they haven’t performed to your satisfaction, you’re going to do … what?

Are you going to apply for the job of GREAT TALENT EVALUATOR next year?

We all await your decision with breathless anticipation.

Personally, I think Coonelly and Huntington need 3-4 more years to clean up the mess left behind by their predecessors, and to show whether or not they have traded for and drafted and developed the right players.

But I guess you only want to give them 2 seasons. I’m sure they are really worried about job security now that they know you’ve got them on a short leash.

The PBC is going to lose for at least a couple more years before we will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel and have a winning season, and this is being highly optimistic, to be honest.

The most important thing right now is laying the foundation for a sustained run of success in the next decade.

I don’t agree with your time frame but that’s neither here nor there. I’m just a little concerned about one thing.

Has NH (and the current PBC regime in general) done anything to warrant this suspicion/worry?

He seems to have made good decisions for the most part so far:
-The Bay and Nady trades seem fine by me. Andy LaRoche has not performed well but that doesn’t make the trade any worse.
-Money has been invested in developing Latin American talent
-A great deal of money was spent in the draft and by all accounts the Pirates took the best player available when they picked.

NH might end up being a bad evaluator of talent but as I see it he has not done anything yet to earn this reputation.

If Andy LaRoche has not performed well, how has that NOT make the trade any worse. The trade was made to install LaRoche as our evryday third baseman for the balance of the 2008 season AND the forseeable future.

He performed miserably and really showed very little to provide even a glimmer of hope for the future.

Investing money in a Latin America facility was something that even Nutting realized was a necessity. I’m sure that everyone has told him that. It didn’t take the urgin of Team Coonington.

Spending more money on payroll or, for that matter, the draft does not guarantee anything. Seattle had a $100 million+ payroll last year and lost 100 games.

A great deal of money has been wasted on draft choices. But we’ll know more about our 2008 draft by 2010 or 2011.

Major changes need to be made in the front office, player development and scouting. The Pirates are only going to improve significantly by better scouting and player development, and this all starts with evaluation There is a great deal of talk about a new “culture” and accountability; but as far I have seen and am concerned, that’s all it has been - a lot of talk.

Alright so my response:

1) Andy LaRoche- Well the way I see the Andy LaRoche pickup was that he supposed to fill in at 3B in 2008 and perform at least a Jose Bautista level, which he admittedly did not. However he was coming off of injury (throwing hand I believe) and was playing more games in the big leagues than he ever had before (76 to 35). In addition he has been a highly touted prospect and put up excellent minor league numbers. Maybe he will turn out to be a bust if so the trade will look a lot worse. For someone with his pedigree, it seems logical to give it more time to decide whether he has been a total bust. In full disclosure I am not an excellent baseball talent evaluator, just a humble fan so I am taking the word of others when I say that he has some great potential.

2) Latin America- From the PG articles it did appear that Nutting understood the importance of Latin America (traveling down to the DR with Littlefield, etc.) and perhaps he should be given more credit than NH/FC but still it is a step for the PBC in the right direction.

3) True that more payroll doesn’t necessarily equal success (marginal payroll/win chart from Beyond the Box Score: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/12/18/692197/marginal-payroll). But signing the best players available in the draft for the money they required shows that the PBC will not draft players like Moskos just to save money and it shows that the Pirates will put money into the signing of young players to improve the farm system.

4) You admit that we will know more about the 2008 draft in 2010 or 2011 which I wholeheartedly agree with so why do NH/FC need to be fired at the end of next year since most of the players on the team (or even in the organization) aren’t players that have been acquired by them (this might change with trades over the next months)?

5) As I asked earlier what actions of NH have indicated to you that he is a bad evaluator of talent? We really cannot say anything about scouting or player development yet as those things take years which is why I do not understand your short timeline.

“I think it’s just fine that Coonelly isn’t a talent evaluator. A team president isn’t supposed to be evaluating talent. He’s much more concerned with the financial aspects of the operation – and that is, at least in theory, right in Coonelly’s wheelhouse.”

Spot on, Vlad, and should be required reading for the confused Gunner.

Gunner wrote:

“I would imagine that the final decision in player evaluation rests primarily with Coonelly….”

You obviously don’t understand the roles that Coonelly and Huntington play in the organization.

“But I will wait until mid-August 2009 to make a final decision.”

I guess PBC fans need you in charge by then, gunner, in order to decide who to call up in September. I’m sure there will be a marked increase in attendance at PNC Park once Gunner the GREAT TALENT EVALUATOR, is calling the shots on everything, and not those amateurs Coonelly and Huntington.

Huntington can make no decisions without the approval of Cooneely or Nutting.

Doumit’s being injury-prone is the least of my worries.

The fact that he is a MAJOR liability behind the plate is my chief concern, plus the fact that he has no other position where he can be “hidden”.

Doumit is a plus major league hitter who should be a DH in the AL and catch a game or two as week to rest the other catcher as needed (unless they have a good defensive backup catcher)

The Pirates will NEVER win even 61 games as long as Doumit is their #1 catcher.

You have every right to be bitter. We have been fed s**t by Bonifay and Littlefield. We have been “rebuilt” more times than I can remember – all while being mired in 15….err I mean inevitable 16 year losing streak. How can we have trust in anything the Pirates say and/or hire?

As diehard fans who live and die with every pitch and every losing season, we have no recourse other than to keep following our team. IMHO, it looks as if the Pirates are moving in better direction than we did in the McClatchy years. Coonley is a respected member of the MLB brass who decided to take a challenge head on of taking a small market team and bringing them to relevance. Huntington is in the mold of the young GMs who are incredible numbers crunchers. He comes from a team that knows a few things about acquiring/growing their own talent (Manny Ramierez, Jim Thome, Grady Siezmore, CC Sabathia – just to name a few). Granted Huntington was not involved with some of those guys, be he came from that culture.

The reason for all of your skepticism though is that the organization was in such bad shape infrastructure moves had to be taken before we could even address what was on the field. Some of this is rehash but we had to focus on taking the best players available on draft day and address our Latin American organization. What little talent we had on the field, we had to sacrafice for some players who may have potential at the MLB level and those with high upside (for which we were woefully short of in the minor league level). To say we dont have talent evaluators is false because our talent sucked at the minor league level (as determined by Huntington – and to which the majority of posters on this board would agree) and we had to basically blow it up and start over. We can sit here and argue about the potential MLB talent and high upside acquired, but at least most all baseball fishwrap agree that the players we have taken are worth the risk. All of the stuff that went on this past year wont pay dividends for 2-3 years at the earliest. To pass judgement by 8/09 shows that you dont really understand what is going on with this team.

You are just as frustrated as the rest of us, but at least the Pirates have people in upper management in place that were highly touted from their circles – not just hyped by the Pirates front office. Let them work their plan. I believe in their plan more than Bonifay and Littlefield’s plans- even though I know the Pirates product on the field will suck this year. Their sucking is a byproduct of the past crappy management – not the Coonington regime.

At this juncture, we have to lock up a Doumit and a McClouth. We are required by the MLB to play 162 games this year at the professional level. These guys are serviceable. We need serviceable until we can produce enough players to be contenders. Dont sweat an Andy LaRoche. Do you really think we would get an everyday third baseman for the next 5 years on the Bay/Ramirez trade? We were just pawns to get the deal done between the two major market clubs. Our third baseman for the future either has yet to be drafted or is in the minors now (with us or someone else). What return we received in all of the trades are building blocks – not cornerstones. We will have to build our cornerstones. Bay was not going to be a cornerstone unless he could produce 2008 numbers in 2011 or 2012 – same goes for Nady.

To sum it up….the Coonington regime hopes to homegrow our cornerstones. I believe they are going about it the right way for a small market team. I am as impatient as hell, but at least have a tiny bit of faith that these guys could get it done. The only thing that stands in their way is Nutting who I think could take us the way of the Clippers by not letting Coonington work their plan……

I am very skeptical about the new regime, but as I said, I will withold my final judgement until mid-August 2009.

I support the two major 2008 trades. However, I will disagree with you regarding Andy LaRoche. I believe that Pirate management was counting on him to play 3B everyday for the next three years. I think that Pirate management must now be very concerned over what they saw from him in 2008.

I do think that Huntington has a better handle on things than Littlefield or Bonifay. This is NOT saying a lot.

And certainly anyone would have been a major improvement after McClatchy.

Every major league team has “talent evaluators” called scouts. The Pirates have made some changes since the Fall of 2007, but we have no idea how good these scouts are.

I am not the type of person that would hire a new regime and give them five years to perform their magic. I would monitor RESULTS closely.

The RESULTS that I am looking for in the Pirates are:

1) I need to be convinced, in my own mind, that the Pirates are on the right track in several areas: 1) that the players competing for major league jobs understand that they are expected to be “winners” and to play and act like “winners”. All of the talk about “accountability” is very important. This talk must be upheld by management.

They need to find “winning” ballplayers. These players are not necessarily going to be the most outstanding or highest paid players, because the Pirates simply are not able to sign these players. But “winning” players are out there.

2) I want to see improved performance on the field at the major league level over 162 games as measured by the W-L record of the TEAM. Individual statistics are meaningless to me. All that matters is the team’s W-L record. If the Pirates do not have an improved W-L record in 2009, then the front office, Russell and his staff will have failed in their player evaluations. Failure was certainly the case in 2008. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt in that they were relatively new and thought that the same players would do better in 2008 than in 2007. (I won’t go into the definition of “insanity”.)

3) Much more has to be done to bolster both the scouting and player development areas.
The individuals that oversee these two areas must be strong, decisive individuals in their own right and must not be pawns of Team Coonington.

4) As a small market franchise. the Pirates have to be much more creative in how they run their operation. I will not go into detail here as to my ideas of “creativity”, but there are many ways to find talent.

There’s a lot more, but if they can satisfy me in these areas, then 2009 should be a better year.

As they say on the mlb.com telecasts ……….“keep watchin’”

Wouldn’t it be advisable to give Andy LaRoche a full season-hopefully healthy-in a Pirate uniform before passing judgment on him one way or the other?

On March 7, 2008, while playing a spring training exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals, LaRoche tore the ulnar collateral ligament off the base of his right thumb during a freak accident. He was attempting to catch a pickoff throw from Dodgers catcher Danny Ardoin that deflected off St. Louis base runner D’Angelo Jimenez and struck him on his throwing hand. LaRoche was placed on the disabled list. Surgery involved the use of an anchor suture to reconnect the ligament and part of the metacarpal bone that chipped off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_LaRoche

You do know this happened, don’t you? I know he was a mess in the field as well as at the plate, but let’s give the guy a reasonable chance.

The reason I usually hammer your posts is because you don’t want to give anyone-from management on down to those playing the game-what I view as a satisfactory amount of time to prove themselves.

“Much more has to be done to bolster both the scouting and player development areas.”

If you’re going to say this, tell us specifically how such improvements could be accomplished.

Many here continually point out to you that the new regime has from the start brought in a system of accountability concerning how the players do everything from the bigs down to rookie ball. Time will tell if they are doing things right, to be sure, but they are doing things much better thus far to my mind than DL and his group.

You know they went to great lengths in 2008 to scout all geographical areas subject to the draft-from the pitcher they got in Alaska to the guys signed out of Puerto Rico. We all know they spent big money when the final tally came in with Alvarez’s deal and some of the later-round deadline deals.

They have increased the number of scouts and seem to be doing a much better job of cross-checking.

They are putting a lot of money and effort into the Dominican Republic facility in a renewed effort to get talent from there.

Rene Gayo seems to have what he needs to expand the Pirates’ presence there and elsewhere in Latin America.

The club appears to be making legitimate efforts to get into the game in Asia looking for talent, and I’m not just talking about the PR from the Indian signees.

The Bucs are reportedly going to hire a scout for Taiwan. Time will tell if we can reap any benefits from an increased presence in the region, but it’s a step in the right direction.

I’m still waiting for them to get some talent from Japan, but at least they are not ignoring NPB like DL did, except for his PR grab with Masumi Kuwata.

What more do you want, gunner? Please tell us.