Link Roundup: Pirates To Face Ryan Dempster On Opening Day

Unless by "a certain number" you mean "several, hugely critical," like Cutch and Pedro going down.

Not both of those, I wouldn’t think, but it’s not like the loss of either one was needed last year in order to get the result that we got. Just LaRoche, Iwamura, Crosby, and Church. Two starters and two benchies.

got me thinking. So I checked, since 2000, with starters who have pitched at least 70 innnings (CMort pitched 79 last year), CMort has the 4th worst ERA
Nomo ‘04 84 IP 8.25 ERA
Durbin ’00 71IP 8.21 ERA
Erickson ’00 92 IP 7.87 ERA
Morton ’10 79 IP 7.57 ERA
BUT, FIP tells a different story (this is not to imply that Morton wan’t terrible, I just thought it was interesting) Morton is tied for 225 worst. Thats a big swing. His 5.29 FIP compares pretty well to the five worst
Waechter ’04 70 IP 7.30 FIP
Abbot ’04 93 IP 7.13 FIP
David Hernandez ’09 98 IP 6.79FIP
Rowland-Smith ’10 101IP 6.77 FIP
C. George ’03 93 IP 6.76FIP
Elarton ’06 114 IP 6.76 FIP

Also in the top 35 are Oliver Perez ’05 at 6.25 FIP and Gorzo ’08 at 6.35 FIP (with a 6.66 ERA, scary)

Not meant as a mean spirited rebuttal, just stuff I found interesting.

Of the Pirates bring a more sustainable contender, depend on how much of the high-end pitching works out. If little to none of it does, then we’ll end up like the Brewers, paying for Wolf and emptying the farm for a Grrinke and Marcum for two years. If the pitching falters, then I think we’ll take a similar path to them in 5 years give or take. If the high ceiling arms reach their ceiling, along with some other good luck, we might be able to act like the Rays.

  Just cause the Brew Crew didnt have a pitching pipeline doesn’t mean we won’t, although it is possible they flame out at this point.

Good trade.

I’m not sure what you mean by "significant signs,"

A team where the core players have remained healthy and developed as expected, and are supported by enough depth that a playoff run the next year is a realistic possibility.

If you’re going to trade a young veteran for value in pursuit of the “keep the ball rolling” strategy mentioned above, you need to do it while he has at least 1.5-2 years of control remaining. For an example in practice, look at the difference in what the Rangers got for Teixeira and what the Braves got for him a year later. Thus, if we’re in a situation two years from now where the core players have three years of control left and contention in the upcoming season seems unlikely at best, we’d need to start thinking about unloading some of our pieces at the end of that season or get caught in a situation of diminishing returns. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we couldn’t maintain a competitive posture if we did well in those trades, but it’s a situation with relatively little margin for error.

Ideally, everybody develops as expected and it’s all a moot point. Cross your fingers.

I didn’t mean to suggest that two years was the absolute limit of how long a team like the Pirates could be successful. I do, however, think that a team that consistently has among the lowest payrolls in the league (and not, as the financial documents suggested, merely because they are being cheap, but because they legitimately don’t have much money) is going to have a very, very hard time stretching its window of contention beyond a couple of years. Certainly, it can be done, but it’ll be hard. Their margin of error is even smaller than that of the Twins, who have had a higher payroll than the Pirates every year since 2002. (Although admittedly the Pirates might be able to close the gap somewhat if they first become competitive like the Twins are and start making more money from attendance.)

To take the current team as an example: Alvarez probably isn’t staying any longer than he has to, so he’ll likely be gone after 2016. McCutchen can become a free agent after 2015 (and hopefully the Pirates will sign him long term). Tabata and Walker can become free agents after 2016. The Pirates probably won’t be competitive this year, and probably not the year after that either. And them being competitive in 2013 or 2014 is certainly possible, but it’s based on guys like Rudy Owens and Bryan Morris turning out to be a lot better than anticipated, or something like that. The Pirates have to sneak in a couple years there before they have to start making decisions about whether to trade a guy like Alvarez. Meanwhile, their highest-upside talent currently in the minors won’t make an impact in the majors until 2015 or 2016, right around the time many in the current core are ready to leave.

Add in the fact that the Pirates will have to prove themselves to the fans before the Bucs will raise payroll substantially, and it’s going to be tough to make this work – to be competitive in a gunning-for-an-NL-Central-crown sort of way – for more than a couple of years. It’s possible to imagine rosier scenarios, where McCutchen signs a bargain extension to stay until he’s 33, Taillon and Allie race through the minors and pitch well right away, and someone likes Rendon becomes a star almost right away, for example. But in general I think the problems the Pirates are facing now, where they have a fair amount of talent but a lot of the best players are at very different stages of their careers – can happen pretty easily, and are likely to restrict a lot of talent-rich but money-poor franchises to brief runs at contention.

It’s funny – a few years ago at Baseball Think Factory, someone said that if they were a small-market GM, they’d draft a bunch of top high school talents in their first few drafts, and then draft a bunch of top college guys in their next few, trying to create a perfect storm of young players. The Pirates have drafted good high school talent in every draft since 2008, but in the first round, they drafted college guys in the first two years and a high school guy in the third. It’s almost the exact opposite of the BBTF poster’s plan. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have picked Alvarez, obviously, but they’re a long way from creating that perfect storm, and I think that would be the best way to sustain a competitive run for longer than a couple of years.

What is tough to understand, Vlad?

From your post, it wasn’t clear exactly how much of that pitching you were counting on reaching the majors over the time period under discussion. If you’re including guys like Kingham and Allie (thanks for the clarification, BTW), I think you’re being overly optimistic.

Charlie’s lazy and absurd 2-year window comment would be partially based on all of those arms not working out.

Some of those arms aren’t going to work out. Guys get hurt, guys get traded, guys get moved to the pen, guys can’t make the leap to the next level of competition… and even successful pitchers often need 100-200 innings’ worth of experience at the ML level before finding their footing. Look at Greg Maddux (186 IP and a 76 ERA+ in his first two ML seasons), or Tom Glavine (245 IP and a 80 ERA+ in his first two), or Mario Soto (116 IP and a 79 ERA+ in his first three), or or Bartolo Colon (94 IP and a 83 ERA+ as a rookie), or Mark Mulder 154 IP with an 86 ERA+ as a rookie), etc.

As far as the low minors are concerned, guys like Heredia and Allie are good prospects, and we did well to add them, but exactly how quickly do you think they’re going to be ready for the majors? You think Heredia’s going to be a quality ML starter at the age of 20?

We can probably bank on Owens, Locke, Morris, and Wilson being ready within the window under discussion (assuming that all four succeed, of course). Anything else is iffy – even Taillon, given that he hasn’t thrown a pro pitch yet.