John Perrotto's winter rumors
Perrotto throws out a few interesting Pirate items over at Inside Pittsburgh Sports.
-The team will be looking at offers for Zach Duke during the winter meetings. They don't have a specific package they're looking for, and want to see what kind of offers will come in.
-The Pirates biggest trade target is Tampa's Reid Brignac. They've tried to sell the Rays on Capps and Duke, but haven't been able to figure anything out yet.
-The team is interested in Rich Harden, as are several other teams who will have money to spend.
-The Pirates may look to bring in Daniel Cabrera if he's willing to take a minor league deal.
9 months ago
ElDuce
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I'm a fan of Perotto
but this article screams of laziness. It just seems like hes regurgitating rumors that we’ve all heard before. Nothing really new there for a site you have to pay to view. Then again, as DK mentioned, reporting “interest” can be tricky.
BTW if this rumor was true, I would take a years worth of Harden, Lowry or Douchser and 6 years of Brignac for 2 more years of Duke (assuming alot there, but mostly just making a point that there’s FA pitchers we’re interested in and could sign that’d have a pretty good chance of replacing Duke if we decided to trade him) The goal is to accumulate as much talent as you can.
If NH were a stock trader, he’d be a scalper(constantly buying and selling to squeeze profits). The old buy and hold theory just ain’t his style
Buy-and-hold is tricky in baseball...
…since players’ service time (and thus time under team control) makes them depreciating assets unless they improve their skills enough to offset it.
Taking those in order:
1) Good. Duke’s stock right now is probably as high as it’ll be for the forseeable future. May as well see whether someone’s willing to overpay.
2) I’m not entirely sure what to think of Brignac at this point. Our scouts plainly like him – he was a focus of trade talks during the Bay negotiations, and he’s still only 24 next year.
3) If we’re willing to take a risk (and bet a decent sum of money on it), Harden has an awful lot of upside. Hard to know how seriously he’d take us as a potential destination.
4) I’ve been half-expecting this. He fits into NH’s mold (big-body hard-thrower with no control), and we lobbied him pretty hard last spring before he signed with Washington.
Does anyone have any positive info on Cabrera? Everything I’ve read is that he throws really hard, but has no idea where its going and is quite the head case. Of course, that last label can be hard to shake, even if its not true.
Isn't it true
that really tall and lanky pitchers take longer to develop?
No, you aren’t buying that? Then I do not know.
I’ve always thought Baltimore might have screwed him up very early on. When they brought him up to the majors all he had done was throw about 100 innings over 2 years in rookie ball, 125 innings in A ball, and 25 in AA. At each level he really struggled with his control (BB/9 over 5), but they loved his arm and stuck him in the rotation for almost a full season where he had more walks than strikeouts. I don’t think he ever got to properly develop. He may be beyond the point where he ever will now.
He’s one of those guys who will start to struggle and it will just snowball from there.
Duke/Brignac
I also like the idea of trading Duke while his value is high. His ERA was much lower than his FIP, but some teams might be able to buy the whole “with Kerrigan he is a different pitcher” spiel (although I think the Rays are too smart for that).
As for Brignac, I wouldn’t mind it, but I wouldn’t sell the farm to get him. His one huge breakout year in 2006 was aided by an abnormally high BABIP, while he struggles to draw walks, and is reported to be an average to below average fielder. He is young (24) and cheap, so he would be a much better option that Cedeno. But I wouldn’t give up too much for him, as I don’t think the Rays value him that highly either.
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