SB Nation - Charlie Morton

Community Projection Review: Center Field

Charlie — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:20:39 -0000

5 months ago: Pittsburgh Pirates' Andrew McCutchen follows through on his double against the Florida Marlins in the seventh inning of a baseball game in Miami, Friday, July 3, 2009. Pirates' Jason Jaramillo scored on the double and the Pirates won 7-4. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

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Next up in our review of our community projections is Nate McLouth.

Community: .276/.355/.480

ZiPS: .261/.342/.459

Actual (including time with the Braves): .256/.352/.436

Bonus: We predicted McLouth would get his first caught stealing on May 21; actually, he didn't get one until June 22, although he got six overall with the Braves, including four after returning in September from a hamstring injury.

ZiPS got us good here, although it's worth pointing out that McLouth hit .256/.349/.470 with the Bucs. The closest guesser was mocasdad, who had McLouth at .260/.340/.440.

The McLouth deal will, I think, turn out to be one of Neal Huntington's better ones, even if Gorkys Hernandez never pans out. Charlie Morton alone could make the trade a good one, and if Jeff Locke makes it, well, all the better. The Bucs got three interesting players for one they didn't really need that desperately.

McLouth was perfectly functional in 2009, but he still took a large step backward--he hit for less average and power, he was less healthy, and he stole bases less effectively. UZR says his defense did improve, but those things can fluctuate a lot from year to year, and my guess there is that he's still slightly below average overall. (The very low statistical ratings he got in 2008 were a little bit ridiculous, and so, probably, is the idea that he was above average this year.)

The McLouth trade probably wasn't based primarily on a position crunch, but McLouth may have greased the wheels for a trade by balking, at least at first, at the idea of moving to a corner. This would have put the Pirates in the awkward situation of having two good centerfielders (Andrew McCutchen, who was banging on the door at AAA, and Nyjer Morgan) in the corners and a mediocre centerfielder actually in center. It's not entirely clear what McLouth's position on the matter was--Doug Mientkiewicz claimed at one point that McLouth wasn't willing to move, but then Dejan Kovacevic later wrote that McLouth might have been willing to move but didn't feel he should have to "automatically forfeit the position." Which begs the question of how exactly McLouth thought a determination should have been made--paper/rock/scissors, maybe? Anyway, McLouth has value as a sort of marginal centerfielder, but not so much to a team that has McCutchen, and as a corner outfielder, McLouth is fine but nothing special.

In any case, the Bucs immediately replaced McLouth with a much better player in McCutchen. McLouth and McCutchen actually have a fair amount in common: they're both high-percentage basestealers with a broad base of hitting skills. But McCutchen is much faster and thus has better range in center, and he also hit for better average and power than McLouth in 2009 and is likely to continue to improve. McCutchen was highly regarded before being promoted, but even so, his major-league debut was surprisingly good. Here's his community projection, which we did back in March:

Community: .264/.334/.392

ZiPS: .261/.337/.362

Actual: .286/.365/.471

Oops! I love it when we make these kinds of mistakes. Anyway, the closest guesser was Matt Bandi, who predicted McCutchen would go .280/.340/.400, so no one got terribly close. (UPDATE: Oops! Actually, Brakeman8 had McCutchen at .280/.340/.415. Sorry!)

The fact that McCutchen surpassed expectations to such a great degree (he even left his 90% PECOTA projection in the dust) might lead us to believe that he'll come back to earth next year. That certainly might happen to a degree, but I'm less worried about it than I might be in some cases. Most of McCutchen's surprising growth came from his power, which scouts have always thought he would add--it was just a matter of when. That he would suddenly add it at 22 is younger than I would have expected for a player with his body type, but the power is clearly legitimate: he belted the ball all year. And as I've written before--actually, I wrote it about McLouth back when he was a young player--well-rounded young hitters set themselves up for power breakouts by controlling the strike zone and having a broad base of skills from which to draw. The power breakouts don't always happen, but they happen enough that we shouldn't be too surprised when they do. Anything can happen, but there's really nothing to dislike about McCutchen going forward.

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

Charlie Morton, Ryan Doumit, Jeff Karstens Help Bucs Sweep Doubleheader

Charlie — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:06:50 -0000

More photos » by Charles Rex Arbogast - AP

2 months ago: Pittsburgh Pirates' Lastings Milledge, left, keeps Chicago Cubs shortstop Ryan Theriot from completing a double play during the first inning of a baseball game Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2009 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Pirates' Steve Pearce was safe at first on a fielder's choice. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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All of a sudden it seems like the Pirates have decided that losing 100 games wouldn't be so good after all. The Bucs defeated the Cubs twice today on the strength of strong starting pitching from Charlie Morton in the afternoon and Jeff Karstens in the evening. Pat has a good account of Morton's start, which involved a complete-game shutout, four hits and eight strikeouts, and essentially it seems like Morton took a little more than usual off his fastball and thus got more of them over the plate. Morton finished the year very well, knocking almost an entire run off his ERA in his last three starts.

In Karstens' starts I'm always watching from between my fingers, hoping that all the long fly balls he gives up stay in the park. That's a pretty scary proposition in Wrigley, but tonight, at least, it worked. Donald Veal came on in relief of Karstens and walked two batters in a third of an inning. Fun fact: Did you know Veal has a 2.15 WHIP? 2.15!

Ryan Doumit, meanwhile, went nuts, with a single and two doubles, and a towering homer to right in his final at bat. His name wasn't quite Andy LaRoche territory, but it wasn't far off either.

* * *

I just had an article about the Pirates' streak of seventeen straight losing seasons published at Failure Magazine. Yes, it's an e-zine about failure.

It's The 47th Anniversary Of... Cubs vs. Pirates Doubleheader Preview, Wednesday 9/30, 1:05 & 7:05 CT

Al — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:30:18 -0000

More photos » by Charles Rex Arbogast - AP

Write your own caption.

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A 47th anniversary? Of what? What's that all about?

This all started with an email exchange on a SABR mailing list to which I subscribe. (Yes, I got permission from both men to post their email here.) Josh Heit asked the list over this past weekend:

On Monday, the Mets and Nationals begin a series and the teams will have at least a combined 191 losses (Mets 89 going into Sunday, Nationals 102). Is this is a record? I have checked some obvious choices such as the 2003 Tigers and did not find a series that beat 191, although I was not working off of a comprehensive list.

To which John Pastier wrote the following definitive reply:

As a 1962 Mets fan, I am deeply shocked that Josh does not consider The Amazin's to be an obvious choice to be checked for this honor. This club was to losing what Rickey Henderson was to stealing or walking, what Barry Bonds was to splash hits, what Ichiro is to singles, what the Rockies are to thin air, what Joe Morgan is to baseball analysis, and what Pete Rose was to making outs. They are the undisputed gold standard of losing, and holding up a puny 191 combined losses before this juggernaut of defeat is like asking whether Babe Ruth ever hit more than 40 home runs.

The Mets and the Cubs played each other on Sept. 30, 1962, and at the close of business, they had combined for 223 losses, 120 of them by the Metropolitans. And they did this even though they were not allowed to complete their full schedule, falling two decisions short of the requisite 162.

I hope Pastier was being facetious about Joe Morgan (either that, or in an oblique way calling him a "loser"). Anyway, yes, the Sept. 30, 1962 game (which the Cubs won 5-3), holds the record for the game in which the two clubs began the day with the most combined losses (222; the Mets began the game with 119 defeats and the Cubs 103, which is the franchise record, tied in 1966). Another interesting note about that season-ending series at Wrigley Field 47 years ago: the first game of that series, a Friday afternoon game on September 28 also won by the Cubs 3-2, drew a paid "crowd" of 595 people. That number of people could fit comfortably in a couple of bleacher sections. It was one of nine games between 1959 and 1966 that drew paid attendance of less than 1000. How times change.

There will be a few more people than that in the seats during today's first game, a makeup of the postponement from August 16, but likely fewer than the estimated 15,000 who showed up last night.

Starting rotation note: Lou announced during last night's postgame news conference that Jeff Samardzija will start tomorrow vs. the Pirates, and Tom Gorzelanny on Friday vs. the Diamondbacks. (It was originally the other way around.)

Game One Starting Pitchers


Ted Lilly Cubs	vs.	Charlie Morton Pirates

12-8	W-L	4-9
3.02	ERA	5.01
143	SO	54
34	BB	37
22	HR	7
vs. Pit	--	vs. Cubs

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Ted Lilly	12-8	26	26	0	0	0	0	170.0	146	62	57	22	34	143	3.02	1.06

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Charlie Morton	4-9	17	17	0	0	0	0	88.0	98	49	49	7	37	54	5.01	1.53

Game Two Starting Pitchers


Carlos Zambrano Cubs	vs.	Jeff Karstens Pirates

9-6	W-L	3-5
3.69	ERA	5.45
146	SO	49
74	BB	44
10	HR	12
vs. Pit	--	vs. Cubs

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Carlos Zambrano	9-6	34	27	1	1	0	0	163.1	149	74	67	10	74	146	3.69	1.37

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Jeff Karstens	3-5	36	11	0	0	0	0	100.2	106	62	61	12	44	49	5.45	1.49

I'm going to try to say nice things about the Pirates' starters today, Charlie Morton and Jeff Karstens, but geez, those records are pretty bad. Neither one strikes out many hitters, and both ERA's are north of 5.00. The last time Charlie Morton faced the Cubs, they scored ten earned runs off him in one-plus innings on August 14 at Wrigley Field before John Russell took pity on him and got him out of the game. Jeff Karstens had one shining moment as a Pirate, in the first game he threw for them after being acquired from the Yankees. On August 1, 2008, he threw six shutout innings against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. His next two outings against the Cubs, not so much -- five earned runs in three innings in a start on August 25, 2008 and two earned runs in two innings in relief on September 9 of this year.

Ted Lilly will be trying to lower his ERA below 3.00 and finish the year with a sub-three ERA for the first time in his major league career -- a worthy goal. A win today would also be his 45th as a Cub, giving him an average of 15 wins a year over the first three years of his four-year deal, one of Jim Hendry's best free-agent signings. Ted is 1-1 vs. the Pirates this year with a 2.77 ERA and he threw better in the June 30 loss, when the Cubs got shut out by Ross Ohlendorf (who the Cubs won't face in this series), than in the September 9 victory at PNC Park. Ted is also 8-1, 1.60 in 12 starts at Wrigley Field this year and 8-3, 2.55 in 14 starts in day games.

Carlos Zambrano is 1-0, 2.19 in two starts vs. the Pirates this year; he will be trying to follow up his shutout of the Giants with another strong performance to end the year on an up note, and also to get his 10th win. That would make seven straight years in double figures for Z and it would be his 106th career victory. Of the current Pirates, no one has more than 14 career AB against Z, and only Brandon Moss has homered off him.

Today's first game is on WGN and FSN Pittsburgh. Today's second game is on CSN Chicago Plus (CLTV in Chicago, "check local listings" elsewhere). For other games today see the MLB.com Mediacenter.

MLB.com Gameday (game one)

MLB.com Gameday (game two)

Baseball-reference.com game preview (game one)

Baseball-reference.com game preview (game two)

SB Nation game preview (game one)

SB Nation game preview (game two)

Please visit our SB Nation Pirates site Bucs Dugout. They seem a little lonely over there.

There won't be a separate game preview thread for the second game; consider this a preview for both games (feel free to revisit this thread before the night game begins). Overflow comment threads will post today for game one at 2:15 and 3:15 pm CDT. The first pitch thread will post for game two at 7 pm CDT and overflows at 8:15 and 9:15 pm CDT.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

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.

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

Rookies of the Yeah...: Pirates 3, Phillies 2

WholeCamels — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:51:59 -0000

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(AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

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Well, that was a hoot.

J.A. Happ stayed in command for most of the game, holding the Pirates' offense mostly in check with the exception of an Andrew McCutchen home run in the bottom of the first. Charlie Morton, though, handcuffed the Phillies as well; after scoring just one run after loading the bases with no outs in the first, the Phillies scored just one more run the rest of the game, on a Paul Bako home run of all things. The Phillies as a team had six hits all night -- three by Jimmy Rollins, and two by Paul Bako. For a long time, it looked like that'd hold. Until the bottom of the eighth.

Happ surrendered a leadoff single in the eighth, then proceeded to retire the next two hitters and appeared poised to escape the inning and take a one run lead into the ninth. But, Garrett Jones, another rookie, connected on a bomb to centerfield that gave the Pirates a 3-2 lead.

And except for a one out single in the ninth by Paul Bako, Matt Capps got a clean save to close out the game.

But hey, no blown save tonight! And a complete game for J.A. Happ! And, umm... no more Pirates this season.

Ugh. Lost a series to the Pirates. Oh well.

Important games this weekend against Atlanta.

Pirates Win Fourth Straight, 5-2

Charlie — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:07:58 -0000

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When you compare the Bucs' active roster to the Reds', it's actually not unreasonable to think the Pirates might keep winning, especially against a starter like Micah Owings, who seems destined to be famed more for his hitting than his pitching. Garrett Jones contributed a homer to right that finally occurred with two men on; nearly all of Jones' previous homers had been solo shots, which I don't think is anything we should gnash our teeth over, but it's got to be nice for him to hit a three-run bomb for once. Also, Lastings Milledge hit his second homer as a Pirate, Andrew McCutchen had one of his patented fly-like-Superman triples, and Delwyn Young played pretty good defense at the keystone. Also, Charlie Morton came back to the surface after his disastrous last start and didn't get the bends. Nice game, and now the Pirates can jump to fifth place with a win tomorrow.

No disrespect to the '79 team, which will always have a place in my heart for being the Bucs' last championship squad and for winning the title in the very week I was born, but I've never liked pillbox hats, which make people's heads look funny. (See the Morton picture to your right, which I swear isn't photoshopped.) I'd gladly exchange some funny-looking heads for some more games like this, though.

One quick note: Evan Meek's season is over after moving to the 60-day DL to make room for Phil Dumatrait on the 40-man roster.

Pirates' Q+A Portion of Season Continues

Charlie — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:15:07 -0000

More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

Lastings Milledge homers on Tuesday.

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Neal Huntington's life has to be pretty painful right now for all kinds of reasons--just walking through the streets of Pittsburgh must be difficult. But in some ways, it's a baseball dork's dream.

Some of the hardest of the hardcore Bucs Dugout baseball dorks play in a fantasy league each year that has 18-20 teams, with many more spots per roster than most fantasy leagues have. The number of players drafted is about twice that of the standard 12-team fantasy league. Which is great, because you get to indulge your weirdest flights of fancy in the draft. In the late rounds this year, I picked Matt Joyce, Homer Bailey, Brandon Moss and, much more successfully, Russell Branyan (who I also wanted the real-life Pirates to sign in the offseason). But the size of the league quickly becomes a problem in the middle of the season, when a couple of your players go down and you're forced to find new ones in the free agent pool. The problem isn't finding a guy who's talented, it's finding a guy who's actually going to play.

What the Pirates are doing with their big-league roster right now is like managing a team in a very deep fantasy league, except that they also can hand out playing time. So it's a sort of experimental method that, in the short term, is aimed more at answering questions than getting results. Can Delwyn Young play second base? (Kind of.) Can Ronny Cedeno hit enough to stick as a starter at shortstop? (Maybe.) Can Garrett Jones play? (No comment, although he's certainly done little to prove me right so far.) Can Andy LaRoche develop any power? Can Charlie Morton finally translate his ability to mow down minor leaguers to the big leagues? And what about Lastings Milledge? Or Steve Pearce? Or Kevin Hart?

This Q+A-based approach to handing out playing time often produces painful results; after all, there are reasons why a lot of these guys never got extended shots before now. But, in a way, these August and September games are more fun for me to watch than April or May games, because in August or September there's often much more value in getting a "yes" answer. If Jack Wilson has a good week in April that's great, but the only long-term upside there is that the Pirates get something better for him in a trade, and even then that's often wishful thinking, since everyone basically knows what Jack Wilson brings to the table. If Delwyn Young has a good week, though, that's much better, because you don't know nearly as much about what he brings to the table, and if it turns out to be something tasty, you get to keep him for five years.

The only Bucs rookie who's even close to a sure thing is Andrew McCutchen. Many of the others, perhaps most, will ultimately fail. The best of the Pirates' young talent is still in the minors. But the Pirates are still well worth watching this fall, because if a surprising number of their youngest players are successful, they could end up being in great shape if and when Pedro Alvarez, Tony Sanchez, Jose Tabata, Tim Alderson and some of their other top prospects are finally ready.

That's why--and not to count chickens before they hatch here, but I have to leave a little before tonight's game is actually over--it's been really rewarding to see the Pirates in general, and guys like Cedeno and Milledge in particular, do good things in this series. It may almost be football season, but these Bucs are still pretty interesting to me.

How About 17 More Today? - Cubs vs. Pirates Preview, Saturday 8/15, 12:05 CT

Al — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:00:16 -0000

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Write your own caption.

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Obviously, it won't be as easy against Zach Duke, but sometimes when you start hitting, it's contagious and continues for more than just one day. We still don't know, as of this writing, whether Aramis Ramirez will be over his cold from yesterday and be able to play:

"I think the best way to do this is, he'll let us know, and that's the best way," manager Lou Piniella said of Ramirez's availability. "I certainly don't want to play anybody who's not 100 percent or doesn't feel he's 100 percent, doesn't feel he could go out there and contribute as much as he could.

"He knows himself much better than anybody else. When he can't make it, let me know or let the trainer know, and that's the end of it. We'll get somebody else out there."

As I noted yesterday, Ramirez's car was in the players' parking lot early. But it was long gone by the time the game ended. Meanwhile, Toni Ginnetti's notes column in the Sun-Times this morning has this on all the rookies who have pitched for the Cubs this year:

Justin Berg is the ninth rookie to pitch for the Cubs this season, one short of the franchise record from 1958 and 1962.

The 1958 Cubs were 46-42 and only 2.5 games out of first place on July 18, before going into a 26-40 tailspin and finishing 72-82 in Ernie Banks' first MVP season. Of the ten rookies who pitched that year, only three -- Glen Hobbie, John Buzhardt and Dick Ellsworth -- had even modestly successful major league careers. The 1962 Cubs, as you likely know, set the franchise record for losses with 103 -- that was a truly terrible team, and only Cal Koonce among that year's rookie pitchers went on to even some major league success. This year's team is better than that, and Randy Wells is a genuine Rookie of the Year candidate. In the cases of Hobbie and Ellsworth, their careers were ruined by injuries suffered because, in part, they were ridden far too hard at very young ages -- look at the innings they had piled up by the time they were Wells' age. Thus, I'm glad the Cubs are being careful not to push too many innings on Wells, a converted catcher, this year.

Some of you sharp-eyed BCB'ers (actually, all you had to do was read the post) noticed that Roy Oswalt's photo appeared above Charlie Morton's statistics in yesterday's game preview post. You've discovered a BCB "secret" -- I have templates stored for every Cub starter, and Wells' happens to have Oswalt as the opposing pitcher because of this game from May 16, which is when I stored that template. I had meant to change it but forgot before I left for the game. Now you know -- and some of the comments were pretty funny.

Today's Starting Pitchers


Tom Gorzelanny Cubs	vs.	Zach Duke Pirates

4-2	W-L	9-10
6.23	ERA	3.40
14	SO	78
5	BB	38
2	HR	15
vs. Pit	--	vs. Cubs

Note: Gorzelanny's numbers below are with the Cubs only. See the pitcher box for his full-season numbers.

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Tom Gorzelanny	1-1	2	2	0	0	0	0	8.2	9	7	7	2	1	7	7.27	1.15

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Zach Duke	9-10	24	23	3	1	0	0	158.2	159	63	60	16	38	78	3.40	1.24

Zach Duke is 4-6, 3.09 in 15 career starts vs. the Cubs, his most against any team. This year in two starts he has a 3.21 ERA in 14 innings vs. the Cubs, but the Cubs won both games, on May 27 because the Pirates had a bad bullpen, and on June 29 because the Pirates had no offense. Both are likely repeats today. Maybe Alfonso Soriano can get untracked vs. Duke; he's 15-for-33 (.455) with 4 doubles and 2 HR vs. Duke. Maybe that's why he looks so angry in that photo.

Tom Gorzelanny, obviously, is making his first start against his former team. He's excited to make his first Wrigley start as a Cub, but said all the right things so it doesn't wind up on the visiting clubhouse bulletin board:

"It's never a piece of cake with them," Gorzelanny said of his former club. "When I was there we always thought a lot of teams thought that about the Pirates, that they could just come in and sweep us, but there are some good players out there and they play hard. It's not going to be easy."

The only current Pirates Gorzo has faced are Ronny Cedeno (4-for-12) and Lastings Milledge (2-for-4).

Thanks to Bud's Stupid Blackout Rules, you can see this game only on cable in Chicago and Pittsburgh, and on MLB.TV. For other games today see the MLB.com Mediacenter.

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Baseball-reference.com game preview

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Overflow comment threads will post today at 1 pm, 2 pm and 2:45 pm CDT.

Discuss amongst yourselves.