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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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.

Before I get into it,  I thought it was appropriate to throw out links to all the previous 2010 season preview posts.

Written back in Janury: Prospects part 1 & part 2

Its probably useless at this point, but for the sake of completeness, here is my “very brief” spring training preview

Probably my favorite of the series, Expectations

And finally, the Pitching & Defense and Offense previews

OK, let’s get to the predictions

April 5th, Today:  The Pirates will start the year off 1-0, getting to Vicente Padilla early and often and the bullpen holds on for a 7-5 victory.

April 28th: The Pirates lose the last of a 3 game sweep in Milwaukee, falling to 10-11 and below .500 for good.

June 3rd: An off day.  Aki Iwamura is traded for a mid-level pitching prospect, clearing the way for Andy LaRoche, off to a hot start, to move to second base and Pedro Alvarez to make his big league debut at home the next day against San Francisco.  Alvarez finishes the season with 22 homers.

June 7th: The Pirates select phenom Bryce Harper second overall in Major League Baseball’s first year player draft.

July 13th:  Andrew McCutchen is the Pirates lone All-Star, as the team crawls into the break 10 games under .500.

July 20th: Brad Lincoln makes his Pirates debut by giving the team their first victory of the season against Milwaukee.

July 31st: For the first time in god knows how long, the Pirates do not make a major deadline deal.

October 3rd:  The Pirates beat the Florida Marline to end the season with 70 wins, good for last in the NL Central, 4 games behind 5th place Houston.  Jose Tabata spends the entire year at AAA, and is not called up as many expected when the season began.

October 4th: In a one game playoff, Aroldis Chapman beats Adam Wainright giving the Reds the NL Central crown.

November 4th: AL wildcard Tampa Bay beats NL West champion Colorado to win the world series in 7 games.

Pirates MVP: Andrew McCutchen

Pirates ROY: Pedro Alvarez

Pirates “Cy Young”: Charlie Morton

NL Cy Young:  Roy Halladay

NL ROY: Aroldis Chapman

NL MVP: Albert Pujols

AL Cy Young: Felix Hernandez

AL ROY: Austin Jackson

AL MVP: Evan Longoria

*In the upnroven category are Lastings Milldege in LF and Jeff Clement at 1B. Clement is there for obvious reasons, but I felt like I needed to explain Milledge a bit. His careez UZR/150 in LF is 10.4, but that’s only over 93 games. Over the larger sample, 298 OF games, more than half of them in CF, his UZR/150 is -10.0. Until the sample size in LF is larger, I’m calling his defense unproven.

On the pitching side, the starting rotation looks like this. Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, Ross Ohlendorf and Charlie Morton return from last year. Daniel McCutchen won the 5th spot from Kevin Hart this spring, but I expect to see both of them start some games this year, as well as 2 guys starting the season at AAA, last years rule V pick Donnie Veal and former #1 pick Brad Lincoln. Of this group, Morton and Lincoln have the highest upside, but both are young. Lincoln especially figures to have some struggles once he gets called up, which will probably happen sometime in June or July. Duke and Maholm are pretty much known quantities to Pirate fans at this point. Neither is gonna blow you away, but both manage to get a lot of ground ball outs and are relatively effective when the defense behind them is good. Unfortunately, as I already said, that is not likely to be the case and they are therefore likely to have some troubles this season. Overall, this group definitely has a lot of potential, but there’s just too much young inconsistency here to expect anything great to happen. They all have the potential to be good, but who steps up will be very telling in how this team moves forward next year and beyond. Behind these guys is a large group of starters at AA and AAA, and in the years to come they will be pushing for spots, so the ones who wish to be a part of the long term answer need to step up now.

While the rotation is mostly the same form last year, the bullpen had been almost completely overhauled. Gone is Matt Capps, Steven Jackson and others. In their place is Octavio Dotel, Brendan Donnelly and DJ Carrasco. I really like what Neal Huntington has done with the Pen and think they will be able to keep this team in a lot of games and hold leads, on the rare occasion they are given them.

Overall, the pitching is going to be good but not great from end to end. The nice thing is that if anyone fails to perform, there is someone behind him at AAA waiting for the opportunity to show their skills. I expect a lot of guys to be given just that opportunity this season, and even if its going to be frustrating at times, it should be fun to watch this team come together and see who steps up. This theme of competition for spots is one I expect to see this year and into next year, and its one I’ll touch on in my offensive preview as well, coming tomorrow.

About a week ago I posted about Joel Hanrahan’s injury.  Today we got some good news on that front, as it was announced that his latest MRI revealed no structural damage to his injured throwing elbow.  There is still no hard time-table given for his return, but the terms “dissipating inflamation” and “no structural damage” are both very good things, and should mean he’ll be back sooner rather than later.

This one is behind a pay-wall, ESPN insiders only, but Buster Olney seems very bullish on the potential of this Pirates line-up, especially the power potential of Garrett Jones and Pedro Alvarez.  There is also a note in there about Paul Maholm altering his pre-game routine to conserve his energy for later innings.

Just heard this now, literally as I was writing this post.  Charlie Wilmouth of BucsDugout is going to be on the FanGraphs Audio podcast (they mention it at the end of the linked episode) on Thursday.

I’m not quite sure what it is about this pirates administration, but I think they have a tendency to get caught up in the moment and speak a bit more freely than they should be.  The latest example of this, Frank Coonelly today says that “2010 is the beginning of the next dynasty of the Pirates.”  Really?  I truly believe this team is heading in the right direction, but Dynasty?  As they say on NFL PrimeTime, Come on, Man!  Edit: I forgot to note this originally, but in that same post, Chuck Finder also adds that Neal Walker is being turned into a super-utility player, something I’ve speculated about in the past.

Finally, something I really enjoyed seeing this week was this tweet from Rob Biertempfel about the energy CF Andrew McCutchen gives this team.  Looking back to when he was called up last year, and that was expected of him at that time, he has met or exceeded all of it.  Its easy to dream on how great a player this kid can be, and I’m glad to hear that he’s the one providing the team its energy.

Since I didn’t see any of the game, and only heard bits and pieces, I’m not going to try to provide any deep analysis.  I have 2 points I want to make here though.  First, Matt Capps is not the same pitcher right now as he has been in the past.  I think I’ve said this before on this blog, but I’ve never really been a believer in Capps.  At his best, he has good velocity and great control on his fastball, but he doesn’t really have a second pitch.  I like that in an 8th inning guy, but you can’t be an elite closer without an out pitch.  Right now, and for large stretches of this year though, he has not been at his best.  That control has been largely missing this year.  Add to that a decrease in velocity and what you have is a guy out there throwing meatballs.  There are 2 key numbers that illustrate the difference from this year to last.  First, he is throwing far fewer fastballs this year when compared to last.  Last year, he threw his fastball 78.6% of the time.  This year, its down to 70.9%.  That’s a huge difference, which indicats that he doesn’t trust his fastball as much this year.  The second number is his BB/9 rate.  Last year it was .84, this year its 3.19, almost 4 times higher.

Essentially, my point here is this.  Matt Capps should not be the closer for this team right now.  One of the things this management group has harped on over and over again is accountability.  This is a perfect opportunity to show they are serious about it.   Capps isn’t good right now and both Joel Hanrahan and Jesse Chavez are pitching well.  One of those two should be given the chance to close and perhaps a move like that would take some pressure off of Capps and allow him to figure out what is wrong.

The second point I want to make is about Andrew McCutchen.  He may end up being the savior of this franchise.  OK, I realize that’s premature, and that it will take much more than one player to make this team a contender.  Seriously though, his play has been nothing short of spectacular, way exceeding the expectations I had for a 22 year old rookie on a bad baseball team.  He absolutely deserves to be the NL rookie of the year, and when you look at his numbers compared to the other contenders (Dexter Fowler, Colby Rasmus), he should be the only position player in the discussion.  If your a fantasy player, take him early next year, because he’s going to give you 20/20 with a .290 average and 90 or so RBI’s.

I was at the concessions when Nyjer Morgan came to bat in the 6th, was hit by a pitch, and then JR was run for arguing it.  But even from the concessions, the fans were deafeningly loud when it happened.  Its a good thing JR was ejected and not T-Plush.  The HR Nyjer pulled back in the 8th clearly saved this game for the bucs.

The win moved the Pirates to 33-39 on the year as we head into a weekend series against KC.

WHYGAVS on Miguel Angel Sano and his age

The post-gazette on the promotion of Pedro Alvarez

Peter Gammons on the Indians’ managerial situation

Jason Grey on the fantasy prospects of the best rookie center fielder in baseball

Last night the Pirates lost to former teammate Nate McLouth and the Atlanta braves in 15 Innings, 7-6.  McLouth was 3-7 with a HR, his tenth, while his Pirates CF counterpart, Andrew McCutchen went 4-7 with 2 triples and a double.  Through 5 games he is now hitting .400 with an OPS over 1.000.  While it is a small sample size, count me as a believer, his speed is ridiculous, and he doesn’t seem nervous out there at all, so look for him to only get better.

Zach Duke had a poor outing, giving up 6 runs in 6 innings.  Over the course of the 15 inning affair, the Pirates used their entire bullpen except for closer Matt Capps.  Jeff Karstens, who is scheduled to start Wednesday, took the loss in the 15th, but only threw 18 pitches, so it likely won’t affect the order of the rotation.  I know its probably too early for it, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Chaz Morton called up to make a spot start on Wednesday.  Morton last pitched on Friday, and is scheduled to pitch again on Thurday for Indy, which means he could make the start.  It seems unlikely that he would be called up so quickly after a trade though, only to be sent back down after one start.

Now I’m not a scout, and I don’t pretend to be one.   So I’m not really in a position to analyze the loot we got in Return for Nate McAwesome.  But I can say this much; prospects are coveted now more than ever by big league GMs.  With that in mind, what the Pirates got is substantial.  The return of 2 of the top ten prospects(according to baseball america) from one of the best minor league systems in baseball, and a starter who is considered major league ready is quite a haul for one player.  In this case, a player who won a gold glove despite what the advanced defensive metrics say.  According to fangraphs.com writer Dave Cameron

Despite winning a gold glove last season, the glove isn’t as valuable. McLouth has consistently ranked as a below average defensive center fielder, compiling a -10.6 UZR/150 over his career. He’s a corner outfielder playing out of position in center, but he’s not an atrocity out there.

Nate is basically at his peak.  Yes, he will hit 20-25 long balls a year, and steal 20 bases.  But he doesn’t have the power or speed to ever go far beyond those numbers, and his obp isn’t high enough to make him truly great.  As Keith Olbemann pointed out you can make the case quite easily that Andrew McCutchen, the pirates star prospect CF called up to replace McLouth, is an upgrade over Nate right away.  He is certainly a defensive upgrade today, and projects to be a far superior offensive player soon.

But really, the reason the Pirates made this trade wasn’t because McLouth was a sub par player, and It isn’t because they needed to make room for McCutchen today, that certainly could have waited.  The reason this trade was made for the same reason the Bay and Nady trades were made last year.  Its because when Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly took over, they were handed an empty closet talent wise.  The Pirates minor league system was in shambles and was in dire need of restocking if this franchise is ever going to compete for a World Series and be a consistent contender in the NL Central and for NL Pennants.  This move, paired with the moves made last year and the moves that will be made later this year, likely trades of Adam Laroche, Jack Wilson, John Grabow, and possibly Freddy Sanchez, are moving this franchise one step closer to that ultimate goal of a World Series.