July 2009

The New Look Pirates, Game 1

Well it’s the first game without Jack, Freddy, and Grabow. The Pirates welcome Nyjer Morgan and Sean Burnett back to town after quite a controversial trade deadline period. Lastings Milledge makes his bucco debut, and unfortunately, I won’t be able to see any of it. Here is the liveblog tonight! Don’t miss me too much! 

Game 102 – Nationals @ Pirates

The Future of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Prospect Chart

Alright well I’m no baseball scout or super insider who gets all the scouting reports, but I’m a dedicated fan who has a laptop and knows how to use the internet. With those the resources and the drive to do it, I’ve compiled this list of players that are going to make up the future of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It doesn’t look pretty when I post it on this blog, so here’s the link to the actual spreadsheet file you can open - http://www.fileden.com/files/2006/6/14/68533/Prospects.xlsx

I posted the position players earlier, and I’ve finished up the pitchers now, so I’m going to post them all at once here. So here it goes.

Prosp1.png
Prosp2.png
Prosp3.png

New City, Same Results

Jack Wilson suited it up and played baseball tonight, but for the first time in his major league career, he didn’t have a Pirates uniform on. Jack made his debut with the Seattle Mariners in a game against the Rangers in Arlington. The game is in the 8th inning right now, but so far it’s been nothing new for Jack. The Mariners have been completely dominated by the Rangers and are currently losing 7-0. Young pitcher Derek Holland. He’s allowed only 1 hit through 7 innings and that one hit was not recorded by Jack. He is 0-2 and coming to the plate again in the 8th. Jack has grounded out and flew out. He hasn’t been very busy defensively, the Rangers have been putting the ball in the air all night. Freddy will make his debut with the Giants tonight at 10:15, I’ll keep you posted. 

Update (10:04): Jack just struck out to end the 8th inning. This Holland kid is nasty, can’t blame Jack for putting up a goose egg against him. Also, Jack is wearing #9, which looks really strange. 

JackMariner.png

Update (10:12): Freddy isn’t in the lineup for the Giants, I’m guessing it’s because of the knee. Looks like we’ll have to wait a while longer to see his debut. 

So I guess there’s nothing else to be said here… check out my Pirates Prospect Post, I’m pretty dang proud of it. 

Pirates Trade John Grabow, Tom Gorzelanny to Cubs

Here’s the deal:

Cubs Get:
John Grabow, Lefty RP
Tom Gorzelanny, Lefty SP
Pirates Get:
Kevin Hart, Righty SP
Jose Ascanio, RHP 
Josh Harrison, 3B
I like it. Kevin Hart has been in the bigs this year and has put up great numbers. Good stuff, I’m excited to see him. He could very well take Virgil Vasquez’s rotation spot. I’ll be back with more!
In fact, Hart pitched today for the Cubs. He went 6 innnings, 3 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 2 HR. I’ll be watching mlb.tv archive later and see what his stuff is like. 
On the season Hart is 3-1 with a 2.60 ERA. 

And So It Begins…

The firesale is almost complete. It is possible we could see John Grabow traded, but other than that I don’t think anything else is going to happen until next year, when we could be talking about Matt Capps and Ryan Doumit. All-in-all I think our minor league system is pretty much set and we won’t see any more major names added. So let’s take a look at what we have down there and what we could be seeing in Pittsburgh in the next several seasons.

The excel spreadsheet doesn’t look very good on this blog, so if it bugs you too much you can open the spreadsheet by clicking this link:

Pitchers coming soon. Lastings in Pittsburgh for his debut against the Nationals tomorrow night. Let’s go bucs!

A Note To The Casual Pirates Fan

Today, the Pirates team of 2009 died. The buccos traded away Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson, two fan favorites and true Pirates. Right now, if you compare the starting lineup at the beginning of this season to the starting lineup of today, you will see that Ryan Doumit, Andy LaRoche, and Brandon Moss are the only ones still around. If you go back further to 2008′s first-half starting lineup, Ryan Doumit is the only remaining position player. That is rebuilding in its highest form. 

Now most fans are rather angry about these recent trades, especially Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez. Freddy and Jack were two above average players who were always in the news for the right reasons and always contributed on the field and off of it. They were two great guys that a kid could look up to. However, when you are talking about making the playoffs and competing for a World Series, the only choice was to trade them away. 
The sad truth is that the Pittsburgh Pirates of 2008, before the Bay/Nady/McLouth/Morgan/LaRoche/Sanchez/Wilson trades, had no prayer of ever making the playoffs. They simply didn’t have enough talent, in the major leagues or in the minor leagues. There was literally no hope for them. If you want to argue this with me, we can do that at another time (and I can assure you, you will lose that argument). So what do you do when you don’t have the TEAM talent to go out and win consistently? Well, for the last 16 years the Pirates have been making silly trades with the sole purpose of saving money, and then going out and getting a couple of over-aged, has-been players (Kenny Lofton, Reggie Sanders, Matt Morris…), over paying them, and then praying that the rest of the team can somehow put a miracle together and take the team to a fairy tale season. This, of course, doesn’t happen in real life, especially in Pittsburgh. The ways of Dave Littlefield were ineffective, and most times down right stupid. He never acquired any real minor league talent, save Andrew McCutchen, and put this team in a hole that was almost impossible to dig out of. 
Luckily for the Pirates, players like Nate McLouth, Nyjer Morgan, and Freddy Sanchez came out of no where and put together some impressive stretches, stretches that they may or may not have kept up (most likely not). This rose their value in the eyes of other teams. Now say what you want, if all of the players that we just traded would have played their best baseball all this season with the Pirates, it’s still incredibly unlikely that the Pirates would have made the playoffs. Neil Huntington realized this, and began preparing to rebuild. He knew the fans wouldn’t like it, but when all is said and done, this team would be much closer to a world series ring than ever before (in the last 16 years). 
So the trading began, and with the trades of the aforementioned Pirates, in came young talent in players like Brandon Moss (eh…), Charlie Morton, Ross Ohlendorf, Daniel McCutchen, Bryan Morris, Jose Tabata, Gorkys Hernandez, Lastings Milledge, Joel Hanrahan, and most recently, Jeff Clement and Tim Alderson. 
Now the casual fans complain and say “well those young guys may never work out”… that statement is true, you never know what will happen with young players, especially pitchers. My response to that is simply that at least the Pirates have a CHANCE at getting some good major league players, as opposed to before when the guys we had weren’t getting it done and we had nothing in the minors. Having a strong minor league system is a vital tool to competing in today’s major league world, just ask the Tampa Bay Rays, who went from worst to first in 2008. 
Next, the casual fans say “well even if those guys do turn out to be good, the team will just trade them away when they are”. The obvious response to this is, no, they will not. The Pirates have never had this much talent all in the same range. We’ve had our talent spread out where one guy would be in his prime in the majors while other guys would be 20 years old down on the farm years away from the majors. To win, you need talented guys all on the same level, and the Pirates haven’t had that since 1992. These trades made it so now they do have talent on the same level. These trades also did us another favor, prevented us from spending money on guys who won’t help the team when we have a chance of being good. What’s the use of paying guys like Freddy and Jack significant dollars when they aren’t going to be on the next Pirates playoff team? There is none. Now that all our guys will be seeing the majors at the same time, we will have the opportunity to pay them their money and give them long-term contracts. That’s the plan here. It only seems like we trade all our good players because we don’t have many good players. Having 3 above average guys doesn’t win games, having 9 does. We have a better chance of putting together a team full of good players now than ever before. 
The future is bright, but it will take some patience. The Pirates are going to stink for the rest of this year, and quite possibly most of next year too. But when the time comes (2011, 2012), the Pirates will start becoming a competitive team that competes every year, and we may very well be seeing a World Series Championship in the next 5 years. You heard it hear first. 
Thank you for reading. 

Jack Wilson and Ian Snell Traded To The Mariners

What a deal. Here’s the swap:

Mariners Get:
Jack Wilson, SS
Ian Snell, RHP
Pirates Get:
Ronny Cedeno, SS
Jeff Clement, C/1B
Aaron Pribanic, P
Brett Lorin, P
Nathan Adcock, P


Here’s the deal, the Pirates absolutely robbed the Mariners. Sure, we lost Jack Wilson, one of our most valuable players. However, Jack is 31 years old and is certainly not a guy that is going to help us in the future. Despite his outstanding defense, he really isn’t all that valuable of a player, so the fact that we got a fantastic prospect in Jeff Clement for him is almost unbelievable to me. Clement is undoubtably the main thing to focus on in this deal. Ronny Cedeno will come to help the Pirates get through this year, and then who knows what after that. The three arms are all in A ball and have good upside. You won’t be hearing about them any time soon, and, like any other A pitcher, it is questionable if they’ll ever make an impact in the major leagues. It’s good to have a bunch of those kinds of guys though, makes it almost a sure thing that we’ll have a gem or two down there. Now let’s talk about Jeff Clement, the newest Indianapolis Indians. 
Here’s Jeff’s baseballcube page. He was the Seattle Mariners #1 prospect in 2008. Yes, we got a NUMBER ONE prospect for Jack Wilson and Ian Snell. Are you kidding me?? Jeff was the #3 overall pick in the 2005 draft. He’s a power hitter, thank God. Baseball Cube ranked him at 94/100 power, which is the same rating as Evan Longoria has. In 91 games in AAA this season, Clement is hitting .284 with 14 bombs and 67 RBI. 
Clement has played catcher almost all of his minor league career, but apparently he will be a first baseman for the bucs. This is good news, but raises some questions about Pedro Alvarez, Andy LaRoche, and the rest of the corner infielders in our system. It’s one heck of a good problemt o have though. Welcome to the Pirates, Jeff Clement! 
In other related news, Freddy Sanchez could be gone in the next hour. Some rumors say that the Pirates and Giants have completed a deal, and the Giants are set to examine Freddy in the next hour and if all goes well complete the deal. Names that are being mentioned for the return are John Bowker, Kevin Frandsen, and Jesus Guzman. I don’t know much about them yet, and unfortunately I won’t be able to update again until later tonight, because I have to go to work! So I’ll post later! 
Quick Update – that Freddy trade is not in place, it was a false rumor. Doesn’t mean something won’t happen soon though, stayed tuned everybody!

FIRESALE!

According to the American calendar, today is July 28th. According to the major league calendar, today is 3 days before the trade deadline. This is an exciting time for baseball fans, especially fans of team’s that are rumored to make a lot of moves in the next couple days. No team is looking to trade more than the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates have pulled 3 trades already this summer, and I would expect that number to double by Friday. 

  • The San Francisco Giants have shown interest in Freddy Sanchez. The Pirates at first were looking to get a big return for Freddy, but it’s crunch time now and it seems like they are set on dealing him, which might mean they will settle for less now. I would still expect to get some nice prospects for Freddy. 
  • Jack Wilson‘s name has also been popping up a lot. The Red Sox may soon be adding their third former Pirates to their starting lineup. They seem very interested in him and I think they may be ready to give up more than Jack is worth to get him. This is exciting news. Don’t expect anything unbelievable, like top 5 prospects, but I definitely think we are going to get a good return for Jack. I’m sure we will miss him in the near future but we have got some young middle infielders playing well for our minor league teams, and I expect the bucs to add some more guys to help them this week. 
  • Two other Pirates likely to be dealt are John Grabow and Matt Capps. These two are much less likely to be dealt than Freddy and Jack but the team is definitely listening to offers. The Chicago Cubs apparently have a ton of interest in Grabow, but the Pirates don’t really like what they are offering in return and don’t think the Cubs have a strong enough farm system to get a deal done. As for Matt Capps, I don’t really expect a deal to get done. The Marlins, Rockies, and a couple of other teams have shown some interest in him but I don’t think the Pirates really want to trade him unless they get a good return, which I’m doubting they’ll get. 
  • Surprisingly to me, Zach Duke has also been mentioned in rumors. The Phillies and Cubs are expressing interest. This one is almost sure to not happen. The Pirates are asking for a lot in return. They want 3-5 prospects, and a couple of them have to be top level guys. I don’t think either team would be willing to part with top prospects to get Duke. Although who knows, if Roy Halladay  doesn’t work out for the Phillies, maybe they will make a desperation move and make an offer that Neil can’t refuse. 
It’s going to be an exciting couple of days, expect to see an very different Pirate team take the field next week, and my different, in no way do I mean “better”. This could get ugly folks…

Lincecame in our faces.

Tim Lincecum – 9 IP, 2 R, 0 ER, 15 K

Does anything else need to be said here? 
See ya tomorrow. 

Double 9′s in San Fran

That’s right ladies and gentlemen it’s GAME 99 as the Pirates set sail for San Francisco. 

I haven’t been hitting the blog very hard in the last couple days, and the Pirates haven’t been hitting the ball AT ALL the last couple days. In their last 2 games they’ve been outscored 16-0.

The Pirates will hope to have a reversal of fortunes starting tonight as they take one of the league’s elite pitchers – Tim Lincecum. They just faced Tim a couple weeks ago and got 1 whole run off of him. The run came off the bat of Garrett Jones on a first inning home run, and after that it was lights out. Paul Maholm pitched a gem but the bullpen couldn’t hold it up and the Pirates lost. Paul gets another shot tonight and will hope for the same results as he takes the hill in search of his 7th win. So here we go! Let’s go bucs!

Game 99: Pirates at Giants

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