I did think that part was pretty silly, since obviously you’d take Clement, Adcock and Lorin over Matt Morris any day of the week. Also, it’s not at all uncommon to be able to pick out a handful of signings a team made that cost $10 million and didn’t pan out; that’s even the case for a small market team. That doesn’t make them nearly as dumb as the Morris move was.

Yeah, there’s no way the Pirates are retaining Church.

And he had the staff figuring out that Dana Eveland wasn’t worth keeping around as a good evaluation. Somehow trading a prospect away for him and then figuring out he was garbage was a success while taking a few months to find out if a guy who had spent his entire career as a catcher or 3B could play 2B was a failure. I just didn’t get that.

Who cares? RESULTS. That’s what counts. RESULTS. If the Pirates were in 3rd or 4th place and making real progress, I’d say, “OK, the Pirates are at least getting better.” But they’re not. They’re 28 games below .500. On track to lose 103 games. They are no better than when Huntingtown, Coonelly and Russell took over. The problem is Bob Nutting. For the Pirates to improve, Pittsburgh absolutely MUST have new ownership. All the arm-chair analysts with all their blah blah blah about this player and that player doesn’t obscure the reality that Pittsburgh ISN’T improving as a baseball team. After all the talk, that’s all that matters. And Nutting CANNOT deliver on that outcome. Simple logic. Nutting MUST sell. We MUST get an ownership that can put a competitive team on the field. End of story.

From Dejan: "Does anyone really want to see how the second half of the Pirates’ 2010 season plays out?"

This is one situation where the sequel almost has to be better than the original.

…such as, you know, screaming ad nasuem for a team’s owner to sell.

Please tell me you want Mario LeMieux to buy the team, since the Pirates are doing the same thing now that the Pens did a few years back.

I mean, seriously. What would you suggest we do to fix the team? Give us good, hard ideas of what you would do. Who would you trade, and for whom? Who would you draft? Who would you sign in free agency? You have all the answers, bub? Enlighten us!

Oh, and you can’t use player analysis either, since it’s apparently a bunch of gibberish? Then again, most people tend to throw aside that which they don’t understand…another trait of stubbornness, if you will.

He talks in one sentence about how doing the same thing will lead to the same results, and then two sentences later has seamlessly transitioned into a complaint about the new management team and their new methods.

I wonder whether he knows that McClatchy was majority owner until 2007? If he didn’t, that would explain a lot…

So what system will the new owner use to make the team competitive overnight? Will he just grab $300 million from his pocket and buy the Yankees? Will he tell Paul Maholm to be an ace and it will magically be so? Will he put on his scary face and cause the full development of Tabata/Cutch/Alvarez to happen overnight?

Yes, the Bucs are still losing, and yes, Nutting/Huntington are in charge, but that doesn’t mean that they’re plan is bad (that’s not to say that it could potentially not work)…but it’s a solid plan and probably the only plan for a small-market, low-budget team like the Pirates. Sure beats signing washed-up old fogies who were once mid-level players or praying for an enormous miracle.

Just this: what would expect the hypothetical new management team to do differently that would suddenly turn around what had become a wasteland of a franchise?

…I think that’s a perfectly fine sample, given the circumstances.

was his team mate Gorkys.

I was watching the entire game and just stepped out to get my laundry after Shelby Miller was pulled. Figures that would be Morris. Like you said, probably his only batter.

and answering questions you asked yourself. The more irksome thing is that I’ve seem some Australian politicians doing it as well – and you just know that they’re only doing it to try and save embarrassing questions being asked of them.

you make good points.

It’s disturbing that Neil Walker’s improvement was a surprise? He hit .260 in AAA last year with a .311 on base percentage. At minimum, he has to be a mild surprise.

You know, I actually don’t want them to add any age 30+ position players. Unless they are well above average, that’s when they usually decline (and a lot of them fall off fast).

Pitchers tend to go at a much older age, so I’d be fine with some offseason pitching acquisitions (starting and relief).

I’d take Sano by far over Scheppers. He’s already tearing up the GCL. That’s going to be a lot more painful to watch than a guy whose arm will fall off any day.

I couldn’t give you a figure, but yeah, the number of important prospects who’ve had serious injuries this year is much larger than is normal.

I think Jaramillo has just played alot worse than expected even for a back up and Kratz has put up good numbers. I don’t know if its a indicator Doumit is gone.

Doumit hasn’t played that well so what are we going to get for him unless he’s in a package deal.

1) Jaramillo’s down because he’s been awful.
2) Doumit has 31 RBIs, not 12.
3) Sanchez is at least two years away, and that’s if he can handle Double-A or Triple-A.

…sending down Jaramillo would be dumb, insofar as they’d have to wait 15 days to bring him back up.

I think it’s more likely that they just wanted to give Kratz a look because Jaramillo hasn’t been very productive. Remember, they very nearly picked Kratz over Jaramillo coming out of spring training, and probably would’ve done so if not for 40-man roster considerations.