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OF Andrew McCutchen WTM MILB

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RP Jeff Sues WTM MILB

RP Michael Dubee MILB WTM

Virgil Vasquez, Eric Hacker, Steve Lerud Booted From 40-man

by Charlie on Nov 6, 2009 5:21 PM EST Comment 2 comments

Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Virgil Vasquez delivers against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the second inning of a baseball game Sunday, July 26, 2009, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)

More photos » by Matt York - AP

3 months ago: Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Virgil Vasquez delivers against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the second inning of a baseball game Sunday, July 26, 2009, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Matt York)

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These are all fairly logical choices with Evan Meek and Jose Ascanio still on the 60-day DL and several prospects still waiting to be added before the Rule 5 draft, as well.

At 27, Virgil Vasquez is little more than a vaguely convenient guy to have on your AAA roster--homers ate him alive in his 14 appearances with the Pirates this year, just like they did in his major league debut in 2007. There's no real reason to think that will change.

I liked Hacker a little when the Bucs acquired him from the Yankees for Romulo Sanchez, but he didn't do much with the Pirates to justify my continued interest. His line at Indianapolis (132.3 IP, 4.49 ERA, 94 K, 50 BB) was boring enough to place him squarely in that group of pitchers in their mid-20s who are nice to have, but only because they can start. He's another Vasquez, in other words.

As for Steven Lerud, the reason he was on the 40-man in the first place was not really because of his performance, but because catchers, and especially left-handed catchers with power potential, were in high demand. This season he made strides in controlling the strike zone, but the power mostly disappeared, and he continued to struggle hitting for average. He now has a career minor league average of .228, which means that unless he improves that and fast, he'd struggle to crack .200 in the majors. If he doesn't wind up in an another organization next year, he'll probably be back at Altoona for a third season.

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Kevin Polcovich honored

The former Pirates shortstop is being inducted into his high school's Hall of Fame.

about 17 hours ago Vlad 2 comments 0 recs

Pirates Deal Chavez for Iwamura

by Sam on Nov 4, 2009 12:51 AM EST Comment 90 comments

More photos » by Gail Burton - AP

FILE - Tampa Bay Rays' Akinori Iwamura throws out Baltimore Orioles' Brian Roberts (not shown) during the first inning of a baseball game in Baltimore on May 13, 2009.

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The Post Gazette reports that Pittsburgh acquired 30-year-old IF Akinori Iwamura in exchange for RHP Jesse Chavez..

Iwamura is coming off a season in which he posted a .745 OPS before tearing his ACL. Chavez, 26, was one of the lone bright spots in the Pirate bullpen last year.

More from Charlie once he has better access to the internet.

UPDATE by Charlie: Iwamura seems like a perfectly reasonable answer at second base, but to give up a guy who was one of the team's only semi-reliable relievers and would have been under team control for several more years strikes me as a bit strange. Iwamura basically is Andy LaRoche but without the upside, and Pedro Alvarez will presumably be ready to play in early 2011 if not sometime in 2010, so this seems like a move aimed squarely at this year. Which seems like something everybody loves, but of course it doesn't make any sense at all for the Pirates to play for this year, since they just finished cleaning house a few months ago.

This isn't a huge deal, though, and Neal Huntington's stated explanation--basically, that relievers are fungible because their performance varies a lot--makes sense, to a degree. The odds are against Chavez developing into a consistently excellent reliever, especially since he wasn't all that impressive last year, even for a Pirate. I'd generally rather the Pirates didn't send off decent players with years of team control remaining, but I think I can live with it this time--second base was a big hole.

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On the DL

by Charlie on Nov 3, 2009 2:51 PM EST Comment 31 comments

I think I might have swine flu. In any case, I've been as sick as I've been in about a decade. Give me a couple days to get back on track. My apologies for the lack of updates.

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Shortstop – Jack Wilson, Pittsburgh and Seattle
Wilson won’t win a Gold Glove this year. Just like Mark Teixeira didn’t win one last year. He split time between leagues, and the Gold Glove voters don’t know which league to put him in. Not so with The Fielding Bible Awards. Jack Wilson was the best shortstop in baseball last year. Period. We don’t care which league he played in. He led all shortstops in Run Saved by a wide margin (27 runs saved to Brendan Ryan’s 19) and has taken over the MLB lead for most Runs Saved over the last three years (51). Mr. Wilson is the Fielding Bible Award winner at shortstop for 2009.

The Fielding Bible - 2009 Awards

4 days ago Vlad 14 comments 0 recs

Pirates Can't Learn Much From Phillies

by Charlie on Nov 1, 2009 5:05 PM EST Comment 60 comments

More photos » by Ross D. Franklin - AP

Philadelphia Phillies' Cole Hamels throws against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

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John Mehno has the right idea in this Beaver County Times column about the differences between the Pirates and Phillies--it's not primarily about spending, it's about building by acquiring amateur talent. But while the technique of comparing some great Phillies draft picks (Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and so on) to picks the Pirates botched at similar points in their drafts is effective for an article written with a word count for a general audience, it doesn't quite tell the whole story.

The Phillies' case is really weird. If you look at their drafts under previous GM Ed Wade (that's basically the time frame described in the Beaver County article), it's very surprising they've been so successful. Working backwards, the best player they got in 2005 was current Athletics reliever Josh Outman; they also got current Reds reliever Matt Maloney. That was it. In 2004 they got J.A. Happ in the third round, Jason Jaramillo in the second, and Lou Marson in the fourth, but they also took Greg Golson as a dubious tools pick in the first round and got nothing in the later rounds. In 2003 they had no first- or second-round pick; they got Michael Bourn and Kyle Kendrick, and that was it.

In 2002 the Phils took Cole Hamels in the first round, which was obviously a great pick, but they got absolutely nothing else. In 2001, it was Gavin Floyd in the first round and Howard in the fifth, and absolutely nothing else. In 2000, they got Utley, Taylor Buchholz and nothing else. In 1999, it was Brett Myers, Marlon Byrd and nothing else. (They also drafted Joe Saunders, but didn't sign him.)

Now, maybe this doesn't sound too noteworthy to some of you. Maybe you think that if you get one good player out of a draft, that's great, and to a certain extent that's true. In this case, the results speak for themselves. But what's odd to me about the Phillies' drafts under Wade is how incredibly thin they were. Wade seemed to get a star player and almost nothing else every year for several seasons in a row. That's strange.

Continue reading this post »

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Trent Jewett Returns to International League

Longtime Pirates AAA manager Trent Jewett has been promoted from Class A+ Potomac to the Nats' AAA affiliate in Syracuse, so he'll be managing against Indianapolis next year.

6 days ago Charlie 0 comments 0 recs

Pirates Claim Justin Thomas From Mariners

by Charlie on Oct 30, 2009 8:19 PM EDT Comment 29 comments

Like Vlad in the comments to a fanshot on this subject (and thanks for taking care of that for me; it's been a busy workday), I wonder how long newly acquired lefty reliever Justin Thomas will still be on the 40-man roster. The Pirates claimed him off waivers from the Mariners, and while he's a fairly interesting player, he might not need to be on any team's 40-man right now.

Thomas was drafted in 2005, but he was already 21 when drafted, so he was a bit old for most of his levels. Still, he zipped through the low minors with very good strikeout rates. Unfortunately, he doesn't have blazing stuff--he relies very heavily on his slider and on changing speeds with his fastball, which leads me to guess that his solid numbers at the low levels had more to do with maturity and with low-minors hitters' general inability to hit breaking balls than with talent.

Thomas took a long time to adjust to AA--his entire 2007 season there was awful--and he had a terrible season at Class AAA Tacoma in 2009, walking 40 batters in 60 innings in his first full season as a reliever. Maybe the Pirates' scouts see something here they like, and since Thomas throws tons of breaking balls he might someday be an adequate LOOGY (lefty one-out guy) in the bigs. But that seems unlikely without more time in the minors to work things out, and "adequate LOOGY" isn't the sort of upside one wants from a guy who's taking up a spot on the 40-man without contributing immediately. So Vlad might be right that at some point this winter, the Bucs will quietly try to send Thomas to the minors and hope no one claims him. He'd be a nice player to have at Indianapolis--they need lefties right now.

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A little unrelated administrative note: I'd really, really appreciate it if people would stop using "PBC Blog" as a slur. I'm certainly not going to ban or officially warn anyone for that alone, but it's happened enough here that it's 1) a cliche and 2) it seems very strange to attack posters for having knee-jerk opinions by knee-jerkingly telling them to go to the PBC Blog. There are better ways to disagree, including either ignoring the post that bothers you or substantively responding to it.

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