Pirates Sign Trent Stevenson

Are generally lazy and ignorant. I like Mike & Mike, but they know nothing about the Pirates; it’s like listening to them “discuss” hockey t(he 4 times a year that sports gets a passing reference, but I digress).

The ESPN people and Rob Dibble and most columnists and whoever else you can consider a national commentator are not angry with the Pirates, they are just ignorant. They don’t pay attention to them (which is understandable to a certain extent) and then don’t do their homework when the team has a moment of national relevance (which is not understandable). Simply put, they are lazy and ignorant.

To underscore the general ignorance of the national sports media, the Steelers get favored status, yet many of the national types have been applauding the classic Steelers running game for the last 3 years when anybody who has paid attention knows that the classic Steelers running game has been absent.

Local people are generally better, but sadly, many of the local Pittsburgh media types are just as lazy when it comes to the Pirates. I am a loyal DVE morning show listener, but Jim Krenn has been unjustly ripping the Pirates trades. The local ESPN radio guys all seem to understand the situation, but – other than Stan & Guy – choose to ignore it in pathetic attempts at humor, strong opinion or to generate phone calls.

The team has sucked. There is a lot worth ripping, but at some point you ought to pay attention to what is actually happening – especially local people. It’s easy to rip the team for 17 years of shit, but that is already understood. The team is a joke? Wow, thanks for the insight. How much more can Pirate fans take? Thanks for asking the question aloud; I’m really chewing on that question. Move on already!

I’ve spent a lot of time in sports media. I’ve interviewed for several jobs (including at ESPN in Bristol) where the focus was on sports knowledge. Interview question: tell me everything that you know about Wake Forest football.

That was 15 years ago and clearly much has changed. Today, the talking heads know a lot about a few things and just a couple of talking points about most things. The problem is that the talking heads are supposed to offer edgy, hard hitting opinions and the overwhelming majority of them simply don’t have enough knowledge to do so on topics other than the Red Sox, USC football, Duke hoops and the New York teams. As a result, you have a bunch of people who know little of the subject offering ‘hard hitting’ opinions that just make them look stupid to the educated (see: Freddy Coleman, ESPN radio). All the employer cares about is traffic (ratings), even if the opinion is baseless.

Charlie Steiner’s had a show called Baseball Beat on MLB Home Plate (Sirius XM). It was a tad slow at time, but great overall because it asked questions of people who really knew the subject matter: beat reporters. Steiner asked questions or sought responses to his outside observations. He didn’t pretend to know things that he didn’t know. The show was, what is the word(?), oh yeah: intelligent. And it was canceled in the spring. It has been replaced by a bunch of talking heads who (see above).

I have an issue with this, as you can tell. Sorry for the oversized rant.

Good day.

It’s almost as if they purposely put forward the perception they have no idea what is going on. It was pretty sad to see MLB have a network where the talking heads do not have a clue who the good players are versus the bad players.

     The Red Sox made the offer for La Roche a couple of weeks ago. Pittsburgh then asked Wilson and Sanchez if they would sign two year deals. This trade comes right after their refusals. My guess is that Diaz was picked up because Wilson turned down Pittsburgh’s offer. Diaz was sent to AAA to get him ready for next year. I think Huntington had another offer he wanted to take, but needed a shortstop for next year once Wilson turned down the offer and took Diaz.