News Roundup

by Charlie Wilmoth on May 28, 2006 5:13 PM EDT in News

-P- Craig Wilson expresses the closest thing to anger I've ever heard from him:

Major League Baseball's trading deadline is July 31, and the Pirates surely will shop Wilson, given that he can be a free agent after this season and that the team rebuffed attempts by Wilson and agent Steve Hilliard to discuss a contract extension this past winter.

Wilson could try to accelerate that process, of course, by demanding a trade.

Asked what options he might have to address his situation, Wilson replied flatly: "That's a very good question."

You go, Craig. It's amazing that Wilson has been able to hold it in so long.

-P- Speaking of Wilson, Bob Smizik calls him a platoon player:

He's looking more and more like a platoon player. He thrives on left-handed pitching but is considerably less successful against right-handers, who form the majority of the major-league pitching corps. For his career, his on-base percentage is about 70 points lower against right-handed pitching and his slugging percentage is about 90 points lower.

That's an interesting bit of writing, telling readers that Wilson is considerably better against lefties than righties - which is true - without giving them the relevant context by telling them how ridiculously good he is against lefties. Wilson has an .820 OPS this year against righties and an .809 OPS against them for his career. Those are very good numbers, and other than Wilson, the Bucs haven't had a first baseman or rightfielder post an overall .820 OPS in more than 100 at bats since 2003, when Reggie Sanders and Matt Stairs did it. So who's Wilson supposed to platoon with? Players who can consistently post better than an .820 OPS against righties are rare and usually expensive.

-P- Jim Tracy says it's the players' fault:

Saying he doesn't hit, field, throw or catch, Tracy laid the club's National League worst record squarely at the players' feet.

"Every ... little ... aspect of the game has to be important to you if you're going to change the culture," Tracy said slowly for emphasis.

Not only do I think Tracy is a bad manager, I'm beginning to think he's a bad person, too. Obviously, the Pirates are not a good team and would probably have a losing record no matter who managed them. But that should be totally clear to everyone already - would it kill Tracy to take some of the blame for the Pirates' losing? I don't expect him to acknowledge that his insane managerial tactics haven't helped or that his messing around with some of the Pirates' players has probably actively hurt, but a promise to try harder would be nice, at least. Blaming the losing on the players is just classless. The Pirates' players sucked it up and agreed with Tracy, but it may be noteworthy that the ones quoted here (Jack Wilson, Roberto Hernandez and Nate McLouth) have played well recently.

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Comments

C. Wilson

Maybe this is something you were referencing, Charlie, but I would like to know how many ABs Wilson has seen against lefties this year versus how many times we have faced a lefty. It seemed to me that in April, Craig couldn't see the field even against lefties when everyone was healthy. This really raises a question abou Tracy's managerial aptitude.

by hisjazziness on May 28, 2006 9:50 PM EDT reply actions

Wilson/lefties

I wasn't referencing this, but it's an interesting subject of discussion. Wilson has 43 PAs (I don't know how many HBPs, if any) against lefties, while Jose Castillo and Jack Wilson have 54, Jeromy Burnitz has 50 and Jason Bay has 63. Nate McLouth, who is a lefty and until recently a part-time player, has nearly as many PAs against lefties as Wilson because Jim Tracy was deliberately protecting Chris Duffy from lefties at the beginning of the season. Basically, what happened was that the Pirates faced six lefties in their first eight games of the season. But Sean Casey was healthy then, and Tracy wouldn't just buck up and put Wilson in the lineup. So he missed a bunch of opportunities there. Also, he benched Wilson one game against a lefty starter in order to start Jose Hernandez at first.

by Charlie Wilmoth on May 28, 2006 10:07 PM EDT up reply actions

Wilson's splits

Wilson missed a fair amount of time last year, but his lefty/righty splits were:

vs LHP: 65ab+bb, .283/.449/.415 (.864 OPS)
vs RHP: 162ab+bb, .267/.351/.424 (.785 OPS)

In his last full season as a regular in 2004, Wilson had a .912 OPS against left handers, and a .839 against right handers for a .853 overall. The 2003 split was more extreme -- 1.122 against lefties, .736 against righties. In a career that includes over 1700 at bats going into 2006, Wilson has a .982 OPS against lefties and a .808 OPS against righties, .855 overall.

The immediate point for comparison is Sean Casey -- last year with 529 at bats, Casey posted a .820 OPS against lefties and a .780 against righties, a slight reverse platoon advantage for the lefty-hitting Casey. He hit .335 against lefties too -- .298 vs. righties.

In 2004, one of Casey's best years (.324-24-99), Casey had a .891 OPS vs. lefties and a .921 against righties. In a career of over 4000 at bats, his OPS against lefties is .779 and against righties is .857.

Another point for comparison is Jeromy Burnitz, but I see no reason to pile on Burnitz at this juncture.

The recent handling of Wilson betrays an arrogance that is hard to understand. Sure, if your team is loaded you can afford to not play a guy who, history has it, will provide a .350 on-base percentage and slug at or near .500. But the Pirates?? Right now on this team, Wilson trails only Bay on OBP and slugging (he trails Casey too, but Casey has played only nine games). The Pirates have five starters slugging below .450 (seven counting Bautista and Randa), and the team is 25th in on-base average, and they're going to sit Wilson on the bench? What are they thinking!

by c60 on May 29, 2006 11:46 AM EDT up reply actions

Smizik column

Speaking of the Smizik column, he also writes there that a lower payroll leads to a lesser quality team (or something to that effect) when talking about the prospects for the team next year.

How could this have been written with the knowledge that the team would be no worse off (and arguably better off) without Casey, Randa, and Burnitz, saving about $20 million and going with Wilson, Sanchez, Doumit, Bautista, etc.?

I know I'm not the only one who thinks this.

by hisjazziness on May 28, 2006 10:47 PM EDT reply actions

Smizik seems to believe

Payroll size causes team performance.

It doesn't. Payroll spending is correlated to team performance. If spending money caused player's performance, then McClatchy should give every Pirates' player an instant raise so the team could win this year's championship. But payroll spending doesn't cause winning or losing. Thus McClatchy could give this year's Pirates' team the Yankees' payroll and that generosity wouldn't change the skill level of the team in any way.

by steve_z on May 29, 2006 12:07 AM EDT up reply actions

A manager's job

There's precious little reason to actually hire a manager to decide the game-day decisions, rather than to write a rather simple alrogithm and have a laptop spit out said decisions. One of the major reasons is the idea of morale - getting your players to want to play hard for you. Everybody knows Dusty Baker's problems (overreliance on "proven veterans", overworking his pitchers, etc.) but he does have an impressive history of getting exceptional performances out of the players he does play, showing his prowess in this sort of area.

Now, if your team is 16-34, you might expect morale around the clubhouse to be low. It certainly won't help matters for the guy who's supposed to be in charge of getting you to go out and try your best every game to say, publically, "hey, this is all THEIR fault." Maybe its true, maybe he thinks its true, but its still the manager's job to do whatever it takes to make his players want to play, and throwing them all under the bus doesn't help. That's the exact same reason you defer all the credit when you're 34-16 - the manager's job is to make the team want to play to the best of their ability, not to protect his own rep.

by DJAnyReason on May 29, 2006 10:01 AM EDT reply actions

I don't think Tracy's critics are obsessing

We're just coming to realize that Tracy sucks.

If Tracy doesn't think he's done anything wrong, why would/should he tell you otherwise?

That's the problem with Tracy you're missing: He has done wrong and he blames the players to ensure that no one attributes wrong doing to him. Thus the outrage.

Of course, a good leader shares in the blame of those he leads. I haven't noticed Tracy doing anything like that at all.

by steve_z on May 29, 2006 10:06 AM EDT reply actions