Pirates Having Miserable Season, Even By Own Standards

in the mid 1980s and didn’t see much of those terrible teams, but I imagine they were a lot like this.

Littlefield wouldn’t have let this happen. We’d be right on target for those 70 wins.

1. The presence of so many young position players learning how to hit ML pitching.
2. A mediocre to poor starting pitcher staff.

When one adds to these two the low rate of return on Huntington’s reclamation projects and the pitching prospect lag now current in the development pipeline, a one-hundred and ten loss season becomes comprehensible.

I also do not agree with the belief that Littlefield would have managed to build a team that would not fail to achieve 70 wins. Littlefield was a piss-poor horse-trader. Huntington has proved himself a good horse trader. Whereas Littlefield always adopted a risk adverse strategy in his trades, a strategy intended to maximize the value the Pirates received at the Major League level, Huntington sought to maximize per se. Given this difference, what sort of return would Littlefield have gotten for Bay, Sanchez, Wilson, etc.? I’m betting the return would have been poor to very poor. With the players acquired by Huntington, we can see the potential in the players he acquired even though we can also see that these players may never realize their potential in Pittsburgh or at all. When one adds to this point another key problem — Littlefield’s sorry draft record — then the organization’s talent deficit becomes comprehensible.

One upshot: Littlefield’s washed-up veteran strategy stood no greater chance of avoiding an epic collapse than Huntington’s burn it down and rebuild it from scratch strategy.

Another: An $80M payroll would not have given a GM like Littlefield the means he could use to continue to successfully “Drive for 75” every year. The successful execution of that bad strategy required resources that Littlefield lacked.

Bad teams will make dumb plays. It’s always odd when people say well the team can be bad but at least it could be fundamentally sound — I feel like that’s something fans make up more times than not.

Anywho, I would agree that the bummer for me is not so much the record and play, but rather since I always assumed the team was going to push 90-100 losses this year (I was not thinking this time would get to 72-75 wins like some), I am more bummed about some of the individuals. But, again, I agree with you that sans Lincoln, at least it has not been the rookies.

The Pirates are effectively an expansion team. Like any new organization they hope to build from the ground up. And like previous expansion teams they have a core of young players they hope to build around: (Cutch/Tabata/Walker/Alvarez/Meek/Hanrihan). Is this enough to become a winning franchise in the near term? Of course not. Until a pitching staff can be developed for innings 1 thru 7 losing seasons will continue to mount. As good as the Altoona staff has looked none project to be a true number 1. And lets not forget they are in AA for a reason.

A few years ago I had hoped that by 2011 we would have a .500 team in Pittsburgh. Considering the economics of the game, by the time a legitimate major league pitching staff can be assembled with adequate depth to deal with injuries, arbitration and free agency will impact the retention of position players - and the merry go round continues.

With modest local TV and radio revenue and ownership that while not looking to make a lot of money certainly does not want to lose any, there is little chance of ever seeing a World Series game at PNC Park.

It was obvious the Pirates were not going to be very good this year. It maybe should have been obvious that they were going to be REALLY bad. It wasn’t obvious that they’d be THIS bad.

The pitching is awful, awful, awful and that was pretty much apparent from the get-go. Even if the pitching staff had pitched to their expected performances they would have been very bad. Ohllie, Maholm, Morton, and Duke looked like perfectly fine back-end of the rotation guys. The rest wouldn’t crack a rotation of even a .500 club but would be fine as spot starters. However, I don’t think anyone saw the pitching staff would collapse as badly as they have. Is there a single starting pitcher on the staff right now that would be starting for another major league club? Maybe they could be #5’s on some of the other awful teams. Still, there hasn’t been a positive story from the starting pitching staff this year.

It just stinks that the bright spots this year have been limited to Neil Walker, Jose Tabata, Evan Meek, and Joel Hanrahan. I can’t think of a single other player who has exceeded expectations. What’s worse is that I’m not sure anyone else has even MET expectations. That’s just sad.

Gotta keep trucking along, though. They’ll get there eventually. I hope.