Pedro Alvarez's career has been weird. Why was such an impressive rookie season followed with such a disaster?

There were a number of people who predicted this, based on his high K numbers in college and the minors. I was less concerned because his K rates didn't increase as he moved up the ladder (college, A+, AA, AAA were all comparable)

As a major leaguer, he has K'd in 30.7% of his ABs. That's not good, but it is workable. His K rate was constant between 2010 and 2011, what changed was that his BABIP and power disappeared. He stopped hitting the ball hard.

K numbers a concern but they stayed constant as he moved through the minors. During the three month stretch of July, August and September of 2010 he put up a 272/344/502 triple slash. That's quite good for a rookie.

As a rookie, Alvarez had the following Plate discipline statistics (I'll show the league averages in parentheses)

O-swing%: 29.7% (29.3%)
Z-swing%: 61.2% (64.4%)
O-contact%: 47.5% (66.5%) ****
Z-contact% 83.1% (88.1%)

The stats were similar in 2011.

Here's what those stats mean to me:

He has an average eye (his probability of taking a strike or swinging at a ball are league average). He can't make contact with pitches out of the zone worth a crap. He makes contact with pitches in the zone decently.

Here are my own observations from watching 30-50 of Pedro's ABs last season:

He looks at a lot of elevated pitches on the outer half that he should be swinging at. He also tries to pull a lot of outside pitches leading to whiffs and GIDPs and generally weak contact.

Here is what Hurdle said about Pedro in a fangraphs piece linked here

"On Pedro Alvarez: “Pedro Alvarez is still learning. The success he had in 2010 obviously caught everybody’s attention; it put Pedro in the public eye. He’s got a chance to have a run-producing bat. I really believe that hasn’t changed, regardless of what happened last season.
“One of the biggest challenges for hitters in the major leagues is that after being up for three months, the league has pretty good intelligence on you. Information travels quickly. What you are doing well, they find a counterpunch for. They counterpunched Pedro early in the season and he never really got himself to a position to throw a counterpunch back. He got away from his game. I think he maybe became a little too passive.
“We don’t want him to work on having a perfect swing; we want him to have a dangerous swing, an impact swing. He was vulnerable this past year to soft and spin. The year before, he hit soft and spin. He also didn’t miss many fastballs in the zone.
“Everything starts with a thought. There are things that paralyze young hitters. It usually takes some experience and I think it usually takes more than 500 at bats. It’s closer to 900 minor league at bats and 1,500 big league at bats. It’s the ability to not focus so much on everything the pitcher has. They put too much emphasis on the four pitches the guy throws and not enough on the one they want to hit. That’s a transition I try to take good young hitters to.
“Say that a pitcher has a go-to pitch for when he’s behind the count, a strike-one pitch, and a kill pitch. Well, let’s identify what we want to hit. We want to see the ball up; that’s number one. All right. And we want to see it either in or out. Don’t try to hit all of them.
“I think that one of the things Pedro did last year was get into the trap of trying to hit every pitch somewhere, instead of being more selective and looking to do damage in the strike zone.”"

That sounds to me like he is looking for middle-in fastballs. He definitely wasn't looking middle-out because he sure didn't seem to ever swing at those.

My theory:

IMO, Hurdle's advice is somewhat counterproductive in this case. Being extremely patient for a pitch middle-in is bad advice for a guy like Pedro who has contact problems. It causes him to wait until he has two strikes to swing at hittable pitches that aren't exactly where he wants them. As a result, he gets in lots of 0-2 and 1-2 counts. In those counts, pitchers like to throw pitches out of the zone and, as noted above, Pedro can't make contact with pitches out of the zone. All hitters do worse when behind in the count; however, I'd wager that contact hitters are less affected by it than power/strikeout guys like Pedro. IMO, this new approach at the plate was the cause of his collapse last year and I don't think Hurdle has identified the true cause here.

Also, and this is a stretch, but Pedro's extreme selectivity for meatballs middle-in might cause him to want to pull everything, too.

Possible solutions:

Go to the plate looking to pound anything that is elevated and in the zone, especially on the first two pitches -- who cares if it isn't perfect. You're not going to get perfect in the majors.

Go with the pitch. Pedro has the ability to go with the pitch, he just didn't do it last year for some reason.

The most disappointing development in the Pirates organization this season has been the failure of Pedro Alvarez.

What is going on here and why is this happening? I have seen 20-30 of Pedro's Abs which is a very small sample size and I don't have the fundamental knowledge to make any conclusions on his swing. What I can do, though, is look at Fangraphs. Last season, Pedro's triple slash in the majors was 256/326/461. The power ISO (SLG - BA) was 205, the wRC+ was 111 (above average). After a lousy first two weeks, he went on to put up OPS of 855, 735, 936 over the last three months (averaging out to 842). Contrary to popular belief, his numbers were not solely the result of a good September. He hit pretty well in July and August too. This was a very good rookie season. That's why his disastrous sophomore campaign has been so surprising. This year he has put up a 203/273/294 triple slash. Wow!

What the heck happened? From simple inspection, the BA is down 50 points but the ISO is down 100 points. Is he striking out way more? No. The K rate hasn't gone up much, but the BABIP and power have completely disappeared. It is surprising to note that his Z-swing %age (fraction of strikes that he swings at) is normal at 65.5%. He also doesn't swing at an abnormally high number of would-be balls. These numbers are qualitatively similar to last season.

How about his ability to make contact with the pitches he does swing at? With balls in the strike zone, he is 6.8% below league average (only slightly worse than last year).His ability to make contact on balls out of the zone is actually much higher than last season though still 13% below league average. Overall, his contact % is a little bit higher than last season.

What type of balls does he hit when he does put them in play? Here is where some big differences relative to last year emerge. His GB/FB ratio is way up (1.15 to 1.97). His LD% is up significantly (14.8% to 19%) and his HR/FB ratio is way down (17.6% to 9.1%). Ground balls and liners should cause the BABIP to go up, so I conclude that he is making weaker contact and so the BABIP and ISO are way down, despite the increased LD%. This also explains the reduced HR/FB.

So why is he making weaker contact? Looking back on the statistics, his contact rate on balls out of the zone has improved from 47.5% to 55.6% and my hunch is that he doesn't hit those balls very hard. His efforts to make more contact with pitches out of the zone are hurting him because whereas those used to be swinging strikes, now they are outs. One thing that the plate discipline statistics probably do not capture is the fact that Alvarez is taking a lot of very crushable pitches, if there were a meatball swing %, I'm sure he would be way below average. Another thing that these statistics don't capture is the fact that a lot of those GBs are due to him trying to pull low and outside pitches. I am not knowledgable enough to comment on his swing mechanics.

So how does he snap out of this? I see two things he must do. First, he must go with the pitch - he has the ability to hit to left field with power, I've seen him do it before and he must dedicate himself to doing this. Second, he needs to be ready to crush a mistake in any count. If the first pitch is a belt high fastball then he has to be mentally ready to kill it. Given his performance over a three month sample size last year, I still believe that he possesses the talent to be an 850 OPS hitter in the majors; I think that his problems right now are all in his mind and they are correctable.  What do you see?

I wanted to get some perspective on how our farm system has fared overall this season. I took Sickels' list of 2011 Prospects and then determined whether their performance has caused their stock has gone up (+) or down (-) this season. ++ means stock way up, -- means stock way down, = means stock is steady, =+ slightly up etc. The letter grade next to the name indicates Sickels' grade before this season. The ungraded guys were "also worth noting" guys.

Taillon, B+, =+
Allie, B, -
Sanchez, B, --
Owens, B, --
Heredia, B-/B, -
Locke, B-, -
Moreno, B-, -
ZVR, B-, --
JWilson, B-, =-
Marte, B-/C+, ++
Morris, C+, =-
Cain, C+, +
Holt, C+, =+
Kingham, C+, +
Watson, C+, =
Chambers, C, =+
Dodson, C, +
Hernandez, C, +
Rojas, C, =-
D'Arnaud, C, =
Alderson, +
Avila ?
N Baker ?
Bishop --
Black ?
Cayonez --
Cunningham ++
Curry ++
Friday --
Grossman ++
Harrison +
Irwin +
Lambo --
McFEAR ++
Mercer =+
Miller --
Moskos =+
Presley ++
Stevenson ?

Adding them all up I got:

21.5 minuses
20.5 plusses

So on the whole, the system stayed constant, nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. Obviously, our top-10 prospects were generally disastrous this season but some of the lower ranked guys stepped up big and established themselves. This doesn't factor in newcomers like Cole or guys who are having encouraging debuts in the GCL like Hansen and Osuna, either. If we manage to sign Bell our system could look pretty good.  My rough guess at the list/grades is after the jump

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The whole argument against the increased use of technology in baseball officiating is completely absurd.  It generally consists of two “points”.  First, blown calls are “part of the game”.  Second, the game is already too long. 

The first point clearly has no validity at all:  there was a time when gangrene infections, surgery without anesthetic and water-borne illnesses like cholera were “just a part of life”.  So, when scientists/engineers/doctors figured out ways of eliminating those problems, was humanity supposed to ignore their solutions because these aforementioned problems were “just a part of life”?  Of course not!  The same is true here.  Yes, umpire mistakes are a part of the game, but they are a bad part of the game, a problem with the game.  If the technology exists to mitigate this problem, then it should be used, plain and simple unless it negatively impacts the game in some other way.

Would increased use of technology negatively impact the game somehow?  The most prevalent argument is that it would slow the game down.  Is that even true?  Balls/strikes could be called electronically at the same speed with which an umpire does so.  The technology is already used in tennis; it could easily be adapted to baseball.  How about reviews of calls in the field (safe or out)?  Assuming that we can’t automate that (and we may well be able to – but let’s leave that aside), we are left with review/replay.  People point to the NFL (and its archaic replay system) as evidence that review, by necessity, causes large delays in the pace of a sporting event.  However, I believe that the majority of the delay time comes from the inefficient manner in which replays are performed in the NFL.  First, the head coach has to wait for a replay to be shown on the scoreboard (or broadcast) in order to decide if he should challenge the call, then officials waddle off the field in order to look at monitors, put on a headset, look at a bunch of different angles in slow motion and then waddle back onto the field to announce their decision.  Much easier would be to have one umpire in the press box watching the game on HD TVs with all the different angles right in front of him and have that review ump decide what gets reviewed and handle it all himself.  This is what they do in a number of NCAA football conferences and it is far less disruptive than reviews in the NFL.  There is already a sizable pause between pitches in MLB, during which time decisions could be made about what to replay – and the revision decision itself could be made during that pause in many cases.  I can’t imagine this adding more than 5 minutes to the average game.  3 hours versus 3 hours and 5 minutes is probably not even a detectable pace difference.

For me the conclusion is inescapable, and I have been a proponent of this for over a decade, technology should be used.  Umpire mistakes make the game worse and MLB should be doing everything in its power to give us, the fans, the best possible product.  The arguments against increased use of technology don’t hold much water in my opinion.

I'm sure this post will get ridiculed but here goes:  I don't think this was a moral victory at all.  Since when is losing a game that we should have won by 15-20 a moral victory?  That's right, I know Wiscy is #14 in the nation and whatnot, but we should have killed them tonight with the way they played.  At halftime, we were up 23-18.  We gave up 10 offensive boards in the first half and I counted 3 missed dunks by us.  Most of the offensive boards were on plays where we didn't box out one (or more) of their players and missed dunks are inexcusable, just LAY IT IN!!!!  That halftime score should have been more like 30-10 or 30-15 and then we cruise.  Both teams played better in the second half and they came back to beat us because we didn't completely bury them when we had the chance in the first.  One other thing, why don't we go to Basabe more often on offense?  I thought there were way too many forced, difficult shots by Cartwright and especially Gatens when Basabe was owning people constantly.  Any time Basabe is being guarded by a 6'6 ginger he needs to get the ball.

Basabe was a huge bright spot for me.  He scored over Leuer and Nankivil and swatted those guys too.  I don't know how responsible he was for the defensive rebounding disaster, so maybe that mitigates his positives a bit.  Marble was very good tonight too.  Based on the last three games (the only ones I've been able to see this season), I think this team has the physical tools to be a 0.500 team in the Big Ten, but they make too many mistakes.  Wisconsin didn't have anything on us in terms of raw athleticism. 

has supposedly asked for and been granted a release from his scholarship.  This rumor has been all over hawkeyereport and even the mods there think it's probably true.  I believe it.  This means he will be able to start trying to find a transfer destination immediately.  This doesn't come as much of a surprise to me and it opens up another scholly for next season, that we will hopefully spend on a backup PG.  This could be a mutually beneficial separation.  Best of luck wherever you end up Anthony!

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Here is my take on the Iowa Men’s Basketball team right now, based on my personal observations and a bit of statistical research.  I have watched all of the Bowling Green, Texas and Wichita State games and about half of the Virginia Tech game, so my opinions are based on a fairly limited sample size.

In the games that I have watched, we have shown some promise on offense.  We tend to play good offense for significant periods of games, and by this I mean that we have good passing and good patience, which generally leads to good shots.  I know many people complain about all of our 3 point attempts, but during the games that I have seen, many of our 3 attempts have been open shots.  I think, in time, some of those 3s will fall.  Gatens and Tucker were both excellent outside shooters last season and I don’t think it was just a mirage.  We don’t have anybody who is a particularly good driver, but Gatens, Tucker, Payne and May have shown a few flashes of good driving ability.  They obviously lack the athleticism to be great at finishing in traffic, but eventually I think they can be OK at getting into the lane and finishing.  However, their strength will always be 3 point shooting and passing.  Unfortunately, we tend to have about 5-10 minutes per game where we are just God-awful on offense, leading to a 10 or 15-0 run for the other team.  During this time, we tend to take highly contested shots and turn the ball over. 

I don’t know why we only play 30 minutes of good offense per game.  Is it our lack of experience (which can be remedied) or lack of athleticism (which can’t be remedied) or lack of depth (which can be remedied next season)?  I think it’s a combination of all three of these things.  Due to our lack of athleticism, our guys must work harder than their defenders to get to the ball – otherwise, the defenders will win, due to superior athleticism.  Our 10 minutes of crap offense seems to happen when our guys get a little bit lax, either due to fatigue or just not being used to playing at the high D1 level for 40 minutes.  This lackadaisical play is manifested with guys not getting open and lazy passes on the perimeter, both of which lead to turnovers and transition dunks for the other team.  I don’t think that we are THAT lazy, it’s just that given our lack of athleticism, any lack of intensity on our part makes us look like we are in slow motion.  By next season, our improved experience and/or depth will hopefully allow us to play our best on offense for 40 minutes.  If we do put together our best 40 minutes of offense, we will be a very good offensive team because of our shooting.

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I noticed that our ERA at the end of the year was 14th in the national league.  This was surprising because Duke and Ohlendorf both pitched pretty well this year, while Maholm and Morton were both OK (Morton was pretty good, sub-4 ERA when you omit that disastrous 10ER performance at Wrigley). If 4 of our starters were OK, why is our team ERA still ranked 14th in the NL?  I looked at our team pitching statistics after 159 games (so the last couple games are missing).

The first thing that jumped out at me is the number of innings pitched by guys who stink.  When I sort our pitchers according to ERA and break them down into guys with ERAs above 5 and ERAs lower than 5.  I find that guys with high ERAs pitched 421 innings for us this year; 30% of our innings were pitched by guys who stink.  I compared these numbers with teams that have league average pitching staffs (like Colorado) and found that decent pitching staffs tend to have way less than 421 innings pitched by guys who stink - they tend to be around 200.

                                                                                IP             ER          ERA

        Innings by pitchers with ERA over 5:      421          282         6.06017192

        Innings by pitchers with ERA under 5:    977         428         3.942681679

        Totals:                                                           1398        710         4.578019774

The biggest offenders were:

Karstens  105.2 IP,  5.37 ERA

Snell 80.2 IP, 5.36 ERA

Capps 54.1 IP, 5.8 ERA *These were especially costly, Capps cost us several games this season*

Hart 53.1 IP, 6.9 ERA

Vasquez 43.2 IP, 5.98 ERA

The unholy tetrad of Karstens, Snell, Hart and Vasques pitched 280 innings for us last year!

Let's look at the bright side, this means that we will probably be better next year.  For example, I expect Dan McCutchen and Brad Lincoln to collectively eat up most of those 280 innings.  Suppose McCutchen and Lincoln take up all 280 of those innings and have a 4.5 ERA (nothing spectacular, mind you, a very reasonable expectation).  Suppose also, that Capps can get it together and put up a 3.8 ERA (again something he has done before).  If all these highly plausible things happen then our collective staff ERA would be 4.24.  This is also assuming that the collective production for the other members of the staff remains constant.  A 4.24 ERA would be middle of the pack in the NL.  A few other points are worth mentioning:  1.  Morton could very well have a sub-4 ERA next season (if you omit that nightmare at Wrigley, then he had a sub-4 ERA this season).  2.  Lincoln and McCutchen could do better than a 4.5 ERA.  3.  Our defense was dramatically worse after the trades and if we don't do something to improve defensively at 2B then Maholm and Duke may give up a lot more runs next year, due to their tendencies to pitch to contact.  I think our pitching staff can take a big step forward next year but we need to ensure that they have a competent defense working behind them and we may need to sign a reliever or two.  One thing is clear, our collective ERA will improve dramatically if we cut out some of this deadwood (Karstens, Vasquez and Hart) and replace it with guys who are serviceable.  The replacements don't have to be great, just serviceable.  I think McCutchen and Lincoln can be serviceable next year.  What are your thoughts?

Pedro Alvarez has been promoted to Altoona, according to John Perotto.  I don't see any coverage of it yet on the post gazette website, but I am assuming that Perotto has a reputable source.  I must say I am VERY surprised about this promotion.  Pedro has been striking out in 30% of his ABs all season.  His power has improved steadily but a 30% K rate is a major red flag, just look at Jamie Romak's performance this season in AA.  From what I have heard/read, Alvarez has had trouble with breaking stuff in the dirt (my own opinion is that it is probably in 2 strike situations when he is trying to protect the plate and be over-aggressive).  He has also hit straight stuff a long way from what I have read.  He has had a few monster, multi-HR games in the last week but his overall stats for June (or the last week for that matter) aren't that great.  He tends to follow up his monster games with 0-4, 3K performances in which he also commits an error in the field.  Hopefully he will be able to hack it at AA, but I can see this being a total disaster where he hits 0.180 the rest of the way a la Romak.  I just don't think he is ready for AA pitching yet.  I guess we are gonna find out.

When I first read Brooks Pounders profile, what I saw was a tall, somewhat overweight kid who has 4 decent pitches but doesn't really have the velocity that you would expect from someone with that frame.  Something rang familiar about that description and then I realized that it sounds a bit like descriptions of Stephen Strasburg when he was coming out of high school.  Here is one such description that I found on the internet:

So who is this guy and if he is so good why wasn’t he drafted out of high school?  Currently Strasburg is listed at 6′4″ and 220 lbs.  In high school, he was slightly shorter and about 50-60 lbs. heavier. His fastball barely touched 90 mph.  San Diego pitching coach Rusty Filter saw something in him and insisted on having him in camp.  In his freshman season, Filter but Strasburg on a conditioning regimen that included hot yoga and as a result, Strasburg shed 30 lbs.  Not only that, his velocity began to creep up.  By the time he was a sophomore, his fastball was consistently clocked at 97-99 mph with occasional touches of 100 and 101.  Strasburg also possesses a plus-plus-plus slider at 81-84mph.  He has a plus change that he uses infrequently and a plus curve in the 70s.

That description above is from mopupduty.com and they are describing Strasburg.  A high school 6'4'' 270lb pitcher whose fastball is only 90mph sounds an awful lot like Brooks Pounders too doesn't it?  Lets have Pounders do some "hot yoga", whatever that is.  Maybe he'll be hitting 100mph in a couple of years.

There is much debate about (1) whether this deal was a salary dump and part of the 18 year pattern of trading our only good players etc. and (2) whether the guys we got back were good enough to justify trading Nate, what kind of players do they project into etc.  One thing that hasn't been discussed so much is what is the future of our OF?  Morgan has been a very pleasant surprise but despite his decent/good OBP and good defense, he has no power at all.  Because of this, as well as Nate's lack of ideal speed for CF, I had always envisioned Nate sliding over to left field when Cutch came up, with Cutch in center.  Given the dimensions of PNC park, this would be a great defensive alignment, since a tweener CF/corner hybrid is exactly what we need in left at PNC.  Nate would have been a great defensive LF for us, and his bat would have been above average in LF too (though not as good as his bat plays in CF).  This trade leaves our organization with no real power above A+ (w/ exception of the constantly injured Doumit and the oscillatory Adam LaRoche).  Where are we gonna get the power from?  We seem to be stockpiling AAA pitchers with these trades as though we want to be decent again in 2010 or 2011 - we also now have a very good defensive team and a lot of guys who can get on base (Andy LaRoche, McCutchen) but where will the power come from?  Or is the plan to use our speed at the top of the lineup to "manufacture" runs?  If so, that strategy sounds familiar doesn't it?

Do we have the cap room to make a competitive offer for him?  He is only 29 years old.  I know he missed several games last year due to injury.  How serious was the injury?  Will it affect him long term?  Assuming he is healthy, he could give our line a major boost.  We could insert him at RT or LT (and move Starks back to the right side).  Either of those moves would improve our OL immensely.  I have no confidence in Willie Colon whatsoever.

First off, Foote has been a good but not great player on our defense for several years now.  He was a starter on 2 SB winners.  I am sad to see him go, if he is going.  That being said, I don't have a problem with Foote leaving.  Timmons has immense potential and I think he can make our D even better than it was before.  

I do have a problem with us cutting him like this after the draft.  I would have preferred to trade him for draft picks.  This seems like a stupid waste.  Foote, while not a star, could improve most of the defenses in this league.  One would think that we could have traded him for some type of draft pick, instead of just cutting him like this.  And if not a draft pick, then trade him for an OL who can come in here and compete for a job. Seems a waste of resources to just cut Foote like this.  Anybody got some insight here?

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Crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city crap city 

Yesterday was rough.  First Moss got hurt and then Cunningham's knee blew up.  We are totally snakebit as an organization right now.  Oh well, at least we aren't the Cubs and none of our fans have cost us a pennant.

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My friends:  allow me to tell you my pre-game tradition, and how it began.  It was the night before the 2006 AFC championship (against Denver) and I was partying with some friends of mine out here in San Francisco.  Obviously, I was PUMPED about the Steelers.  I was born in 1982, so the Steelers had never won it all during my lifetime and I had experienced numerous heartbreaking losses in AFC championship games.  By 2006 I was pretty damned tired of watching my teams lose championship games. 

So I’m sitting on a couch at this party and some friends of mine started throwing around a little nerf football.  Somebody threw it towards me and when it was in the air I noticed that it was PURPLE AND ORANGE!!!  BRONCOS COLORS!!!  Naturally, I dodged the ball and loudly proclaimed that I didn’t want to touch anything that was Broncos colored.  At this point somebody pointed out to me that my shirt had Broncos colors on it.  I looked down and they were right, my grey shirt had orange and purple letters on it.  Now I can’t emphasize enough how pissed I was about all of our previous playoff defeats.  I let out a howl and ripped my shirt off my chest, incredible hulk style.  I then ripped my shirt into little pieces and burned them in the fireplace of the apartment where we were partying.  The next day, the Steelers dominated Denver, in what was probably the most satisfying football game I have ever watched.  Obviously, this whole episode amused my friends greatly and a couple weeks later on the night before the Superbowl, I was over at the same apartment wearing a blue-green shirt, which I ripped into pieces and burned.  We all know what happened the next day.

I decided that I should only use this ritual to bring good fortune in AFC Championship games or Superbowls, so I didn’t burn any shirts for the next two years.  Until, of course, two weeks ago when I burned a purple shirt the night before the Ravens game. Right now I’m wearing a white, red and black shirt – you know what that means!  So enough about me, what are some of your superstitious rituals?

OK, I'm new here and this is my first FanPost.  I live in California and have only seen 6-8 games this year, but I've read about all of them.  Thus, most of my impressions have been formed from watching a limited subset of our games.  Obviously many people are assuming that this team will get much better in subsequent years with experience, but I wonder about that.  From what I've seen this team lacks the athleticism of their opponents.  I think much of our struggles against pressure are due to our guys being unable to beat their defenders off the dribble and on cuts.  IMO, while it looks like we choke/panic against pressure - the reason why the guy with the ball looks so lost is that he can't dribble past his man and none of his teammates can get open.  If our lack of athleticism is the root cause of our problems, I seriously question the notion that we will improve with experience because IMO quickness is more of a natural talent thing than something that comes with practice/experience.  So with that, I'd love to know if you think I have a point or if I'm full of shit.  Let's address each assumption that I've made one at a time.

1.  Our athleticism is inferior to most of the rest of the B10.

2.  This lack of athleticism is the reason we struggle against pressure D - not just full court, but aggressive half court as well.

3.  Our team quickness will not increase as our team gets older.

OK have at it.  Sorry I don't have any Obamicons to add to my post ;)

Hopefully we will be treated to another day of exciting football.  I have not seen much of several of the playoff teams, especially Miami and Minnesota.  

Baltimore was moving on offense and then fumbled.  Now Miami just picked up a first down.  I wonder how often the announcers will use the phrase "wildcat formation" during this game.  My guess is about five thousand times.  Ooh Miami just made a big play.  1st and goal.  Three good plays by Balt's D and Miami settles for a FG.  Okay hopefully I'm over the word limit now so I can stop rambling.

This link totally cracked me up:

http://www.sportspickle.com/features/volume8/2008-1126-pirates.html

not a bad idea, as a backup plan I think we should try to sign Goro from Mortal Kombat - that would at least cover 4/5 of the starting rotation.  Perhaps religious icons and/or comic book or video game characters could be a real gold mine for us.  While we are at it we could sign Saul or Ward from New York in the original NES Little League Baseball game. :)

Do we have the money to sign Brandon Jacobs?  I don't know how many guys we need to resign in the offseason.  However, imagine what we would be like if we had a power running game?  We have a phenomenal defense, a good QB.  If we had a power running game I think we would be the best team in the NFL - we might be anyways, let's face it, if we hadn't negated a TD with a holding penalty and our long snapper hadn't been injured we may well have beat the Giants.  I think we are very close to being a great team - could Brandon Jacobs be our missing piece?

I don't have a tape of the game and I'm sure many of you do.  They hardly showed any replays of the first interception at all, so I don't know if my analysis is correct.  We like to line up in a bunch formation on one side with Holmes isolated on the other side and have him run either out or post routes.  From what I saw of Holmes' route it looked like he was trying to fake the DB into thinking he was running a post and then get behind him for a big play.  It looked to me like Ben didn't set his feet and square up to make the throw and as a result badly underthrew an open Santonio Holmes.  This interception was a terrible decision by Ben.  He has a nasty habit of throwing w/o setting his feet.

On the second interception I believe Indy blitzed and Holmes was the hot read.  Ben threw the ball ahead of Holmes but Holmes stopped and the ball got picked off.  I don't know whether Holmes was supposed to keep running or not (often times the receiver is supposed to find an open spot and then stay there).  I also don't know whether that pass would have been complete if Holmes had kept running, the DB was in pretty good position to at least break it up.  I don't think we had any other open guys though because I think Moore stayed in to pick up the blitz.  I think Ben made the correct decision to throw to Holmes there, just with terrible results - then again I don't have the tape, so if someone else was open on that play let me know.

Overall, our passing offense made progress today.  Ben was generally throwing the ball to open guys (30/42 for 280 yards).   The second interception might not have even been his fault.  I think that possibly due to missed practice there was miscommunication between Ben and his receivers - there was a 3rd down play in the first half where Ben thought Ward was running an in route or a post and Ward ran deep instead - the result was a FG instead of a first down and possible TD.

You know what they say in sports, "you're never as good as your best statistical performances make you look and you're never as bad as your worst statistical performances make you look."  In his last 10 quarters, Ben has 8 interceptions - only 2 of which were clearly the result of bad decision making on his part.  2 were on Hail Mary passes, 1 was on 4th down, 2 were on batted balls and 1* was because Holmes stopped running.  The other 2 were definitely due to stupid decisions by Ben.  I noted the last one with an asterisk because Holmes may have been supposed to stop running.

Anyways, let me know what you think.

I like having the combination of him and Foote on our team.  I think their abilities complement each other nicely.  In particular, Timmons is great in passing situations - he is good at blitzing and good in coverage, basically a sack/turnover machine.  However, from my vantage point he needs a LOT of work on run defense.  He got plowed into the end zone by McClain a couple weeks ago, and today he failed to tackle Benson a couple times.  I'm very worried about his ability to tackle Brandon Jacobs.  Fortunately, we have Foote, who doesn't get run over very often.  From here on out, I expect to see Foote in for running situations and Timmons in for passing situations and I think that will be just fine for us.

I heard John Clayton on ESPN yesterday say that Polamalu was wrong and that the NFL is genuinely concerned about the safety of its players.  I say, that is a half-truth, they want increased player safety in so far as it increases TV viewership, ticket sales and product endorsements.  if they are so concerned about player safety then why are they talking about EXTENDING an already grueling 16 game season?  It is a well-known fact that former NFL players have a dramatically shorter lifespan than the average American.  Yet, they are talking about extending the season and increasing the amount of physical punishment the players have to endure.  Oh well, I guess it's just big, ugly linemen that are going to be receiving most of the beating and when was the last time you saw one of those guys in a commercial?

I don't really care for the BoSox anymore, I was rooting for them over NY in 2004, but their fans also root for the Patriots so. . . yeah.  However, I like Jason Bay - he was good for us his entire career (minus 2nd half of 2007).  Thus, I think I shall root for Bay and his  team in the post-season.  But enough about me, what do you think?  Who are you rooting for this post-season?

We already will have 2 very early 2nd round picks and it is looking more and more like we will have 2 very early first round picks as well (possibly 2x top 5).  I have heard that this year's draft class is better than last, particularly w/respect to pitching.  Last time I checked, our org. needed more pitching (understatement).  Who are considered the top prospects in the 2009 draft?  This Alvarez thing sucks, but if we can get two stud pitchers out of it then I won't be so bummed.  Thoughts?

I am very interested in the Pirates new player development strategies.  It is definitely a great idea to have system-wide level concepts and consistent instruction as players move up the system.  For example, a pitcher should not be told to change his arm angle every other season.  One concern that I have about this is exactly how much leeway individual coaches are given to come up with and implement their own ideas and generally use their own initiative.  I feel that anytime you have a large centrally-run system where everyone follows the prescribed "rule book", you potentially lose a major edge - namely the creative brilliance of your employees, in this case the creative brilliance of our coaches.  Obviously, this probably doesn't apply to our existing player development personnel.  However, I think it's one reason why Jewett isn't coming back, basically his unwillingness to become an automaton.  Such a centralized, we have established protocols for everything from batting stance to how many sunflower seeds a player can eat in a game, system is a good idea when your coaches are completely incompetent, as many of ours likely are.  However, I feel like the ideal scenario is one in which we hire excellent coaches, instruct the coaches on how we want to do things, and let them use their creativity and initiative to help us attain excellence in player development.  Anybody got thoughts on this, in particular, how do good developmental
systems operate?

This is a pretty naive question, but it confuses me.  When a team makes a trade for a player to be named later, does the team have any idea who that player will actually be? I assume that they don't know exactly who they are getting, otherwise they would just announce it, right?  Do they basically have a list of guys to choose from and they check out all of those guys and decide which one is best?  If anybody can break this down for me I would be grateful.