Pirates Lose Again, Set American Sports Record

I originally planned (as you can see by the archives) to provide pre-game and post game wraps for the rest of the 2010 baseball season being slogged through by the Pirates.  It didn’t take long for me to realize it was pointless.  Since the time I started this blog, I could’ve written the same game summaries of nearly every game they’ve played (that’s not an exaggeration; go take a look for yourself).  Here’s how nearly every game has gone:  Pirates lose, pitching is awful, offense is ATTROCIOUS, and John Russell needs to be fired ASAP for the horrific job he’s done.  So, I chose to spare myself the time and not do that.  There are many other blogs that can show you the statistics on the offensive production that isn’t even worthy of a AAA team.  You have other options for viewing the tally of near record-setting strikeout rates Pedro Alvarez is putting up in the cleanup spot.  Other sites exist where you can find the exact numbers on a starting rotation where four of the five don’t even deserve to be on a major league starting rotation.  And nearly ALL baseball blogs (particularly the Pirates sites) are unanimous in their hatred of John Russell. 

Somebody shoot me in the face, please.  I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

Losing is one thing.  As a Pirate fan, I got used to losing a long time ago.  Want to know how long?  Well, tonight, Pittsburgh is in a class of their own, as the Pirates Baseball Club has set an American sports record by clinching their 18th consecutive losing season.  This years graduating high-schoolers have never seen a Pirates team break .500 in their entire lives.  Wow.  That’s a long way from my youth, when I remember a mashing lineup of Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Andy Van Slyke etc, backed up by 20 game winners and standout starters like Doug Drabek, John Smiley, Zane Smith, the breakout arrival of Tim Wakefield and the like.  Watching the Pirates win the then-National League East Division Championship year in and year out gave me authorization to rub the black and gold in the faces of all my friends (many of them Cubs fans).  Ah.  The good ‘ol days.

So like I said, I can deal with losing.  Don’t get me wrong, I hate it, but as a Pirate fan, you’re conditioned to struggle through a bad major league product while taking solace in the off-the-field things that brought hope that the cavalry was on the way.  This week is a great example of it.  While the Buccos have been getting their heads bashed in, the Pirates pulled off an unprecedented front office coup, signing Jameson Taillon, Stetson Allie, and the top prospect from Latin America, Luis Heredia.  Few in baseball thought that task could be accomplished, but the Pirates nailed it, adding three of the premier pitching prospects in baseball to their system in a single week.  These are the things Pirates fans cling to in order to maintain their sanity, and in order to rationalize why being a fan of this club isn’t the sports equivalent to Battered Woman Syndrome.

However, the performance of the big league club is killing me.  Not only are they losing which is par for the course, but they’re awful.  Losing is one thing, not even being competitive game in, game out is quite another.  Basic, fundamental, Baseball 101 skills are unknown on the big league squad.  The pitching is not just bad, it’s awful.  The hitting is not just bad, it’s pathetic.  The defense is not just bad, it’s unworthy of moderately talented minor league teams.  And the effort and management is by far the worst in the league.  It’s not even close.

I am a huge baseball fan.  Always have been.  But I cannot wait for this season to be over with.  I pray that the offseason brings wholesale changes to the Pirates staff.  2011 cannot be anywhere near where the 2010 Pirates are.  That cannot be tolerated.  But to prevent another nightmare season next year, changes must be made THIS YEAR.

Pirates Under Construction

As my beloved Pirates continue to flounder this season (hey, at least they won a game this week, and it’s only Wednesday! ), I figured I’d do a brief post on the most popular of newly established Pirate traditions:  building for the future.

This week the Buccos set a record in spending on the first year player draft, signing both their number one and two picks, Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie.  These guys are just 18 years old, throw in the upper-90’s, and the Pirates spent a boatload of cash (around 9 million bucks for these two alone) to lock down the two hurlers and lure them from playing college ball.

Now, there has been much talk of the “core four” already playing in Pittsburgh, Pedro Alvarez, Neil Walker, Andrew McCutchen, and Jose Tabata.  Pedro should be a slugging star in the relatively near future (and first baseman, I hope), and I see now reason why McCutchen and Tabata won’t improve to be good with the bat (they aren’t bad now), add a lot of speed to the basepaths, and they have many years to improve their work in the field.  Walker I’m not near as confident about.  Walker has shown versatility and athleticism (number 1 pick as a catcher, switches positions to third base, and now the Bucs starting 2nd Baseman–that’s versatility!), and has put up good numbers with the stick in his first year as the starting 2nd basemen with the big club.  Many fans see the 24-year-old performing this well in his first full big league season and imagine how good he’s going to be with some experience and growth as he enters his physical prime.  For some reason, I see a very handy, reliable utility man.  I pray I’m wrong.

The Pirates have been inexcusably bad this year (and last year for that matter, but this year is abysmal).  Manager John Russell’s complete incompetence, without basic baseball 101 knowledge, and actions that have at times put young players in dangerous situations, more than warrant his firing, even aside from the total lack of results.  Add in some of the secretive incidents like the power struggle then subsequent firing of Gary Varsho and Joe Kerrigan by Russell and GM Neal Huntington, and you get the impression that this club is a seriously dysfunctional organization, even aside from being an incompetent one.  That isn’t the kind of news that inspires confidence.

That being said, there is something that this front office does that previous Pirate regimes refused to so:  build from the bottom up.  Now, whether this rebuilding process works or not is not at all certain, and whether this regimes talent development skills are good enough are highly in doubt.  BUT, a team like Pittsburgh has to build through an aggressive draft, and spend the money for development through the minor leagues, and have a foreign presence throughout Latin America and Asia.  These Pirates with this owner and Huntington HAVE at least done that.

If you can’t keep up with the spending of the big boys like the evil Yankees at the major league free agent-level market, you had best be able to provide your own talent.  It can be done:  Cleveland has done it, Oakland ditto, and the Minnesota Twins are perennial contenders because they can provide their own home-grown talent, wave-after-wave.  To be fair, Huntington and team President Coonelly had alot of work to do before they can even begin to show results due to their predecessors completely neglecting the Pirates system and investment in the amateur draft.  However, as I said, I’m not convinced Huntington is a good enough talent evaluator to make it work, but the effort is there.  Huntington did tear down the piecemeal team he inherited (though the trades can be debateable), and owner Bob Nutting has at least ponied up to build a bottom up system.  Kudos to them.

Make no mistake, an ideas of Tallion making it to Pittsburgh in 3-5 years and being anointed an ace is not just not a given, it’s unlikely.  However, as a Pirate fan, I’m far more willing to wait with high-ceiling players working to make their way than I am waiting on another 26 or 27-year-old like John Bowker, or the littany of others that have fit that bill over the last 20 years.  Tallion, Allie, Bryan Morris, and the many other prospects the Pirates have acquired may never be the stars (or even make it to Pittsburgh) that the Pirates and their fans want them to be.  Regardless, this is the right way to try to build, and signing Taillon was a must.  Huntington, Coonelly, and Nutting deserve credit for that.