When the name Jason Kendall pops up, a large amount of Pirates fans first reaction is "albatross contract".  A large amount of those left would probably think "gruesome injury".  While that probably gets rid of the majority of fans, some of those who remain might have a thought similar to, "good player who got injured and unfortunately couldn't live up to his amazing early career after getting hurt".  After the jump, I'm going to look into the player Kendall was, and show how his reputation in Pittsburgh relative to his performance shows why signing a player to a "fair market" deal in Pittsburgh, and especially "overpaying" for said player, is a dangerous thought.

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So, I was looking at potential replacements for Paul Maholm that could possibly be on the market, and Jeff Francis popped out at me as a possible signing.  Yes, he had injury ridden 08 and 09 campaigns, but he bounced back in 2010 to a 3.79 xFIP and 3.88 FIP season for 2.0 WAR and had a 4.29 xFIP season and 4.10 FIP season this year while throwing 183 innings and accumulating 2.6 WAR.   Not to mention that he has shown significant upside before the injury with a 3.6 WAR season in 2006 and a 4.1 WAR season in 2007.  He seems actually fairly comparable to Maholm with a slightly better past peak but with an injury history as well.  My question is how much do you think he will make in 2012?  He made $2 million plus performance bonuses this year, but I'm pretty sure he'll get a pay hike after pitching at an acceptable level in 2011.  

Now I won't make a poll on this, because I expect opinions to wildly very, so state in the comments how much you think he will make in the off season, how many years he'll sign to, and if YOU believe the Pirates should attempt to sign him, and if so at what price.

Frankly, I'm surprised that this long after the draft that this hasn't been done already.  I'm merely combining the draft bonus totals and the payroll totals of the MLB teams and adding them together (ESPN for salaries and BA for draft bonuses).  That way, we get the amount of money spent on ballplayers in 2011 by MLB teams without counting the small amount minor league players make outside of bonuses.  

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Jeff Keppinger was dealt to the San Francisco Giants for 2 Giants prospects.  The prospects were 2 strikeout pitchers with walk issues that were bullpen guys that ranked 22 and 29 in the Giants organization.  What's nice about knowing this is that it gives us an idea of how much he would've cost for us.  My question is, would anyone here have been interested in adding Keppinger as a temporary 3rd baseman then utility infielder/outfielder for once Pedro gets back for a similar price?  

That similar price, I'd say is Diego Moreno and Tony Watson.  Both are pitchers with good stuff that could prove useful, but both are also relievers.  Neither are very highly ranked on our prospect lists as of May, (though Moreno might've climbed since then), and while Moreno might be more valuable than either Giants pitcher traded, I wanted to make sure the deal would've gotten done, without giving up anything more than relief candidates.

Now, Jeff might have been only a very marginal upgrade at any position he plays, (or temporary probable decent upgrade at 3rd) and he doesn't fit one of the "pressing need" positions of the Pirates, but I'm interested to see what the people here have to say about this possibly coulda happened deal.  It's one of those deals that slightly improves the club currently, protects against injury, and doesn't result in the team giving up top prospects.  Keppinger has been a .307/.320/.436 guy this year who almost never walks or strikes out.  His salary is 2.3 Mil this year and he is an unrestricted free agent next year.  He can play all the infield positions apparently for those interested, though his defense isn't exactly good, and he has experience in the outfield as well.  If we had gotten him I would have seen him as a nice guy to have around in case of injury.  That's just my opinion though, let's hear your thoughts.

Derek Jeter has put up one of the greatest offensive careers by a shortstop in league history.  He just put up his 3000th hit, an impressive counting number.  More importantly for this case he is top 10 in Wrc+ (wOBA adjusted for era) among shortstops and I don't think it is disputable that offensively he has had a hall of fame caliber career, even his most adamant haters should grudgingly admit that much.  That said, this post isn't just meant to extol the virtues of Jeter, cause that wouldn't be fun on it's own, right?  I am here to enlighten everyone here who doesn't know about the second best shortstop in Pirates history, a guy be the name of Arky.

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Well, we got eight batters finished for our fan projections, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to see how our individual projections would most likely play out on the field in terms of the offensive stat that means the most to a teams success, runs scored.  I'm assuming Garret Jones numbers will equal Matt Diaz numbers for platoon purposes and assuming very slightly better pitcher batting than last year, (my pitcher slash line is .100/.136/.126).  I threw the numbers into http://lineupsimulator.com/ after transforming each line into a number, (this took forever).  I also threw the numbers into http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis.py which is less intricate but you don't have to type in at bats and I thought it would be nice to have a second source.  Our expected runs scored over the year if our lineup stays healthy and performs exactly to fans expectations is, (drum roll please)

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In the discussion over whether Olsen or Morton should be 5th starter, Rainja brought up the point that Morton's .320 BABIP and 62% strand rate over his 250 inning MLB career are not unlucky.   His logic stated that since great pitchers are ones who get outs in all situations, great pitchers will have great strand rates because they are better at getting batters out in all situations.  I decided I'd do some research on the past year and see if there were any pitchers most people would consider good who put up subpar strand rates, to see if this theory held up.  I also checked to see if there were many pitchers with high strand rates and weak peripherals, (for ease of search, I defined weak periphs as having a K/BB ratio 1.80 or under, arbitrary yes, but I think most would agree that 1.8 is not good as far as K/BB goes).  Here are some of my findings.

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Here it seems a lot of us like the idea of platooning Garret Jones, and the splits do certainly tell a tale.  This is a lefty who hits .215/.256/.354 against lefties this year for an OPS of .610 and hits for .270/.339/.449 against righties this year for an OPS of .789.  That is a spread of 179 points and as he is a lefty, as Vlad would mention, there is not a huge likelihood of him regressing to the 1.09 platoon split that righties would seem to regress to.   What is crazy is that this spread is SMALLER than his career split, which is 241 points! Clearly, this makes him quite the target for platoon work.

But, let me tell you about a different hitter, that has been even more extreme this year if not for career.  A guy who hits .287/368/.481 for an OPS of .850 against righties.  That sounds really good doesn't it?  That hitter has also hit .182/.262/.273 for an OPS of .536 against lefties.  In short, better than Garret against righties and worse against lefties for an OPS spread of 314 points!  This guy is a switch hitter who's career split isn't Garret Jones sized, but at 106 points I'd say it's pretty sizeable.  This guy, is Ryan Doumit.  He's an .800 OPS career against righties and .694 against lefties.   Discuss.

Answer truthfully, who would have put money on this over/under?  Over/under of number of articles by Bob Smizik that would be agreed with by the majority of the people at Bucs Dugout in August of 2010

1

Now, I'm figuring that most of you would bet the under, with the feeling that even if he SOMEHOW manages to write something that we like, it would be a one time fluke and I would at least get my money back.    BEHOLD

Props to jlk9697 for pointing out this article first

http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/bobsmizik/archive/2010/08/26/ap-article-on-pirates-unfair.aspx#comments

Read this article, and the comments, and you will be wondering if someone took over for Smizik without his permission, sorta like what happened when J. Jonah Jameson was in the hospital and the Daily Bugle made a positive article regarding Spider Man to take from comics.  A like to jlk9697's post here gives a brief synopsis for the TL;DR crowd and those who refuse to visit Smizik on principle even when you agree with him.

http://www.bucsdugout.com/2010/8/26/1651995/smizik-logical

If that wasn't enough, he had to write THIS ONE TOO

http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/bobsmizik/archive/2010/08/27/littlefield-drafts-still-haunt-pirates.aspx

This article describes  Dave Littlefield's drafts.  Someone in the comments stated that we all know that DL was inept so why did he do it and SMIZIK SAID THIS

(This article has nothing to do with my feelings about Littlefield, who was a good guy and a terrible GM. It's point was to show how barren the Pirates system was when Huntington took over.

WOW

I'm sure some people probably would say, "what's the big deal, this is simple stuff", but it's SMIZIK, he is ripped on so much here when his articles disagree, I feel that he should at least be congratulated for his articles that agree with us.

A.232/.300/.384 line is not pretty, it is a line that would POSSIBLY be adequate for a good fielding utility infielder who doesn't play much, but is not attractive, a .684 OPS, pfft... foget about it.  A .259/.325/.509 line is MUCH more attractive though, its a dude with an OPS of .834, the dude might not get on base enough to be considered amazing, but its a line I would love to have on my team.  That's what 2 days from Pedro Alvarez has done to his line.

It got me thinking, what if we took the best 2 games of a persons season, had them just so happen to fall on the next two games, and see what it does to a persons line.  While at first I felt like adding Pedro's totals to certain players, I figured that I would be at least slightly more realistic and pretend that they repeated their 2 top games of THIS season again over the next 2 days.  For a quick example, though I won't get into detail for him, Bobby Crosby's best game of the season was either a 2 for 4 game with 2 doubles or a 1 for 2 game with a homer and its really not hard to pick those out for him.  You then pretend that in his next 2 games he goes 3 for 6 with 2 doubles and a homer, because he has shown himself capable of doing those performances this season, and see what it does to his line.  I've decided to do it to some vilified players for fun. 

Woo, that out of the way, lets start with Ryan Church, because his numbers are fun to play with.

Current line of .190/.246/.325  I think that ugly is a proper word to describe that line, maybe even a little generous.  Church's two best games of the season for boosting that line are a 3 for 3 game with a homer and a walk against Philly and a 3 for 3 game with a double and a walk against Atlanta, adding 6 for 6 with 2 walks, a double, and  a homer changes his line to .219/.297/.373, which is still not pretty, though I'd say with decent fielding that would merely make his season bad, as opposed to what many people here have called it.  PROBABLY that would even be a line you could trade if you added solid fielding.

Now lets do Aki Iwamura's cause his might be interesting, I'm not sure how it will change his line.

.182/.292/.267 is the line he had when he got the boot here in Pittsburgh.  Not Church ugly because we all know that OBP is more important than slugging and the .46 point difference in OBP is a point in Iwamura's favor, but still ugly.  His 2 best games that I am putting on this list are a 2 for 4 game with a walk and a home run, (yes, Iwamura hit a home run this year, don't act too shocked) and a 3 for 6 game with a walk.  That would bring his line to .206/.310/.297, which like Church is still ugly, but at least the OBP number is slightly prettier being on the good side of .300.  Guess I was wrong about it possibly being interesting, still not good enough to stick, (I also ran the numbers if I added his 2 for 5 game with a homer instead of the 3 for 6 game and it came out to ..195/.303/.310, which gives him a SLG and OBP over .300, but I think .07 of OBP is worth more than .13 of SLG by Sabermetric studies).

Lastly, lets put  Andy LaRoche through this exercise

Andy's current line is .232/.297/.310 and his two best performances of the year were a 4 for 4 game and a 4 for 5 game, all singles.  That would change his line to .259/.320/.355 which actually sounds like the line of a mediocre bench player as opposed to a complete scrub.  Add in the fact that LaRoche CAN hit for power on a good day and that he's streaky and it does seem possible that one week of LaRoche being on fire could really spike his numbers.  NFW has done his job, and Pedro is Pedro, but if the display that Alvarez had against Wolf was against a righty, I think you could have made a case for their to be a platoon split between Alvarez and LaRoche.  Really, Alvarez seems like the kind of guy who might follow the Ryan Howard career path, (outside of huge contract, I wouldn't mind that) and have bad splits against lefties career wise, and Andy LaRoche has a .714 OPS career against lefties in 288 AB, (not a ton, but not a tiny SS)  This post wasn't meant to be a plug for LaRoche, but on the fly, sorry if it turned into one.   If someone else wants to continue the fun of the 2 big nights idea, feel free, and have fun!

"According to league sources, the Flyers have a verbal agreement in place with the San Jose Sharks to fork over a seventh-round pick next season if they can sign San Jose's Evgeni Nabokov before July 1, when he becomes an unrestricted free agent.

Don Meehan, the agent who represents Nabokov, told CSNPhilly.com earlier that his client's no-trade clause is not an issue. San Jose obviously has given the Flyers permission to get a deal done and Meehan is willing to engage the Flyers ahead of July 1."

I'm surprised that there isn't a thread about this on the first page.   Noted that the dude hasn't produced big in the biggest pressure situations at times, i.e. playoffs and olympics (he did make it to the western conference finals this year though, yes his team was stacked, but he could have choked worse earlier, that duly noted), but this dude seems to possibly be the key to ending the revolving door goalie in Philly and I find it a little scary to think that the Flyers will FINALLY have a quote unquote "franchise" caliber goalie if they manage to sign him.  The cap raising makes it actually possible that they might sign him and might be part of the reason, (this deal) that the Flyers were willing to trade Hamhuis' rights to us.  Anyone elses' thoughts, opinions, etc.  is welcomed.

I figured I'd update everyone here a little with how some of the other teams in the league are doing in the extremely important activity of signing draft picks.  It seems as if some teams have really jumped out of the gate, here are some links

The Twins sign two

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11041136&notebook_id=11046180&vkey=notebook_min&fext=.jsp&c_id=min

The Royals sign seven

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11041140&notebook_id=11043346&vkey=notebook_hou&fext=.jsp&c_id=kc

The Astros sign nine

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11029518&notebook_id=11034726&vkey=notebook_hou&fext=.jsp&c_id=hou

The A's sign frickin 17 already

http://www.csnbayarea.com/06/11/10/As-Agree-to-Terms-with-17-Draft-Picks/landing.html?blockID=251999&feedID=2797

The Phillies, Braves, and Rays all sign first round picks, (though in the Rays case, their second pick, 31st overall, a compensatory pick for not signing their pick from a year ago and the Braves pick is the 35th overall, supplemental first).

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11041136&notebook_id=11046180&vkey=notebook_min&fext=.jsp&c_id=min

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11028294&vkey=draftcentral2010&fext=.jsp

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100609&content_id=10987836&notebook_id=10987838&vkey=notebook_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

You can read the articles if you want but I will point out some highlights.  The 35th overall pick in the draft signed for 800k, which seems to be really low, and either his agent didn't do his job, he really wanted to sign quick, or he got picked so early because the Braves knew he would sign cheap (possibly a combination of all three as well).

Out of the A's picks, the earliest drafted pick signed was their 6th rounder, so they still got a lot of work to do in signing their top picks same with the Royals, the earliest drafted player they signed was their 6th rounder, and the Astros earliest drafted player was their 4th rounder, with their next earliest being 8th. 

I'm sorry I haven't posted more info, but I figured this could help a bit here and get some discussion going.

I figured I'd update everyone here a little with how some of the other teams in the league are doing in the extremely important activity of signing draft picks.  It seems as if some teams have really jumped out of the gate, here are some links

The Twins sign two

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11041136&notebook_id=11046180&vkey=notebook_min&fext=.jsp&c_id=min

The Royals sign seven

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11041140&notebook_id=11043346&vkey=notebook_hou&fext=.jsp&c_id=kc

The Astros sign nine

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11029518&notebook_id=11034726&vkey=notebook_hou&fext=.jsp&c_id=hou

The A's sign frickin 17 already

http://www.csnbayarea.com/06/11/10/As-Agree-to-Terms-with-17-Draft-Picks/landing.html?blockID=251999&feedID=2797

The Phillies, Braves, and Rays all sign first round picks, (though in the Rays case, their second pick, 31st overall, a compensatory pick for not signing their pick from a year ago and the Braves pick is the 35th overall, supplemental first).

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11041136&notebook_id=11046180&vkey=notebook_min&fext=.jsp&c_id=min

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100610&content_id=11028294&vkey=draftcentral2010&fext=.jsp

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100609&content_id=10987836&notebook_id=10987838&vkey=notebook_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

You can read the articles if you want but I will point out some highlights.  The 35th overall pick in the draft signed for 800k, which seems to be really low, and either his agent didn't do his job, he really wanted to sign quick, or he got picked so early because the Braves knew he would sign cheap (possibly a combination of all three as well).

Out of the A's picks, the earliest drafted pick signed was their 6th rounder, so they still got a lot of work to do in signing their top picks same with the Royals, the earliest drafted player they signed was their 6th rounder, and the Astros earliest drafted player was their 4th rounder, with their next earliest being 8th. 

I'm sorry I don't have more info, but I figured this could help a bit here and get some discussion going.

Having NH as our GM, I thought that we were guaranteed to do at least one thing better than any other team, even the Yankees, and I turned out to be wrong.  No, it isn't outspending the opposition, though I am pretty sure we will do that again this year.  No it is not picking players who will instantly be downgraded by some people just because they are now in the Pirates organization, (though with some less intelligent people, this might be true as well).  It all comes down to one thing I thought we were a lock for but the Yankees are beating us this year at it.

Picking Right Handed Pitchers with Zac(k) in their name.  We drafted a total of one, Zachary Weis, with the 297th overall pick of the draft.  The Yankees, well, thet drafted Zachary Varse at 355th overall, and Zachary Muding at 925th overall.  Really, we draft 16 RHPs in 2 days of the draft and have NH, and we still can't get more Zac(k)s than the Yankees?  I'm through with this team...