The Real Point About The Royals
by WTM on Mar 17, 2011 5:17 PM EDT
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PrintIn a chat at the PBC Blog (subscription required), Dejan Kovacevic today addressed the inevitable comparison between the Pirates and the Royals, who now boast one of the strongest farm systems within memory.
It never stops surprising me how many people fail to see the real problem of these Pirates. It's really not about payroll or ownership nearly as much as it is about plain, old baseball decisions that have bombed.I often have been charged with overvaluing the quality of the veterans that this management team inherited in 2007, but no one will convince me that the Pirates got anywhere near a representative return on all those players shipped out.
That's the best way to build up a farm system with elite prospects in a hurry. The draft and international venues take time, but they're even more important in the long run. The draft has gone well for the Pirates, I think, but my above point underscores yet again the folly of letting Miguel Sano get away.
Just picture the Pirates if they had gotten even decent returns for all those trades, plus signing Sano. Then, SI might have been writing about them and the Royals.
Kovacevic is correct in noting that the exclusive focus of many fans on the team’s payroll as the source of all its trouble is missing the real issue. He’s also correct in noting that he’s been charged with overvaluing the veterans that GM Neal Huntington traded away, by me among others.
But in focusing primarily on the trades (apart from Sano), he’s missing the issue almost as badly as the fans who are obsessed with the payroll. Well, no, not "almost," but he is focusing on the wrong point. I’m not going to rehash the arguments about the value of individual players like Jason Bay, Nate McLouth, et al. It’s not really necessary, either, because the notion that "breaking up" a collection of 95-loss talent was going to produce contender-level talent, or even 70-win talent for that matter, while also getting much younger and less expensive, is absurd on its face.
The Royals are certainly the model for the Pirates, but not because of veteran-for-prospect trades. Their farm system wasn’t built on trades. None of their top ten prospects, and only one of their prospects who rank in Baseball America’s top 100 (Jake Odorizzi at #69), arrived in trades. By contrast, Andy LaRoche ranked #31 at the time of the Bay trade. And the Pirates had no trade piece, not even Bay, who was nearly as valuable as Zack Greinke.
The Royals have really done just one thing well, and that’s draft brilliantly. That’s what the Pirates have to duplicate, as well as succeeding in the international arena. The Royals are an especially bad comparison for any decisions other than drafting. Dayton Moore’s work at the major league level has been one long succession of "plain, old baseball decisions that have bombed." Just ask Royals’ fans about Jose Guillen, Kyle Farnsworth, Juan Cruz, Yuniesky Betancourt, Mike Jacobs, Joey Gathright and Coco Crisp. While you’re at it, ask them if they’re looking forward to watching Jeff Francoeur and Melky Cabrera. And see if you can find a more foolish series of transactions than Moore’s decision to dump Miguel Olivo and John Buck so he could sign the far older Jason Kendall to catch for two years. Olivo and Buck both enjoyed solid seasons in 2010, with Buck making the All-Star team, while Kendall sunk to just a hair above replacement level.
Whether the Pirates can come anywhere close to the Royals’ success (or, let’s say, tentative success, because they’ve done nothing so far at the major league level except tussle with the Pirates for top draft positions) remains to be seen. As Kovacevic rightly points out elsewhere, Moore’s been on the job a year longer than Huntington. It proved to be a crucial year, at least as far as perception of the farm system is concerned: one year ago, BA ranked the Royals’ system 16th. They had a slew of huge breakout seasons in 2010, mainly by players drafted out of high school. With the Pirates focusing heavily on teenage pitchers the last two years, it’s obvious from the Royals’ example that it’s too soon to judge. In another year, though, or two at most, it won’t be any more. But that’ll be the crucial judgment, not Huntington’s decision to break up the ’27 Yankees.
UPON FURTHER REFLECTION, AN ADDITIONAL POINT:
Dejan infers—with the comment about SI writing about the Pirates instead of KC—that the Pirates’ system would be vastly stronger if NH had gotten “even decent returns” in the trades. To say that’s an overstatement is, well, a huge understatement. But it’s possible that the Pirates’ farm system could be marginally stronger now if NH had gone for lower level prospects instead of major-league-ready players like LaRoche, Morton, Milledge, Clement, etc. Then again, they probably would just have ended up with more flawed prospects like Tim Alderson and the system would be rated about where it is now. Those are the sort of prospects you get when you tear down a 95-loss team.
But this line of thinking also ignores the situation NH was facing. In the typical rebuild situation, a team will have some talent ready to go in AAA and AA, even if it’s just B-/C+ type prospects. A sad-sack franchise usually will have had high draft picks combined with at least a little recognition that it needs to build through its farm system. But the Pirates weren’t like that. Not only did they have a rotten team at the major league level, they had almost nothing in the minors. To my knowledge, that’s unprecedented. The Royals weren’t known for astute drafting prior to Moore’s arrival, but he inherited a farm system that BA ranked 11th. NH inherited one that was ranked 26th. The only teams ranked below them were the Astros, whose owner was unwilling to invest anything at all in the farm system; the A’s, whose system had been depleted by large numbers of graduations and injuries; and the Tigers and White Sox, who’d just traded away all their best prospects. In short, the only teams rated below the Pirates were ones that either weren’t trying or had extenuating circumstances.
Typically, a rebuilding team would just bring up the prospects, regardless of whether they were quite ready and regardless of whether they were more than marginal prospects. But the Pirates didn’t have that option. All they had in the upper minors was a bunch of career minor leaguers with no upside at all. I don’t know that NH has ever publicly explained his strategy in the trades, but he had to put a team on the field. I suspect he was trying to balance the goals of building the farm system and populating the major league roster with players who had at least a little upside. To do the latter, he brought in a bunch of struggling, former top prospects who might still turn things around. I don’t think he did a very good job of it, but I also don’t think he had the option of focusing solely on lower level prospects. And that’s apart from the difficulty of getting teams to turn loose of truly high-ceiling prospects these days.
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I agree with him about Sano.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
The failure to sign Sano was one of FC/NH’s major f’ups. That said, the failure in that case was the team’s inability to manage — or is it ‘massage’ — Plummer so that they would have gotten the chance to bid over the Twins. This sin was a minor one that had major consequences.
Individuals who rake Huntington over the coals for his trades are not going too far out on a limb when they do so. They rely one hindsight and present performance to make their case. But hindsight and present performance do not exhaust the relevant evidence in this matter.
The way to properly evaluate those trades requires identifying with a high degree of confidence the trade options Huntington had when making those trades. If, for instance, the return for Jason Bay was the best Huntington would have gotten at the time when the trade was made, then the Bay trade was an unqualified success. But to know this with certainty requires knowing in great detail the trade market during that year. Which trades, if any, did Huntington pass on when he traded Bay. Were these possible Bay trades better than the actual Bay trades? If they were better, could Huntington or anyone else have been known that at that time?
Huntington’s trade critics need to identify the concrete possibilities Huntington faced when he made each of his trades. Lacking this kind of baseline makes their criticisms nearly vacuous.
s.zielinski
by steve_z on Mar 17, 2011 6:26 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
my take on this
Trades should be judged by their outcome. It’s fair, however, to compare it against a baseline constituting the best you could have gotten out of it, such as Jason Bay, when evaluating the Jason Bay trade. In this case, as a team looking to reload, it’s fair to accept that holding on to Bay is not the right thing to do- rather flip him to restock the farm. In that light, however, it’s not always possible to know if there were better offers that could have been obtained, in general.
In Bay’s case, however, the answer appears to be yes.
Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, Huntington suggests that the Pirates now believe that they had a better deal on the table for Bay than the one that they ultimately swung. He also recognizes that his team might have received a greater haul than the four players (Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen from the Sox; Bryan Morris and Andy LaRoche from the Dodgers) whom it acquired had it waited until the offseason to deal Bay.
With regard to your question: “If they were better, could Huntington or anyone else have been known that at that time?”
Perhaps not. But the reality is, that its Huntington’s job to play the odds to figure the best return for his team, and if it doesn’t work out, he’s going to take the fall for it. Naturally, he isn’t going to be fired for one bad trade, but if over time, he cannot show improvement, he is going to take the fall.
The Problem with the Bay trade
is that they demanded major league ready players
and so the talent level suffered.
if all the players returned were Morris` age at the time, I am sure the talent level would have been better
The key phrase
…with the benefit of hindsight…
Huntington said the Pirates went back and evaluated the processes they used to make the Bay trade, and could not find a reason to change those processes. Since Huntington was candid in this interview, I would accept without challenging it. And the Bay trade might yet favor the Pirates if Morris becomes a #3 starter and, even more so, if Hansen recovers.
s.zielinski
Hindsight?
Hey tubby z, some people were critical of the trades right after they were made. So knock it off with the unsubstantiated “hindsight” crap.
Bottom line is the Pirates would be better off today if they had something to show for Jason Bay. Period. Whether hindsight is used or not, that’s a fact. Whether people liked the trade at the time, that’s a fact. NH will be ultimately be judged by how well he’s done producing a MLB team. Getting next to nothing for his best trading chip, along with trading a 50 HR player for garbage, isn’t going to reflect well on him. Hindsight or not.
I agree with some of what your are saying...
but he didn’t trade a 50 HR player in Batista. Be real. Your point is taken with the hindsight comment but ther is no need to exaggerate. By your logic the Pirates traded a 6 HR .259 BA in Bay, a 6 HR .190 BA in McLouth, 6 HR ,256 BA in Nady, and 0 HR and .249 BA in Jack Wilson. Using your logic Huntington did quite well. You can’t just pick a players peak season after he was dealt and say that was his value. Can you honestly say that you or anyone else predicted that Batista would hit 50 HR’s? I don’t think so. I agree that NH will be judged by how well he’s done producing a MLB team but you don’t need to use incorrect information to make your point.
More excuses
Justify it all you want. The fact is NH traded a 50 HR homerun hitter for a useless back up catcher. That’s how it’s ultimately going to be perceived. But I suppose everyone will tell me to wait for Bautista to do it again. Just like they were predicting he’d come back to Earth after a good May. And then said he couldn’t keep it up for more than two months. And then he couldn’t do it for more than half a season. Etc, etc, etc.
Everyone just loves to justify the poor job NH has done assembling a MLB team. We’ve all heard the excuses:
- Nobody knew Bautista was going to be a 50 HR guy
- Andy LaRoche was a top rated prospect
- Brandon Moss had the potential to be an .800 OPS guy
- Charlie Morton is a special talent who just needs better defense and to perform more guitar solos.
- Matt Capps didn’t fit their internal value.
- Nobody could have predicted the injuries to Hart and Hansen.
- How many saves did Jesse Chavez have for th ’27 Yankees?
At some point NH needs to be held accountable for the quality of players he’s assembled and how they perform as Pittsburgh Pirates. To date, it’s been pathetically miserable. No amount of justifications and excuses is going to change that. Period.
Wow!
I’m not making excuses or justifying anything. I agree with you that Hunitington is going to be judged by the talent he assembled. Not sure what else you want. All I’m saying is that he didn’t trade a 50 HR player. That’s a fact. Cry all you want about it but what I said is fact. As far as the rest of your ramblings in this reply; I don’t even understand the point you are trying to make (except that Huntington is the devil) because you are all over the place. Are you really pissed off about losing Chavez? Really?! Try me again some time when you feel like making some sense.
The point is there are plenty of fans excusing and justifying nearly everything NH has done. Especially WTM, who acts like he’s the only fan worthy of ever being critical of the Pirates.
After being on the job in TB for 4 years, Andrew Friedmen led the Rays to the World Series.
After being on the job in KC for 4 years, Dayton Moore not only has assembled the best minor league system in baseball, but one of the best systems in recent history
After allowing his team to fall into shabmles in order to see Barry Bonds break the all-time HR record, Brian Sabean led the Giants to a World Series vicotry just 3 years later.
How will NH compare to those guys in 6 months when he will have been on the job for 4 years?
There are a lot of differences between the Pirates and those other orgs but...
I will take your questions in order:
1) Friedmen – no
2) Moore – maybe
3) Giants – no
I think the Pirates are a 67 win team this year so I don’t see a division title or a world series victory this season or next. I do think there is a good chance that by this time next year the Bucs will have a top 10, possibly top 5 minor league organization. That would be quite a feat given the absolute disaster of an organization NH took over after the Littlefield disaster. That’s really the big difference between the Pirates and the other orgs you mention. I don’t like a lot of the moves Huntington has made at the major league level but I think he is doing a pretty good job of building up the minors. I feel that Hunitngton’s future will be dependent upon on how well the Pirates are able to develop the talent he has acquired.
if this happens
I do think there is a good chance that by this time next year the Bucs will have a top 10, possibly top 5 minor league organization
I think NH will have earned a longer leash regardless of how the ML team performs.
I'll stand pat with my original post
The fact that some fans criticized the trades at the time they were made is irrelevant when assessing their arguments. After all, theses critics gave themselves a 1 in 2 chance at being right about any given trade while also giving themselves years to observe the results of the trades! Of course, the Pirates front office lacked the benefits of hindsight and were forced by nature to deal with uncertainty, asymmetrically distributed knowledge, time-constraints, etc. Trades can only be reasonably evaluated by accounting for the knowledge available at the time the trades were made. If trade X appeared superior to trade Y when the trade was made but trade Y appears better in hindsight, that does not mean that the rational decision at the time of the trade would have had the Pirates making the Y trade.
For instance, the Pirates have two potential trades and must make one or none of those trades tomorrow..
Trade X: Ronny Cedeno for the KC Royals top five prospects.
Trade Y: Ronny Cedeno for Stephen Drew.
The immediate outcome: The Pirates prudently trade Cedeno for the Royals top five prospects. The reason: Trade X will probably give the Pirates greater baseball and salary value than trade Y.
The long-term outcome: The Royals top five prospects fail as Pirates. Stephen Drew fulfills the promise he had when a prospect. Thus, with the benefit of hindsight, trade Y was superior to trade X.
So, it’s clear that the rational trade was to trade Cedeno for Drew? No, the rational trade for the Pirates still had the Pirates trading Cedeno for the Royals prospects. That was the vastly superior trade at the time it was made. The fact that trade X failed to deliver the value one would expect from it — well, that’s just the sinews of baseball’s trade market.
Tubby Z? Heh.
s.zielinski
You're clueless
Who care what anyone thought about the trades at the time. Whether you liked them or I hated them or someone else didn’t give it any thought as they played with their electric trains and ate a bowl of Raisin Bran, NH will be judged by how well he’s assembled a MLB team. It’s how ALL general managers will ultimately be judged. Right now the Jason Bay trade is nothing short of an abject failure. Claiming Byan Morris will be a #3 starter is 100% wishfull thinking on your part as there’s a much, much greater chance he’s wasting time on Pirates message boards in 4 years than of him ever becoming a #3 starting pitcher in the major leagues.
So as it’s clear you can’t defend you argument the critics were using hindsight to evaluate the trades (because they weren’t as they were critical at the time), it’s not the point. The point is NH has taken a bad MLB team with a bad minor league system and in just under four years, assembled an even worse MLB team with an improved minor league system that is still below average.
Hindsight, foresight, whatever you want to call it. those are the facts you green t-shirt wearing pompous douche.
I wish assholes like you would consistently post under one name
I wouldn’t want to confuse you with another asshole. That asshole might be less of an asshole than you are. I wouldn’t want to smear anyone by comparing him to you. Your assholeness ought to remain distinct and obvious to everyone who crosses your path.
But….
s.zielinski
"Who care [sic] what anyone thought about the trades at the time. [sic]"
We-e-e—e-ll, anyone who wants to correctly evaluate whether the trade was a solid, rational decision, i.e. a good idea. This is the same criteria anyone correctly evaluating ANY economic decision maker’s behavior in any economic arena would use.
Now, if you want to make the banal, trivial point that in baseball GM’s are sometimes irrationally fired due to factors beyond their control, regardless of whether the decisions they made were sound on the basis of the information available at the time, then that’s cool, I guess. It’s also banal, trivial and boring. “You mean GMs are fired because trades they made that were not demonstrably flawed at the time didn’t work out? Shocking! You mean it’s difficult to convince a fan base 99% of which cares only about major league results and never thinks about sports on a level other than that of cheerleader that it’s whether decisions made were rational and solid that should matter when evaluating a front office (and there are plenty of GMs that make idiotic decisions given information at the time, see GMDM of the Royals, Jeff Francouer, Melky Cabrera, Jason Kendall and anti-John Buck fame)!?!?!” Say it ain’t so!
If you want to make the banal, trivial point that a baseball trade involving prospects that didn’t pan out should not have been made given the knowledge that those prospects failed, go ahead and continue to say boring things (although from a theoretical physics perspective, wouldn’t NOT making the trade obviate the way things worked out in the universe where the trade was made?).
That people impute hindsight retrospectively onto the discussion or argument that contemporarily surrounded this or that decision is a very human foible and irrelevant to the merits of that contemporary argument as it actually was. So some people had a silly, inflated notion of what the players the Pirates traded might bring and ignored the constraints a gutted minor league system and the need to have a shot at winning right away placed on NH. So they criticized the trades at the time and wishfully imagined that the hauls were underwhelming. It doesn’t change the facts as they were, and it doesn’t mean they now “proven” correct, at least without evidence that information was available at the time that was ignored or misevaluated/unintegrated in the decision making process.
by tobynotjason on Mar 20, 2011 1:57 PM EDT up reply actions
development
we seem to often leave this out, perhaps because its a process that we never see, but the “Draft brilliantly” point has to be asterisked with a footnote of “get people who can develop talent”. Those two things probably need to go hand-in-hand, in the sense that a farm system may be better at developing pitchers than hitters (and lets hope ours is given the past 2 drafts), or vice versa.
The scouting department and the draft room have to pick players in accordance with their abilities in the development department. It’s one thing to find a talented HS-er (for example) who needs a couple of things ironed out, and quite another to actually be able to iron those out. (Naturally, its not this straightforward, but hopefully, you get the idea).
I love, for instance, what they’ve been able to do with Meek and Hanrahan (maybe Hanny was plain unlucky in WSH, maybe not- I’ll give the people some credit), and Searage’s work with Morton in AAA gives me some hope too. We’ll see in the years to come whether the farm system can actually develop the raw talent…
+ 1
well said; everyone talks only about trades and drafts, never about how those players are developed. Look at the A’s for the last couple of decades. Yea, they’ve drafted pitchers pretty well, but you have to admire how they keep developing them.
6 and counting
Since you didn't want to do it...
I will.
Most of the major trades NH has made have either been positive or neutral.
The Bay trade was a miss. This much we can all pretty much agree upon. Morris is the last hope we have for salvaging something out of that deal. Would’ve liked to see more come out of the trade, but you know what they say about hindsight.
Obviously Jose Bautista as well, but if it wasn’t Robinson Diaz, it would’ve been some other schmuck. Bautista didn’t have any value at the time and brought back someone with equally little value.
— Other than those two trades, where is his complaint?
Hanrahan is easily worth Morgan and Burnett, let alone a year of taking a gamble on Milledge (Exactly what teams like the Royals and Pirates should be doing)
Morton, Gorkys, and Locke for McLouth is a win as well. Locke alone is worth more than McLouth with the salary they’re committed to pay him. Morton and Gorkys appear to be organizational guys, but then again.. so does McLouth at this point.
Marte/Nady for Ohlie/Tabata/Karstens was a win for everyone. The Yankees got what they need and the Pirates obviously aren’t complaining about this.
Lambo/McDonald for Dotel – Probably the clearest trade win of any trade during NH tenure, even if McDonald is forced back into the bullpen this is still a win.
-
Everything else is relatively minor. Dotel made up for Capps, Javier Lopez made little sense to hang on to, etc. etc.
Am I missing something??
Yes...
He TOTALLY shouldn’t have traded Bixler for Jesus Brito!
/sarcasm
"So you think 25 percent of the country is retarded?! Yea. Atleast 25 percent. Well lets do a sample. There are 4 of us an you're retarded. Thats 25 percent." Southpark; Mystery of the Urinal Deuce
RIP Corey Keller, James Taylor, M. Jay Darby, Derek Davis.
by gorillakilla34 on Mar 17, 2011 10:42 PM EDT up reply actions
DK
I do think DK is correct in pointing out that a lot of the current administration’s moves have bombed. I don’t hold this entirely against them, as I think there’s a lot of “luck” involved in how players turn out, but it’s just plain true that aside from the draft, the Huntington regime has engineered a lot of failures. I didn’t think any of the ‘08-’09 trades were bad (although I did/do think NH might have been able to get more in some of them), but on aggregate they have not gotten much out of them. And DK is right that if more of them had panned out no one would now be upset about ownership or payroll.
note
I don’t personally care who SI is writing about, and I don’t think the Royals are any more likely to contend than the Pirates in the next five years or so. I don’t have any context for DK’s comments either, since I can’t look behind the paywall here. I’m just saying that he’s more or less right that the problem with the Pirates’ organization right now isn’t payroll or ownership; it’s the fact that their baseball decisions have not worked out well for them (for the most part).
My own view is that NH underperformed in the trades, but not nearly to the degree Dejan thinks, and that Dejan overstates not only the value of the guys NH traded, but the utility of vet-for-prospect trades. Most of them don’t really work out that well because teams rarely trade blue chip prospects. Cliff Lee—a far more valuable trade piece than Bay—was traded three times and the best player involved is probably going to be a 3rd/4th starter for Cleveland.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
A famous saying
“Prediction is hard, especially when it involves the future.” Most GMs have a history of failed trades. The problems of the Pirates are not that they made bad trades, but that they stuck to an outdated plan for too too long.
Viva Clemente!
agree
Except that I think you’re underrating a few of the prospects that Lee has been traded for: I still like Smoak, Carrasco, and Knapp.
But DK does overrate the vets the Pirates traded, and you’re right that a lot of those deals don’t pan out. I’m a big fan of NH despite his misses and mistakes, but I am upset that so many of his trades haven’t worked out.
What Dejan tends to do is value the traded players at their performance peak. So Freddy Sanchez is an all-star and batting champion, not a frequently injured player who was one of the worst regulars in MLB the year before he was traded. McLouth is “All-Star Nate McLouth,” not a guy coming off what most people figured was a peak year. Dejan seems to think GMs trading with the Pirates base their evaluations on the player’s best season and don’t make any effort to project the player going forward or account for any risks.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
by WTM on Mar 17, 2011 6:33 PM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
WTM's Analysis hits the nail right on the head
Dejan is a fucking idiot, and the anti-Pirate apostle. Just because he is more competent than Smizik doesn’t make him good, it just makes him slightly less garbage. The dude has zero credibility in my book. I’m glad his filth is behind the pay wall at the dying PG. Should be funny in a few years when the Pirates are competing and the PG is bankrupt.
by Kosstic518 on Mar 17, 2011 5:56 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
I think that’s a bit much.
In particular, I can’t see how coverage of the Pirates would be improved at all by the P-G going bust.
by Vlad on Mar 17, 2011 7:33 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Never said it would be improved.
Just said it would be funny, which it will be.
Now that I think about it, it won't be worse either, it will be exactly the same...
…because I get all of my information from not PG/Trib sources. Information is free these days, we don’t need them.
I get all of my information from not PG/Trib sources. Information is free these days, we don’t need them.
And where do those sources get their information, exactly? The P-G is the original point of origin for a lot of the news that gets reported about the team. If they go away, so do all of those stories.
Some things we could do without, sure, and others could be handled to one degree or another by amateurs and hobbyists like us. But I don’t have the personal resources to fly down to the Dominican Republic for a week with Rene Gayo so that I can write about how the team scouts 16-year-old kids. That kind of stuff would just vanish.
That was a great piece...
I enjoyed the write ups he did on Pedro, Sano and Taillon as well. Those are the reasons I read DK and still click on to the PG. I don’t always agree with his opinion’s but DK was a very good beat reporter IMO. Those calling him idiot in this post are way off base.
I agree....
I don’t think he is idiotic, I simply don’t think he knows much about baseball in terms of franchise strategy and properly evaluating players and teams and minor league systems.
If he simply stuck to coverage, as opposed to offering uninformed opinions on transactions, he would continue to get praise for the amount of info he puts out. However, as WTM pointed out in this specific post, his knowledge is still derived from 15-year-ago-thought, as opposed to anything relevant these days. I take him slightly more serious than Dunlap, which means I don’t really take him seriously at all.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 9:40 AM EDT up reply actions
I don’t think he is idiotic, I simply don’t think he knows much about baseball in terms of franchise strategy and properly evaluating players and teams and minor league systems.
If he simply stuck to coverage, as opposed to offering uninformed opinions on transactions, he would continue to get praise for the amount of info he puts out.
Yes, exactly. It seems that right now, he’s not in the optimal role for his skill set.
Of course it would....
Bankruptcys, or companies going under, usually lead to better, more well-run companies taking their place.
The PG is a rag, especially as it relates to their ‘coverage’ and ‘opinions’ of Pirate baseball. If they went under, there is a very good chance that someone would enter their market share with a better product – if for no other reason that the current product can’t get much worse.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 17, 2011 9:47 PM EDT up reply actions
I would welcome a better product
One day it will happen, its only a matter of time. Unfortunately most of their writers are old and might be retired by the time it does. I really would have liked for Smizik/Cook to get laid off while they were still working age.
There's a wealthy, eccentric, right-wing loon in Greensburg
who would just LOVE for the PG to go under.
That who you have in mind?
Considering I am a 'right-wing' loon, yes - that would be fine....
Most ‘right-wing’ loons are better at running a business than most ‘left-wing’ loons, if for no other reason than they actually don’t mind business.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 9:10 AM EDT up reply actions
Okay,
but are you wealthy, eccentric and in Greensburg?
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Mar 18, 2011 9:38 AM EDT up reply actions
No, I am poor, conventional, and am currently in Budapest
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 9:41 AM EDT up reply actions
so you must be Hungary
Players who should be in the Hall of Fame: Pat TIllman, Dwight White, Donnie Shell, L.C. Greenwood, Ray Guy, Steve Tasker, Jack Butler, Greg Llyod, Andy Russel, Cris Carter, Kevin Greene, Curtis Martin, Willie Roaf, Andre Reed and Jerry Kramer
"Any statement beginning with the words 'In truth' is almost always a lie." Mordred Deschain
Canal Street Chronicles resident Steelers Fan
by WVPiratesfan on Mar 18, 2011 11:03 AM EDT up reply actions
I seriously doubt
you are as far to the loon as he is.
Wow, that turned out far more backhanded-complimenty than it was supposed to.
I’m registered Republican and lean toward fiscal conservatism, while being fairly libertarian socially (and I vote for all parties, including Lib and Constitution). My position is, I don’t care who or what you do in bed, I don’t care who you want to marry or how you want to live, none of that is any damn business of mine. Just keep your hands off my wallet.
So I probably lean more in your direction than my flip comment suggested.
But the guy in Greensburg, he gives me the willies.
Pittsburgh is one of the few cities left with anything like two competitive newspapers, and two competing voices, however flawed those newspapers may be. Not just because I’m in the business (and can you be business-friendly and still want a newspaper business to fold?) and have friends at both papers, but it would be a disaster for the city if either one were to go away.
You and I are very similar in our political beliefs/philosophy
Plus, I think I am being ‘business-friendly’ by wanting a better product from both major papers. I think, in general obviously, both papers are extremely lazy in their reporting covering the Pirates – both showing no motivation to get with the times, so to speak, in how to properly evaluate a franchise and its individual components. They respond to the uneducated and ignorant Pirate fans…..which creates more uneducated and ignorant Pirate fans. As Fat Bastard would say, “It’s a vicious cycle…..”
FWIW, I have no idea who you speak of when referring to the ‘Greensburg Loon’. But, I am assuming he and I voted the same way for Governor so i probably support him more than some. It’s good to have allies, even if those allies are perceived to be loons – especially in a one-party city like PGH.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 11:27 AM EDT up reply actions
FWIW, I have no idea who you speak of when referring to the ‘Greensburg Loon’.
He can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe he’s referring to Richard Mellon Scaife.
Bankruptcys, or companies going under, usually lead to better, more well-run companies taking their place.
Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. It depends on the cause of the bankruptcy. In this case, I think it would result in other companies deciding that there’s no money to be made in the P-G’s niche, due to changes in the way people value and consume news, and thus leaving it unfilled. You don’t see a lot of people rushing to fill the demand for typewriter repair or buggy-whip manufacturing, do you?
Entering the Pittsburgh print media market would be particularly daunting right now, in that the Trib’s owner doesn’t care whether or not it turns a profit. He just wants the ability to use their readership base as a way to occasionally disseminate stories and opinion pieces – the entire rest of the operation is basically just a promotional expense for him. That makes them hard to fight.
the current product can’t get much worse.
I have to respectfully disagree on that one as well. Just go back ten years and look at the stuff Paul Meyer used to write about the team, back in the dark ages. The current coverage is better than that by leaps and bounds.
Fair point about Meyer.....
But, again, that is like comparing NH to Dave Littlefield in terms of expectations. NH doesn’t get the benefit of that comparison, so neither should the Post Gazette.
It is sad, however, in the larger picture, that it is easier to get more unbiased views and quality information from national coverage than our teams local coverage. Until that ceases to be the case, i will continue to go to those national sources and generally take the PG for what its worth – quotes from our staff, players, and administration and continue to ignore the columnists.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 9:37 AM EDT up reply actions
It is sad, however, in the larger picture, that it is easier to get more unbiased views and quality information from national coverage than our teams local coverage.
It depends on the national source, I think. Alan Robinson, the team’s AP guy, is probably the least objective beat reporter covering the team. Which is particularly unfortunate, given what the AP used to be.
For analytical pieces, there seems like a big split. You get better analysis from the good national writers, but also worse analysis from the bad ones, with a big valley in between. I think that if you plotted the writers along two axes (high/low local knowledge and high/low analytical skill), you’d end up with most national analysts at high knowledge-high skill or low knowledge-low skill. As bad an analyst or a writer as a guy like Smizik is, his presence within the market at least gives him a better working knowledge of the team and its personnel than someone like Jay Mariotti or Joe Morgan.
Agreed.....
I have about 10-15 columnists/sites that I can read on any given day and know that I am reading someone who is more knowledgable than I am and will present a very thoroughly, well-reasoned position on a particular Pirates subject, regardless of whether I agree with it or not.
None of those 10-15 sites/columnists originate from PGH.
I guess that is my point – I don’t think anyone writing in PGH knows much about the team they cover or are ‘familiar’ with.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 10:20 AM EDT up reply actions
Some details here:
http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/index.php/topic,81715.0.html
This version of the story is the same one I heard.
Alan and I hung out for awhile many years ago but I don’t think I’ve seen him since the ‘80s. I forget how old he is, he may have been approaching retirement anyway and just decided he didn’t need this shit anymore.
The irony of his getting mad at the copy desk, though, is that Alan is the one AP sports writer I’ve seen who most often had his work go out with this line atop it:
“3rd lede writethru, corrects …” followed by “4th lede writethru corrects …” followed by … well, you get the drift. He churned out massive amounts of copy, so much that inevitably some of it was a little sloppy. And by massive, I mean he’d sometimes do a story from Steelers camp, a story from Pitt camp, a Penguins story and then cover the Pirates game all in the same day. Man was a workaholic. Occasionally he was even a pretty damn good writer.
I generally enjoyed his stuff...
…until the AP tried to move away from the “AP Style” a few years ago, and insert more opinion- and advocacy-based content into their product.
When it comes to analysis of publicly available information...
…I greatly prefer the writing of the better informed Pirates fans. You can find well-educated engineers, lawyers, financial analysts, and the like among them. By and large, these individuals will never have the access of a beat reporter, although Bucs Dugout and PiratesProspects showed that management and player access is not a monopoly held by the beat reporters. But they often have knowledge and skills that exceed those found among the beat writers and columnists.
s.zielinski
Can you give an example of his idiocy,
or do you just hate him?
Not snark, true curiosity.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Mar 17, 2011 8:11 PM EDT up reply actions
WTM explained it perfectly.
Thinking you can turn garbage that was a 95 loss team into even a 70 win team in that short of a time period through trades without using the draft and international signings, and then blaming the GM that inherited the situation. As WTM points out, they had no one in their top 10 come from trades, and when they got Odorizzi back it was for a piece way more valuable than the pirates most valuable piece. The examples of the Royals and the Pirates don’t match for the reasons that Dejan believes, and its not even close.
95 losses to 70 wins
You can certainly turn a 67-95 team into a 70-92 team by trading veterans for young players. And that’s assuming that the ‘08 team that NH dismantled was a 67-95 team, which is probably not true. People are giving DK too much shit here. I think he’s a bit negative myself more often than not, but he’s absolutely right here (at least in the little excerpt WTM posted). The Pirates’ baseball moves (other than the draft) by and large have worked out terribly, and that’s a big reason why the Pirates are in the position they’re in today.
This is obviously an opinion, not nearly accepted fact.....
By and large, I think the moves have been fine, not terrible.
DK, and presumably you, feels that we had something good when, in reality, we had something awful. You aren’t going to get demonstrably better by trading very average players, especially with their FA time approaching quickly – thus eliminating any leverage the Pirates had and increasing the desperation the Pirates had to trade them. Other clubs know this…..and their offers in return reflect this.
I don’t think he’s ‘negative’ – I think he lacks knowledge about baseball and how to properly evaluate players. Him labeling Jason Bay a ‘superstar’ is a microcosm of all the problems he has in assessing a players value.
As NH said, we didn’t break up the 27 Yankees, or even the (insert average team in any year) team. We broke up an awful team, with players that were approaching their walk years at an advanced age. Until you and others realize this, your perception of ‘our return’ will always be misguided.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 17, 2011 10:43 PM EDT up reply actions
Advanced age?? Really??
Bay…29
Nady…29
Adam LaRoche…29
Wilson…31
Sanchez…31
Duke…27
McLouth…27
Morgan…28
Grabow…30
Gorzelanny…26
It’s not like any of them were in their mid 30s. Guess that means it’s time to trade Garrett Jones, since he will be 30 in June.
So he broke up an awful team…and replaced it with…an awful team.
So he broke up an awful team…and replaced it with…an awful team.
Pretty much. Of course, Dejan evidently expected him to trade that awful team for the best farm system of the last decade. Fat chance of that.
I wouldn’t choose the phrase “advanced age,” but the point to me is that none of those guys figured to be still on the uphill sides of their careers at the time they were traded, other than Gorzo, which imo was the worst of NH’s moves outside of Capps. And WIlson, Sanchez, Bay, Nady and Grabow were effectively older than their actual ages given their frequent/chronic health problems. NH was trading a bunch of guys who not only had teamed up for a string of 94/95-loss seasons, but who were at serious risk of falling off a cliff in the very near future. And, sure enough, most of them did.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
Of course, Dejan evidently expected him to trade that awful team for the best farm system of the last decade.
Are you divining this strictly from the excerpted quote or are you reading into it stuff that DK has said in the past? If it’s the latter, fine. But if it’s the former, I think you’re off-base. He doesn’t even say the Pirates’ farm system could be better than the Royals or anything hyperbolic like that. He just says SI might have written about both the Royals and Pirates, which I take to mean just that the Pirates could have a really great farm system rather than a middle-of-the-pack one. That seems reasonable. His larger point, that the problem with the Pirates is that their decisions have worked out poorly (as opposed to payroll/ownership) is debatable but certainly reasonable.
The reason I think this is important is that if we all understand that process and results aren’t congruent and that people can make decent decisions without getting decent results, we can all have a much more rewarding discussion about the state of Pirate baseball. I think DK and Smizik and a lot of yinzers have a problem with seeing poor results and believing some measure of stupidity or stinginess to be behind them, and I think it’s good to write articles like this from time to time to point out the fallacies in their logic. But on the other hand, I think some of the pro-FO rhetoric gets too reactionary. Too often the pro-FO side goes overboard in denying some fairly innocuous and non-controversial claim. This post is a good comparison of how the Royals got to where they are and how that path is and isn’t similar to the Pirates’ own, but I’m a little wary of the “DK has it all wrong” angle, which I don’t really buy and only seems to fuel a pointless us-vs.-them war.
you misunderstand
DK may think the team that was dismantled was good, but I don’t. I do not, however, think they were 95-losses bad. They were 50-58 at the end of July 2008 (on pace for 75-87).
We traded Nady, Bay, and McLouth (our best players, arguably) with over a year left on their contracts. The Pirates did not have decreased leverage because of rapidly-approaching free agency (or, at least, no less leverage than any team has, since every team considers contract situation when evaluating a potential trade).
I think your final paragraph represents a mistaken belief about my position. I know the 2008 Pirates weren’t good, and I know that most of the players we traded weren’t that great. I also don’t think that any of the trades we made were bad. I just think that they haven’t worked out in hindsight. That’s not a very radical position. I’m also not saying that I think NH is a bad GM or anything. He’s made some good moves, some bad moves, and some okay moves. Overall, I like him a lot. I’m just saying that he’s done an awful lot of stuff that hasn’t gone well, and that I agree with DK in saying that this (along with DL’s awfulness) is the primary reason the major league team is terrible and the minor league system is average.
epoc
good post.
cabrerakilled feels huntington can do no wrong, Dana Eveland and other trades were all well thought out and maximized returns.
when your team plays progressively worse as time wears on, that is not a sign of doing well on trades and free agent signings. It has been noted that he asked for MLB ready players on several occasions and the results are what they are, the W and L tell the story.
Huntington has done well in the draft and international signings are encouraging but to say he did well with trades and building the major league team is wrong just as the numbers suggest.
Just my opinion.
by jackiegleason on Mar 18, 2011 8:26 AM EDT up reply actions
No, that's not my opinion at all....
But, yes, I feel the trades have been much better than you apparently do.
What epoch fails to consider, in my mind, is the knowledge of other teams that we were not going to pay those guys (Bay, Nady, Sanchez,etc) because it wouldn’t make sense to and because we aren’t a huge market. That knowledge influences their offers and makes dealing very difficult in our situation.
FWIW, I agree with WTM, and said so at the time, that the trade involving Gorzo was NH’s worst, in my eyes. It involved, in my eyes, a guy that still had some upside left (Gorzo) along with a decently valuable piece (Grabow) for questionable return, especially if you saw Hart/Ascaino as bullpen pieces – which I did.
Other than that trade, as epoch rightly suggests, I think the decision-making process that fueled each trade was sound. Not all have worked out, but a lot are far from settled, and a few have worked out.
In essence, the results haven’t been terrible and a strong argument could be made that they have been a net positive.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 9:19 AM EDT up reply actions
you continue to misunderstand
I have fully considered the fact that we were having a fire-sale (i.e., that we weren’t going to pay the guys we traded). I understand that. But I’m not at all complaining about the trades that were made! I think they were mostly fine, as do you. What I am saying is that they haven’t worked out, and the fact that they haven’t worked out is the primary reason why the major league team is still awful and the minor league system is middle-of-the-road.
Nothing you say here is controversial in the least ......
But, I do sense a sort of unrealistic expectation coming from you that GMs won’t make many mistakes. In other words, when you are trading a lot of garbage or average players, more times than not you are going to miss on players coming back.
But, whatever – I get what you are saying, I agree with a lot of it (probably more than it seems) and I still think that DK’s opinion on this issue, like most of his, is uninformed, unfair, and speaks to a guy who should stick to coverage rather than analysis.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 1:03 PM EDT up reply actions
His reliance on W's as an informative stat for Pitchers.....
His reliance on AVG as a complete picture of a batters ability…..
His labeling Jason Bay as a ‘superstar’……..
His failure to comprehend how bad of shape the Pirates were in at the end of 2007…..
His revisionist history on how ‘good’ the Pirates would be if they had kept all of the players (McClouth, Sanchez, Bay, Nady, Wilson) they rightly got rid of…..
And, most recently, his failure to understand how the Royals sytem became the Royals system, something that he apparently feels was the result of ‘great trades’ by perenially bad GM Dayton Moore…….
I am sure there are other examples of his idiocy, but I haven’t read his stuff in over 8 months, so my BS meter on DK is currently lacking its full scope…
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 17, 2011 10:09 PM EDT up reply actions
forgive me
Maybe I’m missing something by not being able to read the full context of Dejan’s thoughts here, but in the excerpt that WTM posted, the only “comparison” that DK makes between the Royals and the Pirates is to say that if the Pirates had gotten Sano and better returns for their trades they might have a farm system as highly-touted as the Royals. I don’t see any reason to claim that he doesn’t understand “how the Royals sytem [sic] became the Royals system.” He’s just saying that the main reason that the Pirates’ major league team is awful and the Pirates’ minor league system is average is that the Pirates’ FO moves have, by and large, not worked out. This is absolutely true. (Even if most of those moves predate the current FO, it’s definitely true that a lot of the current FO’s moves have not worked out either.)
if the Pirates had gotten Sano and better returns for their trades they might have a farm system as highly-touted as the Royals
Actually, he said “decent returns.” Either way, it’s one of the most ludicrous statements I’ve seen in a long time from somebody who’s normally rational, i.e., not Smizik.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
ludicrous?
Why is that ludicrous? The Royals obviously have a historically stacked farm system, so maybe it’s overoptimistic to think that the Pirates would be quite on that level, but it’s far from ludicrous to point out that both the major league team and the minor league system would be vastly better if NH’s moves had worked out better. Maybe I’m unclear about what you consider ludicrous.
See below
Dejan claimed that trading away 95-loss talent could have brought back something approaching a historically stacked farm system. That’s “ludicrous,” as in “idiotic,” or “beyond the realm of sanity,” or “in some bizarro dimension where Jerry Lewis is funny,” or “equivalent to thinking that 2+2=312.5588008,” or “Smizikian, as in worthy of Smizik.”
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
we'll have to disagree
Even if they’d made the exact same trades, the Pirates very well could have an excellent farm system right now if NH had been right more often. If Morris looked like a future ace instead of a #3 starter or set-up man; if Locke looked like a #2-3 rather than a #3-5; if Gorkys looked like he could ever hit ML pitching; if Alderson hadn’t completely fallen apart; if Lorin wasn’t constantly injured; etc., the Pirates would have a really excellent system. Not at the Royals level, but good enough that it wouldn’t be at all ludicrous to mention them in the same breath. And that’s without even mentioning Strickland, Argenis Diaz, Ciriaco, Harrison, Pribanic, Adcock, etc. It does not seem unreasonable at all for Dejan to make that claim. It seems pretty uncontroversial to me, honestly.
Look at it this way —
The Royals have five of BA’s top 19 prospects. None of those guys came in trades. Not for Greinke, who was a better trade piece than anybody NH had. Not for DeJesus, who was a better piece than anybody NH had except Bay. They have other good prospects, but it’s those five guys who set their system apart. You don’t have a system in the same galaxy with theirs unless you have several guys like that. If all the guys NH acquired totally fulfilled expectations—which is pretty much what you’re saying and which is a ludicrous hope in itself—the Pirates still wouldn’t have anything like that. At most, maybe Morris would be on a level with those five guys, and even that’s a stretch. NH couldn’t have gotten even one of those five guys straight up for Bay.
And that’s without even mentioning Strickland, Argenis Diaz, Ciriaco, Harrison, Pribanic, Adcock, etc.
These guys were never anything more than complementary pieces. They’re not the sort of guys who make a meaningful difference in the overall quality of a system. And as a group they haven’t fallen much short of expectations so far, anyway.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
disagree
First, if guys like Strickland, Diaz, Ciriaco, et al, are not going to make a meaningful difference for your organization, why acquire them? Obviously, they weren’t expected to be top prospects or great ML players, but presumably they were acquired because the FO thought they had potential. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect that something from all those pieces would develop into something valuable.
Second, the scenario I outlined does not represent a best-case scenario for everyone we acquired; it represents a best-case scenario for five prospects. We also acquired ML pieces like Milledge, LaRoche, Moss, Clement, Cedeno, Ohlendorf, Hansen, Karstens, etc. If none of the prospects had worked out but some of the ML players had, we would have our current middle-of-the-road farm system but a pretty good ML team. The point that both DK and I are making is that, again, the primary reason why the Pirates’ organization, top to bottom, is not very good, is that the FO (under both Littlefield and Huntington) has made a whole host of decisions that have utterly failed. No one expects every move to work out or every player to become a star, but pretty much everyone we acquired, with the exception of Ohlendorf, McDonald (so far), and possibly Tabata has under-performed expectations. That is astounding.
If you want to quibble with me and DK about whether a farm system that includes Sano and better returns on our trades is worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as the Royals’ system, fine, but it seems awfully petty. There’s really nothing wrong or misguided about the point DK is making here, so why take exception to a minor detail?
It’s not quibbling or a minor detail, it’s a fundamentally ludicrous point that “you and DK” are trying to make. Among other things, you don’t seem to understand the different roles played by depth, which does matter, and impact talent, which is the real difference maker.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
Can you explain your second sentence? What about what I’ve written indicates that I don’t understand the difference between depth and impact talent? Are you saying we shouldn’t have expected anything out of guys like Harrison and Pribanic other than organizational players? If that’s true, then NH’s trades were a lot worse than any of us thought. I understand that those guys were never impact players, but surely we acquired them because someone thought they might be serviceable big leaguers in some role, right?
As for the first sentence, I don’t think there’s anything ludicrous about the claim that the Pirates’ system would be a lot better if the Pirates’ trades, by and large, hadn’t bombed. Quibbling about how much better it might be seems beside the point.
You keep moving the goalposts here. Dejan didn’t just say the Pirates’ system would be better. Obviously, it’d be better if the trades worked out better. Duh. He said that if they’d gotten “decent returns,” SI might be writing about them and not the Royals, which is the same thing as saying that a merely decent trade performance by NH should have produced talent that’s more or less equivalent to what the Royals have. I don’t know whether that’s what you’re trying to say or not, because you keep slipping in wording that isn’t anywhere close to what Dejan said while claiming you and he are making the same argument. But it’s not “quibbling” to say that Dejan’s argument is ludicrous. There’s no way in hell that the talent NH traded away had so much as a 0.00000000000000000000000000001% chance of producing a return that was in the same universe as the Royals’ current system. Branch Rickey in an LSD-induced hallucination couldn’t get a fraction of a return like that by breaking up the crappy team NH broke up. You don’t get the core of a playoff team, which is what the Royals have if things go right for them, by trading away a perennial last place team.
As for depth vs. impact, guys like Diaz, Strickland, etc., are useful in a system because nobody can fill all their needs with impact prospects. There aren’t enough of them for that. That’s why depth-type prospects are worth trading for. But the BA writers have explained many, many times that prospects of that sort have little to no impact on system rankings. It’s the impact guys who determine where systems rank. So it’s wrong either to claim the system should be noticeably better because if guys like that had turned out better or to say NH shouldn’t have bothered trading for them.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
Game. Set. Match.
This argument is so nauseating – WTM has shown DK, and ostensibly epoch, to be out of their league.
Well done…..
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 19, 2011 2:23 AM EDT up reply actions
I see
I’m afraid that a misreading is largely to blame for our disagreement. You seem to think that Dejan said that the Pirates might have a better system than the Royals, but that’s not what he said at all. He said, “SI might have been writing about them and the Royals.” Again, if you think it’s wrong to mention the Royals and Pirates in the same sentence, fine, but that’s a minor quibble. He’s just saying that the Pirates could have an excellent farm system if they’d gotten decent returns for the trades. This is absolutely true, and I’ve already provided an example of how it could be so.
Look, you don’t trade for organizational fillers. Like I said, I know Diaz and Strickland aren’t impact players, but I’m sure someone in our organization thought they had major league potential, or else we wouldn’t have traded for them. My point in bringing them up is to say that even the so-called “depth” that NH got in trade has underwhelmed. If one of those guys had exceeded expectations and now looked like a possible future starter, the system would look that much better.
To clear things up, Dejan never said the Pirates could have a better system than the Royals, and he also clearly acknowledges that the draft and international signings are the best way to build a farm system (with the caveat that they take more time than trades). His lone point is that if the baseball decisions NH had made had worked out better, the Pirates would have a much stronger organization. This is not only uncontroversial, it’s pretty goddamn obvious. You guys are getting your panties in a bunch about a completely innocuous couple of paragraphs.
You are missing something, in my eyes
You are missing the fact that our system was awful as a baseline, while the Royals (prior to Moore’s arrival) was average, or, in other terms, right around where ours is now. We have gone from worst (or near worst) in baseball to 13 in Fangraphs within 3 years. That isn’t ‘terrible’ or ‘not working out’ – that is very, very encouraging.
You are also missing the fact that the Royals farm system was built on drafting, not trades. So, considering that they went from average to best (based extensively on the 2010 season of the majority of their prospects), the fact that we went from abysmal to above average or average…..means NH is doing something right, again, not ‘terrible’ or ‘not working out’.
DK has no concept of where we were in 2007……because he doesn’t understand how to properly evaluate talent and system strength.
Plus, if you want to debate every trade that NH has made, I am more than confident that the results will not be ‘terrible’ as you say in an above post, or even ’haven’t worked out’ as you it put it more mildly. They haven’t been exceptional – but that was to be expected, considering we got rid of a bunch of average players who were aging and who were approaching their FA years.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 17, 2011 10:50 PM EDT up reply actions
missing something
I’m not ignorant of the state of the system when NH took over, and like you I find NH’s work, as a whole, very encouraging. Nonetheless, if NH’s moves had worked out better, both the system and the major league team would be better. This seems fairly uncontroversial to me.
I understand how the Royals’ farm system was built. I don’t see how that has any bearing on what DK is saying (in the excerpted bit here, at least; please, if there’s some unquoted context I’m missing let me know). Dayton Moore didn’t trade away an entire team; NH did. If the trades had worked out better and he’d signed Sano, we’d have a lot more good prospects. Maybe not as many as the Royals, but we’d be a lot closer. Again, I’m not sure how this is controversial.
Re: debating every trade: As I said above, I don’t dislike any of NH’s trades. But I do think a lot of them have worked out terribly for us. I think we reasonably could have expected better results than we got, but again I don’t blame NH entirely for how things worked out. And again, I do not see how this position is at all controversial.
If the trades had worked out better and he’d signed Sano, we’d have a lot more good prospects. Maybe not as many as the Royals, but we’d be a lot closer.
No, we wouldn’t, unless the trades were downright miraculous. And Moore has indeed traded most of his best players, or just let them walk. He got a middling return for Greinke, one that actually is very similar to what NH got for Bay. He got a risky starter with health issues for David DeJesus, who was a much better piece than anybody NH traded except Bay. He got nothing for John Buck or Miguel Olivo, both of whom signed elsewhere for about what Moore wasted on Kendall. He got worse than nothing for Leo Nunez. He got nothing for Mark Teahen, whose career OPS+ numbers are remarkably similar to Freddy Sanchez’.
The Royals themselves illustrate perfectly how completely off the wall it is to maintain that the Pirates, short of an unprecedented series of highway robberies, could have traded their 95-loss talent for a farm system that bore even the slightest resemblance to what the Royals have now. Moore got rid of a bunch of guys who were no worse than what NH traded, yet nearly all of the Royals’ top prospects are the guys they drafted, not the guys they got in trades. If NH had gotten a decent return in the trades, the Pirates’ system would be about as much closer to the Royals’ as I am to China when I lean forward in my chair.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
And you...Cabrera...
have no clue where the Royals were in 2007.
2004… 58-104
2005… 56-106
2006… 62-100
Were talking Minor League systems, Thunder.....
Not ML results.
I thought that was abundantly clear, considering the thrust of the original post.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 9:24 AM EDT up reply actions
And we will take a look at the Royals Minors at the end of 2006.
Omaha…57-87
Wichita…77-62
High Desert…69-71
Burlington…67-70
Idaho Falls…41-35
AZL Royals…37-19
Their drafts…and the players that made it to the majors…
2004…Billy Butler…JP Howell…Billy Buckner…David Herndon. Total WAR 7.2
2005…Alex Gordon…total WAR 4.0
2006…Luke Hochevar…Blake Wood…and Jarrod Dyson. Total WAR -0.2.
Their entire minor league system at the end of 2006 consisted of Greinke…Buckner…Butler and Gordon. After that…it was a wasteland. Probably even worse than the Pirates system.
Three years down the road…2009 season…an equal place to where the Pirates are at the end of 2010 as it relates to time of the GM on duty.
Omaha 69-71…jumps to 82-62 in 2010
NW Arkansas 73-67…jumps to 85-55 in 2010
Wilmington 79-60…drops to 66-72
Burlington (Midwest) 64-75…drops to 48-88
Burlington (Appy) 25-43…jumps to 32-36
Idaho Falls 41-33…drops to 28-48
AZL Royals 21-34…jumps to 28-28
Moore didn’t trade for any significant prospects…drafted a bunch of them…and reportedly has the top minor league system in the majors.
NH traded for several significant prospects…by all reports…Alderson, LaRoche, Clement…drafted a few top prospects…and has a group that hasn’t even made it to the middle. And 3 pitchers throwing short season or Low A ball aren’t going to be enough to raise that grade to #2.
BTW…Mike Montgomery was a supplemental #1 in 2009 for losing a FA. The next pick the Pirates pick up that way will be the first one in 18 years.
What’s it all boil down to?? The Royals system has been upgraded by the draft…and most of their players are going to reach the majors within a couple of years of each other. They are pretty decently distributed between pitching and offense.
The Pirates tried doing it through trades (to restock the minors) and the draft. The trades…for the most part…have produced 1 decent major league player (Tabata)…maybe 2 decent pitchers (Hanrahan and Ohlendorf) and a bunch of trash. The drafts have produced a major leaguer (Alvarez)…a catcher that might be decent (Sanchez) and 3 guys that have yet to throw a professional pitch. And the Pirates drafts are extremely top-heavy in pitching. Gonna be buying a lot of bats if we have to wait on the “Big 3” pitchers to make the majors.
Moore has done a lot more with a lot less. And even his “success” is somewhat questionable…as the Royals minor league records below AA appear to be reentering the Twilight Zone.
And even his "success" is somewhat questionable…as the Royals minor league records below AA appear to be reentering the Twilight Zone.
Minor league W/L records don’t track particularly well with the prospect status of the players on those teams. Under Littlefield, for example, we always had excellent records, largely because we were using overaged ringers rather than prospects who were still developing their skills.
by Vlad on Mar 18, 2011 1:54 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
The drafts have produced a major leaguer (Alvarez)…a catcher that might be decent (Sanchez) and 3 guys that have yet to throw a professional pitch.
Yes, if you mostly ignore anyone drafted after the first round.
by MBandi on Mar 18, 2011 3:25 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Not to mention all of that
I was just going by what was idiotic about this topic, but you are 100% correct he believes in all of those other things.
Bottom line, Dejan is a fucking idiot.
I don't think he's a fucking idiot...
but he’s clearly morphing into Smizik. Maybe it is being over exposed to all the yinzers behind the paywall.
And I’m sick of hearing about Sano. The entire fault lies with his agent, who screwed his client six ways to Sunday.
If you think Dejan is an idiot, you need to have your meter recalibrated. I don’t agree with him about this particular issue, or his take on the trades in general, but I do think some of this criticism is way overboard.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Mar 18, 2011 12:33 AM EDT up reply actions 2 recs
Im not sure I have agreed with any of his opinions in the last four years
His views on the situation with the Pirates in every article I have read of his that is not just fact reporting is based off of huge assumptions he makes. The dude is a giant Yinz, the comment about him morphing into Smizik couldn’t have said it better.
Either way, there are about 10 to 15 sources, including yourself, that I would trust with matters concerning the Pirates before I would even gander at Dejan’s stuff. I may be the most extreme, but half of these comments from the most informed Pirates community on the internet think he has gone sharply downhill.
by Kosstic518 on Mar 18, 2011 7:36 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Your entitled to your opinion...
but I would also like to point out when you are blatanly wrong.
The dude is a giant Yinz, the comment about him morphing into Smizik couldn’t have said it better
This is just so false I don’t even know where to start. So let me get this straight, you are clearly defining a “yinz” as someone who doesn’t agree with everything the front office does? DK has become more vocal with some of his opinions but he is far from a yinz. As far as I can tell the only thing he doesn’t like about the management team is the results from the trades. Doesn’t make him a yinz or Smizik-like at all. I’ve read him for a while and he has had many, many positive things to say about the front office and has mostly taken a wait and see approach with them because he knew this would take a while. He has recently become more critical and I don’t agree with a lot of his opinions but his work as a beat writer was outstanding. See the article on the Dominican Academy referenced above. His story on Pedro and Sano and Taillon were definitely worth reading. He recently did a nice little write up on Rendon. These are things you would never get from Smizik., putting DK in the category is incredibly unfair IMO.
For the record, DK spent months combating trolls on his site when he was the beat reporter. He daily battles with true yinzers like NuttingHostage, BFD, Daquido Bazzinni. If DK were a yinz in the context you are using it he would have agreed with everything those guys said. But instead he banned them.
yeah
DK holds slightly more trenchant opinions on some topics than is ideal, but he is pretty good at his job. I do sometimes get this vibe that some people consider anyone who doesnt agree with what the FO does as a yinzer (not referring to Kosstic, just a general comment). IMO, that actually does the argument (that the FO is trying to do the right thing) more harm than good.
I agree with epoc’s stance above in that the plan in the FO has been solid, but the execution and results thereof are still in doubt. If I had to evaluate the results right now, they’d be negative, but there’s still time for it to improve (in addition to the abysmal farm system inherited, etc)
by BurgherKing on Mar 18, 2011 11:04 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
You hit my feelings pretty much on the head. The plan is a sound one…I just have major concerns about the execution and results from the execution. I don’t think that talent evaluation of this group is very strong. The difference between a decent farm system and a great one is in drafting major league players beyond the first round. I see no indication that is happening here.
I see no indication that is happening here.
I can see indications. However, that still has to be taken some distance from the point of the draft. Wayyy upthread, I made the point that you can draft the guys with high ceilings, but the development in the farm system has to take them close to those ceilings. And if it doesn’t, you’ll be left with little. None of Montgomery, Lamb or Duffy were sure things, and they may still not be, but they’ve been developed to get closer to their ceilings. The Pirates could have guys like ZVR/Cain/Dodson/Fuesser/Stevenson/Allie/Kingham compete with them, but only if the development system does its job well. It’s not fair to blame guys not working out on the draft evaluators/luck alone.
we have different definitions of yinz.
I was going with uneducated/people that have no context of reality. He can report facts, sure, but anyone can do that. His analysis is what makes him yinz. If he was a beat reporter with no opinion he would be a lot better, but all of this argument is theoretical because he is extremely opinionated, in what I and many people on this site believe to be an uneducated direction.
by Kosstic518 on Mar 18, 2011 2:32 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I'll just respectfully disagree with your opinon of Dejan...
I was going with uneducated/people that have no context of reality.
Clearly Dejan is educated so he already doesn’t fit your definition. He may not have completely bought into advanced stats yet but hardly anyone in the mainstream media has (or at least many beat reporters have not to the best of my knowledge). And for the record the Saber community still represents the minority when it comes to baseball fans. I think DK tries to do his best to find a balance for both types of fans. He has touched on things like BABIP and UZR in the past although he is clearly, and admittedly , uncomfortable with it.
He can report facts, sure, but anyone can do that.
Not true. Go back and read your buddy Smizik and tell me that he can consistently report facts. Additionally Dejan has many contacts within the organization so he gets access to information that others cannot.
If he was a beat reporter with no opinion he would be a lot better
If he was a beat reporter with no opinion he would be a robot.
but all of this argument is theoretical because he is extremely opinionated
Again, I respectfully disagree. He does have an opinion on a couple of issues that he refuses to budge on but most of the time he gravitates towards the middle. Like you I like it better when he sticks to reporting and provides less analysis but I think you are overly harsh in your criticism of his work. To each his own. I respect your opinions we just don’t agree on this one.
"If you think Dejan is an idiot, you need to have your meter recalibrated. "
I think you mean REWIND YOURSELF
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Mar 18, 2011 10:18 AM EDT up reply actions
I strongly disagree
I think Dejan has proven to be knowledgeable about all things Pirates, with the added bonus that he genuinely cares about the city of Pittsburgh.
I disagree with him (and with WTM) that it was Huntington’s fault they missed out on Sano — not giving a bidder a chance to counteroffer is just cutting of your nose to spite your face, and that was all on Sano’s agent. And one can debate whether it was reasonable to expect to get top-tier prospects in return for the core of Bay et al. that Huntington inherited, but thus far the returns from those trades have been underwhelming. Hopefully, Tabata will continue to blossom, and both Ohlendorf and Morton will have good years.
The Bay trade doesn’t look like it (a slam dunk winner), but if you take into account the fact that all they lost was eight months of Jason Bay’s services, as well as the fact that even the Red Sox look like they won’t be able to re-sign him, it’s not nearly the loser many people seem to think.
even the Red Sox look like they won’t be able to re-sign him
???
The Red Sox actually could have resigned him, but they decided against it at the price he wanted because they were spooked by the condition of his knee, as I understand.
by MarkInDallas on Mar 17, 2011 6:18 PM EDT up reply actions
The Red Sox actually could have resigned him, but they decided against it at the price he wanted because they were spooked by the condition of his knee, as I understand.
Which does in and of itself, of course, have a substantial effect on any assessment of the value we surrendered in the deal.
Of course, as Dejan would say,
since that was only discovered later, it had no bearing on the perceived value at the time of the trade.
by MarkInDallas on Mar 17, 2011 6:46 PM EDT up reply actions
it wasnt later, was it?
Wasnt the knee responsible for Bay missing some time in 2007 as well? And even though he showed he was over it in 08 and 09, injuries to certain parts (like the knee) have a way of acting up. Boston made a smart move, imo.
Yes.
I’m not saying there wasn’t a question concerning his knees that hindered his value. There most definitely was. But it was found to be worse than expected a year or so later.
by MarkInDallas on Mar 17, 2011 7:08 PM EDT up reply actions
In which case...
…the subsequent performance of LaRoche and Moss and the illness of Hansen don’t count, either.
Looking at the present-day value of the components of the trade is a fine approach, and so is looking at the value of those components at the time of the trade. It’s not fair or reasonable, though, to use the one approach for one half of the deal and the other half for the other.
by Vlad on Mar 17, 2011 7:37 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions 1 recs
I agree with you but I would think the pirates were in fact aware of what they were getting. One player didn’t perform as hoped. One was a outfield filler. One was high risk, high reward. The best peice looks to be a good # 3 rotation guy.
by Seven_Patch on Mar 17, 2011 9:15 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
That’s part of the reason the Red Sox didn’t sign Bay. The other from what I’ve heard is they just thought he was too expensive.
They didn’t want to pay him more per season then JD Drew, because according to the advanced metrics, Bay was not as good as Drew.
by Adam Reynolds on Mar 18, 2011 1:35 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
For the most part I am pleased with Huntington’s drafts except for last year’s rounds 6-10 (basically the HS pitchers that they drafted but failed to sign). I understand the idea of best player available but in my opinion they should have looked for a couple more position players or taken less hard to sign guys. I do think that his drafts are relatively strong and am looking forward to the future results from Latin America.
Alex Gordon
We need to be careful about over analyzing a club’s farm system, statistics can be deceiving. I recall Alex Gordon was touted by many of the national experts as a sure thing, and he’s been a bust so far. The Royals deserve credit for what they’ve done in the minor leagues, but how many of their highly rated prospects will turn into even solid players is difficult to predict. I’ve heard countless prospects touted as can’t miss stars over the years by the baseball insiders fail to even be average players. Time will tell.
While the Pirates farm system doesn’t appear to have the quality of KC, you never know how everything will turn out. For years we’ve been hearing how terrific the Marlins farm system is, but it’s been nearly a decade since Florida even made the playoffs.
Some people get excited about minor league stats, but who really cares about a minor league batting title? For my money, what Walker, Tabata, and Alverez have done in a small sample of major league competition is a better indicator of future success.
I would think
That the Royals farm system will appear MUCH weaker next season, even if nobody graduates at all.
Among others, Myers, Lamb, Hosmer, and Moose all really broke out and had excellent seasons last year, but none were as highly thought of previously. Hosmer, in particular, was wayyyy down the lists prior to last season due to his struggles.
The point is, the law of averages demands that several of these guys will get hurt, regress, or not be able to make the transition to the bigs. People talk about these guys as if they will no doubt step in and dominate, but there’s no guarantee of that at all. The Royals have done an excellent job of drafting and developing, but most of that is based upon the 2010 minor league season alone, as several of these guys were not nearly as highly thought of before.
Don't really have much to add...
…but I wanted to say that this is an excellent piece, WTM.
by Vlad on Mar 17, 2011 7:38 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
The elephant in the room
Look, when you trade The Franchise for Jeff Clement, you’ll never be a winning ballclub. An All-Star, Veteran, Leader, for Clement. I may be overvaluing Jack Wilson and conveniently ignoring several other relevant facts, but that doesn’t change the fact that a Franchise Player was traded for diddly poo.
by azibuck on Mar 17, 2011 8:18 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
psssst...
azibuck is no troll.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Mar 18, 2011 10:23 AM EDT up reply actions
jack wilson was the franchise player?
just because he was around longer than any of his Pirate contemporaries doesn’t mean he was a franchise player. franchise players have to be, ya know… good.
Here's another point . . .
. . . that never seems to get discussed. Dejan infers—with the comment about SI writing about the Pirates instead of KC—that the Pirates’ system would be vastly stronger if NH had gotten “even decent returns” in the trades. To say that’s an overstatement is, well, a huge understatement. But it’s probably true that the Pirates’ farm system could be marginally stronger now if NH had gone for lower level prospects instead of major-league-ready players like LaRoche, Morton, Milledge, Clement, etc. Then again, they probably would just have ended up with more flawed prospects like Tim Alderson and the system would be rated about where it is now. Those are the sort of prospects you get when you tear down a 95-loss team.
But this line of thinking also ignores the situation NH was facing. In the typical rebuild situation, a team will have some talent ready to go in AAA and AA, even if it’s just B-/C+ type prospects. A sad-sack franchise usually will have had high draft picks combined with at least a little recognition that it needs to build through its farm system. But the Pirates weren’t like that. Not only did they have a rotten team at the major league level, they had almost nothing in the minors. To my knowledge, that’s unprecedented. The Royals weren’t known for astute drafting prior to Moore’s arrival, but he inherited a farm system that BA ranked 11th. NH inherited one that was ranked 26th. The only teams ranked below them were the Astros, whose owner was unwilling to invest anything at all in the farm system; the A’s, whose system had been depleted by large numbers of graduations and injuries; and the Tigers and White Sox, who’d just traded away all their best prospects. In short, the only teams rated below the Pirates were ones that either weren’t trying or had extenuating circumstances.
Typically, a rebuilding team would just bring up the prospects, regardless of whether they were quite ready and regardless of whether they were more than marginal prospects. But the Pirates didn’t have that option. All they had in the upper minors were a bunch of career minor leaguers with no upside at all. I don’t know that NH has ever publicly explained his strategy in the trades, but he had to put a team on the fields. I suspect he was trying to balance the goals of building the farm system and populating the major league roster with players who had at least a little upside. To do the latter, he brought in a bunch of struggling, former top prospects who might still turn things around. I don’t think he did a very good job of it, but I also don’t think he had the option of focusing solely on lower level prospects. And that’s apart from the difficulty of getting teams to turn loose of truly high-ceiling prospects these days.
Hmmm, maybe I should update the original post.
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.
great point
I think this is something that gets overlooked very often. People criticize NH for getting quantity over quality, but it really isn’t a fair criticism. He needed quantity AND quality because the system, from top to bottom, was so barren. I think you can make a decent case for the idea that, for instance, at the time of the Bay trade, the package we got was better than the alleged TB package of Niemann and Brignac, just because we needed more talented bodies in the organization. That line of reasoning has limits, of course, but it’s definitely worth remembering that NH really didn’t have the luxury of just getting the highest ceiling guys he could; he needed a lot of bodies, too.
Yet you say his moves have been 'terrible'.....
I don’t follow the logic….
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 17, 2011 10:52 PM EDT up reply actions
He said they've worked out terribly...
there’s a difference. Don’t want to speak for epoc but it would seem that he agrees with the strategy (“the moves”) but is simply pointing out that for the most part NH’s attempt to rebuild the ML team through trades has not worked out. The process was sound given the state of the franchise but the results so far have been terrible (Clement, Milledge, Moss, Laroche, Hansen, Morton vs Ohlendorf & MacDonald – that’s the list of ML ready talent acquired as I remember it; did I miss anyone?) . He also gives NH credit, and justifiably so IMO, for restocking a barren farm system through the draft. I would add that he has also improved the acqusition of international talent…this despite the Sano fiasco (which I too place partial responsibility on NH).
bingo
Yes, exactly. I think it’s significant that DK, in the excerpt quoted, says “decisions that have bombed” rather than “bad decisions.” That is a distinction that I too am making. Hopefully this is clear, but I do not think NH has made any really bad decisions, but I think it’s indisputable that a lot of his decisions have worked out really badly.
I understand the distinction.....
And, while I agree that not all of the ‘right’ decisions have ‘worked out’, as I said above, some are far from settled and some have really worked out.
The record, even when discussing the results of the decisions, is not nearly as dire as epoch or DK seem to suggest. And, again, I think what people perceive as ‘working out’ has a lot to do with what they perceive we gave up in terms of talent. I come from the general perspective that we gave up a lot of average to below-average players, at aging points in their careers, with FA fastly approaching. I wasn’t expecting much by way of return – and, in that sense – in most cases, I have been satisfied with the results.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 18, 2011 9:31 AM EDT up reply actions
results
When I say “results,” I’m not talking about a re-evaluation of the deals themselves. My position remains that they were, for the most part, good trades. The results are what they’ve done for the organization. And, by and large, they’ve either failed totally or just not lived up to expectations. I don’t think I’m being dire here. We’ve had increasingly worse performance from the ML team since those trades were made, largely because most of the ML-ready guys we got in the trades (Milledge, LaRoche, Clement, Cedeno, Moss, Hansen, etc.) failed spectacularly. And although our farm system has gotten better since the trades, that’s largely because of good drafting. If you look at BA’s top 31 for this year, only two of the top ten and 7 of 31 were acquired through trade.
I totally understand WTM’s point that the Royals mostly got their awesome system through drafting too, but that’s kind of a strawman, no? DK’s point is just that if the Pirates’ decisions had worked out better, they’d be a lot better. I agree.
It’s cool if you’re satisfied with the results. Honestly, I am too, basically. They mostly didn’t work out, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I’m not sore about it. I just don’t see how it’s controversial to say that, by and large, excepting the draft, what NH has done since taking over has yielded underwhelming results.
Good points...
I think the main thing worth noting is this:
It’s cool if you’re satisfied with the results. Honestly, I am too, basically.
Most of us who support Huntington are ok with the results because we knew what he was trying to do and what he had as assets when he took over; unlike DK who I do think overvalued what was traded. As WTM pointed out in his update NH was given nothing to work with in the minors or majors. He chose, or was instructed, to try and rebuild both at the same time. The strategy he chose gave us the best chance of being competitive the soonest. Our assets were spent acquiring ML ready former top prospects in the hopes that one or two would break out late and realize their potential. It was a solid attempt but it didn’t work. Had the Pirates just accepted that the ML product would struggle for a couple of years, as it has anyways, and had Huntington traded away players for the best talent he could acquire regardless of how close to the majors they were, I’m sure the farm would be better today. How much better is impossible to say because as Cab points out we weren’t dealing away assets that would net a team’s top prospect. This is the one area where DK frustrates me because people have debated this point with him ad nauseum and he just doesn’t agree. Still doesn’t make him an idiot; just makes him a writer with a different opinion.
I agreed with this
At first. But, aside from the Nady trade (which I’ve always liked, and which addressed glaring holes in the MLB rotation while adding a MiL prospect), who was brought in? LaRoche, who pushed aside a tolerable 3B option in Bautista. Moss, who pushed aside a better RF option in Pearce. Clement, who pushed aside a better 1B option in Pearce. Cedeno, who was necessary (although Iszturis could have gotten us to the offseason, at which point FAs were available). Milledge for Morgan was a straight swap, and, given Morgan’s age/background, I don’t really put it in the same category.
I’m not going back over the 2008 40-man, but I don’t think I’ve missed any significant players. Is there any MLB position where the Pirates would have been forced to start a bad AAA player had they not gotten ML-ready talent in exchange for MLB players?
LaRoche, who pushed aside a tolerable 3B option in Bautista
I think you generally have a more favorable opinion of Bautista’s play with us than the common consensus. He was only a hair above replacement level as a Pirate. Certainly not the kind of player who’d dissuade you from adding a top young talent at the position.
Moss, who pushed aside a better RF option in Pearce.
By this point, I believe the team had decided (rightly or wrongly) that Pearce was not an option as an everyday outfielder, for defensive reasons. After him, there really wasn’t anyone to use in the OF in place of Nady.
Is there any MLB position where the Pirates would have been forced to start a bad AAA player had they not gotten ML-ready talent in exchange for MLB players?
The pitching staff. We would’ve been up shit creek in 2008 if not for Ohlendorf and Karstens. Due to Littlefield’s gross negligence, we didn’t have even replacement-level options at AAA to use as rotation filler. We were giving starts to JVB and Yoslan Herrera. Whereas if we’d had the sort of reasonable depth that any team not run by a stupid asshole does, we could’ve instead targeted higher-ceiling arms in the low minors in our deals.
Instead...
we were up shit creek in 2009 and 2010 (and probably 2011) with the pitching staff. And that’s WITH Ohlendorf and Karstens. So instead of JVB and Yoslan Herrera…we give starts to Dana Eveland, Hayden Penn, Brian Bass, Brian Burres. We didn’t increase the depth…or the quality of the pitching staff with the trades.
you're going too far
We obviously increased both the depth and the long-term outlook of the pitching staff through the trades. We could have done better but let’s not get crazy here.
We didn’t increase the depth…or the quality of the pitching staff with the trades.
Yes, we did. The fact that NH has generally done a fairly marginal job of acquiring depth players as NRIs doesn’t affect the value generated by having Karstens and Ohlendorf rather than two additional marginal depth players.
I think Thunder is stating
bringing in guys who are not true major league starters as increasing depth.
olendorf appears mlb caliber probably but nobody else has been unless 5 plus ERA’s are what should be considered good.
This team has increasing losses and building ERA. There’s bringing in pitching depth and there’s just bring bodies in.
by jackiegleason on Mar 18, 2011 5:06 PM EDT up reply actions
Without looking through every single team in the league...
….I would bet McDonald could make at least 20 rotations in the league. In a very small sample size, he has a career xFIP of 4.52. I don’t know what the league average xFIP for #5s was in 2010, but I highly doubt it was better than 4.52.
Morton’s numbers have been bad, but I’m still bullish on him for one more year.
Maholm and Correia I’d trade asap for whatever you can get back for them.
In order
Bautista: even slightly above replacement level is good enough relative to WTM’s premise that, without MLB return, we’d have been playing a Bixler-grade guy there.
Pearce: Second verse, same as the first. It sure as hell doesn’t bail out NH to say that he viewed Moss as a clearly superior option to Pearce. Certainly there are few of us who would agree with that sentiment, then or now.
Pitching: That’s why I excepted the Nady trade, which was – as I’ve said a hundred times – always the best of the bunch, because it traded a guy at peak value (and an expendable RP) for our most desperate need. If the other trades had returned a bunch of Ohlendorfs and Karstens and Tabatas, we’d have had a better team in ‘09 and ’10, and we would, in fact, gave a better farm system than we do now (assuming that all of the Tabatas hadn’t reached the bigs yet).
Certainly there are few of us who would agree with that sentiment, then or now.
It was a justifiable position at the time, particularly if you take the position that Pearce doesn’t have the glove to be an everyday OF. Look back at Moss’s track record at the time we traded for him and refresh your memory.
That’s why I excepted the Nady trade, which was – as I’ve said a hundred times – always the best of the bunch, because it traded a guy at peak value (and an expendable RP) for our most desperate need. If the other trades had returned a bunch of Ohlendorfs and Karstens and Tabatas, we’d have had a better team in ‘09 and ’10, and we would, in fact, gave a better farm system than we do now (assuming that all of the Tabatas hadn’t reached the bigs yet).
At the same time, however, the Nady trade would have been even better from a long term standpoint if we’d been able to chase higher-ceiling talent than Ohlendorf, Karstens, and Dan McCutchen. We had to compromise the franchise’s long-term interest in order to clean up part of Littlefield’s mess.
I nominate this as post of the year.
Through the first 2.5 months of the year.
DK is about quantity of information, not quality or knowledge
WTM makes it painfully clear in this well reasoned post.
I don’t understand why anyone……anyone reads the Post Gazette for anything other than quotes from our players/FO/coaches. All of the ‘opinions’ by all of the columnists are meaningless – if for no other reason than the columnists simply don’t know of what they speak.
Dunlap and DK are one in the same – guys that don’t understand advanced metrics, guys that don’t understand how bad Dave Littlefield ran this franchise into the ground, and guys that constantly think by spending more results will improve.
To be frank (and slightly less blunt than Kosstic – though I agree with his sentiments), the Post Gazette is full of columnists that are full……of shit.
by CabreraKilledMyChildhood on Mar 17, 2011 9:44 PM EDT reply actions
you cater to your readers
and sorry to say, those who agree with the Smiziks far outnumber the ones who dont
Sports Illustrated has a tremendous article on the Royals’ farm system, for what it’s worth. Posnanski always does a good job, and he’s a non-homer Royals guy who knows what he’s talking about. I think Moore should be lauded for what he’s put together, but at the same time, the real test comes once his best guys get to the Majors.
It’s impossible for every single one of Crow, Moustakas, Hosmer, Myers, Lamb, Duffy, Colon, Eibner, Montgomery, Jeffress, Odorizzi, Dwyer, Perez, et al to make it. Moore is probably going to have, at the very least, though, an above average lineup with a few guys who could be horses in the rotation.
If he finds good complimentary talent to bolster his core, he’ll go down as a good GM. If he keeps botching the Major League roster as badly as he has, they’ll never win anything, anyway. He could have built this system without the Jacobs, Farnsworth, Cruz, Francoeur, Meche, and Melky deals…but he didn’t.
If he doesn’t teach himself, they’ll never be any more than decent, even with a lineup that has some combination of Moustakas, Hosmer, Myers, Butler, Kila, and Eibner. That will never beat the AL’s best.
You bring up a good point...
unfortunately…we’ve got a bunch of people here that think that Taillon, Allie, Heredia and Sanchez are all going to be superstars…and are going to make the majors in 3 years or less. It just doesn’t happen that way.
I'd be careful
to not make too broad assumptions about what people think. I can only speak for myself, but when I comment, I enjoy to lean towards the optimistic side. It’s more fun that way. Am I aware that the odds are that only one of three, maybe the best odds are even that none of the three becomes even a good to very good MLB pitcher? Yea. But at times, particularly in more speculative threads, I’m inclined to dream a little more on what could be, for fun.
I think the the Community Projections here are a strong indicator that we, as a whole, have our heads screwed on straight here at BD. Some of us lean optimistic, some pessimistic, but it comes out fairly even.
Redeemed.
Wow
This was a fantastic post. This is what this site is all about. I read every single word in every single comment and enjoyed it so much. This is a great site and I’m so grateful that I can come on here and read what you all think instead of a moron like DK. He isn’t nearly as bad as Smizik but he is starting to drift that way. I think that NH has done a fine job and would be honestly heartbroken if he were to be fired at this point.
twitter.com/iandavidjackson
by omar moreno on Mar 17, 2011 11:27 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
What DK doesn’t acknowledge or realize is that the Pirates had no leverage at the time of these trades. If they kept Bay, Nady, etc. they were still going to be an average team at best. Other teams knew this, so knew the Bucs were a bit desperate; and thus, at a disadvantage. Under these circumstances, I feel the trades were overall successful. In addition, absolutely nobody in baseball could have seen the demise of guys like LaRoche.
6 and counting
Maybe I've missed the boat here...or probably.
The premise is that the Pirates farm system (and major league team) needs to be improved mainly by the draft…and not by trades. NH hasn’t done well…for the most part…with trade acquisitions. Had he let the pending FA players go for draft picks…we’d probably have about 5 extra picks (or more) in the 1st 3 rounds over the last few seasons (Bay 2, Nady, Sanchez, LaRoche, for starters).
Do what you do “best”. In Neal’s case…trading obviously isn’t what he does best, so why depend on it to dispose of your best players.
Probably would have been the best strategy...
I agree but I think NH was challenged to rebuild the major league roster at the same time in the hopes that the team could be competitive quicker so the fans wouldn’t have to suffer through another 5 year plan.
Had he let the pending FA players go for draft picks…we’d probably have about 5 extra picks (or more) in the 1st 3 rounds over the last few seasons (Bay 2, Nady, Sanchez, LaRoche, for starters).
Let’s check the tape.
From the 2008 rankings, Bay and Nady were both Type As, though neither made it by very much. I think it’s safe to say that both would’ve drawn offers. LaRoche was a Type B in 2009, and as such we would’ve gotten one pick for him if we’d offered arb and we’d declined. It seemed quite likely at the time, however, that he would’ve accepted arb if it had been offered to him. I can’t find Freddy’s status listed anywhere, but given the criteria Elias uses for ranking 2B/3B/SS, I don’t think he would’ve garnered compensation. His relevant cumulative stats from 2008-2009 (PA – 1097, BA – .281, OBP – .311, HR – 16, RBI – 93, F% – .990, TC – 1354) don’t seem to stack up well at a glance, given his poor 2008 (which hurts rate stats) and the time he missed in 2009 (which hurts counting stats).
As such, we probably would’ve gotten four picks from those four FAs: Two first/seconds, and two sandwich picks.
Thus, the relevant question...
…is whether we would’ve gotten more from four draft picks than we would’ve from the players we acquired in those four trades plus the money we didn’t use to pay four high draft picks.
Personally, I think that Tabata, Ohlendorf, and Morris represents a pretty decent return compared to what you’d get from four picks in the ~16-60 range (without mentioning the financial aspect).
Yes
It’s by far a better return than would have been likely in those compensation picks.
by MarkInDallas on Mar 20, 2011 1:15 AM EDT up reply actions
Boy, will I be glad when the season starts.
Perhaps a lot of this sniping, condescension, fighting, and now, name-calling — will end.
I’m attributing it to Winter. I do so because this bickering horseshit is beyond the usual for BD, and it’s getting tiring.
And before anyone says, “You are free to not read blahblahblah…” rewind yourself.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Mar 19, 2011 12:16 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
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