Pirates Offseason Thread 2022-23

[King Colby]

El Blimpo. He's now Dr. El Blimpo.

Other hilarious rocco-isms:

"The carcass" I believe was rod barajas

"Poser" was chris resop

"The virus" was somebody (?)

A "maholm" is when a pitcher gave up a run in the half inning following the pirates scoring runs.

What else?

[Troy Loney]

El Blimpo. He's now Dr. El Blimpo.

Other hilarious rocco-isms:

"The carcass" I believe was rod barajas

"Poser" was chris resop

"The virus" was somebody (?)

A "maholm" is when a pitcher gave up a run in the half inning following the pirates scoring runs.

What else?

Big Worthless and Little Worthless. The LaRoche brothers.

[MR25]

Apparently I helped Rocco settle on Rotting Carcass for Barajas:

http://www.letsgopens.com/scripts/phpBB ... 8#p2099258

[Ad@m]

El Blimpo. He's now Dr. El Blimpo.

Other hilarious rocco-isms:

"The carcass" I believe was rod barajas

"Poser" was chris resop

"The virus" was somebody (?)

A "maholm" is when a pitcher gave up a run in the half inning following the pirates scoring runs.

What else?

Was the “virus” Lyle Overbay?

MATW

[King Colby]

LOLOL at MATW. One of the best. Then he turns into a fkn stud

[robbiestoupe]

Travis Sawchik wrote a book about the Pirates process and success back then. The issue was the rest of the league caught up, and the Buccos stopped innovating (and probably a lot of the innovators left for greener pastures).

Oh, interesting. I'll have to find the book and give it a looksie

I'm through most of this book. Sigh, what a different world we operate in now. Perhaps we aren't getting all the insider information that we got during the Pirates' most recent run of success, but it just seems they are worlds away from where they were. They had a mission to innovate and get ahead of the game and did so in so many areas.

Hard to say what the team is doing now, but I sure hope they are using every tool they can to get the most out of their players. I still remember thinking during that run from 2013-2015 that the Pirates had finally become that team where reclamation projects came to actually turn their careers around. It actually seemed to work with them. Today you hear about reclamation projects coming to Pittsburgh and the only thing you can think of is rental or stopgap or veteran taking away innings from a youngster.

I don't know what broke Huntington. Was the Archer trade the beginning and the end, or were there signs before that that he was losing it? Nutting I'm sure can be blamed quite a bit for not investing in the 2016 team, but either the Pirates stopped trying to find the hidden gems or other teams caught up and they no longer had the advantage.

[DigitalGypsy66]

[Beveridge]

We are very close to the best 4 words in sports @MrKennethTKangaroo

[Dickie Dunn]

Lolo Sanchez is still a thing?

[robbiestoupe]

More surprised to see Drew Maggi's name. That's a blast from the past.

[LeopardLetang]

Chris Owings ugh

[Sam's Drunk Dog]

[willeyeam]

so it's February 2nd. The Buccos haven't signed a 2nd catcher. Is Endy like, gonna break with the big club? What's going on

[DigitalGypsy66]

Delaymageddon

[willeyeam]

Young Hayes is now Thicc Hayes

[Troy Loney]

Needs to fatten up to unlock the Charlie Hayes factor

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

We are very close to the best 4 words in sports @MrKennethTKangaroo

February 15th for your Pittsburgh pirates baseball club

Let's go????

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Also, Hayes has a career slugging percentage like 30 points lower than Colin Moran. Hopefully all this time in the gym means a. He doesn't get hurt within the first 7 innings of the season and b. He does something other than hit ground balls.

[Troy Loney]

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/pittsburgh- ... ects-2023/

Fangraphs list is out for the Pirates, kind of a huge drop-off from the last time they reviewed the system. For context, their 2022 updated list had over 60 guys in their 35+ value bucket, basically the separation between a nobody and a "prospect". So that's almost 20 guys just cratering out of prospect status (think guys like Omar Cruz, Eddy Yean and Matt Frazier).

There's also some elements on this list, where I can look at it, and objectively call it utter dogshit.

Case in point, Travis Swaggerty is ranked 31. 20-24 are:
Anthony Solometo
Hunter Barco
Malcom Nunez
Nick Gonzales
Dariel Lopez

One might say, wow, this system is amazing if that's your 20-24, and then look and say, wow, Travis Swaggerty is 31, this system is dogshit.

What I say is that fangraphs falls prey to the same nonsense all prospect hype sites do, not being actual baseball scouts. Any prospect ranking piece can identify the prospects that rake and are clearly better than their competition and are good enough to play in the majors. But the rest is all just arbitrary nonsense. Fangraphs has been high Swaggerty since he was first drafted, despite years of evidence proving he's not any good, they still keep him around. And last year, they didn't like Gonzalez, and now they've been "vindicated" and decided he's trash.

[robbiestoupe]

Seems like they are only analyzing based off hard data and nothing about learning a new pitch, learning to strike out less, etc. which is what a player may be working on in the minors.

But if taken at face value, that list is very damning for GMBC. Not a single guy projected to be an All Star caliber player, going into his 4th year as the GM. Every year he has picked in the top 10 of the draft. Not very good at all.

His trades haven't been all that stellar either. He's basically traded away Starling Marte, Josh Bell, Joe Musgrove, Jameson Taillon, Clay Holmes, Adam Frazier, and Jacob Stallings for Endy Rodriguez, Peguero, Contrares, Bednar and other potential guys like Crowe, Suwinski and Castillo. Decent players, but as a sum not better than what he traded away, IMO.

For the Pirates to be good again, they need more than just an average GM, which is about where I'd rank Cherington right now.

[Troy Loney]

Drafts (2020-2022), I don't really have an issue with what they've done. They definitely have some misses (there are guys that quickly emerged as better than Gonzalez, but really can't hindsight drafts like that.

I don't think Gonzalez is a bust yet, and Jones is still a highly regarded prospect. Even Mlodzinksi is still floating around these lists. Could still be a good draft considering there were only 5 rounds.

2021 - Basically they could have gotten Lawler or Mayer or get the Chandler/Davis combo. Obviously they need both of those guys to make the majors, or passing up on Mayer makes them look very stupid.

2022 - Johnson, Barco and Kennedy looks like a good haul.

Trades, good IMO:

The only guy they traded away in that group who had legit value was Musgrove, and they got Endy and Bednar. Can't really argue with that ultimate return. The Marte trade is down to Peguero, and that could completely bust, or still turn out. Taillon for Contreras is a clear W. Frazier for Suwinksi is a W, and at worst a wash if he flames out cause Frazier is a nothing. Stallings also turned into a nothing, so that's at worst a wash. Holmes was a big L (obviously) and I am not sure what Bell is. I don't realy think he was every going to bring much back.

[robbiestoupe]

You may be right TL, but the wins are just marginal if you ask me. Yes, it's too early to really evaluate the drafts, but don't you just want to see one of these guys rocket up the prospect lists and have "franchise" written all over them? More Oneil Cruz's, if you will.

There's two ways for the Pirates to succeed:

1) draft and trade better than anybody else. And not 51% better, 90% better.

2) rekindle the magic FGMNH had from 2012-2015. Find one or two metrics that have been overlooked and undervalued in players, and exploit it.

You can say the jury is still out on #1, and so far I haven't seen anything on #2 although I'm sure teams are not going to be shouting at the rooftops what their strategy is. But there doesn't seem to be any direction towards, for instance, developing ground ball pitchers or batters that get on base at a high rate or whatever new approach they may be taking. Perhaps it's hidden, but to me it just seems like they are trying to put together a team of good players without much of a plan throughout the system. I guess you could say one strategy has been to draft athletes that can play multiple positions (or even multiple sports) but then you end up with a system full of Jack-of-all-Trades, expert at none guys.

This year is going to tell a lot about what the Pirates have in their system.

[Troy Loney]

NH was terrible at drafting, when Kevin Newman is one of your more "successful" first round picks, then...

He took Taillon over Machado, Alvarez over Posey, and Cole was taken in one of the best recent drafts (sort of like how they got McCutchen in 05). The best pick was Glasnow, but they self-mutilated themselves for years to eventually ruin that value. Bell was a bold move and worked out for about two years until they had to dump him. I recommend not punishing yourself by looking at NH's list of first round picks.

NH also dumped all the assets on the roster, at that time it was like Bay, McClouth, Nady, and god know what else. But all in all, he got nothing back in those trades.

Guess I am just saying that they didn't get good through trades or the draft. Mostly McCutchen being an MVP and somehow finding hidden value and pitching/defense strategies that worked really well.

They've quietly demonstrated player development capabilities that we haven't seen in a long time. What Roansy, Endy, Luis Ortiz and Cruz have done the last two years is new. I'd even argue to point at Suwinski, Keller, and probably a couple other ones as evidence that there is tangible proof improvement.

If it's there, I think we can have some confidence that they'll find it for the likes of Davis, Gonzalez, Priester, Peguero, etc.

[Beveridge]

Hey, at least we aren't signing 36 year old Yu Darvish to a 6 year 108 million deal.

[LeopardLetang]

Didn't espn rank swaggerty 8th last week?

But he's still a reasonable prospect. After his first month last year he ops'd .799 and had family issues or something