan and Tracy

2006-06-19T05:32:00.000-04:00

The Pirates beat writer for the Post-Gazette, Dejan Kovacevic, would never say this in so many words, but it is becoming clear that he considers our new manager a horse's ass. The theme of his story in today's paper is the disparity between Tracy's perception of yesterday's loss and that of everyone else who watched it. That's a theme that Dejan has used before.

"You know that the club has made progress," Tracy said. "Now, the next step we have to take is realizing exactly what it is I'm sitting here talking about and know that, if you're going to be a club that's going to win these games, the mistakes that we saw happen today ... they can't occur. They just can't happen."

As I've pointed out before, realizing exactly what Tracy is sitting there talking about is a challenge in itself. But the larger issue raised by the article is that Tracy's leadership style, again as we have seen before, is to hector his players unreasonably while failing to take public responsibility for his own game decisions.

Jack Wilson and the others players who are quoted in this article don't believe there is anything that Jack could have done to make the play on the goofy little popup that started the rally. Most people also agree that charging an error to Perez on the bunt was ridiculous. There is, in fact, only one thing in that inning that can be second guessed. After Torres came in and hit Cuddyer, Morneau, a lefty, came up to bat with Grabow warming in the bullpen. Tracy left Torres in the game, and Morneau promptly cleared the bases.

The Pirates didn't get anymore runs, so a case could be made that, after the first run scored, nothing else mattered. Maybe that's why Tracy focused his comments on what happened before the Twins took the lead. Still, Tracy's tendency to be publicly critical of anyone other than himself can't be helping the atmosphere in the Pirates clubhouse.

This is a day...

2006-06-18T16:04:00.000-04:00

when the manager should overturn the post-game deli table. The Twins are making us look like Little Leaguers.

Why is Ryan Vogelsong on this team?

Defending our turf

2006-06-18T15:58:00.000-04:00

Pirates have done a good job in the Twins series of beating back the recent challenge from the Cubs.

Sixth place is ours, Dusty--don't forget that.

Shooting fish in a barrel

2006-06-17T21:11:00.000-04:00

Seriously, Bob Smizik: Are you really suggesting that Ian Snell belongs on the All-Star team? He's one of the 12 best pitchers in the National League based on a half season in the majors?

Absurd. And the reasoning--that Snell belongs because of how hard it is to have a winning record on a losing team--is equally absurd. Although Snell has been our best pitcher this year, his won-lost record, like all won-lost records, is dependent on all kinds of other variables that have nothing to do with his performance--things like who the opponent was, who the opponent's pitcher was, how well the guys were hitting when he pitched, how well the guys were fielding when he pitched, and so on.

Josh Fogg's relatively good won-lost record (relative to other stats that describe performance more precisely) was often cited as evidence that he had a certain indefinable something--moxie, guts, competitive spirit, bulldogishness, whatever. I liked Fogg just fine. He was a guy who, like Bob Walk and Jim Rooker, got the most out of his talent. But in a big game, I would rather have had Doug Drabek or John Candelaria, thanks.

I think that the All-Star Game has to take careers into account as well as performance in the first few months of the season. Snell might make an All-Star team some year, but he's not ready yet.

Al-Anon

2006-06-17T19:58:00.000-04:00

Rooting for the Pirates is like being married to an alcoholic: eternally hoping that the behavior will change, and repeatedly being disappointed.

The Pirates are getting ready to go out on a toot again, and there's not a thing I can do about it. I know, I know..."You have to take care of yourself."

Will someone please explain to me why the fact that Sean Casey is a nice guy is pertinent to the discussion of whether signing him to a three-year contract is wise? Really, who cares? As a poster at OnlyBucs points out, the teams that Casey has played on have a .480 win percentage.

"I think it would be a huge thing for the Pirates," outfielder Jason Bay said. "They always talk about trying to get good baseball players who are also good people.

"Sean hasn't been here long, but he has more than lived up to his reputation as one of the best people in baseball and, obviously, what he can do on the field goes without saying."

No, it doesn't go without saying, so I'll say it: What he will be able to do on the field in 2007-2009 is not sufficient to be a good way to spend $18M.

Character doesn't win championships, talent does. Talk to a sports writer who covered the 1979 Pirates sometime and ask him what that group of guys was like in the clubhouse.

Durocher may have been right.

All things Kip Wells

2006-06-16T11:57:00.000-04:00

Today's read-the-whole-thing post is the lengthy dissertation by Pat at Van Slyke about Kip Wells. Don't miss the attached comments thread either.

I fall squarely on the side of inserting Kip into the rotation when he returns, though my reasons aren't nearly as well researched or carefully considered as Pat's. I was at his best game of the year last year, against the Phillies--sang the national anthem that day, in fact--and I can't get the memory of what Kip can do out of my mind.

In the absence of disciplined statistical analysis, we are all blind men describing elephants and then disagreeing with each other about what they look like. I say disciplined statistical analysis because it's also true that interpreting statistics objectively is not easy. Most often, people use statistics selectively to support opinions they already hold.

Cognitive dissonance

2006-06-15T12:35:00.000-04:00

OK, first there's this:

"I can't really put into words how reliable this guy is," Tracy said of Sanchez, who is hitting .462 in the sixth spot. "He's a terrific offensive player. He's not a home run hitter and he's not going to be asked to be one here.

"But he's an ideal sixth hitter. He does his fair share of damage cleaning up what the third, fourth and fifth hitters don't do. He's a very unselfish player. He's a headsy player. He's a thinking man's player. He's a winning player."

Aha, says I, Tracy clearly gets it. I can now relax about Freddy losing playing time to Joe effing Randa.

And then, the same day that the quote above appeared in the Post-Gazette, there's this:

PITTSBURGH
1. J. Bautista, CF
2. J. Wilson, SS
3. S. Casey, 1B
4. J. Bay, LF
5. J. Randa, 3B
6. C. Wilson, RF
7. J. Castillo, 2B
8. H. Cota, C
9. V. Santos, P

Now I know, it's one game and doesn't necessarily indicate any kind of a trend, but I've been trained not to trust this team to do the right thing. So this makes me a little nervous.

On the other hand, I guess it's possible that this is one case in which we really are putting Randa into the lineup to showcase him for major league scouts who may be in Pittsburgh to assess his health, for a possible trade. If that's the case, then I'm okay with it. We sure don't need Joe Randa now; we never did, but the Pirates didn't know that.

This team, by the way, is not as bad as it appeared to be in the beginning of the season. I was there last night, and they played a damned good game--one of many they have played recently. Jose Castillo, with his newfound power, is a real difference maker. If everything else remains the same, the pitchers improve, and Castillo achieves the potential that we've been waiting for for a couple of years now, this team might even be capable of exceeding mediocrity.

The mystical intangibles of Mr. Ronnie Paulino

2006-06-14T05:36:00.000-04:00

Paul Meyer in today's game story:

Perez zipped through the Cardinals over the first three innings, allowing only a two-out single to Scott Rolen in the first. He had a tough fourth, but crisis intervention by Paulino kept damage to a minimum.

Rolen flared a one-out double over first. Juan Encarnacion's single to center gave the Cardinals a 1-0 lead. Jim Edmonds bounced a single to right, moving Encarnacion to second.

Perez thought a 1-2 pitch to Yadier Molina was a strike, but plate umpire Mike Winters ruled it inside. That seemed to upset Perez and, when Molina followed with a bases-loading single to right, his mood didn't improve.

Paulino kept calming down Perez through a six-pitch at-bat by Chris Duncan that ended with the rookie waving badly at a 3-2 pitch that was low and outside.

"[Paulino] has a sixth sense of recognizing that," Tracy said of the catcher's cognizance of looming trouble. "He put [Perez'] focus right back where it needed to be."

Perez finished the inning by getting Hector Luna to line to left.

It helps to remember that sixth sense when pondering the four strikeouts and the called third strike in the ninth with the tying run on third.

Oh please, dear Lord, let it be true

2006-06-13T16:47:00.000-04:00

Tigers are interested in Burnie:

Newsday reported that the Tigers might take a run at acquiring outfielder Jeromy Burnitz from the Pirates, citing two reasons: because the Tigers are looking for a left-handed hitter with power and because Burnitz "usually gets traded this time of year."

via Honest Wagner.

The earth is shifting under our feet

2006-06-12T22:03:00.000-04:00

Odd headline to Pirates Notebook today: "GM will eye trades if team fails to contend." This is still in question? Who knew?

Although it is always a challenging exercise to figure out exactly what Littlefield is saying--he is a master of obscurity, ambiguity, equivocation, and shameless spin--as near as I can tell, he is getting ready to do something, and he's beginning to build a case for why he did it.

Littlefield said in an interview that the team must show dramatic improvement soon for him to consider keeping it intact.

And who was it, exactly, who constructed this aggregation of players and believed that it would contend? Well, that doesn't matter, I guess. The point is that, if they want to stay intact, they'd damn well better show some dramatic improvement. You have to admire such courageous commitment to excellence in a leader.

"We're going to have to make some very serious strides for what I would characterize as doing something, meaning getting into the playoff hunt," he said. "The idea is that we want to get better, and I think we're showing that. We've been competitive all year. Unfortunately, we've lost a lot of one-run games, and the record is not good."

Umm...what? Does this guy just put a bunch of cliches into a blender and press "blend" when he gives an interview?

"But the idea of what takes place at the trading deadline ... there's always a balance you have to strike as you get closer to it. We'll see how it unfolds, but you have to have legitimate options to play certain positions."

"We're in a much, much different position now. If you look at the team, we had a couple of holes coming into the season that we filled with veterans. With Freddy playing the way he has, that looks like less of a hole for the future. Obviously, Bautista has done a nice job, and we'll see where he fits in. But a high percentage of our guys are going to be around for the next 3-5 years, and we have much better options if we were to trade a veteran player."

So, we didn't have a legitimate option at third base during the winter, and that's why we acquired Joe Randa? Is Freddy's performance this year that much of a surprise and a revelation? What team was Littlefield watching last year?

And then there's right field. Bautista might be a legitimate option out there, so now we may be able to afford to unload Jeromy Burnitz and some of that $7M contract. Call me crazy, but it seems to me that that $7M contract was a damned expensive insurance policy, with a damned small payoff, for a small market team to be able to afford. But then that wasn't the point, was it? That money was spent to send a message to the fans: We Will (spend money).

Craig who? Please don't bring that name up again. We don't talk about him around here.

In the end, unloading the veterans is exactly what I would like to see Mr. Littlefield do. I won't have any problem with the unloading; in fact, I welcome it. It's the loading that I had a problem with.

Update: Great minds think alike.

Duffy is back

2006-06-12T21:12:00.000-04:00

What was all that about, anyway? Maybe we'll never find out.

Gammons: No Pirates/Cards trade talk about Craig

2006-06-11T21:46:00.000-04:00

Peter Gammons just said on Sunday Night Baseball that Walt Jocketty says he has not been talking to the Pirates about Craig Wilson.

It's that time of the season again. Last year it was Lawton, the year before it was Benson, and this year it's Craig Wilson. It's important to remember that almost nothing that gets written about ever ends up happening.

GRAND SLAM BAUTISTA!

2006-06-11T18:31:00.000-04:00

That's why you keep the TV on during games like this.

Burnitz left the game in the 4th

2006-06-11T17:36:00.000-04:00

He hurt his leg.

I'm going to refrain from writing something intemperate.

Irate fans make WPXI

2006-06-11T16:53:00.000-04:00

Enjoyed seeing the video online. These guys are getting lots of attention, and that is nothing but good. You'd have to say that the niche they have identified is poised for growth. If I were a sports writer visiting Pittsburgh and looking for a good story, I would be seeking these guys out.

If I were advising the Irate Fans guys, I'd recommend against reusing one of the phrases that Possum (I think that who it was) used to WPXI, though. I don't think it's smart to emphasize the need for an owner with "deep pockets"--doing so is an invitation to McClatchy & Nutting to use the convenient alibi that they have used to such great effect for so many years. I continue to think that it's not the depth of the pockets that has been the problem, it's the bad decisions about how to spend available funds.

The pockets last winter were deep enough to overpay Jeromy Burnitz and Joe Randa, and deep enough to make similarly idiotic decisions during the entire McClatchy tenure; so clearly, there is something else that is amiss. The Iraters would be better off talking about that something else: bad management and the absence of a coherent plan.

The Brandon Duckworth era ends

2006-06-11T16:32:00.000-04:00

Traded to the Royals. Hope we don't come to regret this one.

So who goes when Kip comes back? One more bad outing and Perez will be a lock to go down. But what if he pitches well? Seems to me that a package with Santos and Craig Wilson ought to get us something useful.

Kudos to Tracy for benching Burnitz against a righty after his execrable game the other night when he left a starting lineup's worth of baserunners on base and helped to botch a catchable popup. However, he is back in there today.

Rob & Rany on the Royals, Pirates, and other bottom feeders

2006-06-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

Excellent exchange between Rob and Rany about protracted hopelessness and its effect on being a baseball fan. Here is the money quote relevant to those of us in whom the fan affliction attaches to the Pittsburgh Pirates, from Rany:

I guess the best thing I can say about the Royals is this: for many years around the turn of the century, I could at least argue that as bad as things were, the Royals were not the single worst franchise in the game. There was always the Devil Rays, and the Pirates were no prize either. The Tigers lost 119 games three years ago; we were never close to being that bad.

But all that changed over the last year. The Devil Rays were bought by a new owner, Chuck Lamar was jettisoned, and they started producing outfielders by the bushelful. The Reds have a new owner and a new GM, and they're competitive. The Brewers are everyone's trendy sleeper, and the Tigers look like a playoff team.

And for the last few months the Royals weren't just the most hopeless franchise in baseball; they might have been the most hopeless franchise in American professional sports.

I think that, if nothing else, the arrival of Dayton Moore and the effective departure of Dan Glass gets us out of this particular cellar. The Royals will still almost certainly have the worst record in the game this season. But long-term, I strongly feel that with David Littlefield still running things in Pittsburgh, and Kevin McClatchy still owning things, the Royals have a better -- if still slim -- chance of turning things around over the next five years than the Pirates do.

Despite the recent homestand and the games against the Rockies, today's Casey story makes me think that these guys are right about the Pirates. Littlefield and McClatchy are hellbent on making the same stupid move that has burned this team over and over again, and those of us who remain fans, in spite of our better judgment, can no nothing but stand aside and watch in horror.

The article is about how--and if--you can keep rooting for a team like this.

Read the whole thing.

If you're depressed

2006-06-06T21:50:00.000-04:00

about the Pirates' Groundhog Day-like repetition of past mistakes, I recommend this comments thread at Baseball Primer to lighten your mood.

I feel like I'm going to be sick

2006-06-06T06:13:00.000-04:00

Great idea, let's work real hard to lock up Sean Casey's declining years.

This is Kevin Young all over again. Worse, because when the Pirates signed Young, his future looked better than Casey's does now and, unless I'm forgetting someone, we didn't have another much better option already on the team. Unless someone with foresight had realized back then that we had a young guy on the team, considered a catcher at the time, who could give us great offensive production at first base for many years at a reasonable price...a fellow named Craig Wilson.

The game keeps finding Burnitz, doesn't it?

2006-06-05T22:10:00.000-04:00

Man, would I like to see Craig Wilson playing every day. It's just criminal that we brought this guy in to replace Wilson in right, who is now likely to play only against lefties. What a joke this team is.

He hasn't been as awful lately as he was for the first month and a half, but this is what he is--an average to poor fielder who hits for low average and low OBP with occasional power. No matter what side he hits from, Craig Wilson is simply a much better ballplayer than Burnitz at this stage of their careers. We need Craig back in the lineup, and that is just not going to happen. Infuriating.

Success!

2006-06-04T16:06:00.000-04:00

From a comments thread at Honest Wagner:

Interesting DL radio show. He said point blank Freddy is the 3B and will not be replaced when Randa is ready to return.

Man bites dog; the Pirates do the right thing.

Bert Cota, unpack your bags

2006-06-04T15:19:00.000-04:00

Doumit just pulled the hamstring on a play at first, and it looked real bad.

Dammit!

Character

2006-06-04T15:04:00.000-04:00

A common theme among our announcers and various other apologists for the team is that the current hot streak somehow demonstrates the "character" of team members, whatever that might mean.

So, if we say that the fact that we are now winning some games demonstrates some quality that we call "character," that means that the team is demonstrating a quality that other aggregations of 25 men would not demonstrate in identical circumstances. Really? Aren't teams always trying their best to win every game they play? Are we saying that the Pirates are trying harder than other teams who have horrible starts do? And if this turnaround continues and we do manage to salvage some respectability this season, how rare is that really? I know that earlier versions of the Pirates did it all the time, notably in 1974 and 1978.

I don't have any data to back up my impression, but to me, it seems that the opposite--the team that starts poorly and then completely falls apart and stops caring and trying--is more rare, simply because management doesn't tolerate teams like that, and their managers nearly always get fired. The only example I can think of is the team in Lamont's last season. McClendon't team last year did poorly and he got fired, but it never seemed to me as if they weren't trying.

So if this quality of continuing to try and sometimes succeeding is really not so rare, what value is there in citing it as an illustration of character?

The inscrutable Mr. Tracy

2006-06-04T01:48:00.000-04:00

Even company shill Ed Engle is mystified:

Tracy said Duke's first-inning problems are probably "more strategic than it is anything else" but wouldn't elaborate when asked to explain what he meant by that.

He didn't elaborate because he has no idea what he meant by that. The common word for this sort of statement is "bullshit."

Humility

2006-06-01T15:58:00.000-04:00

After listening to this afternoon's game while working on a major editing project, I thought about something George Will said on last week's Baseball Prospectus Radio. He said that, when he was writing Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, the one thing that he found both surprising and impressive was that he never once heard anyone who had played the game of baseball brag in the way that, say, Terrell Owens brags. Will thinks that this is because baseball is so difficult, and failure in baseball is so much more common than success, that the game tends to enforce a certain humility on those who play it, including its most successful performers.

If that's true of ballplayers, it also ought to be true of bloggers and others who write about the game as if they have it all figured out. Just when you think you know all there is to know, something happens like this Brewers series. Before this series, I was certain that the Brewers and Pirates were polar opposites: a team with a promising future run by smart guys who made smart decisions...and us. I know that this was only four games, and bad teams sweep good teams all the time, but still...

As a Pirates fan first and blogger second, though, I'm happy to sacrifice my certainty about what ails the Pirates for victories as sweet as this one.

Irate Fans

2006-06-01T06:17:00.000-04:00

Let's give some love to iratefans.com. Welcome to the neighborhood, fellas, stop by if you need anything.

We'll add them to the sidebar soon.

Correlation and causation

2006-06-01T05:04:00.000-04:00

I suspect that readers may be checking the blog during the past few days and concluding that the reason I haven't been posting is that, when the Pirates are winning and things are going well, I have nothing to say.

Not true: correlation and causation are not the same thing (just as it is not necessarily the return of Sean Casey that has ignited our offense--although it definitely is a factor).

The fact is that I have a big deadline at work that is cutting into my reading and blogging time. Maybe one of the reasons I often rail about the inadequacies of the likes of Bob Smizik and Paul Meyer is that I envy the freedom they have to write about the Pirates whenever they want to, and I sometimes think that they abuse that freedom.

But that's enough metablogging--on to the show.

Enter dark, ominous music creating a sense of foreboding and doom:

Third baseman Joe Randa, out with a fractured right foot, has taken batting practice the past two days and is making "very good progress," Tracy said. (From Pirates Notebook today.)

After all of the Freddy talk of the past week, I'd say that at this point, the Pirates simply can't replace him with Randa when he returns. I think that Freddy has played his way into the starting lineup, and that is a measure of just how great Freddy has been playing; playing well enough to change the team's plans is very difficult to do with a front office as taciturn and as obsessed with saving face as this one has often been.

At the same time, I have to give Tracy some credit for doing the right things lately. Jeromy Burnitz didn't play against any of the three Brewers lefthanders we just faced and, with the exception of the continued obsession with Paulino and the shunning of Doumit, I can't disagree with any of the lineups he has recently put out there. After working myself into a lather about Tracy, there is something reassuring about this statement, also from the Notebook:

Tracy, asked why he kept the same batting order for a third consecutive game: "Twenty-six runs."

Back to Sanchez for a moment: It's now clear that I deserve a public flogging for this statement from a few days ago, written moments before Jose Castillo arrived with the prodigious power that has been predicted for him for a long time but that has never quite materialized until now:

I think that the move that is being contemplated by the front office when Randa returns is for Freddy to replace not Randa as the anointed third baseman, but Castillo as the regular second baseman. Between the critical comments by the announcers during games, the visible in-game scoldings in the dugout from Tracy, and the tenor of the comments by Tracy in the Notebook, it seems to me that Tracy and Littlefield are losing patience with Castillo's inability to get his head out of his ass during games.

I will take the occasional, or even frequent, mental lapses in the field in exchange for the offense we've seen lately, and I'm sure that Tracy will too.

Speaking of announcers, the one irritant during The Streak (now up to three games) has been the aggressive triumphalism of Lanny Frattare. Unfortunately, I've had to listen to many of the games on the radio, and when he is not describing what is happening on the field, Lanny has seemed intent on declaring success prematurely (Bush on the aircraft carrier, "Mission Accomplished") and assaulting the character of those of us who have expressed skepticism and derision about the team. This is a direct quote from last night's game: "Jim Tracy is a tremendous manager, and he has a tremendous coaching staff."

As much as I love the offense we've been seeing lately, I'm not quite ready to buy that one.

Wilbur Miller, who turns up all over the place and is invariably perceptive, articulate, knowledgeable, and correct, wrote somewhere yesterday that the biggest issue for the Pirates right now is recovering gracefully from the bad moves they made in the winter. If there were a way simply to vaporize Joe Randa and Jeromy Burnitz, the season could proceed as it should, we'd learn about the young players we need to learn about, and we'd have a team that would be fun to watch and to follow.

But from McClatchy down, there is both a financial and a reputational investment in the fiction that the Pirates generously entered the free-agent market and spent money to make the team better. This was the brand story of the 2006 season, expressed in one of the "We Will" commercials that was shown only a couple of times before reality rendered it unusable. The Pirates need to find a graceful way of rewriting the brand story now that the original one has lost its usefulness. There's a better story that could now be written, but this has not typically been an organization nimble enough to change plans when things don't work out.