2010 Season Preview
by C Shint on Jan 21, 2010 12:02 PM EST
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Disregard the silly WAR stat and all of that. You know as well as I do that they give little insight into What can actually happen in a season. Yeah it can be a good indicator but I'm going to look at the pirates and say that things for 2010 look bright.
Now barring injury (and trades), and thats a big hurtle to aviod, but the offense looks better than a year ago. Starting with Doumit, at the beginning of the year last year he was healthy and the pitching staff looked great. He is a great bat to have in the lineup so the combo of him with the pitching and hitting will greatly improve the pirates this year. Iwamora to me splits even with Freddy Sanchez but Cedeno is an offensive improvement over Wilson. Cedeno hit 5HRs with the pirates last year in a much less time and Wilson only had 4. McCutchen, Jones, and Milledge will all be up for a full year which would indicate them to only improve on what they did last year. So overall the offseason seems improved.
The Defense may be worse off in the infield with the loss of wilson and sanchez up the middle but it should not effect the team to a point where it is a problem to win games.
The pitching could be the uprising or the end of the pirates this year. what pitcher steps up? i think that maholm, duke, olendorf, morton give the pirates a shot at winning but they will have to pitch at the top of their game to make the pirates a team to deal with this year. I am willing to assume that they will be better than last year so we should see improvement here. And finally the bullpen looks a lot stronger with the additions of many veterans competing for spots in the pen. Things look bright for the pirates even in 2010 even if the target years is 2011 - 2012.
My prediction: 78 - 84, close to ending the streak, but not close enough.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the managing editor (Charlie) or SB Nation. FanPosts are written by Bucs Dugout readers.
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Winning? Not this year
While i agree 100% we are much improved over last year…I don’t think we’ll win this year…I really want to see what our team can do if we win 77 games I will call this season a success and something to build on. Now if we win 82 games then NH should get the biggest paid day in the history of GM salaries. However I look for us around 75-77 win and finishing above the reds in the division….
Sorry
You turned me off from reading when you said
Disregard the silly WAR stat
The glare of the spotlight is harsh, and the pressure that success breeds immense. We revere our heroes, but expect much. And criticism can come as easily as praise.
well it is
you cannot base how much a team will gain or lose by trying to do it in numbers. i said its a good indicator but every team has the chance to break the course and over/under achieve. so im looking at if your a fan stand point of who we added, who will be here for a full season, and who we lost. overall i feel like we gained and have players now with more experience and we should win many more games this year than a year ago.
so sorry im optimistic with my baseball team. i guess its hard to come by fans who just believe in the buccos nowadays. so go have fun looking at the WAR stats and gaugin how many games the pirates should win this year.
"you cannot base how much a team will gain or lose by trying to do it in numbers"
Isn’t the number of games won and lost also a number?
80 wins
Everyone better keep this post now, im saying 80 wins for our buccos this year :) Good old Miller lites are starting to kick in lol
I've been saying mid 70's in wins
but if all the things break right that could break right (Andy and Milledge improve/Jones and Cutch don’t regress/Doumit returns/One of Clement, Tabata or Church plays well/Pitching is healthy and productive as we expect), then we will be over .500 in 2010.
If fact, individually, I expect each one of those things to happen, but collectively it is unlikely that they all happen.
I agree with theatrain
If we go 80-82 there really is a baseball god……i give NH until 2015 to win a championship before I write the pirates off completely….Living in Chicago I see two really good teams who compete every year and would love for the city of Pittsburgh to have something else to root for in October besides the steelers…..If not by 2015 i give up on the bucs for good….
Win a championship?
I hate to sound like a pessimist (cause I’m not) but a Championship also requires a good bit of luck. Being realistic, the luck factor needed will be greater in our circumstances simply because we aren’t the Red Sox, Yankees, or Mets etc. and we can’t pay to compete.
I hate to say this, because I really like the job NH is doing, but he also has so many resources available. As such, I wouldn’t be surprised and wouldn’t be too discouraged (mildly) if it takes one more purging of the system before we become a truly dangerous team for a half decade or so run. If you look at our farm system and major league roster, many things will have to break right for us to be a real championship contender, or even a playoff contender for that matter. Thankfully, If I were a betting man (and I am) I’d have to almost guarantee .500 or better ball in the next few years.
If we look at our organization top to bottom, we really have only two players that are locks (or close to a lock as you can get) to be major impact guys. Those guys are Alvarez and McCutchen. We have plenty of fringe guys, Milledge, Tabata, Sanchez, Morton etc, and maybe a guy like D’Arnaud or Starling Marte comes out of the woodwork, and we end up with 4 or 5 all-star caliber players, but if not I could easily see the following scenario
The 2014 season rolls around. Pittsburgh fans are in a fervor. The Steelers just won another super bowl (their seventh), and the Pens are leading the Eastern Conference, looking to win another Stanley Cup. Their is excitement about Buccos baseball as well. The Pirates have just come off their second winning season, showing promise, but haven’t yet managed to actually compete for a playoff spot. 2014 seems to be the year, as McCutchen and Alvarez have turned into real studs. Tabata has played well in his young career, but Milledge has fallen off the map. Morton has never lived up to his promise, but Lincoln and Alderson have become very good pitchers, along with Jeff Locke who has broken into the rotation. Jeff Clement has been serviceable, but is getting old, and Tony Sanchez hasn’t quite lived up to early expectations, although he is an adequate catcher.
The Pirates struggle through the first half the season, but are still in the thick of the wildcard race as the trade deadline approaches. NH, after much debate, and after reviewing his deep, but young farm system (made through the draft and international signings) decides to, rather than trade away prospects, and deplete the system for a shot at a wildcard, sticks with the more longterm plan. Over the next few years he moves McCutchen, Alvarez, and several other players, getting much better return than he got from his first roster sweep. Coupled with better drafts than in the DL era, after nearly a decade the Pirates have a top 3 farm system, with plenty of young, high ceiling guys already in the majors, and sit poised to be a real Championship contender for at least a few years.
by McCutchenIsTheTruth on Jan 23, 2010 12:15 AM EST up reply actions
My question for the mid-to-high 70s or 80s win predictors is, which teams will have a worse record than us in the NL? Which teams won’t meet expectations?
I think the Astros are going to crater.
I also think San Diego has the potential to be pretty bad. And I’d look for some significant regression from the Marlins, Cubs, Dodgers, and Giants.
Just guesswork, though.
Dunno about the Dodgers, I’d put the Mets in there instead.
The season picture as I see it is that the Bucs should be better than the Astros, Padres, and Nationals, and at least have a decent shot at topping the Giants, Marlins, Mets, Cubs and Reds (both the first 3 and last 5 are from worst to best as I see it right now).
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 22, 2010 7:43 PM EST up reply actions
How much worse can the Mets be...
…than they already were last year? If nothing else, improved health should keep them stationary.
The Dodgers are thin in the rotation after letting Wolf and Garland walk, they’re making a bad bet on Blake DeWitt as their starting 2B, and Manny looked mortal after coming back from his suspension. Most importantly, with the McCourts locked in their divorce struggle, the team doesn’t have the financial flexibility to add much payroll in trades during the year, if the boat starts to spring leaks. They can try to address that by adding extra talent in order to get the other team to pick up more salary, but their farm isn’t as deep as it once was, either.
I agree that the Mets won’t get much worse, but if they’re stationary in the low 70s then I guess that’s the range the Pirates are expected to be in as well in the best case. The Dodgers have too much premium young talent to fall into the same problem as the Mets last year, in my estimation.
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 23, 2010 10:38 AM EST up reply actions
easy
These are all the teams that can be easily worse than the pirates: Astros, Brewers, Reds, Nationals, Mets, Padres, Giants (maybe), Rockies (maybe). so there are plenty of teams out there
I don’t know if the Dodgers will plummet completely cause their young guys (Ethier, Kemp, Kershaw) are really on the verge of being big-time stars. But you’re right, their future is really cloudy with that messy ownership situation…it can paralyze any moves an organization might make as that drags out.
I can see the Mets being as bad as last year if Santana isn’t healthy because….well, their rotation sucked with Johan last year until he went out with the arm injury. Even if Wright, Reyes, Beltran (eventually) are healthy, they play in a division with the Phils, and teams that are younger and have some good potential (Marlins, Braves). I could see the Mets ending up looking a lot better offensively if those guys are healthy, but not really moving up too far in the win column because their rotation could be awful.
I don’t see the Bucs being better than the Marlins, Giants, or Reds though, unless they lose some major players to injury and everything breaks right for the Bucs.
win and losses
sometime teams catch lighting in a bottle ,well this is one of those years for the pirates. but how can that be? well lets start off with pitching and pitching depth . first off we have three very solid starting pitchers and a much improved bull pen also we have lincoln , alderson and McCutchen so we might be in a lot of games. if morton can pitch to his stuff and we get anything out of our #5 starter, we should win more games than we lose. now the lightning part. first off doumit must stay healthy because he is real important to our lineup.1b- clement and or jones should put some hr’s in our lineup, 2b and ss need to just field the ball above average and hit about league average and that will be fine. 3b laroche will have a break out year and hit 20 hr,s and alverez will come up and move him to either 2b or outfield or 1b or all 3 . milledge has a break out year and cluch just continues to remind everyone of a young ricky henderson . right field maybe a platoon if clement fails at first . but look for jones to play there a lot if that does not happen. . 87-75 and a wild card push that fails in the last week of the season.
'position flex-ability, yea baby' austin powers
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