Thursday Roundup

by bryanzane on Mar 29, 2007 3:42 PM EDT in News Comment 9 comments

The Bucs tied with the Phillies 5-5. Shawn Chacon gave up back to back homers to Ryan Howard and Pat Burrell. Chris Duffy had a stolen base and Jason Bay drove in 3. Ryan Doumit made an awesome throw in the top of the 9th to get the super-speedy Michael Bourn trying to steal second base.

Dejan Kovacevich has a nice piece up previewing Pirates upcoming season listing 5 reasons to believe they can win and 5 reasons to believe they won't.

Can't remember if I posted this or not, but Baseball Prospectus has their preview up of the NL Central. Their projection system (PECOTA) has the Bucs finishing 5th, ahead of the Reds but posting a decent record of 76-86. They don't think Freddy Sanchez will come close to challenging for a batting title again and they note that if the pitching blossoms they might be better than projected. They aren't counting on that though and put the human prediction at 74-88. They put the Cubs winning the division, followed by the Brew Crew, Cards, and Astros. I happen to think that is insanity.

Marty McCleary has been cut from the roster.

As mentioned in the comment section of a previous post, ESPN has their Pirates preview up as well. I don't know who Phil Rogers is, but his reporting is very sloppy and, in some circumstances, flat-out wrong. First, this report was published today, and he lists Jose Castillo as the starting 3rd baseman. We all know that Jim Tracy named Jose BAUTISTA the starting 3rd baseman last week. Second, as hisjazziness pointed out, Zach Duke did NOT start the season hot and then cool off. The third thing is this line right here:

Ronnie Paulino - Big surprise who could drop off this season.

I do not disagree that Paulino was a surprise last season, but to simply suggest he's likely to "drop off" this season is ridiculous. I guess this Phil Rogers fella hasn't been paying any attention to spring training this year, because Ronnie Paulino is just knocking the cover off the ball. In 49 spring ABs, Ronnie is batting .490 with 4 homers, 15 RBI and a slugging percentage of .837. There is no indication that Paulino is going to "drop off." If there is any indication, it's that he's going to "light it up."

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perez/preview

The writeup of today's game had the following: "Left-hander Juan Perez, who entered the game without allowing a run in 7 1/3 innings, continued his strong spring with a perfect inning in which he retired Utley on a groundout to second and struck out Howard and Burrell looking." Spring training or not, that is a pretty good inning. Wouldn't it be funny if we ended up with a better Perez than the Mets? (I think we got Juan from the Mets, when they had to make room on their roster for someone else, maybe Ollie.) I'd still rather have Ollie, myself.

Also, there is a site called atomicsportsmedia.com that has pretty good previews of all the teams. Here is a link to the Pirates preview.

http://www.atomicsportsmedia.com/articles/787/1/A-Pirates-Life/A-Pirates-Life.html

by aih on Mar 29, 2007 6:25 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Nice

While a bit overly optimistic, I like the article. Thanks for the link!

by bryanzane on Mar 29, 2007 6:41 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

That's what we get

The Pirates suck; ergo, national coverage must likewise suck.

Funny, though - that kind of article should get two people fired.

by psk984 on Mar 29, 2007 9:54 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Extreme Pessimism Sports Network

Did you see the numbers in the poll on their preview page that asks how many games the Bucs will lose? There's no category for 84, but if I think they'll lose more than 105, I can vote for that. Sheesh.

by Zadoras on Mar 29, 2007 11:18 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Spring Training

While Ronnie may be spanking the ball in ST, there's still plenty of reason to think he might drop off this season. Spring training not only presents problems of sample size, but its generally inaccurate to boot.

by DJAnyReason on Mar 29, 2007 11:40 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

OK then...

there's still plenty of reason to think he might drop off this season.

What are the reasons?

And about the notion that Spring stats are misleading, check this out:

...there is one statistic that can be an indicator of potential success for the upcoming season. John Dewan, founder of STATS Inc., has determined that a hitter with a positive difference between his spring training slugging percentage and his lifetime slugging percentage of .200 more correlates to a better than normal season.

Ronnie Paulino's carrer SLG% in 8 minor league seasons is .431 and last year it was .394. This spring, .879. I'm not ready to say that Ronnie Paulino is going to hit 30 homers, but I think he's more likely to improve this season than to regress...

by bryanzane on Mar 30, 2007 12:00 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Marty McCleary

I said the other day he needs to get his agent to find him a job in Japan. I can`t see how spending another season in the minors is going to help him-professionally or financially. The Pirates have too much depth at AAA for him to reasonably get another chance as far as I can see.

by patthatt on Mar 30, 2007 6:30 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

ESPN writeup

I think you missed making fun of what I saw as a big mistake...

"Salomon Torres is durable (he had 94 appearances in '06), throws six pitches for strikes (including a filthy splitter)"

Whether or not Torres throws a splitter sometimes aside (I'm not positive). The pitch he's referring to is obviously the sinker Torres throws about 80% percent of the time. Has there EVER been a guy who trows a splitter that often?

by The New Guy on Mar 30, 2007 10:22 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs