SB Nation User Blog: johnnycuff

via mondesishouse.com, this just in: Andrew McCutchen is fast. Like, Deion Sanders fast.

johnnycuff — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:13:32 -0000

via mondesishouse.com, this just in: Andrew McCutchen is fast. Like, Deion Sanders fast.

The Drama Llama Comes to PNC Park

johnnycuff — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:15:15 -0000

Now we see what 16 consecutive losing seasons can do to a fan base. In a city where half the population would consider letting the waters of the confluence consume them if the Steelers finished the season 8-8 or 9-7 ... in a city where they expect a hockey team led by a 21- and 22-year-old to win the Stanley Cup ... when it comes to baseball, all many fans dream of is mediocrity.

Arrrgh! you ready for some Pirate facts?

Jeez, this saga has enough drama to draw attention from the "Worldwide Leader in Sports (Soap Operas)." Must be hard to file baseball stories without "Manny Being Manny" again until July. Seriously though, Gallo is an excellent and hilarious writer (you may have also heard of his solo project, the Sports Pickle). It's a very well thought out and written article.

When Nady was dealt last year, the Pirates were 48-55. When Bay left, they were 50-58. When McLouth was traded on Wednesday, they were 24-28. The Pirates aren't exactly breaking up the '27 Yankees. The '67 Yankees, maybe.

In the Nady trade, the Pirates got 40 percent of their current starting rotation and a possible future star in Jose Tabata. (Yes, he has a 43-year-old wife who is an alleged baby-stealer. These are still the Pirates.) That trade was a clear win for Pittsburgh.

In the Bay trade, the Pirates got their current starting third baseman and several other prospects with high ceilings. That trade was a win for both sides.

In the McLouth trade, they got three highly regarded minor leaguers and cleared the way for potential superstar center fielder Andrew McCutchen, who went 2-for-4 with 3 runs, an RBI, a walk and a stolen base Thursday in his major league debut.

Lots of good stuff in there.

As an aside, Gallo seems to be the one guy at ESPN aware of any baseball teams outside of the NL and AL East divisions. Gallo and Peter Gammons are the only people I'm remotely interested in at ESPN, and Gammons gets by on his legacy at this point. I did enjoy Nate Silver's informative, if awkward appearance but I'm about one fake Steve Phillips press conference from swearing off Baseball Tonight for life.

one player? there aren't even two.

johnnycuff — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:12:55 -0000

This was originally going to be a reply to zogger's post but it got way out of hand so I made it a diary... err fanpost. I don't mean to pick on his premise because I know he means one player in terms of making us a better team, not necessarily a good team. It just raised a related point to me as I was writing it. Plus it's fun to argue about these things.

A whole team's problems will never be solved by the acquisition of a single player - especially this team. This is not a slow start to the season. This is how the 2008 Pittsburgh Pirates are going to play. I mean all of it, sweeping the Reds and being swept the Cubs alike. We're 9-13, on pace to win (surprise!) 66 games and we're actually overperforming our Pythagorean W/L by a game. We're just not a good baseball team.

The original question was to name one player, reality aside, that you as fictional GM would acquire to make the Pirates a better team. This is a fun question because the huge number of currently and/or permanently below average players on our team allows you to argue for improvement from just about any position on the roster.

However, being a relentless homer, I'll even spot us another player. Let's pick two, and why not the best two that I can come up with. The Pirates could acquire Johan Santana and Alex Rodriguez for zero dollars and zero prospects and we'd still have trouble winning our division.

Start with our starting pitching, which, last I checked is the worst in the league. Santana can only pitch every 5 days, so we still have to use 4 of our other starters. Let's say he replaces Matt Morris in the rotation. Easy choice. I'm going to guess and say Morris and/or his eventual replacement (JVB?) in the #5 spot on this team will win 7 games this year. Santana won between 15-20 games with a similarly anemic offense in Minnesota over the last 4 years so we'll split the difference and and give him 17. I won't even account for the differences between the Pirates bullpen and the Twins bullpens of the past, which would historically favor the Juan Rincon-Pat Neshek-Joe Nathan backend which, since this is a completely unscientific argument, we'll use to discount the AL-to-NL league switch. So that's an extra 10 wins. Since the Pirates are a virtually unchanged 68 win team, then great, we're at 78 wins. Almost to .500!

Now for Mr. Rodriguez. Jack Wilson will eventually be back at shortstop, so let's play A-Rod at third base and bat him in the cleanup spot. Since he's not a Yankee anymore, he won't see nearly as many opportunities with runners on base. Ryan Doumit is currently in the cleanup spot, hitting .344, slugging .574 and he has 8 RBIs. 8! Granted he hasn't hit there all year but he has the same amount as Cristian Guzman and Jason Kendall, neither of whom will ever sniff the middle of a lineup again. In addition, new third baseman A-Rod is going to get walked a ton. I'm talking like more than the 135 times Brian Giles did in 2002. I'm talking Barry Bonds in those terrible Giants lineups walk numbers. Still, A-Rod can fall out of bed with a sprained ankle and a tequila hangover and drive in 100 runs - even in our lineup - so let's give him that. Also due to his absurd OBP, we'd score more runs because presumably the hitters behind him will eventually start hitting and drive in some more runs. (I'm looking at you Adam "454 OPS" Laroche) So what are A-Rod's extra runs worth, another 10 wins? Let's say 15. Spectacular, we're at 93 wins! The Pirates with 93 wins? Can you imagine?

Small problem. The Cubbies are 15-7, on pace to win 110 games. Their Pythagorean puts them at 14-8, on pace for 103 wins, so their record isn't a mere illusion.

It's not just Carlos Zambrano, Alfonso Soriano (who actually can claim no responsibility for their hot start) and Derek Lee that make the Cubs great, just like it wouldn't be Johan Santana, A-Rod and ... umm... Nate McLouth? that would make these pretend Pirates great. It's Carlos Zambrano, Alfonso Soriano, Derek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Geovanny Soto, Rich Hill, Mark Derosa, Kerry Wood, Ryan Theriot, Kosuke Fukudome, Ted Lilly, Bobby Howry, Reed Johnson, and Carlos Marmol that make them great. They're not all superstars (and some by far not) but they're above average and as a whole superior to any combination of players (including our imaginary new acquisitions) we could send out. Look at their reserves. Jon Lieber is a swing man. Felix Pie is a 23 year-old potential superstar and he's having trouble cracking the lineup. Phil Dumatrait? Nyjer Morgan?

This is my point, though it took a long time to get here, that there's no quick fix to turn the Pirates into a winning team and it has nothing to do with Alex Rodriguez and Johan Santana. My conclusion that two players (one of whom would maybe appear in 35 games) would give us an additional 25 wins is absurd. The real point is that this team as it is cannot and will not compete because it has more holes than a Barry Bonds alibi. There's a fire sale coming this summer in Pittsburgh and we can only hope that Neal Huntington is a smart dealer.

So Far

johnnycuff — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:07:45 -0000

I'm impressed so far with the Pirates' ability to hang in there so far, but I still don't see them being a .500 team. Here's why, and feel free to disagree:

-P- The bullpen will not continue to pitch at this level. There just isn't that much talent there. While it's nice we appear to have fleeced the Braves for once -- IMO, Neal Huntington hasn't gotten enough widespread praise for this move yet, because nobody out-talent-evaluates the Braves -- there's just not enough depth (with Evan Meek and Phil Dumatrait at the back of the pen) when someone slumps or gets hurt. Really, there's not enough depth anywhere on this team.

Players are overachieving and will return to normal. Xavier Nady's fast start will end. It always does. Nate McLouth can't hit this well forever, though I'll be rooting against this prediction. He can go a lot of ways from here - he could be this year's Freddy-Sanchez-out-of-nowhere breakout and hit .340 with 50 doubles, or pitchers could figure him out and he ends up hitting .260 with 15 hrs, which certainly isn't bad for a CF, but our expectations are sky high for him. Jason Bay's hitting is very encouraging, particularly his k/bb of 10/11, but it's too early to say he's back Through six games he was hitting .182/.357/.227, though in the last five games he's pulled his average up 100 points and three homers have remedied his Abe-Nunez-like slugging percentage. Still, it's too small of a sample size to say he'll continue to hit this well all year. I love seeing Zach Duke pitching the way he is - man, did he look good blowing a fastball by Derrek Lee in his last start - but there's no way he's this good. His ERA is 2.13 but his WHIP is 1.58. He's given up 18 hits in 12 innings. His ERA will at least double by the end of this month.

Lingering injuries. There's no way Tom Gorzelanny doesn't end up on the DL in the next few months. Then who starts? Dumatrait? JVB? Bullington? Freddy's shoulder isn't going anywhere. I was at that 15 inning marathon against the Cubbies and every throw he made to first, including double play turns, was a rainbow. There's no way he avoids the DL for an extended period of time. at least Chris Gomez can cover second adequately and his hitting has been better than expected. Jack Wilson hasn't even been cleared for a rehab outing yet and will do another turn on the 15 day DL. The Rivas/Bambi platoon continues at SS for another two weeks, and it's going to get really ugly. They both look like amateurs both in the field and at the plate. Who, between Nady and Ryan Doumit, will tweak a hamstring first? My money is on Doumit. Again, just not enough depth, particularly in the middle infield, and any injury to an outfielder not named Nady will result in Nyjer Morgan having a starting role.

Who's going to step up to keep this pace when others slump? who's underperforming? Adam LaRoche? Jose Bautista? Does anyone expect them to carry the team and keep us out of the annual late May / early June season-killing slump?

Matt Morris gets to start every five days. I want to believe that this is a competitive major league team (really I do!) but I think this is as good as this team gets right now, so let's enjoy our bout with relevance while we can. First pitch is at 10:05 tonight.

BP Top 100 Prospects

johnnycuff — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:15:29 -0000

Kevin Goldstein put out his top 100 prospect list over at BP today. As expected, your Pittsburgh Pirates put up their characteristic ho-hum showing with three appearances - Andrew McCutchen at 24th, Neil Walker barely cracking the list at 94th and a surprise appearance by Steve Pearce at 43rd.

McCutchen's ranking no doubt was hurt by his poor showing at AA and his position fell from last year's ranking of 15th. That's still enough to make it as a 5-star prospect on Goldstein's list but as even he admits, the talent level of prospects is down this year. Personally I think he should start back in AA and hopefully move up to Indy quickly, but management may disagree and start him in AAA.

We all know what Pearce did last year and KG's also noticed, putting him in the company of players such as Josh Vitters, Jose Tabata and Fernando Martinez. Pearce wasn't even on KG's radar last year. We've already heard (and judged the hell out of) management's plan for him this year.

Walker makes the list this year after being on the fringes last year. This may not indicate that he's taken a step forward as much as the talent level has stepped back. Goldstein even admits there's a handful of 3-star talent at the tail end of the list, which I suspect includes our third baseman of the future. My guess is he, like the rest of this trio, will take the field for Indy when the season starts.

Other notable Pirate-centric rankings have former-bucco Brent Lillibridge at 63, almost-bucco Jair Jurrjens at 86 and should've-been-a-bucco Matt Wieters at 12th. If you weren't mad about passing on Wieters before, you should be now.

Cincinnati's Jay Bruce is #1.

Pearce to Start Season in AAA

johnnycuff — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:21:15 -0000

From the mothership:

"In a perfect world, Steve deserves a chance to win an everyday job at the Major League level, but with Xavier, with Jason, with Adam [LaRoche], we're not in a position to give that to him," Huntington said. "He's not going to want to hear this, but a young player needs to continue to play, and as a result, Steve will probably end up back in [Triple-A] Indianapolis where he can play every day and develop."

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it shows that the bucs probably aren't going to move Nady before the season starts and commit to a rebuilding project, which has been discussed at length and with much grinding of teeth in threads outside this one.

On the other, Pearce is obviously no sure thing and since the team seems committed to this "what the hell, let's see what happens and maybe we get 83 wins" plan for now Pearce would do nothing but rot on the bench for at least the first half of the season, much like McLouth last year. No question that this would be a bad thing for his development. I'd rather see him getting regular at bats in AAA than spotty ones on the ML roster.

Ideally I'd like to see them move Nady for whatever low-level prospect they can get and let Pearce split time with Doumit in right and occasionally spell Laroche at first.