Minor League Roundup: Owens Dominating Without Two-Seamer

Nice first 10 games in the Pirate system (SC/WV).

12-36 (.333) 2 2B 7 RBI 5 R 3 BB 4 K .804 OPS

Charlie Morton has more stuff than anyone on the staff. We’ll see if he can put it to good use.

Just sayin’: he could be here, and we could be winning*. But it’s far more exciting and rewarding to fantasize about what Bryan Morris will be doing in 2012.

• As of Sunday, I believe, we were the only team in baseball with a RS/RA>1 and a losing record. Of course, we haven’t scored any runs since then, so that’s been taken care of.

It’s predicated on 2 things: our actual record, as of the NyjMo trade, was 5 games behind our pythagorean record (expected based on RA/RS) – we “should” have been in a virtual tie for 2nd. Add a couple games to that, and we’re in 1st or maybe a game out. Charlie pointed to someone’s schedule-adjusted Expected Record that showed us with a losing record regardless – but also in 2nd place (apparently their model thinks that every team in the NLC except us is/was overperforming).

IOW, if your run this season 10,000 times but with Bay instead of Moss and a FA 3B instead of AnLaRoche, we’re competing for the division most of the time. And before you call it hindsight (everyone else did), the main improvement has come from better pitching (Ohlie/Karstens vs. Morris/Gorzo/JVB and the AAA Crew), which was completely predictable, and better D (healthy Jack & Freddy, + OF), also predictable. Bay hurts you defensively wrt Moss, but not as much as he helps with the bat.

There are two points being made fairly often that I think are misleading. One is that the Bay trade is a failure and the other is that the 2009 Pirates could contend, or at least finish over .500, with Bay and McLouth. I think that’s close to being correct on the Bay trade—I’ve about given up on LaRoche and definitely on Moss and Hansen, but I think it’s a mistake to write Morris off and he always had by far the highest ceiling of the four. As for contending, I think there’s a very good chance they’d have finished at .500 with Bay and McLouth this year, and maybe could have made a run for a while at a playoff spot.

But that misses the point of these trades, as well as judging them through hindsight. (Remember how it was the Nady trade, not the Bay trade, that got blasted when it was made?) Coonelly and Huntington have said over and over that they’re trying to build a team that’ll be consistently competitive. I guess a lot of people think that’s just empty puffery, but I think it reflects a conscious policy. They took over a team that had modest talent in the majors and nothing in the minors, and a large % of the major league talent was set to leave in a year or two. They could have made it their priority to make a big run at .500 this year, which is exactly what DL was aiming for. But at best it’d would’ve been a one-year wonder like the 2003 Royals. After that, the team would have been in worse shape than ever—Bay, Nady and LaRoche gone and Yoslan Herrera and John Van B, or people like that, forming 40% of the rotation. They’d be looking at 5-6 more years of rebuilding at that point. (Please forget the fantasies about extending Bay. It wouldn’t even be a good idea if it was possible. As some of the discussion in this thread suggests, he may be declining now. It’d be just wonderful to sign Bay for five years at $15M or so per year and have his power disappear like Brian Giles’ did.)

You really need to look at the Bay, Nady and McLouth deals, and any others they make that are similar, collectively. NH is trying to stockpile talent that’ll reach the majors over the next several years and still be around for a while after that. I’m sure he figures that a lot of the guys he acquires will flop. The point is to collect a lot of guys with good ceilings with the idea that enough of them will work out to form a strong team. That’s why it makes no sense to say the Nady trade worked out and the Bay trade didn’t. They were part of the same process and it’s the net result that matters, not the specific details.

May be a good argument in general, but shouldn’t be applied to me, because I’ve been saying this exact thing since last July. I said last year that this team was 2 mediocre SPs away from respectability, if not outright contention. The Nady trade brought 2 mediocre SPs. Done and done.

Frankly, I don’t know if he’s blowing smoke or if he’s delusional, but the idea that this team will, starting in 2011, be a contender every year forever, is a fucking joke. Not because I think Nutting is evil, or NH is an idiot, but because baseball, in the FA era, doesn’t work that way. Everybody’s hero, Billy Beane, had an impressive run, but you know what? The A’s have been rebuilding for a couple-few years now. Their sucky (and small) division has masked it, but they’ve not been that good.

Furthermore, I firmly believe that the bedrock of their success wasn’t moneyball, but supreme luck – a trio of young starters all peaking at the same time and staying healthy. Lots of teams have had that “plan” – very few have seen it pan out (remember when Paul Wilson, Jason Isringhausen, and Bill Pulsipher were going to revitalize the Mets?). One team that did see it pan out, the Braves, has had more success than Beane without any kind of Moneyball approach. How do you get rich? Start with a lot of money. How do you get a winning team? Start with 3 young stud pitchers (who stay healthy).

I’m not saying that NH has been wrongheaded, or that Beane hasn’t made a lot of good decisions. I’m saying that A. luck is a huge part of baseball, and B. winning the WS is extraordinarily hard, and simply having a bunch of talented guys show up in 2011 is no guarantee of anything.

What a cool name.

if the Pens didn’t tank ‘04 and ’05 (I believe), we would not have gotten Malkin or Crosby. If you stink and you know it, don’t strive for short term success. You only hurt your future.

Granted, with our pedigree of high first round picks, we’re better off picking in the middle _

Owens’ results have been phenomenal, there’s no question. He is 10-1 with a 1.79 ERA in 16 starts. But the Pirates do not have plans to promote him to high Class A Lynchburg anytime soon and probably not at all this season. The development team is looking at factors well beyond results, indicated by the response I got from director of player development Kyle Stark when I recently posed the same question.

“This is his first full season under the lights, so he is approaching unchartered territory in terms of competing during a season,” Stark said. “Also, he is approaching innings workloads that he has never reached. Tackling both of those at a higher level may or may not be the best thing for Rudy. We feel like he can continue to develop where he is at right now, including FB angle, breaking ball development, and use of stuff.”

Owens, a 2006 Draft pick, has pitched 85 2/3 innings so far this season after pitching only 58 last year.

link

Who knows if the results will match, but I am starting to develop a respect for the development plans. They just seem so committed and methodical.