Moving on from our catcher who can’t catch, lets talk prospects and promotions.  With Walker, Tabata, and Brad Lincoln all called up, the only major piece left at AAA is top prospect Pedro Alvarez.  There’s been quite a bit of speculation about Pedro being called up during the upcoming home stand.  The team could clearly use the help, and from all indications based on his numbers in Indy, Pedro is ready.  The only real question is when?  Given that nothing has been announced yet, I’m gonna guess it won’t happen before tomorrows game.  The Friday night game against Cleveland might be a good choice, but no matter when the call up comes, expect it to come soon.

Finally, I want to take a very quick look back at the Pirates draft.  The Pirates were able to nap the top 2 upside arms in the draft in first and second round picks Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie.  Those 2 players alone, assuming they can sign them, could make this draft a huge success.  Both can touch the high 90s on the radar gun, and Allie has even been clocked in triple digits.  Taillon is the more polished of the two, with Allie being seen as very raw and with significant command and control issues that will need to be worked out.  Nonetheless, these 2 players would be very significant additions to the system.  As Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus said on Rocco DeMaro’s Pirates extra Innings radio show after the draft, if they can sign both Allie and Taillon, this draft could potentially be seen as the day that turned this franchise around.  Now obviously that assumes a lot in the way of projection and development, but it does show you the potential these 2 prep pitchers have.  They are precisely the kind of high-upside arms the Pirates minor league system currently lacks.

Beyond the first 2 rounds, I can’t claim to know much about the players the Pirates drafted.  There was a heavy focus on right handed prep pitchers, which was seen as the strength of this draft.  Realistically, its tough to evaluate any teams draft in MLB until after the August 15th signing deadline.  Once we find out which players the Pirates sign and which go to college or otherwise go unsigned, it will be much easier to figure out what kind of talent they have acquired.

The article he links to appears on the Pittsburgh magazine website.  It would easily be the biggest misuse of a journalistic platform related to the Pirates this year, were it not for the Pirates Report fiasco just a few weeks ago.  While I’m tempted to tear it apart Fire Joe Morgan style, I’m going to go another route.

There are lots of problems with what Conboy is saying.  But the most egregious of them seems to be a comical misunderstanding of the nature of the sport of baseball.  Baseball, at it’s very core is a game of one hitter vs. one pitcher.  It’s that nature that allows a pitcher like Strasburg to completely dominate a game, despite the fact that he plays for a Nationals team that is below .500, even after sweeping the Pirates this week.  Conboy’s assertion that players like Morgan are important to a developing team seems to completely ignore that aspect of the game.  In true team sports like Hockey, Football, and Basketball you have to rely on your teammates to help maximize your performance.  I have no doubt that in those sports guys like Morgan and Billy G can make a profound difference to a teams ability to win a championship.  But in a baseball, an individual sport disguised as a team game, team chemistry is incredibly overrated.

Now don’t get me wrong, Nyj-Mo was one of my favorite players when he was in a Pirates uniform.  He’s a plus defender with speed on the base paths who can survive as a slap hitter because of his speed.  But ultimately, this isn’t about Morgan’s skills on the field but rather what he does off of it for a young team.  From what I know of Morgan, based mostly on interviews and the like, he seems like an very likeable, funny guy.  That likeability almost certainly translates to the clubhouse, helping to keep teammates loose, but the assertion that it translates to wins on the field is at best unproven and at worst just plain wrong.

If Conboy wants to criticize Pirates management because Milledge hasn’t played well since coming to Pittsburgh and we’d be a better team with Morgan back, that’s fine.  It’s pretty clear at this point that Milledge has been a dissapointment.  Maybe you don’t like the risks Neal Huntington has taken in many of his trades and think disgraced former top prospects like Milledge and Clement never workout and aren’t worth trading for.  But that isn’t what Conboy says.  In Conboy’s world, Nyjer Morgan and Doug Mientkiewicz (for the record he never specifically mentions Dougie baseball, I’m just assuming Conboy would put him in the same camp as Morgan) would still be Pirates, and those 2 players would lead their young players to victory.  In the real world talent, not chemistry, is what wins baseball games.  I’ll even go a step further and bet that if the Pirates continue to develop talent, to the point that they become a winning team, the chemistry and morale in their clubhouse will be just fine.

After that game was completed, the Pirates announced 1B Jeff Clement would be optioned to AAA and Jack Taschner had been DFA’d.  Those 2 moves made room for SP Brad Lincoln and OF Jose Tabata to make their big league debut’s last night.  Given how dominant Strasburg was in his debut, part of me considers last night a huge disappointment.  Tabata would bat lead-off and went 2-4 with a SB and a BB.  Quite honestly, if he can continue to do that and sprinkle in an occasional extra base hit, I’ll be happy.  But, there was nothing about his performance that was overwhelmingly excellent, and trying to judge a hitter on one game is just dumb anyway.  A one game assessment of a pitcher makes slightly more sense, just because you can judge how their stuff looks, but its still an awful small sample size, which brings me to Brad Lincoln.

Lincolns final line was rather ugly 6.0 7 5 5 2 3 1.  But he was very much let down by his defense, and he showed me some things I liked.  His plus curve ball that everyone has talked about when he was drafted and making his way through the minor leagues is very much that.  It’s a true out pitch when he locates it.  It may have just been adrenaline, but he had more velocity on his fastball than I expected, hitting 93-94 in the early innings.  At least 2 of the runs he allowed probably should have been unearned, but the no decision he came out of the game with seems fitting given how well he pitched.  I’m gonna give Lincoln a pass for now, given that his first start this year at AAA was a rough one and how thoroughly he dominated the level after that.  I’ve gone over this before, but Lincoln is never going to be a true ace like Strasburg, so comparing the two is just plain unfair.  But he seems to have the makings to become a solid middle of the rotation pitcher, one that should be in a Pirates uniform for at least the next 6 years.

It would have been easy for the Pirates to go a safer route at this pick, but Taillon was the best talent available and in baseball, that’s the way your supposed to draft.  There are certainly risks, though.  First off, like all pitching prospects, and especially the high school variety,there is always the chance of injury or flameout.  From what everyone says about how good his stuff is, flameout seems unlikely, but you just never know with pitching prospects.  There’s also the cost.  It’s hard to say exactly what it will take to sign him (I’ve heard everything from 4 Million to 8 Million), but rest assured the Neal Huntington and company wouldn’t have drafted Taillon if they didn’t think they could sign him to a contract.  Whatever the final number is, it’s going to be significantly overslot, and MLB always sits on those deals until the last minute, which means he’ll be signed on deadline day, and likely won’t show up in a box score until sometime in 2011.

Tallion was the Pirates only day 1 pick (1st & sandwich rounds).  Looking ahead slightly to day 2, there are 2 names that stand out for as solid options for the Pirates 2nd round pick, 52nd overall.  James Paxton and  Stetson Allie.  Paxton was drafted last year as a pitcher out of the University of Kentucky, didn’t sign, then lost his college eligibility due to issues around his representation.  He pitched briefly this year in independent ball, but wasn’t impressive.  Nonetheless, he was a top pitching prospect last year and was rated by Keith Law of ESPN as the #21 overall prospect in this years draft, and getting that kind of talent in the second round, assuming they can sign him, would be a nice addition.  Stetson Allie is a hard throwing lefty from St. Edwards HS in Ohio.  He’s destined for the bullpen, and has almost no command or control currently, but he is the hardest throwing pitcher in this draft, and guys who can throw 100 MPH don’t grow on trees.  There are probably a handful of other guys who slid out of the first day of the draft who would be good additions to the Pirates system, but those are the 2 I’m targeting now.

With that out of the way, I’d like to address the issues raised by everyone’s favorite post-gazette blogger about how the Pirates will approach the trading deadline.  He pretty much nails it by saying that Aki, Dotel and Donnely are likely to be shopped given their 1 year contracts.  It’s rather unlikely they will find anyone willing to trade for Aki unless, of course they are willing to eat his entire salary.  Don’t rule that possibility out, but even in that scenario, Iwamura goes from completely “un-tradeable” to “maybe tradeable to a contender looking for a backup infielder” so the return would still be minimal.

The most important part of Smizik’s post though is the futures of Ryan Doumit, Zach Duke and Paul Maholm.  All 3 are veteran’s who are due to make significant money in the next 2 years, and it will be interesting to see how the team handles each situation.  While it’s easy to lump them all together, I’d like to look at each on a case-by-case basis, as I’m sure The Pirates front office will do.

I’ve never been a big Ryan Doumit fan, his walk-off home run on Sunday notwithstanding.  He has a nice bat for the position he plays, but his often nightmare-ish defense combined with his inability to stay on the field has prevented me from ever growing too attached to him.  Catcher defense is a hard thing to measure, so I have a hard time comparing WAR numbers to salary.  For whatever it’s worth, he’s been worth exactly 1 win so far in 2010, which over an entire season more than justifies the $5.1 Million he is due next season.  If there was an adequate replacement available, I’d be all for getting what can be had fro Doumit while he’s healthy and producing.  But I don’t see Erik Kratz and Jason Jaramillo producing enough offensively on an already offensively challenged team to negate the loss of Doumit.  My gut feeling is he stays around til next year, at which point heir apparent Tony Sanchez should be further along in his minor league progression, to the point that his major league potential can be adequately evaluated.

Since Duke and Maholm are very similar pitchers, I’ll just address them together.  Let’s start with the premise that it would make little sense to get rid of both players.  On a winning team, a Pitcher if their ilk is very useful as a back of the rotation guy who gets ground balls in bunches and has a defense that turns them into outs.  Likewise though, I’m not of the opinion that it makes any sense to keep them both long term.  So if we have to pick one, who stays and who goes.

Duke will be in his 3rd arbitration year next year, and has posted seasons of 2.0 and 2.5 WAR in 2008 and 2009 and is on a similar pace in 2010.  That makes him about a 9 million dollar player, and using the standard 40/60/80 scale that means he should get around $7.2 Million in 2011.  After 2011, he will be a free agent.  Maholm will make $5.75 Million next year and the team has an option for 2012 worth 9.75 Million.  Despite what I said earlier about them being very similar players, I prefer Maholm over Duke based on their peripheral numbers.  Since 2007, Maholm has had a betted FIP and xFIP than Duke in every season.  He also has a slightly higher ground ball rate and a slightly better K rate.  In addition to that, since he is under contract rather than going through arbitration, he is a bit more cost controlled than Duke.  All of that makes Maholm the obvious choice to keep around if your only going to keep one.

There is absolutely no reason that Andy LaRoche, one of the teams best hitters, should be hitting 7th.  There is absolutely no reason that ‘Cutch, a prototypical lead-off hitter, should be coming up with 2 outs and no one on as the 3rd hitter so frequently does.  There is very little reason, beyond “tradition”, that the pitcher should be batting 9th (For reference, here is the Pirates “Ideal” lineup.  I used ZiPS(RoS) numbers from fangraphs, except for Duke, where I used career numbers because ZiPS hitting numbers aren’t provided for pitchers).  The Pirates started the season by doing these things.  They were following the math.  Granted, Cedeno isn’t an idea guy to turn the lineup over, but the Pirates personnel isn’t exactly ideal, so they were working with what they had and optimizing run production.  I was happy.  I’m not sure why the moved away from that, I’m guessing it had something to do with Aki’s awful start to the season and all the blowout losses, but whatever the reasoning is has lead to this monstrosity, and I just don’t get it.

I’m not quite sure how the day-to-day lineup is constructed.  My guess is that the front office, Neal Huntington and his team, are providing JR with their input and discussing the math with him, but that he is given freedom to shift things as he sees fit on a dialy basis.  Whatever the system is that leads to a lineup this bad needs to be changed, thats all I’m saying.

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It seems almost too obvious to say that strikeouts are important.  After all, anytime the ball is put in play, lots of variables immediately activate.  The defense could commit an error, runners can move up on a sacrifice or on an errant or ill advised throw.  By recording outs without the ball being in play, your obviously much better off.  But in case it wasn’t already clear, there are 2 situations from last nights game that illustrate that clearly.

Last nights starter, Brian Burress, didn’t record a lot of strikeouts and he was far from efficient.  He did manage to go 5.1 shutout innings by getting out of jams in the 3rd and fourth innings.  The Dodgers should have been able to score in both of those innings.  Getting out of the third unscathed was mostly the result of a fortunate call at second base when Clayton Kershaw tried to advance on a pitch in the dirt.  The 4th is a different story.  The Dodgers had runners on 2nd and 3rd with only one out.  By striking out Casey Blake on 3 pitches, Burress was able to induce a 2 out grounder from James Loney to end the inning.  I’m not going to say they definitely score without that K, but lets just say that organizational depth pitchers don’t usually get out of 2nd and 3rd, 1 out jams in 2 consecutive innings.

Now lets talk about Burres opposite number last night, Clayton Kershaw.  Like Burres he wasn’t exactly efficient last night, throwing 117 pitches over 6.1 IP and walking 4.  But the Pirates offense never got anything going, and only managed the 2 runs they did in the 1st inning as a result of Matt Kemp badly miss playing a Ryan Doumit single into a “triple”.  Kershaw’s 7 strikeouts prevented the Pirates from ever getting a rally going.  He stuck out at least one batter in 5 of the 7 innings he pitched in.  It’s that ability to get strikeouts that makes him the Dodgers ace.  The fact that no one on the Pirates current staff displays that ability is at least somewhat concerning.  I’m willing to bet that if this franchise ever does turn it around*, they will do so only once they find a true staff ace.  Go back through World Series teams and try to find one without a true ace.  Just in the last few years, the ‘09 Yanks had CC, the ‘08 Phils had Hammels, the ‘07 Red Sox had Beckett, I think you get the point.  Teams that compete at the highest levels do so with elite starting pitching.  At this point, and unfortunately for the foreseeable future, the Pirates don’t have that.

*By “turn it around” I don’t mean 82 wins.  I mean that they are in thick of the division race, competing for playoff spots, or dare I say even NL Pennants and World Series titles.

Octavio Dotel came in for the 9th and immediately allowed a Jay Bruce homer.  If you look at Dotel’s splits against lefties, the Bruse homerun isn’t really a surprise.  For his career, Dotel’s FIP against southpaws is 4.68, compared to 2.80 against righties.  In short, he has always struggled against left handed batters.  In a 3 run game with Bruce as the only lefty set to come up, I’m fine with using Dotel.  But in a tighter game, I think JR would be wise to go another direction against left handed batters.

On the bright side, Lastings Milledge seems to have something extra this year that I didn’t really see last year.  At the plate, he’s been mostly a single hitter, and that’s going to have to improve for him to stick as a corner outfielder.  However, he made several nice defensive plays today, plays I’m convinced he would not have made last season after coming over from Washington.

EDIT: I forgot to add that there were two fly balls to left that I found interesting in light of recent discussion on outfield positioning.  Without looking at my score book, I don’t know the innings in which they occurred but, there was one hit toward the north side notch that Milledge managed to corral due to his positioning.  Then later there was ball hit down the line that probably would have been an out were the outfield positioned “traditionally” but it turned into an RBI single due to the left-center shift the team employs at home.  Don’t try to divine any great wisdom from that, just take it as 2 anecdotal plays that occurred in one particular game.

Its also worth noting that this was my first game in my regular plan seats, since opening day I was over on the first base side.  My seats down in section 27 provide a nice view as well as easy bathroom and concession access.  All told, it was a great day at the ballpark despite the cold.

To this point in the season, the team is 4-4, but I find it at least a little bit concerning that all 4 losses have all been by 6 runs or more.  That’s something to keep an eye on as the season progresses.  This team isn’t built to win high scoring games, so if they can’t hold opponents to 3 or 4 runs, they aren’t going to win very often.

Aki Iwamura is quickly becoming one of my favorite Pirates.  He almost always sees 5 or more pitches per turn, and has showing surprising power with 2 home runs.  He’s probably not going to slug .530 for the season, but his at-bats are can’t miss television at this point if your a Pirates fan.

Andrew McCutchen said in the Spring that he wanted to be more aggressive on the basepaths this season, and so far he’s done just that.  His 5 swipes, 0 caught, represent the NL lead in that category (Scott Podsednik has 6 in the AL).  While his performance at the plate hasn’t been great so far, he’s made up for that on the basepaths, and suddenly 60 bags seems very much within reason for the young center fielder.