The Best Management Team in Baseball is now at its fifth MLB Winter Meetings. In that span, the Pirates have not improved. The team inherited was on pace to go 76-86 before general manager Neal Huntington began trading away regulars. There are indications the minor-league system is better, but not yet close to helping the parent club. Some people call this progress. It's actually grounds for firing.

Yeah! How dare Neal break up that powerhouse 2008 team? I mean they were in 1st place on April 3rd and were over .500 as late as April 14th! Unlike that god awful 2011 team that "Failing" Neal put together that was in 1st place on July 25th, was 7 games over .500 on July 19th and was still on pace to go 83-79 on July 31st.

Blogging Bob, good for a laugh when you're up at 3:45 in the morning and can't sleep.

This is a great piece from Rumbunter about missing opportunities in the draft. In this case, local product Matt Adams.

I think it'll be interesting to see how well the Pirates did in the draft the next few years. Because developing their own talent is the big change the Pirates really needed in 2007 and so far I'm starting to wonder about that and we're about to see how much of the Pirates 2008-10 draft picks make an impact with the Pirates.

Usually this wouldn't be worth mentioning on a Pirates blog, but I thought it was interesting that Pittsburgh native Peter Angelos offered former Pirates farmhand Tony LaCava the General Manager's job in Baltimore. If you remember, LaCava interviewed for the Pirates job in 2008 and was sort of an early favorite for the job along with Jack Zdurenick, if I recall correctly. LaCava accepted under the condition that he'd be able to fire anyone he wants in the Orioles front office and bring in his own people. Angelos refused to let him and LaCava turned the job down.

If there's an even worse run organization with an even worse owner than the Pirates, it's the Orioles.

Smizik's entire basis for that assessment of Neal Huntington is that the Pirates aren't winners right now, even if he deserves credit for getting Josh Bell to sign with the team.

Compare that to Pat Lackey's assessment of the organization.

In a way, it's not really fair to compare them. One of them has made a career of being a sports journalist and the other is a Graduate student with a blog who's only been doing this since 2005...

Really it's time. The fans just can't take anymore losing and the players have come to accept it. Changing managers was just a short term cosmetic change. Clearly you're only waiting for the lease to run out so that you can move the team somewhere else.

Having a retired sports legend in our town owning the team would be better off for everyone involved. He would care about winning in a way that you don't.

Sincerely,

The Baltimore Sun

Oh yeah, this to the Orioles...

Nate McLouth had sports hernia surgery and will be out at least six weeks.

Can you like imagine how much better off this team would be with McLouth and without Morton, Locke and Gorkys? This team would be amazingly awesomely epicly good and in first place probably.

I mean, Nate McLouth is an All-Star and Gold Glove winner. McCutchen is only one of those just barely....

Just can't replace the sheer greatness that is Nate McLouth!

This is a great write up by Tim Williams (Pirates Prospects.com) on why it seems like most of the high school players drafted by the Pirates are taking so long to develop. Focusing mostly on Robbie Grossman and Zack Von Rosenberg.

Sports Illustrated lists the longest lasting perennial losers in professional sports history. I'm kinda surprised the 62-68 Mets didn't make the list, but I guess that was just 7 years of badness. All of those listed were longer than a decade. Also, it says the Brewers made the playoffs last year, when it was actually 2008.

Biggest surprise to me was that the Red Wings were listed, but most of those losing seasons were before I was born....

The greatest GM in Pirates history has left us.

I don't have insider, but it looks like Nate McLouth might end up losing his starting job in Atlanta. Again, trading players at their peak value instead of after their value had plummet.

Jen Langosch offers some quotes from Nate McLouth about the Pirates. Not all of them are very flattering. But the difference between the Pirates and Braves since 1992 is like night and day.

Great stuff from the fake GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Onion reports on a disturbing trend in Pittsburgh.