SB Nation - Jeff Clement

Jeff Clement Penciled in at First

Charlie — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:03:59 -0000

by Kathy Willens - AP

The Bucs are comfortable waiting until late in the offseason to target free agent corner players like Xavier Nady.

The Post-Gazette has an interesting item about Jeff Clement and the first base job. The Pirates seem not to mind that some of their top targets for extra corner players (Xavier Nady and Rick Ankiel in particular) are unlikely to sign until late in the offseason. This means they're probably relatively happy with the players currently at the top of their depth chart (Clement at first, and Garrett Jones in right) and want an extra guy mainly to provide competition and to guard against a flameout by Clement or someone else.

This seems sensible. As a fourth-outfielder / insurance policy, Nady is actually fairly interesting to me, since he's right-handed. But Ankiel is a lefty like Clement. And it's not really clear that Nady or Ankiel are better than Clement right now anyway. ZiPS, for example, predicts Clement will have an .801 OPS next year. (Incidentally, it also predicts Matt Capps will have the lowest ERA on the staff. Oops.) Nady is at .780. I don't think a ZiPS projection for Ankiel has been published yet, but Bill James has him at .763.

Now, both Nady and Ankiel would be doing the Pirates a service by keeping Jones out of the outfield, so they provide more defensive value than Clement probably would. And certainly projections can turn out to be wrong, particularly with injury magnets like these three guys, etc. etc. etc. (Don't think you're being original by pointing that out, either.) The point, though, is that if the Bucs have resigned themselves to second- or third-tier free agents like Nady and Ankiel (as is probably appropriate at this point), they're right to not feel much urgency about this. Clement might well end up being better than the available options anyway, and if things get bad, there's also Steve Pearce, Delwyn Young and Brandon Moss--and possibly Jose Tabata and Pedro Alvarez--to fall back on. An additional benefit of starting Clement is that the Pirates can control his rights for several years if he succeeds, and since Tabata and Alvarez could begin to complicate things staring in about July, it behooves the Bucs to see what they have in Clement.

The best reason for the Pirates to sign a free agent outfielder or first baseman is not to replace someone currently penciled into the starting lineup, but to guard against a complete failure, and I don't just mean by Clement. Not to take a shot at someone who thoroughly proved me wrong throughout 2009, but last season Jones played like he knew how to fly. Maybe he really can fly, but given his lengthy and undistinguished history, the Pirates also have to consider the possibility that instead of flying his legs were just moving really fast for a few seconds, like Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff. Clement, Jones and Lastings Milledge should all be in the starting lineup, but if possible there should be legitimate fallback options too.

Lefties, Lefties Everywhere

Charlie — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:47:35 -0000

More photos » by Chris Carlson - AP

Would another lefty hitter like Hank Blalock, right, be the best fit for the Pirates?

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Straight to the point today: one thing I find a bit strange about the idea of the Pirates pursuing Rick Ankiel and/or Hank Blalock is that both those guys are left-handed, whereas most of the Bucs' other options at first base and right field (Garrett Jones, Jeff Clement, Brandon Moss) are too. Steve Pearce is the only righty who might be in the mix right now at first and right, and I can't believe the Bucs are still taking him seriously. If the idea in pursuing an extra corner guy is to add an extra bit of upside and perhaps hope for a nice prospect at the deadline if the new player does well, I can't really fault the Pirates for not considering the player's handedness. But if the Pirates really are serious about seeing what they have in Clement, in particular, it would seem to behoove them to find someone whose skills complement his.

Admittedly, the pickings in that area are pretty slim. Two righty free agent outfielders who might make a bit of sense are Marlon Byrd and Coco Crisp. Byrd was a regular for the Rangers this year and has played pretty well for three straight seasons, so he might require the sort of multiyear contract to which the Pirates would probably rather not commit themselves.

Crisp is a subpar hitter, but he's not old, and he's an outstanding defensive player; he could certainly handle either left or center (if that were required) in PNC. Unfortunately, his throwing arm was poor even before he had surgery on both shoulders this year, so playing him in right wouldn't work. If he were added to the roster, the Pirates could work out some sort of time share where Lastings Milledge and Garrett Jones played every day but rotated between left and right (Milledge) and right and first (Jones), while Clement and Crisp formed some sort of weird semi-platoon at the other available positions.

...This is all really speculative, and Crisp obviously isn't ideal, but I'm trying to be creative here. Given the free agent market, I can see why the Pirates would be interested in Ankiel and Blalock, and I'm not opposed to signing either of them, if they'd be willing to play in Pittsburgh. But, as much as PNC is kinder to lefties than righties, it seems a bit strange to crowd the roster with lefties. Maybe a low-leverage trade or an inspired minor league free agent signing (Ernesto Mejia of the Braves, perhaps?) would be the right move here, with the righty Pearce's initial role being determined by how credible a major league option the new acquisition is.

Bucs Make Flurry of Roster Moves

Charlie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:39:04 -0000

More photos » by Elaine Thompson - AP

Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Chris Jakubauskas throws against the Angels in the third inning of a game Wednesday, May 20, 2009, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

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The Pirates have cut Robinzon Diaz, Justin Thomas and Jeff Karstens from the 40-man roster, added Brad Lincoln, Gorkys Hernandez, Bryan Morris and Ramon Aguero, and claimed reliever Chris Jakubauskas from the Mariners.

Thomas and Karstens aren't huge surprises--Thomas was claimed from the M's only a couple weeks ago, and Karstens was arbitration-eligible--but I'm a surprised by Diaz being cut. He was a perfectly functional backup catcher for chunks of last year, and functional backup catchers are valuable. If one looks at the entirety of his performance record, though, it's not that impressive--he actually hit worse at AAA last year than he did in the majors. So I suppose there's a case to be made that he wouldn't continue to be productive with the Pirates if he stuck with them. If Diaz is lost and Ryan Doumit is traded, the Bucs will have to hunt around for another catcher. This could be a sign that the Pirates are taking Jeff Clement seriously as a catcher, although it also might have nothing to do with that at all.

Jakubauskas doesn't have much of a performance record and he's already 30, but he has a great curveball and he held his own in the American League last year, albeit with a really low strikeout rate, and the sort of flyball tendency that plays better in Safeco than anywhere else but San Diego.

FOX Sports: Pirates, Brewers Discussed Ryan Doumit, J.J. Hardy

Charlie — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:09:25 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

4 months ago: Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit, back, turns to apply a late tag as Colorado Rockies' Clint Barmes scores on double by Seth Smith in the seventh inning of a baseball game in Denver on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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First things first: treat this with a grain of salt for now. The fact that the Post-Gazette reported that the Bucs offered Matt Capps for J.J. Hardy but didn't mention that the Pirates and Brewers also discussed a Ryan Doumit-for-Hardy swap makes this report from FOXSports.com seem a bit strange to me. Nonetheless, it's interesting:

It's becoming very clear that Ryan Doumit is available on the trade market.

The Pirates were engaged in talks with the Brewers earlier this offseason about a trade that would have sent Doumit to Milwaukee for shortstop J.J. Hardy, major league sources said Friday.

But Milwaukee preferred to use Hardy as the trade chip to acquire a starting center fielder, Carlos Gomez, from the Twins.

Hardy and Doumit have comparable contracts, which would have aided a deal.

The Brewers have a couple of decent catching prospects in Jon Lucroy and Angel Salome who are both fairly near the majors, but their current starter is Jason Kendall, who has nothing left offensively. Dealing for Doumit might have made some sense for them.

I'd certainly be open to trading Doumit if I were in charge, but it wouldn't be my top priority. Doumit had a dismal season overall in 2009 but hit very well in September after seemingly recovering from the wrist injury that probably dragged down his numbers before that. Dealing Doumit for Hardy would have been fine, but it would have been a lateral move--both are very talented players coming off poor seasons. Hardy might be the more talented of the two, and he's certainly the more likely of the two to stay healthy, but that's a double-edged sword--Hardy doesn't have an injury to explain why he hit so badly last year.

If the Pirates had traded Doumit for Hardy, they would have essentially been trading out Ronny Cedeno (who would move to the bench if Hardy became a Pirate) for Jason Jaramillo. Again, I think that's a lateral move--Cedeno and Jaramillo are both credible second-division starters and nothing more, and neither have a ton of upside. Actually, if I had to pick which of the two had the best chance to break out, I'd probably pick Cedeno, because of the power he flashed at times last year and because he, unlike Jaramillo, has a few lines on his stat sheet that suggest he can be somewhat better than a glove-first player. (There's also Jeff Clement, who's still trying to stick around as a catcher, but the idea that he can catch will be hard to take seriously until he actually does it for a month or so; given his knee problems, I think it's much more likely he sees time at the corners. If Doumit is traded and Clement can catch, great, but I frankly doubt that will happen.)

The Doumit-Hardy rumors are interesting, though, and they may be a blueprint for the sorts of Doumit rumors we hear the rest of the offseason. Doumit's 2009 season was bad enough that the Pirates probably aren't going to get much value for him if they pursue a standard veteran-for-prospects deal, but they could acquire a similarly talented but problematic player who isn't a catcher, so that Jaramillo can get some more playing time. An outfielder might be a possibility.

I think the more likely scenario, though, is for the Pirates to wait until after the season starts and hope Doumit shows he's healthy and productive, then deal him for younger players. That's essentially what they did with Jason Bay--there were rumors about Bay throughout the 2007-2008 offseason, but Bay had just had a terrible year, so the Pirates waited and dealt him after he hit well for a few months in 2008.

Community Projection Review: Shortstop

Charlie — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:23:35 -0000

More photos » by Ben Margot - AP

3 months ago: Seattle Mariners' Jack Wilson swings for an RBI two-run single off Oakland Athletics' Clayton Mortensen in the second inning of a baseball game Friday, Sept. 4, 2009, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

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Next up in the list of community projections is Jack Wilson.

Community: .271/.313/.360

ZiPS: .267/.317/.358

Actual: .255/.292/.362 (includes 31 games with the Mariners)

Bonus: We predicted Wilson's last game with the Pirates would be August 13; actually his last game was July 27.

The closest guesser was Bolton, who had Wilson at .249/.294/.350.

Wilson actually hit relatively well for him during the portion of the year when he was a Pirate--his .691 OPS with the Bucs was a bit above his career average. After being dealt to Seattle with Ian Snell for Ronny Cedeno, Jeff Clement and minor league pitchers Brett Lorin, Nathan Adcock and Aaron Pribanic, though, Wilson completely fell apart, missing time with a hamstring injury, the flu, and then a heel bruise that shut him down for good in mid-September. He also failed to hit when he did play.

The Mariners have an $8.4 million option on Wilson for 2010, with a $600,000 buyout. Back when the Pirates had Wilson, that option looked somewhat reasonable, especially in light of the mediocre shortstop free agent class and the Pirates' absence of credible shortstop options in the minors. Given the way Wilson finished the season, $8.4 million (or, subtracting the sunk cost of the buyout, $7.8 million) seems like way too much to pay. The Pirates also dodged a bullet by not signing Wilson to an extension while they still had him.

Given all that, Neal Huntington did very well to buy low on Cedeno, ridding themselves of the problem of what to do with Wilson while acquiring a credible alternative. Cedeno isn't Wilson on defense, but he isn't bad, and offensively he did a good impression of a decent Jack Wilson season, hitting .258/.307/.394 with the Bucs. He's also five years younger than Wilson, so he has at least some chance of improving in the next couple of years. Obviously, he hasn't yet proven himself to be a long-term answer at shortstop, but it's equally unclear that Wilson would have been. It is, of course, possible that Cedeno will fall apart next year, but it's also possible he takes a step forward, and anyway the Pirates really just need someone to get through the next year or two until a real big-league shortstop (possibly Chase D'Arnaud) finally emerges from the minors.

Meanwhile, Snell showed few genuine signs of improvement in Seattle--he somehow posted a 4.20 ERA there, but he walked more batters than he struck out. Clement struggled after a quick start in the Pirates organization, but that may have had something to do with an oblique strain that may have cost him a chance at a September callup. Lorin pitched very well down the stretch at West Virginia, and Adcock and Pribanic still look like at least marginal prospects. (Pribanic had a terrific ERA for West Virginia, but he still isn't striking anyone out.) Unless Snell improves, it may turn out that the Mariners get almost nothing from the Wilson trade. Cedeno alone could make it a good one for the Pirates.

Could the Pirates Lose 110 Games in 2010?

Charlie — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:50:23 -0000

More photos » by Alan Diaz - AP

A thought experiment: Brandon Moss may be bad, but if he starts the season hitting .100, is he really a .100 hitter?

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That this post even needs to be written speaks volumes about where the Pirates are right now. But despite the Bucs' spectacular collapse since the trades, I think it's far too early to worry, as many of you have, about losing 110 games next year. It's true that the Pirates' play over the last month would put them on pace for far worse than a 110-loss season. But that doesn't mean a 110-loss season will actually happen. A 110-loss team would be among the worst teams in modern baseball history. In the last 40 years, only two teams, the 2003 Tigers and the 2004 Diamondbacks, have lost as many as 110 games in a season, which means that if the Pirates lost 110, they would have to be considered one of the worst teams in modern baseball history. I think there is plenty of evidence that shows that they are bad. I don't think there is nearly enough to show that they are historically bad.

The irony here is that, way back in 2007, I myself was pointing out that the 2010 Pirates were going to be spectacularly bad. I even suggested what some of you are now saying--that they could lose 110 games. Most of the core players on that 2007 team--Jason Bay, Adam LaRoche, Freddy Sanchez, Jose Castillo, Xavier Nady, Salomon Torres--were scheduled to become free agents after 2009, and Jack Wilson had an expensive 2010 option. In addition, they had one of the worst general managers in the history of baseball at the helm and next to nothing in the farm system. That the Bucs would be quite awful in 2010 has been obvious for a long time now, and frankly Neal Huntington bears very little responsibility for it. In 2007, it looked like a perfect storm of a terrible big-league team, no prospects and inept management was brewing, and I think it was maybe only a little hyperbolic to write that a 110-loss campaign in 2010 was likely.

The reason I don't think it's likely now is that Huntington has taken enough steps to improve the 2010 situation that I think we can remove "historically bad" from the set of likely possibilities for now.

I realize that's a counterintuitive conclusion, since clearly Huntington's eyes are set at a point well beyond 2010 and the Bucs aren't playing very well right now. But without Huntington there would be no Ross Ohlendorf or Daniel McCutchen, who were acquired in the Nady deal. There would be no Charlie Morton, since the Pirates under Littlefield would not allow Nate McLouth to start and therefore to acquire value on the trade market. It's quite possible Littlefield would have started Nyjer Morgan in 2009, but back in mid-2007 his breakout would have been extremely hard to foresee (since Morgan hadn't even made his major league debut at that point), and trading him for Lastings Milledge and Joel Hanrahan would have been even harder to foresee. Without Huntington the Pirates probably still would have had Ian Snell, but they wouldn't have Ronny Cedeno or Jeff Clement. Those guys--Ohlendorf, Morton, Milledge, Hanrahan, Cedeno, Clement--are all major league players. Maybe not great ones, in some cases, but certainly useful ones, and one characteristic of 110-loss teams is that they have very few useful players.

Also, a number of decent prospects--Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata, Brad Lincoln, Chase D'Arnaud, Rudy Owens, Ron Uviedo, Jeff Locke, Tim Alderson--will be either in the high minors or on the verge of arriving there. That may sound like a trivial point, but actually it isn't. 110-loss seasons can be avoided simply by having a storehouse of players who might be able to fill in competently.

Now, maybe Littlefield would have traded Bay and some of the other core players, too. I doubted that at the time, though, because doing so would have meant admitting that he basically had nothing after five or six years on the job, and because he was basically acting like 2010 did not exist, as if the Pirates would be contracted before the season started. That was my reason for thinking 110 losses was possible then. Now it appears that Huntington is at least aware that the Pirates will be playing baseball next season. That might not mean much, but it's something.

The most critical point here, though, is that losing 110 games is spectacularly difficult to do. It requires either extreme negligence or a combination of negligence and bad luck. Merely being a very poor team, which I agree the Pirates probably will be, simply does not get the job done. Let's take the two teams that lost 110, for example.

The 2004 Diamondbacks reached 110 losses through both negligence and luck. Not only did they have the worst offense in the league--an outcome that is surely also a possibility for the 2010 Pirates--but they really had no starting rotation after Randy Johnson (who was brilliant) and Brandon Webb. The five pitchers who had the most starts for them were Casey Fossum, Steve Sparks, Casey Daigle, Edgar Gonzalez, and Lance Cormier, and all of those guys had ERAs over six. Arizona finished 27th in the majors in ERA, and one of the three teams that fared worse was the Rockies. And the Diamondbacks still only got to 110 through bad luck--their Pythagorean record was "only" 54-108.

The 2010 Bucs really don't even belong in the same conversation with the '03 Tigers, who lost 119 games. The Tigers only had one pitcher throw more than 20 innings with an ERA below 4.50; the '09 Pirates, by comparison, have seven pitchers currently in their organization who have done that this year. The Tigers basically had one good hitter (Dmitri Young), and the lower part of their lineup and their bench were filled with guys (Brandon Inge, Warren Morris, Ramon Santiago, Shane Halter, Gene Kingsale, Omar Infante, Matt Walbeck, Andres Torres) who just didn't belong in the majors. It wasn't a case of a team merely being bad; it was a case of a team simply not taking the steps necessary to ensure that there was a real team on the field.

When I say that the Pirates are unlikely to lose 110 games next year, I'm not paying the Pirates a compliment. I'm just saying these 110-loss prognostications are the result of either over-the-top despair about the Bucs' recent play, or a misunderstanding about how incredibly hard it actually is to lose 110.

Another possibility is that people think you can extrapolate the Bucs' play the last couple months over the course of an entire season. You can't. By way of example, let's look at Brandon Moss. Let's say he's the Bucs' fourth outfielder next year and he starts the season 6-for-60, for a batting average of .100.

Now, we would be perfectly justified to say that Moss is terrible. We already would have been thinking that Moss is pretty terrible, given the way he hit in 2009. And then he went and started 2010 6-for-60. Ugh! Terrible.

But would be justified to say that he will continue to bat .100? Well, no. True, he already batted .100 in his first 60 at bats, but hitting .100 over the long haul is especially hard to do. First of all, we have to consider that Brandon Moss has, at various points, done things that suggest he can be much better than a .100 hitter. For example, in 2009 he's batting .241. Not very good, but way better than .100. Also, he made his way through the minors and got all the way to the big leagues, even briefly joining a good team, the Boston Red Sox. He has some skill, and players with some skill can usually hit better than .100. Even Mario Mendoza hit .215 for his career.

So we'd be justified to be annoyed at Moss' poor start. We'd also be justified to factor that poor start into our guesses about what he might do going forward. But it wouldn't make much sense to predict he'll be a .100 hitter.

Guessing the 2010 Bucs will lose 110 games is like that. Yes, they've been extremely bad since the trades. But they have three downright functional starting pitchers in Ohlendorf, Zach Duke and Paul Maholm, plus Morton, who easily could make his way into that category next year. They have Andrew McCutchen, who's a plain old good player. They have Garrett Jones who, while due for some serious regression next year, has probably staked a pretty reasonable claim that he's at least going to be useful. They have Ryan Doumit, who in 2008 was a force as an offensively-minded catcher. They have Milledge and Hanrahan, who have shown promise since arriving. They have guys like Ronny Cedeno, Andy LaRoche and Jason Jaramillo who, while they're not exactly inspiring, have shown they at least belong in the majors. There's also at least a reasonable chance that Pedro Alvarez is going to burst onto the scene at some point next season and go nuts.

I'm not saying that's much. It isn't. I'm saying it doesn't take much to avoid 110 losses, and that while anything's possible, I think the Pirates have what it takes. Don't take that as wild-eyed optimism, because again, it isn't. I'm only saying that I think the Pirates can avoid a complete disaster season, and the fact that they've actually been a disaster since the trades doesn't really change that.

Pirates Finding New Ways To Lose; Also, No More "Scholarship"

Charlie — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:44:26 -0000

More photos » by John Heller - AP

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Typical--the Bucs didn't get blown out by San Diego tonight, and they weren't even unambiguously bad, but they still ended up on the wrong side when the game ended. The Pirates rallied from a 6-2 deficit to tie the game against Heath Bell in the ninth, and that inning featured an awesome plate appearance by Steve Pearce, who laid off a number of tough breaking balls to draw a walk and keep the inning going. But their lack of a real bullpen ultimately undid them as they headed to extra innings--any team with bullpen troubles will be exposed in an 11-inning game, and in this case the Pirates were in a doubly tough spot because Joel Hanrahan, their best reliever by a mile right now, is on the shelf with elbow trouble. Anyway, if you have to rely on the likes of Jeff Karstens in a tough situation, there's a very good chance you're going to lose.

In the meantime, the Bucs' offense did the team no favors by leaving a ridiculous number of batters on base--the Bucs wrangled eleven hits and nine walks, but only scored six times. Garrett Jones hit his 20th home run of the season but, as has so often been the case for him (and I'm not bashing him for this because I don't think it represents a skill, just pointing out a fact), it was a solo job.

Whatever! I'm tired of this. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about the word "scholarship." I come to bury that word, to attempt to remove it from Pirates-related discourse, except as it applies to draftees. For example, "Colton Cain passed up a scholarship to the University of Texas" is an acceptable use of the word. But "I don't know why Andy LaRoche is still starting, since Neal Huntington promised there would be no scholarships" is not. The attempted removal of a word sounds pretty fascist of me, I admit, but I'm not forcing anyone to stop using it, and if the tactic is good enough for an institution of higher learning, it's good enough for me.

I believe Huntington introduced the concept of a "scholarship." Unfortunately, I can't find its point of origin, because if you Google "neal huntington" and "scholarship" on the Post-Gazette's website, you get an amazing 124 results. What I took Huntington to mean or, at least, what most Pirate fans currently interpret Huntington to mean, is that under-performing players would not be given "scholarships"; that is, they would not receive playing time they did not earn on the field.

This was a stupid thing for Huntington to have said (and not only because the "scholarship" students I knew in college were often the hardest working and most talented ones, the ones who didn't need their parents to pay their way, but I digress). The goal of a baseball team should not be to mete out rewards and punishments for its players based on how they do; it should be to win games. It's true that the former often goes hand in hand with the latter, but not always. When deciding who gets major league playing time, there shouldn't be moral considerations about the perceived quality of someone's previous play; instead, it should be one factor that should be weighed along with others. When I hear most fans dismissively use the word "scholarship," I feel like what they really want is some sort of vigilante justice based on how the fans feel someone is playing. Justice has little to do with it.

The fact is that top prospects, like Andrew McCutchen or Pedro Alvarez, should get scholarships, while journeymen should have to do more to prove themselves. If Alvarez comes up after tearing it up for three months at Indianapolis next year, he should play every day in the big leagues, even if he starts 5-for-50. If Ronny Cedeno gets hurt and Argenis Diaz comes up and hits 12-for-30 in his absence, the Pirates should probably send Diaz back to Indianapolis once Cedeno is healthy.

Yesterday in the comments, someone mentioned the concept of a "scholarship" in reference to the possibility that Jeff Clement could end up starting next year. Now, one can certainly express the hope that Clement will not start next year, but invoking the "scholarship" concept attempts to find a very uncomplicated kind of justice in what is actually a very complicated situation. The Pirates will have two outfield positions set with McCutchen and Lastings Milledge, while Jones has shown he should get more playing time in either the other outfield position or at first.

That leaves either an outfield spot or first base unaccounted for. There is, of course, a chance that the Pirates could seek a free agent like Rick Ankiel, but many free agents do not want to play for the Bucs, and the Pirates shouldn't want to give a free agent so much money or so many years that he interferes with the team's long term plans. If they can't find a suitable free agent, and I'd actually bet against them finding one, that leaves them looking for a trade or an internal option. Alvarez or Jose Tabata could be possibilities, but both could probably use at least a couple more months in the minors--the Alex Gordon Problem applies in Alvarez's case, and Tabata hasn't really dominated in the high minors yet.

That leaves guys like Brandon Moss, Pearce and Clement, and of that bunch, why not Clement? Moss is a fourth outfielder, and while Pearce might be a reasonable bench option, he's had an up-and-down career since 2007 and could probably be considered as much of a "scholarship" case as Clement is. (So could Moss, actually.) Clement has a first-round pedigree and a reasonably good minor-league track record. He tailed off badly after a hot start at Indianapolis this year, but that may have had something to do with the oblique strain that finally shelved him. It's not at all unreasonable to think he's a better, higher-upside choice than either Moss or Pearce. Alternately, the Bucs could platoon the lefty Clement with the righty Pearce.

Choosing Clement need not have anything to do with "scholarships." That's irrelevant. It has to do with sorting through a number of possibilities, all with pros and cons, and finding the best one for the present and future of the organization. Sometimes that means playing the guy who played best last month, or for some short span in the majors last year, or for some longer span in the minors this year. Sometimes it doesn't. Anyway, I usually get the sense that when someone is using the word "scholarship," it usually just means "The Pirates are playing a guy I don't like." Instead of using that word, make an argument. There's no doubt that the Bucs sometimes make personnel decisions I don't agree with, but that doesn't mean there's some moral dimension to it, and it simply doesn't follow that the Pirates should always use the guy who played best in whatever arbitrary timeframe or context you care to pick. So please, no more "scholarship." Let's just leave that word alone.

By the way, this post is dedicated to Neil Walker, who earlier this year complained that players like him and the great Brian Bixler were getting the shaft while players acquired by Neal Huntington coasted through. Walker didn't use the word "scholarship," but that's the concept he was invoking.

Well, it's extremely early, and of course it's still possible that Walker turns a corner, but he has begun his major league career 4-for-26. And, with his inning-ending double play with two men on in the bottom of the tenth, he's as responsible as anyone or the loss tonight. Cheers to you, Neil! May your teammates in Indianapolis next year enjoy your grousing as much as I have.

2009 In Review: Indianapolis Indians

Charlie — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:18:32 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

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This will undoubtedly be the most controversial of the minor league reviews I've written, because it involves perhaps the two most controversial Pirates right now, Garrett Jones and Neil Walker.

A note before we begin: I believe minor league stats matter, and I believe minor league stats, and particularly AAA stats, are very valuable tools. See here for a good primer on Minor League Equivalencies, which Bill James showed closely approximate major league statistics. I also believe that what you did over the last month generally matters a lot less than what you did over the past two or three years.

Let's begin by comparing the Indianapolis statistics of two players:

Andrew McCutchen: .303/.361/.493

Garrett Jones: .307/.348/.502

These are very similar numbers, and yet my attitudes toward these three players throughout the season were very different. I loved McCutchen, but was actively hostile to Jones.

Neither of these lines look particularly good in translation. For example, if you adjust Jones' AAA numbers to Pittsburgh, you get .259/.295/.410, which is pathetic. (Remember, that's not a prediction of what he'd do in Pittsburgh, it's a translation of what he actually did.)

Of course, translating minor league numbers to the majors often makes players look pathetic. The reason they're in the minor leagues in the first place, at least in theory, is that they aren't good enough to play in the majors yet, so it's only natural that translating their numbers would make them look bad.

The reasons why I clamored for McCutchen and not for Jones, then, are twofold. First, McCutchen is 22 and Jones is 28. Players generally improve until they are about 27 or so, and then they start to go downhill. So there was good reason to think that McCutchen might actually outplay his equivalency as he improved throughout the year (which is, in fact, what happened); there was no reason to think Jones would do so, at least not judging from his numbers. Also, McCutchen is an outstanding defensive player, whereas Jones has no real defensive value. McCutchen can post a .750 OPS and still be valuable, whereas Jones can't.

Obviously, Jones, who has hit .301/.366/.607 for the Pirates so far, has exceeded any reasonable expectation. But why did it happen? It's not like the equivalency was "wrong"; remember, the equivalency is a translation, not a prediction, and the existence of outliers like Jones doesn't disprove it. He's hit for a higher OPS in the majors than he ever did at any minor league level, which is really strange given how old Jones is. Possible explanations:

1) Genuine improvement. At this point, this explanation deserves some attention, since 19 homers in 239 at bats are very hard to explain away.

2) "He learned it on the plane." I'm copping the title from a message board poster many years ago who was trying to understand why Tike Redman hit so well after being promoted in 2003. There was nothing in Redman's minor league history to suggest that he really was the sparkplug he briefly seemed to be in the majors, so the opinion of this poster was that if Redman had learned anything that caused his great half season in 2003, he must have learned it on the plane from Class AAA Nashville. Of course, Redman hadn't learned anything on the plane, which was exactly the point--his 2003 performance was a huge fluke. A complete fluke isn't as likely for Jones as it was for Redman, whose excellent half-season was driven mostly by batting average. But it's certainly worthy of consideration. For example, Jones' major league equivalency suggests he would have been a .259 hitter if his stint in Indianapolis had actually been in Pittsburgh. If he'd hit .259 in Pittsburgh but generally retained his power, that would make a lot more sense to me given his minor league profile.

At this point, the smart money has to be on a blend of "genuine improvement" and "he learned it on the plane." This isn't so bad for Jones, but I do think the Pirates should probably pencil him into the lineup next year rather than writing that name in ink. Besides, even if his hitting for the Pirates this year has mostly been legitimate, players who develop late often have very short peaks.

We should also be wary of Neil Walker, who has parlayed one great month at AAA in two years there into a big league callup. Walker's profile, going back years and including his terrible .311 OBP at Indianapolis this year, suggests he has no idea how to control the strike zone, and big league pitchers will have little trouble exploiting him. He does have legitimate power, with 47 extra base hits at Indy, but not so much that he's worth the effort. He currently compares unfavorably to players like Tony Batista or Pedro Feliz, who both play good third base defense and have excellent power but frustrate their teams with .250 batting averages and .290 OBPs. Walker currently has less power than either of them, so he should stay in the minors for now. The fact that Andy LaRoche isn't exactly tearing the cover off the ball is neither here nor there; he's very probably a better player than Walker right now, and Walker needs to prove, at the very least, that his terrific August represented real improvement rather than simply one great month.

In the second half of the year, Indianapolis' lineup also featured Jose Tabata (who did what he does, hitting for average and little else) and Jeff Clement, who tailed off badly after a strong start after coming to the Bucs in the Jack Wilson deal.

Indianapolis' best pitcher was... well, actually, it was Tom Gorzelanny, who had already exhausted the Pirates' patience and is gone now. After that, it was Daniel McCutchen. No Relation pitched well enough to overcome some rather glaring issues with flyballs, and earned a spot in the Pirates' rotation, where his flyball issues quickly reared their ugly head--he's allowed three homers in his first two starts, although he's pitched pretty well otherwise. Elsewhere, Brad Lincoln took some time to adjust to AAA after a great start at Altoona, and he finished his season with two great AAA starts. Virgil Vasquez, meanwhile, pitched like the decent AAA pitcher he is. The best pitcher out of the bullpen was Chris Bootcheck, who mowed down International League hitters before running into a wall in the majors.

Analysis of a Fire Sale: The Pittsburgh Pirates, Pt. 3

SFiercex4 — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:51:36 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

Pirates starter Charlie Morton appears to be a critical acquisition in Pittsburgh's trading spree.(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

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(Note: All research and projections were done two and a half weeks ago, but this article was simply not written out then due to other commitments. Any changes due to more recent results can be blamed on my laziness. Adjust accordingly if you'd like.)

Parts 1 and 2 (shown here and here) detailed the players that left the Pittsburgh Pirates this year in trades and how much surplus value they may have provided over the life of their remaining contracts. The Pirates gave up ten players, some of real worth due to their contract status, some not as much due to the remaining length and price of their deals. Using the projections and Sky Kalkman's Trade Value Calculator, I came up with a surplus value of $86.8M.

(Addendum: An emailer and blogger for the Pirates vehemently denies that the Pirates would have non-tendered Tom Gorzelanny. I'm unsure about this, especially given my prediction of another player that the Pirates received of similar value, but if you feel the Pirates would have tendered Gorzelanny after a season of rookie contract team control, add an additional $7M to that $86.8M, calculated as either a 160 inning starter or a 65 inning reliever.

However, the haul the Pirates got in return is almost entirely under team control for the next half decade, with the exception of a few players. Can these players provide the value the Pirates need to offset that large value? We'll find out after the jump.

The Pirates received 18 players in return for the ten they dealt away. Of those 18, I considered 13 of them to be valued as prospects based on Victor Wang's research on the value of prospects. Of those 13 players, three of them I deemed organizational fillers that added no value to the team above replacement. This is more of a function of me unable to utilize either a projection system or Wang's research, which is based on both Baseball America's Top 100 rankings and John Sickel's prospect grades. The remaining five players were given projections based on how major league performance and major league equivalents for minor league performance. Major league equivalents were provided by Minor League Splits. Let's get started.

The Prospects

Thirteen players were labeled prospects for the purposes of this evaluation. Of the thirteen, three players were most discussed in terms of their potential: former Atlanta Braves prospects OF Gorkys Hernandez and LHP Jeff Locke, and former San Francisco Giants prospect RHP Tim Alderson. Two of those players, Hernandez and Alderson, were in Baseball America's Top 100 list and thus derived the most value when using Victor Wang's valuation system. Of the players who were valued using John Sickel's grades, only Locke was graded at a B or higher. The remaining players were graded at C or deemed organizational fillers and thus not valued.

Here's the table in descending value:

So not considering any value from the players that have played in the majors, we can estimate $47.3M in value in the prospects acquired alone. Most of that value is tied to Alderson and Hernandez, and if you don't value those guys highly enough, you can knock them down a peg or so to the next area of value. But these are based on the preseason rankings by BA and Sickels' preseason grades.

This means the remaining five players acquired need to make up an expected surplus value of $39.5M, or around $40M, to make up for the value traded away.

Ronny Cedeno

Of the five players mentioned, Ronny Cedeno holds the least future value for the Pirates. He is regarded as a all-glove, no-hit shortstop, but over his career he hasn't had much of a glove at short either. When running a weighted projection and regressing his UZR/150 to the mean, I got a UZR/150 of -0.8 runs at shortstop. This isn't likely to be enough to make up for his terrible bat. Given that the Pirates don't have anyone coming up to play shortstop for them soon, you can expect to see Cedeno at least for one season with the Pirates. Here's what I got for Cedeno's value.

The calculator presumes some sort of positive value of production when calculating the arbitration salary, but in this case Cedeno is shown to be just about replacement level. Just for ease, I gave Cedeno $1M, which would be a $1.1M loss to the Pirates. Combined with the value Cedeno's provided so far this season, and you actually get a small positive gain from Cedeno's services.

Charlie Morton

Charlie Morton has started for the Pirates since being traded from Atlanta in the Nate McLouth deal. So far this year, in part due to his ability to hold off the home run, Morton has shown to be an average starter with 4.34 FIP. In Morton's previous stint in the big leagues with Atlanta, however, he was hammered, posting a 5.14 FIP and walking almost as many as he struck out. Using the ZiPS end of season projection and the appropriate weighting and regression, here's the sort of production we might expect from Morton.

With the regression, you get a projected 4.68 FIP for Morton, good for 1.5 WAR in 160 innings. Giving him a little bit more WAR in his subsequent years to show a modicum of growth, Morton's average production over his rookie contract and arbitration years would be worth $21.2M to the Pirates. Note that this takes into account that Morton would qualify as a "Super Two" for arbitration.

This is production similar to that of a player the Pirates traded away, LHP Tom Gorzelanny. While the differences between lefties and righties in terms of scarcity are significant, their age and projection of their production is somewhat similar. If we treat Morton as a "Super Two" player eligible for arbitration in his second year with the Pirates, both him and Gorzelanny would be under team control for the same number of years. A similar projection for Gorzelanny leaves him worth about $7M short of Morton's projection.

Jeff Clement

Jeff Clement was a former first-round draft pick out of USC and was supposed to be the catcher of the future in Seattle. However, despite solid seasons in the minors prior to 2008, Clement's only extended look in the majors ended with a .289 wOBA in 224 PA. There are also issues with Clement's defense at catcher and the need for a potential move to first base.

Having been traded to the Pirates will not help Clement's chances at playing time. The team's current catcher, Ryan Doumit, is signed on for two seasons after this one, and the Pirates system also includes Jason Jaramillo, who started the majority of the games this season with Doumit out with injury, and 2009 first round pick Tony Sanchez. At first base, there is the potential of highly touted prospect Pedro Alvarez being moved across the diamond to first base due to defensive issues at third. Thus, it appears Clement, who was immediately optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis when acquired by the Pirates, may be blocked at the only positions he can play.

Using minor league equivalents for Clement's Triple-A seasons and adding on his major league time, then using the typical projection and regression to the mean for his time in the majors, we get a projected .324 wOBA. I gave Clement's 100 games and 400 PA split between catcher and first base; he gets 40 games at catcher as the primary backup to Doumit and considering Doumit's prior injury history, and 60 games at first base considering the multitude of other players that could potentially play first for the Pirates. For defense, there isn't much of a track record of Clement's defense at first base, so I gave him an average score at the position. Giving him the appropriate adjustments, it yields this sort of production from the calculator.

Even this sort of low production in limited playing time by Clement can yield close to $20M in surplus value because of his pre-arbitration years. This doesn't give a whole lot of variation to Clement's production either, and even at age 26, there's still an opportunity for him to shape up into an average major league player. In addition, if his defense at catcher improves and becomes acceptable at the major league level, he may supplant the oft-injured Doumit if there aren't better options, and more playing time at catcher combined with average defense may be the best way for Clement to provide value.

Lastings Milledge

Lastings Milledge is another former highly-touted prospect, originally from the Mets organization. Milledge was dealt last year to the Washington Nationals, where he spent the year playing center field and showing that he wasn't a center fielder. However, he started this season in center field for the Nationals, but spent only seven games with the big league club before being sent down to the minors, where he remained until being traded in that controversial deal for Nyjer Morgan. The Pirates eventually brought him up to the majors and began starting him in left field.

Milledge's hitting has never met the expectations of the organization's he's been a part of. Using ZiPS projections and major league equivalents for his Triple-A seasons for the weighted projection and regression to the mean, I got an expected wOBA of .320, not far off from his career .317 wOBA in 1201 plate appearances. Given that the Pirates already have a center fielder of the future in Andrew McCutchen, Milledge's playing time would primarily be in the corners, where I have him projected as a -3 defender per 150 defensive games. Putting this all together in 137 games and giving him some extra WAR for his age and you get this from the calculator.

There isn't a whole lot to go with here. Pushing him up to 0.6 WAR still gives him a surplus value below $10M. Much of the argument for the positives of the Nyjer Morgan trade lied in the potential of Lastings Milledge. While he does still have room to grow, the Pirates would have to receive at least a league average player in order to get close to the value in return from Morgan.

Joel Hanrahan

Joel Hanrahan had proven so far to be a decent reliever for the Nationals despite a sky-high ERA this season. Coming off of the deal, most analysts felt Hanrahan was an excellent pickup as a reliever for the Pirates as a throw-in in the Milledge-Morgan trade, as in most defense-independent pitching stats Hanrahan was a clear favorite over the player the Pirates traded away, Sean Burnett. Hanrahan is also under team control for a few more seasons. Projecting and regressing his FIP for next season yields a solid 4.08 FIP, right in line with his ZiPS expected rest-of-season total. Projecting this sort of production over 70 innings for the next few years and you get this from the calculator.

As far as relievers go, that is pretty good value for Hanrahan, especially given that Burnett, the guy they replaced with Hanrahan, was closer to replacement level. If Hanrahan is good enough or if the Pirates recognize his ability, he could get a shot at closing for the team, which would give him higher leverage situations and improve his WAR values as well.

Here's the total for just those players.

The Grand Finale

The grand total for the Pirates acquired players, including both the prospects and the five players projected values, comes out to $91.1M, for a net surplus (based on my expectations) of $4.3M of value. There are perhaps a few assumptions here that are of question, in particular A) the lack of growth in terms of production given their age by the acquired players for whom I did projections, and B) the non-tendering of a few players that the Pirates had, particularly Tom Gorzelanny, who was the youngest of the players dealt away, and C) the somewhat high evaluation of Nyjer Morgan. I believe that those are of the magnitude where, taken as a whole, they are likely to even out, so I am of the opinion that this analysis more or less holds.

The Pirates gained an extremely large amount of service time tied up in young players who are either prospects or haven't had a lot of major league service. By my count, the Pirates brought back in 101 years of service time spread out between 18 players. However, much of that service time is unknown, and there is certainly no guarantee that all or even half of those players will see that sort of time on the Pirates big league club.

The key to this set of trades lies in the fulfillment of a number of prospects. The three players at the top of the list of prospects, Tim Alderson, Gorkys Hernandez, and Jeff Locke, could each become assets to the big league club beyond what those values have them at. As you saw in the case of Charlie Morton, a 1.5 WAR pitcher is a guy who puts up around a 4.7 FIP, decently below average, and yet still valuable to the club, according to the often used method of valuation of WAR. If Alderson and Locke can become just below average pitchers, they'll hold plenty of value for a team that will be paying them well below market value, and it will push the value of the deals even further towards the side of the Pirates.

Essentially, the Pirates dealt known commodities for plenty of lottery tickets of varying chances of success, a well-known strategy of such . None of the players they acquired were sure positive commodities, but most of them had potential, including the players who had accrued a good deal of major league time. The Pirates took a chance on players like Milledge and Clement, players who were still young but no longer considered "prospects," on the off chance that they realize the potential once seen in them. If either player becomes league average and receives adequate playing time, the Pirates will have received more than adequate return on their tickets.

The Value of Change

Is there also something to be said about the fact that change was made in the first place? GM Neal Huntington received the ire of a lot of fans last season when he dealt Xavier Nady, but so far the returns have been promising. The Pirates organization for years had been running in circles, unwilling to move into a clear rebuilding campaign and instead filling the major league roster with middling veterans such as the likes of Joe Randa, Matt Morris, and Jeremy Burnitz, while neglecting to focus on the farm system. Huntington has changed the way the Pirates work with their farm system, apparently retooling the draft strategy from the days of Dave Littlefield, and in this set of trades he has sought to rebuild a thin farm with desperately needed quantity.

Huntington has attacked this problem by trading players who likely had no future in a winning PIttsburgh team. While we can never be sure that Nate McLouth, Nyjer Morgan, or Freddy Sanchez would not have produced a playoff berth for Pittsburgh, the previous core had had its chance for almost three years without results. While there may not be specific monetary value in the way the Pirates front office has attacked rebuilding the team, there is something be said for an organization that realizes its current iteration does not have much chance for success. Apparently, Huntington saw this and decided to rebuild, which was likely the correct move. The rewards he reaps from the previous core will mostly be seen in three to five years, and maybe then we can have a better evaluation of whether the entire process was a success.

Poll

Did the Pirates come out on top in their trades as a whole?

Yes

152 votes

No

26 votes

Defering until 2012

87 votes

265 votes | Poll has closed

2009 Big-League Losses: Not a Good Way to Judge Rebuilding Efforts

Charlie — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:43:33 -0000

More photos » by Keith Srakocic - AP

It's not Charlie Morton's fault the Pirates have played badly.

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I thought this bit from Dejan Kovacevic was interesting:

As noted in my Sunday piece, half of the 26 players acquired in Neal Huntington's many recent trades are on the current major league roster. That, obviously, is not all of them, and waiting for top-flight players such as Tim Alderson and Jose Tabata to arrive would be the fairest way to assess those. Still, 13 trade acquisitions is more than half the roster, which means the current roster will have to be something more than an unmitigated disaster for those trades, as a whole, to begin to look good.

Um, why? If the best players acquired in those trades are still in the minors, and if the major league roster has been pretty close to "an unmitigated disaster" for 17 years before the trades, and if most of the players Huntington acquired are young anyway, why should he be held to that standard?

Reading between the lines a little, I assume this line of thinking stems from the Pirates' play since the trades. I don't think Huntington should get a free pass by any stretch, and the Pirates' poor recent play disappoints me too. But it seems strange, in a week where we're getting very good news from the minors on a more or less daily basis, to focus too heavily on a handful of busted games at the major league level.

Of the thirteen Huntington trade acquisitions currently on the 25-man roster, more than half (Charlie Morton, Kevin Hart, Joel Hanrahan, Delwyn Young, Ross Ohlendorf, Ronny Cedeno, Evan Meek) have performed pretty well for the team, and others (Andy LaRoche, Jason Jaramillo, Jeff Karstens) have been at least serviceable. The only ones who have been outright disastrous by any stretch are Jose Ascanio (who's pitched all of two innings), Brandon Moss (for whom "disastrous" doesn't seem quite fair, given the quality of his defense), and Lastings Milledge. That's it.

Milledge has been a disappointment to me so far. And the Jason Bay trade continues to be a bad one. But to judge the guys who've been acquired in trades by the poor performance of the entire roster, when half the guys who were acquired aren't even on the roster and those who are on the roster aren't actually playing that badly, seems very strange to me. Let's take a more nuanced, long-term view, please.

Deadline acquisition Jeff Clement has posted a 1239 OPS for Indianapolis so far. Another recent trade acquisition, Jose Tabata, has a .922 OPS there in a small sample, despite only turning 21 this week. Last year's top pick, Pedro Alvarez, is tearing the cover off the ball at Altoona. Tim Alderson has pitched well in two starts there. Jeff Locke, acquired in the Nate McLouth deal, has pitched well in three straight starts for Lynchburg. New Lynchburg infielder Josh Harrison, acquired in the John Grabow deal, has hit well too, and Nathan Adcock, acquired from Seattle in the Jack Wilson deal, has had two good appearances there. Huntington acquisitions Tony Sanchez, Hunter Strickland, Brett Lorin, Robbie Grossman and Casey Erickson have all played well for West Virginia. The Bucs have spent millions in the past couple weeks on a number of talented high school pitchers. Today, two of them, Trent Stevenson and Zachary Fuesser, pitched four innings of shutout ball for Bradenton; it was Stevenson's pro debut.

My point is not that all these players will turn out to be good, or that things are all peaches and cream right now. My point is that, in a week where we've gotten so much good news from the minors and from a number of Huntington's trade acquisitions in particular, it seems like an extremely strange time to call out Huntington's trade acquisitions. The ones already in the bigs have actually, as a group, been decent, and the ones in the minors, along with a number of Huntington draftees, have played very well--better than I'd expected, in fact.

Losses at the big-league level stink. I hate them; we all hate them. But this has actually been a very good week in Pirates baseball, not a bad one. Blaming the new guys for the "unmitigated disaster" that the big-league team has recently been is silly, not only because they aren't primarily to blame but because most of the best ones aren't even there yet. And trying to "assess" the trades based on only a week or two of bad big-league play seems sillier still.

Personally, I prefer to evaluate trades based on the information available when they were made, since the futures of baseball players are inherently unpredictable and all you can do, as a GM, is to position yourself so that you're likely to be on the crest of the wave rather than being smashed by it. But if we're going to evaluate trades based on the results, and only at the big-league level, well jeez, shouldn't we wait a little while for those to come in? Kovacevic notes that "waiting for top-flight players such as Tim Alderson and Jose Tabata to arrive would be the fairest way to assess" the trades. Well, no kidding. If we're going to assess the trades based on big-league results, waiting for the best players to actually play in the big leagues would, in fact, be the only fair way to assess them.