With the Bullington era ending, I did some googling to see how much of what we say now is 20-20 hindsight and came up with some interesting links. John Sickels view of the 2002 draft is consistent with my recollection that most people thought Upton was a better pick, but he is not critical of the pick and notes that “few scouts doubt that he’ll be a successful major-league pitcher.” Just seems like something went wrong with his arm very soon after we signed him.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/misc/1391123.html

In his assessment the next year of the Pirates system, Sickels states that he liked the Pirates 2002 draft, which ended up producing absolutely nothing. (Remember in looking at his description of the Pirates prospects that Ian Oquendo is really Ian Snell).

http://espn.go.com/mlb/hotstove2003/piratesminors.html

Finally, I stumbled on this site, which I’m not even sure what it is, but it includes 2003 Player Profiles by Wilbur, including very accurate assessments of who might be a real prospect in the Pirates system (with the exception of Matt Capps). Also, the site reports that Kevin Goldstein listed four Pirates among the top 58 prospects (Burnett, Castillo, Bullington, and JVB)

gearhard/scout03.html” target=”_blank”>http://www.mindspring.com/gearhard/scout03.html

gearhard/scout03.html” target=”_blank”>http://www.mindspring.com/gearhard/scout03.html

URL begins with the http; I don’t know why extra stuff keeps getting added at the beginning

Sorry for the bad link. I don’t know what the problem is, but it is worth looking at. Try entering the following into google and it should come out as the first hit.

pirate scouting report bullington wilbur

(was it here? I forget sometimes, I make the same arguments on several sites so probably made it here too but anyway …) who told me last winter, when I was arguing the Josh Fogg Theory, how easy it is to find a guy who can consistently put up a 94 ERA+, how those guys are a dime a dozen, so why pay $1 million for one?

If it’s that easy, why don’t we have one in the 5-spot now? Would it or would it not be worth $1 million to the team to be getting a 94 ERA+ 10-12 4.50 ERA out of the 5-hole, instead of the horror we’ve gotten or will get from Morris/JVB/Munoz etc.?

I know Josh has been bad and/or hurt this year, he’s making me look bad, but that doesn’t negate my point: He’s been as certain a 94 pitcher as you could want for five or six years, and we could have had 10 of him for what we pissed away on Matt Morris. How much of a different team would it be if we had a guy like that in the five-hole? Add up Morris and JVB and tell me.

This pisses me off. There’s was no excuse for it, other than we fired the GM a month too late. Even still, we could have junked Morris in spring training and signed a guy at a tenth the price who would have done much better-—maybe not Josh, as it turns out, but a Josh-type pitcher people assured me were all over the place.

Sorry, two-beer diatribe here.