Link Roundup, 4/13/07: Pirates to Retire Paul Waner's Number

by Charlie Wilmoth on Apr 13, 2007 4:11 PM EDT in News

-P- Today, the Bucs announce plans to retire Paul Waner's number. Waner was a great player and he deserves to have his number retired, but the Pirates already have a player - Humberto Cota - who wears Waner's number. This, of course, shows what the Pirates think of Cota. Like Pat, I'm thinking that this and the Pirates' recent decision to have the whole team wear Jackie Robinson's number on Sunday suggest that the Pirates may already think this season is dead in the water.

-P- John Grabow will start a rehab assignment today with the Indianapolis Indians in Richmond.

-P- Wayback Wasdin is carefree about losing games for the Pirates. Well, as long as he's happy...

-P- Cleveland pitcher Jake Westbrook has agreed to a three-year, $33 million extension through 2010. This deal strikes me as defensible, but a little excessive. It's defensible because Westbrook would have been a free agent after 2007 and free agent starting pitching is incredibly expensive. It's excessive because Westbrook's margin of error is very low - he's one of the best pitchers in baseball at keeping the ball down, but his strikeout rate is already very low, and I'm afraid that if it drops much lower, he'll just be a mediocre pitcher. However, the Indians have a history of being ahead of the curve in dealing with contracts and player salaries, and maybe they foresee another huge players' market in the coming offseason. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt here.

-P- John Perrotto just did a chat at Baseball Prospectus. A snippet:

skepstein (Scranton): Please rank: Greinke, Snell, A Reyes, Wainwright, D Cabrera, Loewen, Maine. Thank you.

John Perrotto: 1-Snell (I think this kid is vastly underrated)
2-Greinke (he gotten things back togehter)
3-Wainwright (he's very talented and showed his poise last October)
4-Cabrera (great, great stuff, but still hasn't put it all together)
5-Loewen (gotta love a lefty with potential)
6-Reyes (showed he could thrive on the big stage when he won the World Series opener)
7-Maine (not overpower but has a great feel for pitching).

What do you think? I think I'd put Snell at the top of that list as well.

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Comments

Greinke

I've never seen him pitch, but he'd have to be awfully good to be ahead of Wainwright and Cabrera. I know Greinke is still very young, but I'm dubious he'll ever be an overpowering pitcher. I like Reyes a lot too. I probably would have gone

1-Snell
2-Wainwright
3-Cabrera
4-Reyes
5-Loewen
6-Greinke
7-Maine

azibuck

by azibuck on Apr 13, 2007 5:16 PM EDT reply actions

Other Numbers

The Pirates also retired Pie Traynor's 20 while Richie Hebner was wearing it, and Ralph Kiner's 4 while Dale Berra had it, if I remember correctly.

by sisyphus on Apr 13, 2007 5:28 PM EDT reply actions

Better idea

Retire Cota and keep the number.

by WTM on Apr 14, 2007 1:36 AM EDT up reply actions

Plan

Sounds like a good plan to me.

by sisyphus on Apr 17, 2007 3:06 AM EDT up reply actions

Mine

Snell
Cabrera

I think these guys both have tremendous upside; Snell may actually be a bit more of a finished product right now. Both have excellent stuff and seem to be making some progress in their problem areas (homers for Snell, walks for Cabrera).

3. Greinke

He's not overpowering, but he's not a finesse guy either. He has average-ish stuff but is smart and does a good job setting up hitters. He's obviously a question mark now, but his start this year has been really promising, and before last season I wouldn't have been surprised if he became the next Greg Maddux.

4. Loewen

I've never seen Loewen, but scouts love him, he's really young, and you've got to love the minor-league strikeout numbers.

5. Reyes

His minor league track record's really good, and I like watching him.

Maine
Wainwright

I know Wainwright's had postseason success, but unlike Maine and Reyes, he was moved slowly through the minors and was usually merely good rather than outstanding.

...There's not an enormous gap between #1 and #7 on this list, though, I don't think, even though they're pretty different types of pitchers.

by Charlie Wilmoth on Apr 13, 2007 5:30 PM EDT reply actions

A little off-topic here,

but in Jeff Passan`s most recent Yahoo article about Jackie Robinson, he claims there are only two African-American starting pitchers in the majors. Well, Sabathia interviewed for the article, and obviously he didn`t forget Willis down in Florida, so is there someone we know very well that has been mysteriously omitted from his story?

by patthatt on Apr 14, 2007 12:07 AM EDT reply actions