Bucco Fever

Posts Tagged Neal Huntington

Lineup Construction

May 12

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

I’m just gonna be blunt about this one.  Today’s lineup against the Reds makes no sense.

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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On Revenue Sharing

Apr 10

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike were in Pittsburgh earlier this week and had Pirates GM Neal Huntington on the show Wednesday morning.  If you haven’t heard it, et’s definitely worth checking out, here.  That link also includes an interview with MLB Labor Relations guyRob Manfred, and between the two interviews, there is a heavy focus on revenue sharing, especially in light of the recent media spat between Randy Levine of the Yankees and Mark Attanasio of the Brewers.

I’m not gonna recap what Mike & Mike said, you can listen to the interviews if you like.  But in light of those, I was thinking about the soft cap/revenue system MLB has in place, and the following seems obvious to me.  1) without the revenue sharing system, teams like the Pirates and Brewers would basically have no hope of signing any free agents.  2) Even with revenue sharing, low revenue teams, take a huge risk any time they commit significant ong term dollars to one player.  3)  Just because the low revenue clubs make the playoffs or win the world series occasionally, that doesn’t make the advantage the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, etc. have any less humongous.

You could probably argue any of those above 3 points, but you would be wrong.  Here’s what is debatable though.  Will Major League Baseball ever be able to modify the revenue system to the point where the inherent inequities aren’t there, or at least aren’t as large.  One way to do that would be a hard cap, and that will probably never happen.  But short of that, they would limit guaranteed contracts, increase the percentage of the luxury tax for going over the soft cap, institute a world wide draft.  All of these things would help, and until the owners and players take significant steps to improve the system, there will be stories like the Attanasio/Levine one this week.

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Hot Stove – Bucs Pursuing Relief Options

Dec 3

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

With the Steelers at a very depressing 6-5 and seemingly heading no where, I’ve started to focus a bit on the rapidly heating up Major League Baseball Hot Stove.  At this point in the off season, there tends to be a lot of interest in free agent players from teams and very rarely does that interest reach the stage of negotiations.  So rather than focusing on the specific players the Bucs are expressing interest in, I’d rather look at the group as a whole to learn what type of player the pirates are targeting.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, The Pirates have already addressed their most glaring need by trading for 2nd baseman Aki Iwamura.  With that hole filled, their focus has shifted to acquiring arms to improve a bullpen that struggled down the stretch in 2009.  From the names being reported so far (J.J. Putz, Justin Duchscherer, Noah Lowry, etc) Neal Huntington seems to be targeting players who can be had at good short term value.  These types of guys are intriguing because they have all achieved some level of past success, but had down years in 2009 due to injury.  Of this group, I find Duchscherer the most interesting because of the possibility that he could start.  Right now, the Pirates front 4 starters seem all but assured of being Ross Ohlendorf, Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, Charlie Morton with the fifth spot a toss up between Kevin Hart and Daniel McCutchen.  If the team can sign Duchscherer, he would have the opportunity to compete for the last spot in the rotation and also fall back to be a solid long reliever if he doesn’t win the 5th starters job.

As the off season progresses, it will be fun to watch which of these names become more than just preliminary interest, and to see if Huntington brings in anyone who will make an impact on wins and losses in 2010.

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Sano to sign with Twins

Sep 29

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

I haven’t written in quite some time because the Pirates have done absolutely nothing interesting and I’ve had better things to do with my time than write about a team playing historically bad baseball.  I’ve been keeping my eye on the team, but when you can’t hit, pitch, or field at a consistent level, your going to lose alot of games, which is exactly what the Pirates have done in the last 2 months.  There’s only so many ways you can say that this team traded away most of their talented players at the deadline, got little back in terms of major league ready talent, and in general, the roster on the field right now isn’t very good.  I still believe that Huntington and crew have the organization headed in the right direction, and I have a few season wrap posts in the works, but at this point the 2009 season is a lost cause and I have no interest in writing about how bad they are.

However, it was just recently reported that Dominican super prospect Miguel Angel Sano is going to sign with the Twins for a $3.15 Million bonus.  Sano, you will recall, had been heavily pursued by the Pirates going back to the early summer and it was widely believed among people who know things like this that he would eventually sign with the Bucs.  Allegedly, Sano’s agent Rob Plummer had rejected the Pirates last offer of $2.6 Million but told them they would have a chance to counter another offer and they were not given that chance.  I’m not going to ridicule Plummer. For whatever reason, he feels signing with Minnesota is the best situation for his client, but the whole thing seems a bit shady to me.

As a fan though, it stinks.  The international free agent market is one of the few places where small market teams such as the Pirates can compete on a level playing field.  Say what you will about 16 year old players being very volatile assets, I agree with that whole-heartedly.  But if you aren’t at least a little dissapointed that the Pirates failed to sign Sano, I’m not sure what to say to convince you that you should be.  If this team wants to compete long term, they need to start procuring and developing young, high-end talent.  They have, in the last 2 years, done that in the draft with selections like Pedro Alvarez, Tony Sanchez, and Colton Cain.  But they have yet to do so in the Latin American free agent market.  Signing Sano would have been a huge step in the right direction, not to mention a bit of a silver lining to this awful, awful season.  Their ultimate failure to do so, no matter what the reason for it, is disheartening for me to see as a fan of this team who desperately wants to see them win again.

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Looking Back at The “Fire Sale”

Aug 4

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

In the days since the trade deadline there has been loads of analysis, by both local and national media, on the flurry of trades made by the Pirates this year.  I disagree with the “fire sale” label most are applying to the moves, and Jerry Crasnick at espn.com has an excellent article, which among many other things, refutes this fire sale label, but that’s not really the point of this post.  The point I want to make here is that most of the national media don’t seem to understand why the Pirates had to do what they’ve done.

There seem to be 2 prevailing arguments against what Neal Huntington has done since taking the reins as the Pirates GM.  First, people try to make the argument that the players traded were talented enough to be the core of a winning team.  Jay Mariotti writes on fanhouse:

[Neal Huntington's] plan is to rebuild a bad farm system, but in the process, he has traded off a group of respectable, and, in some cases, quality major-leaguers. Bay, McLouth and Morgan would comprise one of the best outfields in the game if still together. Wilson and Sanchez were huge fan favorites and best friends who worked well as a double-play combination. Snell was a 14-game winner at one point.

The problem with this argument is that it is obviously false.  Almost every single players traded was on the Pirates roster in 2007.  That team finished with a record of 68-94.  Same story in 2008, a team that had a record of 48-56 prior to the first major trade, the Xavier Nady trade.  Quite obviosly, using nothing but the team record, the players the Pirates had weren’t enough to win in ‘07 and ‘08, and there was little reason to believe they would be enough to win in’09 or beyond.

While a few of the players traded away were above average major league players, most notably Bay and Sanchez, there wasn’t enough around them to be a winning team.  Furthermore, the minor league system was left so barren by previous administrations, that there was nothing coming up behind them to augment the talent at the major league level.

While were on the subject of the minor league system, lets get to the second argument commonly made against these trades, that the Pirates aren’t getting high end prospects back in these trades.  The problem with this line of reasoning, is that it assumes major league general managers are willing to part with their high end prospects easily.  In this day and age of the over valued prospect, you can only acquire high end prospects by giving up high end players.  As I mentioned before, the only high end players traded away were Sanchez and Bay (some would argue this McLouth here, but that’s a discussion for another day).  In the Sanchez deal, a high end prospect was returned in the form of pitcher Tim Alderson.  Likewise, the Bay deal, while more of a depth move, returned Bryan Morris.  While Morris has struggled with injuries since coming to the Pirates, he was once considered to be a high upside pitching prospect.  When you consider what was given up, I think the prospect return the Bucs received was more than fair.  In addition, it addressed the immediate problem at hand, which was filling the void left in the system by Dave Littlefield and Kevin McClatchy.

The final argument I hear is that until the Pirates can produce their own players, they will never be able to win.  Peter Pascarelli sums this one up well on ESPN’s baseball today podcast on July 31st.

They’ve got to get some stability somewhere.  But they still have to start producing their own players.  To me, that’s the bottom line.   They can’t keep trading for prospects, and hope that a few of them pan out….It’s a vicious cycle.  An unsuccessful small market team continues recycling players.  Until you have some success and until your own system produces it’s own players, your going to see them trade away guys every other year.

I actually agree with this wholeheartedly.  If the Pirates are ever going to win consistently in the long term, they have to be able to draft well, sign players in the international market, and generally do a good job of developing young talent.  The problem here, is that it’s not really a valid argument against making these trades.  To illustrate this, I’m going to come up with a ludicrous example.

Lets say you were a corn farmer who survives by trading your corn for sugar, meat, whatever it is you need to survive, and then selling the excess for money.  Then lets imagine you had a bad crop one year.  It seems quite obvious to me that you would use the money left over from selling last years crop in order to buy the sugar and meat you need.  But it also seems quite obvious to me that if you continue to have bad crops year in and out for a sustained period of time, you won’t ever get rich.

Its a bit of a flawed analogy obviously, but I think its effective despite those flaws.  For the past 16 years, the Pirates have had a lot of bad crops.  If they want to win long term, they need to start having good crops.  But that alone doesn’t mean they should starve this year.

The bottom line is that until some of these prospects pan out (or conversely, don’t pan out), it will be hard to say definitively which of these trades are wins for the bucs and which ones aren’t.  That isn’t going to happen until at least the middle of next year or beyond.  But you really can’t make a logical argument against the strategy that Neal Huntington has taken in trying to rebuild the organization and the arguments that are being made are very easily refuted.

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