Pirate Prospects

Those of you who are unfamiliar with the work of Keith Law at ESPN.com should avail yourself of the internet and take a prolonged look at his work. It's the time of year to talk about the future, so Keith has once again published his list of the Top 100 prospects in baseball. Also, he produced his annual ranking of the minor league systems for all 30 teams (Buccos are #22, up from last year, and above the Reds, Cubs, and Astros).

The highest ranked Pirate prospect is Andrew McCutchen, who clocks in at #18. Here's Keith's comments (for those of you who didn't click the link already):

Andrew McCutchen has been rushed. Repeat after me: He … has … been … rushed. This isn't a criticism of the current regime in Pittsburgh, as the rushing all took place before Neal Huntington could even get a catalog to pick out new drapes for his office, but they inherited a player who had arrived in Triple-A before his 21st birthday despite posting a .710 OPS in Double-A, a level he reached after the Pirates skipped him right past high-A. He's been rushed, I say. The good thing is that he has survived this hazing and even performed well in several areas, notably his plate discipline. McCutchen has strong wrists and forearms and makes hard contact, but doesn't get his lower half involved at all and thus hasn't hit for the kind of power he's capable of producing. He has great bat speed and has hit for average while making plenty of contact. He's a 65-70 runner but had an uncharacteristically sloppy year as a base stealer; he's a plus glove in center but could use a little work on routes. The power should come -- he's too young for us to assume that it won't -- and the new regime in Pittsburgh has a much better player-development protocol in place.

The other two Pirate prospects on the list are:

#32, Jose Tabata (20 - CF)
#38, Pedro Alvarez (21 - 3B)

Three in the top 40 isn't bad, but that's it. Obviously, this substantiates the commonly-held opinion that the Pirates' system is anything but deep, so there really shouldn't be a surprise here. There are a handful of teams that appear pretty frequently: the Rangers, A's, Rays, Red Sox, and Indians among a couple others, all of which have a good chance to be very competitive this year. People still complain about the Bay and Nady trades, but when big market teams like the Red Sox are maintaining a huge stock of talent in their farm system, the only way for a team like the Pirates to be competitive is to build a stock of similar quality. Sometimes that means you have to trade away (arguably) your best players.

Let's hope the Pirates manage to move up the list next year.

Thank you, Frank.

I assume this was a Coonelly decision, but I don't really care who made it. I'm just glad that they're gone:

The Pirates will no longer be using their alternate red jerseys.

The new alternates will be unveiled at PirateFest this weekend (at which I will be in attendance), so we'll see how they look. Keep your fingers crossed.

More on Blyleven

Rich Lederer does what he does so well in ripping apart Jon Heyman and making the case for Blyleven yet again.

On a side note, I recently moved (again), and I now get to watch a 42" HDTV that doesn't belong to me. One benefit of that is the cable provider carries the MLB network, which allows me to see old games that I'm strangely interested in, but I have to put up with the studio show that includes Heyman as their "insider," along with Harold Reynolds, Joe Magrane, and others. During their HOF discussion over the weekend, where they spouted roughly the same BS that Lederer takes Heyman to task for above, the only thing that kept me from chucking the remote at the brand new TV was that I couldn't decide which idiot at which to aim it.

There has to be a breaking point with this ridiculous stand-off between the sabermetrically-inclined and the "old school" writers, right? How many more times do I have to read Dan Shaughnessy call really intelligent people like Rob Neyer, Keith Law, Tom Tango (and many, many others) "basement dwellers" simply because he disagrees with their conlcusions that are based on statistical evidence instead of anecdotes and hyperbole?

I find it moderately compelling that Jim Rice finished in the Top 5 in MVP voting six different times, and that Blyleven never won a Cy Young and only made two All-Star teams. Why? Because those points are based on actual evidence. Unfortunately, when you look deeper at what actually happened and not someone's opinion of what happened, Rice's candidacy doesn't really hold up, and Blyleven's looks a lot better.

I get the desire to fantasize the game a bit. Baseball is a beautiful and enduring sport that's just as much a part of the last 150 years of this country's history as anything else, but when you start having conversations about who the best players are, given the fact that those players played in different times, different stadia, and against different competition, you had better start looking at the numbers to be able to figure things out with at least some objectivity.

What about Rock, Tram, and Bert?

The verdict is in. Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice have been the only two eligible players elected by the BBWAA to the Hall of Fame for 2009.

Great player and former Pirate Bert Blyleven saw his vote percentage move up a bit (61.9% to 62.7%), but still fell about 75 votes short of the threshold for election.

In an effort to baffle the mind, the BBWAA cast only 81 votes for former Pirate Dave "The Snake" Parker, who racked up 15% of the vote, enough to keep him on the ballot for next year, but not much else. Granted, Rice put up moderately better offensive numbers, but a good chunk of that was in Fenway Park, and Parker was a significantly better fielder.

Anyway, I've answered my own question. Rice played in Boston. Parker played in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati for most of his career. Both played the majority of their careers before the heyday of ESPN and cable television, which means that Rice received significantly more exposure, playing on the baseball-crazy East Coast, where a generation of fans (and writers) got to hear of and occasionally see his now legendary feats of strength on the diamond. Outside of perhaps his MVP year, Parker is best remembered for the drug trials.

Now, Jim Rice is "the most feared hitter of his time," despite the fact that while he was playing he rarely got an intentional walk, and he wasn't even the best hitter on his team. Leave it to the BBWAA to make a player better than he actually was 15 years after he hung up his cleats.

Though it does get under my skin somewhat, I don't really mind that Rice is in, what I mind is that more deserving people are left out. Blyleven, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell deserve to be in the Hall. I'll let people spin their wheels on McGwire for a while, because I do think he'll eventually get in, but I've yet to hear a good argument why the other three are not worthy of induction. If you've got an argument, I'm all ears.

Burrell signs for 2 yrs./$16 million

Peter Bendix hits the nail right on the head: The Rays just signed Pat Burrell to one heck of a deal.

Since Burrell knew he wasn't going to be back with the Phillies after they signed Raul Ibanez to a misguided deal, he probably did the next best thing by signing with the team he played against in the 2008 World Series.

It warrants mentioning that the Pirates need a right-handed power bat in the outfield (with a very good OBP history), and if 2 years at $8 million per year is all that it was going to take, well...

Obviously Burrell took less money to play for a contending team, but you could argue that if he's willing to take 2 years and $16 million from the Rays, the Pirates could've thrown 3 years, $27-$30 million and probably got the job done. Sure, his defense is terrible, but he more than makes up for it with the bat. FanGraphs has him worth $12.6 million last year, so $9-$10 million a year is a significant discount, even to play for such a lousy team. It was at least worth pursuing, if in fact Team Neil never pursued him.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone asks Dejan in the next Q&A whether the Pirates even bothered to give Burrell's agent a call.