SB Nation - Jason Jaramillo

Should Ramon Vazquez Keep His Roster Spot?

Charlie — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:58:39 -0000

More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

Pittsburgh Pirates' Ramon Vazquez (5) connects for a two-run single against Cincinnati Reds' Micah Owings in the first inning during a baseball game in Pittsburgh Saturday, May 2, 2009. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

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Interesting tidbit in the Post-Gazette today:

Looks like Rule 5 pick John Raynor will be in a one-on-one battle with Brandon Moss for reserve outfield duty this spring. Locked into the bench for now are Jason Jaramillo, Ramon Vazquez, Bobby Crosby and Delwyn Young. That leaves room for one outfielder, preferably one capable of backing up in center. And Raynor might be better there than Moss.

Unlike Dejan Kovacevic, I can only speculate on what will happen, but what should happen here? Vazquez is vaguely useful in that, you know, he can play a bunch of infield positions and isn't Brian Bixler, but Vazquez hit a sub-Bloomquistian .230/.335/.279 last year, making 2009 the fourth season in the past six in which he failed to top a .620 OPS. I mostly admire Vazquez's patient approach at the plate, but that's really all he had in 2009--he looked like was praying for pitchers to accidentally walk him. I liked the Vazquez signing when it happened, but his strong 2008 campaign with the Rangers now looks very fluky. With Bobby Crosby in the fold, there doesn't seem to be any reason to break camp with another utility infielder, especially since Young can also sort of play second.

There are probably five bench spots available, and one probably will go to a catcher, and another to someone who can play shortstop. Jaramillo, Crosby and Young look very likely to make the bench, at this point. Maybe Kovacevic knows something I don't, but if I were in charge, it wouldn't be particularly likely that Vazquez would make the team next year. Assuming for now that Jeff Clement starts at first base and Garrett Jones is in right field, Moss isn't an ideal fit for the bench because he's left-handed like both of those guys. But Moss is out of options, can remain under team control for several more years if he sticks, and (despite his terrible 2009) has some prayer of hitting in 2010. There's really no upside in keeping Vazquez, except as insurance in case Crosby or Ronny Cedeno gets hurt or doesn't make the team. And even leaving Moss aside for a second, I'd probably rather keep Raynor and Steve Pearce as the last two bench guys than give a spot to Vazquez.

Of course, worrying about the Pirates careers of Vazquez and (probably) Moss is a deck chairs / Titanic situation. If Pedro Alvarez comes up, Vazquez will be gone, and if Jose Tabata comes up or the Pirates acquire another corner player, Moss will probably be gone. In the meantime, though, I think he could be a pretty decent bench outfielder--I think he's a bit better as a hitter than he showed in 2009, and his defense is good. It would be nice to stick with him for a couple more months before dumping him completely.

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.

Pirates Can't Learn Much From Phillies

Charlie — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:05:52 -0000

More photos » by Ross D. Franklin - AP

Philadelphia Phillies' Cole Hamels throws against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

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John Mehno has the right idea in this Beaver County Times column about the differences between the Pirates and Phillies--it's not primarily about spending, it's about building by acquiring amateur talent. But while the technique of comparing some great Phillies draft picks (Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and so on) to picks the Pirates botched at similar points in their drafts is effective for an article written with a word count for a general audience, it doesn't quite tell the whole story.

The Phillies' case is really weird. If you look at their drafts under previous GM Ed Wade (that's basically the time frame described in the Beaver County article), it's very surprising they've been so successful. Working backwards, the best player they got in 2005 was current Athletics reliever Josh Outman; they also got current Reds reliever Matt Maloney. That was it. In 2004 they got J.A. Happ in the third round, Jason Jaramillo in the second, and Lou Marson in the fourth, but they also took Greg Golson as a dubious tools pick in the first round and got nothing in the later rounds. In 2003 they had no first- or second-round pick; they got Michael Bourn and Kyle Kendrick, and that was it.

In 2002 the Phils took Cole Hamels in the first round, which was obviously a great pick, but they got absolutely nothing else. In 2001, it was Gavin Floyd in the first round and Howard in the fifth, and absolutely nothing else. In 2000, they got Utley, Taylor Buchholz and nothing else. In 1999, it was Brett Myers, Marlon Byrd and nothing else. (They also drafted Joe Saunders, but didn't sign him.)

Now, maybe this doesn't sound too noteworthy to some of you. Maybe you think that if you get one good player out of a draft, that's great, and to a certain extent that's true. In this case, the results speak for themselves. But what's odd to me about the Phillies' drafts under Wade is how incredibly thin they were. Wade seemed to get a star player and almost nothing else every year for several seasons in a row. That's strange.

To see what I mean, let's take a look at Wade's first draft for the Phillies in 1998. He took Pat Burrell with the first overall pick (a bit of a no-brainer), but he also got several moderately useful players later on, such as Jason Michaels, Geoff Geary and Nick Punto.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter that much if you fail to identify the next Nick Punto in your draft, but it does raise the question of why, if the Phillies are supposed to be a good example of intelligent drafting, they were able to identify so many star players but so few other future productive major leaguers.

Here's an example. In 2000 the Phillies got Utley, who single-handedly made the draft a very successful one for Philadelphia. The same year, the Pirates got Chris Young, Nate McLouth, Ian Snell, Jose Bautista and Sean Burnett. I'd say the Pirates actually did a much better job in that draft, even though it turned out worse--Dave Littlefield stupidly traded away Young a couple years later, and first-rounder Burnett's career was derailed with a ton of injuries. Drafting players who will stay healthy and helping them stay healthy involve skills, of course, and it certainly helps to not take a pitcher in the first round every year like the Pirates did. But there's luck involved too. For example, the Phillies were notably lucky that, for example, high school draftee Hamels basically made it to the majors with his elbow and shoulder intact, particularly after he missed huge chunks of his minor league career with injuries.

In 2001 the Phillies got Floyd, later sent to the White Sox in the Jim Thome trade, and Howard. That was all. Again, the Pirates had a much more robust draft, grabbing a number of moderately useful players in Zach Duke, Chris Shelton, Jeff Keppinger, Chris Duffy, Jonathan Albaladejo and Rajai Davis. (They also might have had some shot of signing 11th-rounder Stephen Drew if Littlefield, who was hired shortly after the draft, hadn't dropped the ball.) The Pirates royally messed up their first-round pick, John Van Benschoten, and that was their fault, but again, I'm not really convinced that Wade and the Phillies had a better idea of what they were doing.

Of course, Littlefield and his team started drafting in 2002, and after that all bets are off. There's no defending much of anything Littlefield did. My point, though, is that I'm not sure the Wade-era Phillies are a particularly good model here. In fact, it looks to me that they repeatedly got very lucky with about one pick each year and totally bombed the rest of their drafts under Wade, with the exceptions of 1998 and 2004. I don't mean to take anything away from the Phillies, who have generally been pretty well run since Wade left. But If there are things the Pirates can learn from this, they are the very basic points that, first, it's generally very important not to screw up first-round picks, and second, that it's important to build a core of homegrown stars. Beyond that, the Phillies' example doesn't tell us a whole lot.

Community Projection Review: Ryan Doumit

Charlie — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:37:13 -0000

More photos » by John Heller - AP

8 months ago: Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit fields a ground ball to force out Atlanta Braves' Brian McCann in the second inning of a baseball game in Pittsburgh, Friday, April 17, 2009. (AP Photo/John Heller)

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For those who are new here, we play a game each winter wherein we come up with a "community projection" for each starting player's performance for the upcoming year. Then we look back after the season is over. First up this offseason is Ryan Doumit.

Community: .289/.346/.477

ZiPS: .287/.343/.463

Actual: .250/.299/.414

Bonus: We guessed that Doumit would play in 115 games; actually he played 75 after missing almost three months with a wrist injury.

Most of the projections were pretty similar, and none were terribly close, but Bucdaddy came the closest, betting that Doumit would hit .271/.303/.433.

As bad as Doumit's season felt, the difference between what he did in 2008 and what he did this year mostly just stems from his batting average being 68 points lower, which mostly just shows what a fickle little finger batting average can be. He still hit for good power, and he pounded the ball in September and October, batting .329/.406/.459 over that period. Which will probably be enough to heighten our optimism until next season--or, at least, until he hits the DL in the second week of April.

Doumit may not ever be healthy for any sustained period of time, but he's still an asset as a catcher. As a first baseman or a corner outfielder, not so much. And until Tony Sanchez is ready, if that ends up happening, the Bucs don't have anyone worth moving Doumit around for anyway.

Stlil, this season showed that Jason Jaramillo is a credible second-division starting catcher, and that Robinzon Diaz is a perfectly decent backup. (Jaramillo's defense makes up for his somewhat lackluster hitting.) Also, this didn't get much publicity, but Erik Kratz, who handled a lot of the catching for Indianapolis, showed a decent arm and solid power in his best minor league season yet; he's a marginal player, to be sure, but it actually wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Kratz, who is already signed to a minor-league deal for 2010, were pressed into big-league backup duty.

So the Bucs have a bunch of vaguely interesting options, and I'd look for them to deal a catcher in the next year or so. Doumit, who's older, less reliable, and more valuable on the trade market than Jaramillo or Diaz, is a likely choice if he gets off to a hot start next year.

Doumit had a mediocre year, and Jaramillo didn't hit after Doumit bumped him back to reserve duty. But the Bucs' catching defense was better overall than it has been in years (certainly it was much better than it was in any year Ronny Paulino was in Pittsburgh) and the Pirates could probably weather a Doumit deal without much of a problem by giving Jaramillo the first crack at the job and turning to Diaz if that doesn't work out. Depth is a nice thing to have.

Pirates Sweep Split-Squad Games From Cubs, 4-0 And 8-2

Al — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:00:56 -0000

More photos » by Paul Beaty - AP

When Micah Hoffpauir and Sam Fuld couldn't come up with this fly ball, we should have known Game 2 wasn't going to turn out well.

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The lineup for game one yesterday read like the list of players the Cubs send to Tucson every spring to play the Rockies. You know, because the regulars don't want to ride the bus for two hours.

They played like they had ridden that bus, too, getting shut out 4-0 by the Pirates and Charlie Morton, a guy they had scored ten runs off of on August 14 before he could even register more than three outs. On a sunny but chilly afternoon when the announced attendance was 34,362, no more than about 13,000 entered Wrigley Field. For the first time that any of us could remember, the Cubs actually closed off the center-field bleachers with yellow caution tape, reminiscent of the days in the 1960's and 1970's when the Cubs wouldn't open the upper deck on weekdays when they expected small crowds. This practice ended after 1981 when the Cubs stopped selling general admission tickets in the main part of the ballpark. (See below the fold for a photo.) The announced attendance, based on the number of tickets sold, put Cubs attendance past 3 million (3,056,781 with four dates remaining) for the sixth straight year. The Cubs will need to put together a good offseason to do that again in 2010.

Ted Lilly didn't throw badly in the first game -- that is, after the first inning, when all four Pirates runs crossed the plate. Some questionable defense didn't help -- Bobby Scales, who again I remind Lou is not an outfielder, pulled up short on Lastings Milledge's looping line drive, allowing it to bounce in front of him. Then he nearly got Garrett Jones having taken too long a turn past second base; if this play had worked, Steve Pearce's ground ball on the next at-bat would have ended the inning with only one run scoring. Instead, Jason Jaramillo followed with a double to the LF corner, on which Jake Fox made a Jacque Jones-like throw to the infield, allowing Jaramillo to take third. Didn't really matter, as .225-hitting Brian Bixler drove him in.

And that was it -- the Triple-A lineup the Cubs sent up in game one managed only four singles, three walks and a hit batsman off Morton and got only three runners past first base; the last of those, Scales, took second on defensive indifference with two out in the ninth.

The weather for the night game (announced attendance 33,299; actual count in the park about 17,000) was colder than Tuesday night's and so were the Cubs' bats. The presence of Derrek Lee, who had two hits and a walk, made it a little less split-squaddy, but D-Lee appeared to still be bothered by his left foot, the one he fouled a ball off of on Tuesday night. It appeared that Lee's first-inning single might have gone far enough for him to reach second base, but he pulled up fairly slowly going into first, not wanting to risk any further injury on a chilly evening. We are told that Aramis Ramirez is going to play "sparingly" the rest of the year, which I'd read as "he won't play at all unless the weather warms up", which it probably won't. A-Ram gutted out half a season -- 80 games -- worth of very good performance considering the serious injury he suffered, and now he needs to rest up and be 100% for 2010. It appears he won't need surgery, which is good news.

Carlos Zambrano made it through six innings in his final 2009 start and didn't pitch too badly, but didn't have his best command. He walked four and two of them scored in a third inning where he couldn't manage to get that third out. One run had already scored when Z struck out Milledge, but Brandon Moss followed with a two-run single, and that, as the saying goes, was that. The Cubs managed their second and final run of the night in the bottom of that inning when Z smacked a double to deep center field, advanced on a groundout by Sam Fuld and scored on a nicely executed sacrifice by Ryan Theriot, perhaps the best thing the Cubs did all day. Z also hit another deep fly ball to CF in the fourth that was caught by Andrew McCutchen. No other Cub hit anything as well as Z did in his two at-bats.

Last night I met BCB reader katie casey and her husband and son -- nice to meet you; wish you (and the rest of us) had been able to see even one win yesterday. The Cubs now need to win all four remaining games on this final 2009 homestand to have a winning decade (this particular decade defined as "the ten years comprising 2000-2009"). That's a worthy goal, and also an 86-76 record would be one game better than Lou's first season as manager in 2007.

Weather permitting -- and this forecast doesn't look too encouraging -- the Cubs and Pirates will finish off their season series tonight. The Cubs clinched second place in the NL Central last night when the Brewers lost to the Rockies; that's nice, but not the goal we were all seeking this season.

The CF bleachers were closed for game 1 on Wednesday. BCB photo by David Sameshima (click on photo to open a larger version in a new browser window

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.

Dozens thrill to the adventure! Reds win a wild one, 4-3.

Brendanukkah — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:13:04 -0000

More photos » by David Kohl - AP

Don't touch me. (AP Photo/David Kohl)

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Joe Nuxhall Memorial Honorary Star of the Game

Drew Stubbs. The rookie went 2-4 with a home run, two runs scored and a stolen base.

Key Plays

Drew Stubbs hit a home run in the bottom of the first inning, Cincinnati's first leadoff home run of the season.
Kip Wells made sure the lead did not hold up long. In the bottom of the second, he walked Lastings Milledge with two outs, hit Ronny Cedeno with a pitch, then gave up back to back singles to Jason Jaramillo and Daniel McCutchen. The Reds were down, 2-1.
The Drew Crew helped put the Reds back on top in the third. With one out, Drew Stubbs singled and stole second. Drew Sutton then singled to drive him in, and took second base on the throw. After moving to third on Joey Votto's grounder, Sutton scored when Scott Rolen singled. 3-2, Reds.
Carlos Fisher relieved Kip Wells in the seventh, and immediately gave up a triple to Ronny Cedeno, and a single to Jaramillo. The game was tied, and extras loomed.
Opening Day centerfielder Darnell McDonald wouldn't let that happen. He singled with one out in the ninth, moved to second on Craig Tatum's hit, and advanced to third on a fly ball by Paul Janish. Then, with JNMHSotG Drew Stubbs at the plate, Pirates pitcher Jesse Chavez uncorked a wild pitch, and McDonald scored the winning run.

via FanGraphs

Other Notes

Official attendance was 13,051. Estimates put the actual body count between 1,500 and 2,000.
This game was a make up game for one that was rained out on April 10. Only Ryan Doumit and ~~Adam~~ Andy LaRoche were left from the Pirates lineup. I can't find a lineup for the Reds from that day, but of the starting lineup this afternoon, only Joey Votto was with the Reds on April 10.
Johnny Cueto was the scheduled pitcher on April 10. He will start tonight's game.
There have only been two major league baseball players with the last name of McCutchen. They both played for the Pirates today.

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.

2009 Trade Deadline Preview: Milwaukee Brewers

Charlie — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:57:09 -0000

More photos » by Darren Hauck - AP

Will the Brewers be willing to part with a young player like Mat Gamel at the deadline?

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Buyers or sellers?

Buyers. The Brewers are just three games back of the Cardinals in the N.L. Central, and three games behind the Giants in the Wild Card race.

Short-term need

Whether or not they're ready to admit it, the Brewers' best chance of upgrading would be grabbing a catcher who can hit even a little. So far in 2009, the Brewers have wasted 309 punchless plate appearances on Jason Kendall, many from the leadoff spot. No amount of nice work with pitchers can make up for a .282 slugging percentage. Milwaukee might be wise to talk to a team like the Pirates, who need prospects and have two credible starting catchers in Ryan Doumit and Jason Jaramillo, but so far I haven't heard of any trade rumors involving the Brewers acquiring a catcher.

Instead, Milwaukee is likely to look for a starting pitcher--even with Manny Parra, who was tremendous in his return from injury against the Cardinals shortly before the All-Star break, and Dave Bush, who seems likely to finish his rehab assignment within a week or two, the Brewers' current rotation consists of Yovani Gallardo and a bunch of mediocrities. (Parra showed better velocity in his Cardinals start than he did earlier this season, and he should be able to bounce back after a poor beginning to the year, but I wouldn't count on him being any better than a league-average starter down the stretch.)

GM Doug Melvin appears unwilling to part with top youngsters Alcides Escobar or Mat Gamel, though, so he'll have to be creative to find a pitcher who could improve on the Brewers' back-end starters. They don't really need a starting pitcher who can just take the ball every fifth day; they need a starter who's good, and that generally takes real prospects to acquire.

The Brewers have been mentioned in rumors about Roy Halladay. Melvin hasn't denied the Brewers are interested, but he didn't seem aware of the details of Halladay's contract last week, so it seems unlikely the Brewers are seriously pursuing him.

Long-term need

Realistically, what Milwaukee needs most is for the rest of the division to stay mediocre. They're very much in the playoff hunt this season despite losing C.C. Sabathia and Ben Sheets from last year's squad. But their corps of young hitters is getting expensive, and costly deals for lesser players like Jeff Suppan, Bill Hall and David Riske aren't helping them. Gallardo, Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun may still be young, but this isn't really a dynamic young team anymore. Their time is now and the very near future.

They could also use a centerfielder--Mike Cameron will be a free agent after the season.

Big leaguers on the market?

Gamel's name will continue to come up if the Brewers continue to be connected to Halladay, but it's unlikely Milwaukee will trade anyone from its 25-man roster.

Minor league strength

The season hasn't been particularly kind to the Brewers' minor league system--a number of their best prospects (including Jeremy Jeffress, Cutter Dykstra, Lorenzo Cain, and Angel Salome) have been disappointing this season. But Escobar has handled Class AAA pitching fairly well and 2008 first-rounder Brett Lawrie has been terrific, and a number of starting pitchers have played well at age-appropriate levels in the low minors--Wily Peralta, Cody Scarpetta, Daniel Meadows and Evan Anundsen all bear watching. Also, the Brewers had five picks in the first two rounds of the 2009 draft, so they should be able to recharge fairly quickly.

Take on short-term money to win?

If last year's decision to take on salary for Sabathia wasn't the sort of bell that would get the Brewers' ownership salivating, then I'm not sure what would be. The Brewers also already took on salary when they traded for Jody Gerut in May. The issue for the Brewers isn't so much money, it's whether they'll be willing to part with the young players required to bring another star to Milwaukee. They already traded Matt LaPorta last year; the idea of trading Gamel, Escobar or Lawrie may be a bit much for the Brewers, who aren't the Yankees and really need a flush farm system to succeed.

For more coverage of the Brewers, check out Brew Crew Ball.