News Roundup

by Charlie on Jan 3, 2008 9:13 PM EST in News Comment 14 comments

-P- Neal Huntington says he's fine with the Pirates' five starting pitchers. What's odd is that he's admitting this, and he's further admitting that this has caused him problems in getting free agent pitchers:

Moreover, as Huntington acknowledged, "a number" of free-agent starters -- mostly at the minor-league level -- based their decisions to sign with other teams because they knew of the Pirates' upfront commitment to their starting five.

That might explain why Chad Durbin, a free-agent right-hander the Pirates liked, chose Philadelphia last month and signed for one year at $900,000. Phillies general manager Pat Gillick told reporters at the time that Durbin was "in the mix for the fifth spot in the rotation," along with injured Adam Eaton and Rule 5 draft pick Travis Blackley.

Why would Huntington do this? And what would be the problem with telling a Chad Durbin that he could potentially make the rotation (and then actually giving him that chance)? I wouldn't root for him to win a spot, but Zach Duke and Matt Morris did little for the Bucs last year to confirm they deserved one. So, first, why be complacent and, second, why admit your complacency to prospective signees? And then why admit to the press that this is a problem?

-P- The A's have dealt outfielder Nick Swisher to the White Sox for pitchers Fautino De Los Santos and Gio Gonzalez and outfielder Ryan Sweeney. For the A's, this trade hinges on De Los Santos, who's an extremely high-upside guy with great stuff who blew away Class A last year. He's a potential star, but 21-year-old Class A pitchers are risky indeed. Gonzalez (who's already been traded from the Sox to the Phillies in the Jim Thome deal, then back to the Sox in the Freddy Garcia trade) is no slouch either, though - he had a great year repeating in AA and could soon be a productive starter. Sweeney's been stalled in AAA for a while now, but he could have some kind of future as a role player. The A's needed to get a lot for a player like Swisher, who's cheap and reasonably young and good, and they did.

For the White Sox, this trade is harder to understand. They didn't really get ripped off or anything, but they won 72 games last year and their division rivals in Cleveland and Detroit should be terrific for at least the next two years. The Sox themselves should be looking to rebuild, not helping other teams do so.

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Deep denial

According to Dejan, Huntington thinks the team underperformed in 2007 and is willing to keep it largely intact. They may have underperformed, but that doesn't account for 94 losses. Maybe they have 90-loss talent instead of 94-loss talent, but it's absurd to think this is anywhere close to a .500 team, much less a contender. It looks to me like he's making the traditional Pirate mistake of wildly overvaluing the team's talent.

by WTM on Jan 3, 2008 10:19 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

The problem

is that Huntington is right,but just not enough.
This team may not be a 94 loss team,but it easily is a 84 loss team and that is if things fell every possible way in a positive manner....

by Count Vertigo on Jan 3, 2008 10:28 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

A positive take

At least huntington isn't running around telling everyone who he is going to trade. I wish littlefield would have pretended like he was happy with what he had once in awhile. Instead he liked to show everyone his hand. Or maybe Neil is an idiot, too. Who knows?

by succos12 on Jan 3, 2008 11:23 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Snell on the move?

I keep hearing that the mariners are interested in Ian Snell. If they can get Adam Jones (not the murderous one), would you take it?

by bryanzane on Jan 4, 2008 11:01 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Snell on the move?

I saw a MLBTR post this morning that linked to a BuccoBlog post about Snell to the Mariners. This is probably another pipe dream rumor, but I would be curious to see what we could get for Snell from the Mariners. They don't seem too interested in giving Adam Jones the playing time he deserves and they have a top notch catching prospect, Clement, who would look a lot better behind the dish than RonPaul. Since the team has no where to go (a poor farm system so rebuilding probably won't work very well, and weak major league talent, so winning now won't work), I'm ok with Huntington trading anyone as long as the return is quality.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2008/01/ian-snell-on-ma.html

How different are the trade market values of Snell and Bedard? Bedard may have a higher cieling, but I think he's only under control for two more years as opposed to Snell's 4.

by Chad Bahamas on Jan 4, 2008 11:37 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Bucco blog

Good God, I wish people would stop linking to this as if the guy had real sources. He doesn't.

by WTM on Jan 4, 2008 1:38 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The voices in his head...

...don't count?

by steve_z on Jan 4, 2008 4:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

For further entertainment in a slow offseason..

Perrotto mentions Seattle has interest in Snell.

http://www.timesonline.com/articles/2008/01/07/sports/pirates/doc478076749bedb443468839.txt

by Chad Bahamas on Jan 7, 2008 9:51 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yes

but only if we get 1 or 2 more top prospects with him. Snell is worth much more than one top hitting prospect. He's a strikeout low walk pitcher with two successful seasons under his belt and his under control for three more seasons. We have to bring multiple players back for the little talent we have.

by Slick on Jan 4, 2008 11:30 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

the truth

While I don't particularly care whether Huntington is truthful with the media or even fans, I think it is a good idea to be truthful with players and agents. Especially if it only means losing out on fringe players like Durbin and Clement. Especially after the disaster of the last regime.

by haven on Jan 4, 2008 12:12 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Trades Must Be Made

"Standing pat" and expecting better results in 2008 makes no sense. Trades must be made if only to find out what type of talent evaluators we now have in the front office. I still cannot come close to understanding how Nutting approved the Morris trade. That one deal could set back the Pirates' development until 2010.

by thegunner on Jan 4, 2008 1:07 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Approval

I think the Morri$ trade helped get DL fired. It's not hard to understand Nutting approving it--he knew very little about baseball and probably relied on DL's claim that they would have to pay even more for a veteran pitcher in the off-season. DL probably also misled Nutting about how good Morri$ was. (I'm pretty certain that DL also misled Nutting about the state of the farm system--again, keep in mind that Nutting was taking over a business in an industry he knew little about.) When Nutting conducted his CEO search, he clearly heard some blunt criticism of the team, which led him to fire DL ahead of schedule. I'll bet that criticism included some scorching assessments of the Morri$ trade.

I'm not saying I'm glad that awful trade happened, but it did have a silver lining.

by WTM on Jan 4, 2008 1:36 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Half and half.

I think that DL probably talked up Morris a bit, but I also think that Nutting was ignorant about baseball operations because he wanted to be ignorant about baseball operations. It certainly made things easier for him to be able to come in and be horrified by the state of things, didn't it?

by Vlad on Jan 4, 2008 3:14 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs