Hurdle Takes the Fall, Bye-bye to Blass, and Who Ya Got in the Series?

The blood-letting began at PNC Park yesterday when the Pirates, in the smarmy personage of General Manager Neal Huntington, fired manager Clint Hurdle, right before the team's final game of the season.  The Pirates can manage to screw up just about anything, even a firing.

Clint Hurdle rides off

into the sunset

Let's face it, a case can certainly be made for Hurdle's dismissal.  He's been on the job for nine seasons, and his message had probably gotten stale with the players and was no doubt falling upon deaf ears.  His fate was probably sealed with that unbelievably horrid twenty-eight game stretch after the All-Star Break when the team went 4-24, and if THAT didn't do it, the tales of a clubhouse completely out of control during the second half of the season surely did.

All of that aside, though, the site of GMNH smugly saying how Clint needs to be "honored" for all he did for the Pirates, and short time after he fired him, is enough to make to make you want to retch.  And how about Bob "Mr. Dithers" Nutting going on and on about how great Clint was, and then telling us that GM Neal and his "excellent leadership team" will remain in place and will no doubt lead the Pirates to greater heights into the future?

As the PG's Paul Zeise said in his online column today, Hurdle's firing can be justified, but it can also be said that he did HIS job with the Pirates one helluva lot better than Neal Huntington and his scouting and development team did theirs.  And if you don't believe that, just take a look at the collection of sub-standard, non-major league quality pitchers that Clint had available to him in the bullpen whenever the underachieving starting staff faltered, which they did almost all of the time.

Clint gets the last laugh.  He is owed $6 million from the Pirates over the next two years, and I hope that he collects every dime of it from this sad sorry-assed organization that the Pirates have become.

********

Until the front office screwed it up with the timing of the Hurdle firing, there was a "feel good" story this weekend, and that was the final series of games being broadcast by retiring announcer Steve Blass, after sixty years serving the Pirates organization.  (Has anyone served the Pirates so well for so long?  I think not.) The fact that Blass' final season turned into a complete shit show was a shame, and the hijacking of his final game by yet another inept front office gaffe was icing on the cake.

As my own tribute to Blass, I will tell my own Steve Blass story.  I've told it before in this space, but, what the hell, here it goes for one more time.  Back in the '00s  when I was chairing the local SABR Chapter, I invited Steve to be a speaker at one of our meetings, and he accepted.   How cool was that to have a genuine, honest-to-God World Series hero come to speak to us free of charge.

Well, he showed up, spoke for an hour, and did a great job of being Steve Blass.  The following week, as was my custom, I sent a thank you note to him for his time and for the job he did at our event.  A few days later, my phone rang at the office - I was still working then - and it was Steve Blass.  He want to thank me for sending him a thank you note.

Who does that?

Here's to a long, happy, and healthy retirement for Steve Blass.

********

The Major League Post-Season begins tomorrow with the first of the Wild Card games, and culminates with the World Series, which might end right around Thanksgiving.  Ten teams are alive for a chance to obtain that World Series gonfalon.  Here is my Grandstander Confidence Ranking (GCR) for the teams still standing, with (1) being "most confident" and (10) being "least confident".

1. Astros
2. Yankees
3. Dodgers
4. Braves
5. Cardinals
6. Twins
7. Brewers
8. Rays
9. Athletics
10. Nationals

Feel free to factor the GCR into your calculations as you make your own World Series predictions, and, as always, watch, but don't bet.

The Steelers Get Humiliated....and Some Pirates News!

A familiar sight - 

Donte Moncrief flat on the ground 

after failing to catch yet another pass 

against New England last night.

There is not much that can be said about that 33-3 humiliation that the New England Patriots laid on the Steelers last night.  Professional sports can be astounding in the sense that a team can point to a single occurrence - in this case, the Steelers season opener against the Pats - prepare for it for months, and then come out so flat and listless that it appears that they had no interest in playing at all, and are never in the game from the opening kick/pitch/tip-off.  This happens a lot in sports, and it always just astounds me when it does.  As one of the oldest cliches in the book says, that's why you play the games.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'll just recap some comments that I made on The Facebook last night while watching the game:

• If the Steelers of the Tomlin/Roethlisberger ever played a worse game than last night, I cannot remember it.
• Based on what we saw last night, I would guess  that opposing teams defensive coordinators will game plan against the Steelers as follows:  "Let them throw to Donte Moncrief and Ryan Switzer all game long, and we'll take our chances."
• It was early in the second quarter, and I felt like I was watching  Pirates game.
• I cannot come up with a single solitary positive thought or comment on the Steelers performance last night.
• As a Steelers fan, one of the worst aspects of the ass-kicking they received from New England is that it will lessen the opportunity to gloat about the Browns and the ass-kicking that THEY received at the hands of the Titans yesterday.
• How about old goat Bob Kraft down there on the field pre-game parading that Lombardi Trophy.  The guy has absolutely no sense of shame does he?
• On the bright side, this week's episode of Pittsburgh Dad should be positively epic!

Oh, and speaking of the Pirates, lost amid the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Steelers debacle, this headline was buried at the bottom of Page 8 of the Post-Gazette sports pages this morning:

FEW CHANGES EXPECTED FOR 2020 SEASON

Some quotes from the story written by Jason Mackey:

"The way general manager Neal Huntington put it Sunday, It doesn't sound as if there will be many changes to the Pirates for next season."

And...

"Huntington's comments painted the picture that, unless something dramatic happens here, the Pirates might be coming back with pretty close to this existing group."

As is the case for last night's Steelers game, I can't quite find the words to respond to THAT either.  Those comments  ought to help sell a lot of season tickets this coming off season.

The Bucs Just After The Break

Eighteen days ago, July 8, I made a post on this blog entitled "Bucs At The Break", wherein I waxed enthusiastically over a thirteen game stretch prior to the All-Star Break when the Pirates went 8-5 against teams that were higher than they were in the standings.  You can look it up easily enough.

In order to save myself retyping the same words, allow me to cut-and-paste another passage from that post:

After the Break, they face another thirteen games against teams above them in the standings, Cubs, Phillies, and Cardinals.   If they can fashion another 8-5 record, or better, in those games, then you have to think that the Front Office will simply HAVE to make an effort to add a piece or two to put the team into a position to make a run for a playoff spot.

That thirteen game stretch ended today, and I don't think that I have to spell it out for fans of the team what happened, but, what the hell, here it is, anyway.  They went 2-11 in those games.  They are now 46-56, in last place in the NL Central, 9 games out of first place, and 9 games out of the Wild Card with eight teams between them and that second WC spot.

For all practical purposes, the season for the Pittsburgh Pirates is over.

The question of what does Neal Huntington do at the July 31 trade deadline (My $.02: listen to any and every offer that might be made for any and every player on the team except Josh Bell, Kevin Newman, and Brian Reynolds) is of far less importance than this one:

Who will be held accountable for this mess of a season?

You could say that it's the fault of Clint Hurdle and his coaching staff, especially Ray Searage, so fire them all, BUT they can only work with the players that they are given, SO....

You could then say that it is GMNH's fault because he has produced a pretty bad ball club, which has included a parade of pitchers who absolutely, positively do not belong in a major league uniform (I don't have to list them for you, do I?), and whose big splash deal of last year, the acquisition of Chris Archer, has blown up in his face like a cheap exploding cigar, so fire him, BUT Neal is hamstrung by a budget that is requiring him to try and compete with a payroll that ranks 27th among MLB's thirty teams, SO.....

You can then say that the accountability buck stops at the desk of owner Bob Nutting, and one thing we know is that Bob Nutting likes nothing more than making money, and the Pirates are making money, so he's not likely to change his skinflint ways (never mind the fact that maybe he could make even more money if he actually had a winning and competitive team).  He likes it just the way it is right now.

So, when the season comes to its merciful end for the Pirates in September, a couple of coaches, or Clint Hurdle, or maybe even GM Neal may get sacrificed to placate the angry masses, but as long as Bob Nutting is still signing the checks, I fear that things are never going to change.

Maybe the team might catch lightning in bottle some year like the KC Royals did a few years back, but we as Pirates fans are doomed to serve the rest of our days as fans residing in baseball's version of Purgatory.  That's the way Bob Nutting wants it, that's the way the MLBPA wants it, and that's the way MLB itself wants it.

Us fans?  We're screwed.

The Trades

Less than a month ago, July 9 to be precise, I expounded in this space about the awfulness of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the ineptitude of the team's front office, which, in the person of GM Neal Huntington, all but gave up on the team and gave indications that they would be selling assets come the July 31 trade deadline.  Since that pronouncement on Huntington's July 8  radio show, you all know what has happened.  The team has gone 16-4, including an eleven game winning  streak, and has propelled itself at the very least back into the race for a Wild Card spot in the post-season.  The players themselves called the Front Office's bluff and yesterday the suits delivered, making two huge trades.  

On Monday evening I was out at an event and a friend asked if I thought the Pirates would make any significant deals at the deadline.  My answer was that they would probably get some middling relief pitcher just to say that they did something, but that I doubted that it would have any significance whatsoever.

Well, I was wrong.  A minor league pitching prospect was sent to Texas for relief pitcher Keone Kela.  I admit that until this trade was announced, I had never heard of Keone Kela, but his credentials as a top flight reliever/closer are impeccable.  

Kela

Then the stunner came yesterday afternoon, right at the 4:00 deadline.  Starting pitcher Chris Archer comes from Tampa Bay in exchange for Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow, and the always popular Player To Be Named Later.

Archer

Despite what his number say, no one throughout baseball disputes that Archer is a genuine top if the rotation starter.    Without question, the Pirates are a better team today than they were the day before with the addition these two guys to the team.

Will it be enough to make a difference this year?  I am not so sure, but before these deals, I didn't see any chance of the team making the playoffs.  That equation has changed now.  Also, Archer and Kela, who come to the Bucs with three and two years of control, respectively, and with "team friendly contracts" (always important to the Pirates), the team looks to be improved going into 2019 and beyond as well.

Both deals represent a shocking change in philosophy for Huntington and the Pirates, who would never part with prized prospects.  Meadows has made the big leagues and has proved that he can play at this level.  He was destined to be the guy who would replace Andrew McCutchen, and now he's gone.  Will he ever achieve Cutch-like status?  Maybe he will, and it will hurt of we see him in multiple All-Star games over the next decade or so wearing a Rays uniform, but he may not, either.  As we all know, baseball history is littered with Can't Miss Prospects who have, you know, Missed.  Glasnow was projected as a dominant Ace of the future, and he has not panned out up until now.  Of course, he could turn out to be a future Cy Young candidate like Charlie Morton and Gerrit Cole are now, or he could remain what he currently is, a middling relief pitcher.  Oh, and we'll see about the Player To Be Named.

But we know what the Pirates have gotten in Archer and Kela.  Two proven major league pitchers who will be an immediate help to this team, both this year and for a couple of years to come.

We have all been burying GM Neal for his inaction and salary dumping this season, so it's only fair to give him some props for what he has pulled off in the last forty-eight hours.  Time will be the ultimate judge of these deals, of course, but as of right now, I like what the Pirates have done here.

Sunday Morning Thoughts (Sports, An Absent Friend, and Mr. Rogers)

We are a little more than an hour away from kickoff of the Championship Game of the World Cup....oh, excuse me, the FIFA World Cup....between France and Croatia.  At the outset of the tourney, I predicted that a team from Europe would win the whole shebang, so, I believe I had that.  I also decided that I would place my rooting interest in France due to the fact that (a) the USA failed to qualify, and (b) because of the wonderful time we had in France on our vacation in May.

So, Vive Le France, and I predict that we shall all be doing  a Victor Laszlo impersonation and singing "Le Marseillaise" when France wins it all later this afternoon.

As always, watch, but don't bet.

********

On his radio show last Sunday, Pirates GM Neal Huntington admitted that the Pirates were not playing well, and that, depending on how it went between then and the All-Star break, he might be forced to reevaluate the team and consider moving assets.  Translation: It will be time to dump high salaried players by any means possible and get younger and cheaper players.  No mention if they would be better players necessarily, but that sure would be a happy by-product of such a purge.

In what has to be NH's worst nightmare, the Bucs then proceeded to win seven of their next eight games, and a win today will mean a five game sweep of the Brewers, who were a first place team when they arrived in Pittsburgh on Thursday (they are now in second place).

Truth is, Huntington has to proceed with the fire sale.  The results of this past eight game sample do not negate the mediocrity that had been the hallmark of the team for the greater part of the season.  Still, NH will face severe criticism if it is perceived that he is trading away pieces from a "winning" team, which the Pirates are not.  He will face criticism if he stands pat as well.  He is almost in a no-win situation, a corner into which he has been painted by his penny-pinching bosses and by his own condescending attitude towards his paying customers.

********

I would highly recommend the Opinion piece on the late Fred Rogers that appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  this morning.  I'll even save you the trouble of looking it up.  Here it is:

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2018/07/15/Rev-Fred-Rogers-minister-to-children/stories/201807150023

Would that there be another Mr. Rogers in our midst today.

********

To An Absent Friend 

Len Chappell

1942-2018

A wire service obituary for basketball player Len Chappell, who died earlier in the week at the age of 77, appears in the  Post-Gazette this morning.  Chappell was an All-American at Wake Forest, a two time ACC Player of the Year, a first round draft pick if the Syracuse Nationals of the NBA, a one time NBA All-Star, and he had a journeyman ten year NBA career playing with nine different teams.

What that wire service obit didn't mention (or perhaps the PG omitted it in the editing process or the real possibility that no one at the PG had ever heard of Chappell before the death notice came over the wires) was that Chappell was a Western PA guy, hailing form Portage PA in Cambria County.

RIP Len Chappell.

The Lone All-Star, and Other Pirates Thoughts

As I do every year at this time, let me salute the Pirates All-Star (it's singular this year - a sad commentary on the state of the Pirates), reliever Felipe Vazquez.

Vazquez is 3-2, 3.38, with 18 saves.  He can be a totally dominant ninth inning guy (witness yesterday's game against the Phillies) so he undoubtedly has earned the spot on the NL squad, but there can also be no doubt that he is also there because, well, every team has to have at least one guy on the team, a rule with which I totally agree, by the way.   I just feel bad that he won't have any teammates there to chat with during the workout sessions in Washington.

The other irony is that with a July 31 Fire Sale pending at PNC Park, there is a very strong likelihood that Vasquez won't be a Pirate much for much longer.  I wonder how many "Vazquez" All-Star jerseys the Pirates will manage to sell before he might be sent to some contending team.

This past December I met Felipe Vazquez (he was Felipe Rivero then) at a charity event for the Caring Place.  He seemed like a nice enough fellow, so I'm happy for this bit of good fortune for him.  I hope that he had a bonus for making the All-Star team written into his contract.

********

If you follow the fortunes of the Pirates, you know that yesterday's win over Philadelphia snapped a five game losing streak, but it was not just any kind of a losing streak.  It was one that included two games wherein the Bucs gave up 17 runs.  Yep, SEVENTEEN RUNS. Hey, these things happen to  even the best of teams over the course of a 162 game season, but when it happens twice within a span of four games, well, that should get your attention.

I tuned in that Friday evening game in the second inning when the Pirates had a 1-0 lead.  They then fell behind 5-1, got to within 5-4, then the dam burst and the next thing you know, you had a final score of 17-5.  Not only that, the game took 4 hours and 30 minutes to play.  It was a record for both the Pirates and the Phillies for the longest nine inning game in their franchise's history, and it tied the National League record.  Too bad that they couldn't have dragged it out for one more minute so they could hold that NL record all by themselves.

Anyway, amazingly and inexplicably, I stayed up and watched this atrocity of a ballgame until the very end.  As my pal Tim Baker put it, it was like seeing a crowded school bus stuck on a railroad track.  You knew it was going to end horribly, but you just couldn't peel your eyes away from it.

Here are some of the memories I will have of that game....

• The Pirates trotted out both Doyvadas Neverauskas and Josh Smoker in relief.  Unsurprisingly, both got blasted.  I made a semi-serious vow to never pay another dime for a Pirate ticket as long as these two guys were on the team. The powers that be must have heard me for both of them were sent packing to Indianapolis on Saturday.  May they never darken the door to PNC Park again.
• I lost track of how many double-switches Clint Hurdle made in that game.  There were at least two, but there might have been a third one, and who remembers and who cares.  It was National League baseball at its finest.
• The supreme highlight, though, came in the eighth (or maybe it was the ninth) inning when Starling Marte claimed he was hit by a pitch.  The umpire said he was not.  The game was already four hours old, and the Pirates were down twelve or thirteen runs at the time.  The Pirates weren't going to let them get away with it.  Clint Hurdle CHALLENGED the call.  An interminable slog of a baseball game became interminabler and sloggier.  But the Pirate challenge was upheld, and Marte was awarded first base.  Take that you incompetent Men in Blue!  Did I mention that the Pirates lost 17-5?
• It got funny as even the team's Chief Apologists announcers, Greg Brown and Steve Blass, ran out of things to say and actually were critical of the farce that the team was putting on that night.
• In retrospect, I just should have turned off the TV and gone to bed as soon as Neverauskas was summoned in from the bullpen.

********

That game was followed up on Saturday when Hurdle gave a quick hook to Jameson Taillon in the seventh inning.  Taillon was pitching well, and had only thrown 77 pitches.  Now, at that point Taillon had put a couple of guys on base, and he was going through dreaded third-time-through-the-batting-order, but on a team whose bullpen was overused and was stinking up the joint, and when the guy who is your supposed #1 starter is going well, and when you're riding a five game losing streak, maybe, just maybe, you stick with him and if he screws the pooch, then he screws the pooch.  The reliever gave up a hit to his first batter that allowed the eventual winning runs to score (the runs were charged to Taillon), and the streak went to five games.  

Taillon questioned the move to reporters after the game, and you have to wonder if this is a crack in the dam that will lead to Hurdle losing the team and the players adopt a don't-give-a-shit attitude for the rest of the season, if that hasn't happened already.  Also, Neal Huntington defended Hurdle's move on his radio show yesterday in a classic bit of Huntington Bullshit which also contained his patented bit of what-do-you-people-know-about-baseball-anyway condescension.

Also on his radio show, NH said that unless the Pirates really, really turn it around before the All-Star break, the team may be forced to start trading away players.  He also said that before the season began, he and his minions had the Pirates pegged as a team that would win between 78-82 games.  In other words, Huntington felt that he had a mediocre team.  Funny how the front office brain trust never said that back then.

It is going to be interesting to see just who gets dealt by the end of the month.  Very likely that guys like Josh Harrison, Francisco Cervelli, Jordy Mercer, Vazquez, and at least one of the three outfielders (Dickerson, Marte, Polanco) are dealt.  Salaries and contracts will be dumped, "prospects" will be obtained, and the merry-go-round will start all over again.

********

While I am on this tangent, I have to mention Huntington's comment of a few weeks back when he stated that the Pirates will not be able to improve the team by adding better players who cost more, because of the declining revenues due to the drop in attendance since 2015 when the Pirates failed to build on a 98 win team by, you know, not adding payroll and getting and keeping better players (after a season where they set attendance records). In other words, it is the fault of us, the paying customers, for not buying tickets to an inferior product that keeps the Pirates from obtaining and paying for better players.  Nope, not Nutting's/Coonelly's/Huntington's fault.  My fault.  Your fault.  The complete arrogance and condescension of that statement, not to mention it's tone deafness, is something that will haunt Huntington and the Pirates for as long as they remain in place at 115 Federal Street.

********

One final comment.  Dan Bonk and I recently did some research on MLB teams' total wins since 1979, the last year in which the Pirates played in and won the World Series.  This covers the seasons from 1980 through 2017, thirty-eight seasons, and does not include the expansionist Marlins, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Rays.  You ready for this, Pirates fans?

• Of those twenty-six major league teams, the Pirates have won the fewest games in that 38 season stretch.  They won 2,828 games. The Royals were the next rung up with 2,864 wins.
• Not surprisingly, the Yankees were Number One on the list with 3,388 wins.  That's 560 more wins than the Pirates, That's three and one-half season's worth of games. Just think about that.
• In that 38 season span, twenty-seven teams - yes, even the Marlins, D'Backs, Rockies, and Rays -  have played in the World Series.  Only the Pirates, Mariners, and Expos/Nationals have failed to reach the Fall Classic in that period.
• In that 38 season span, the Pirates have had ten (10) winning seasons.  That is fewer than any of the other 25 teams on the list.

Yes, my friends, for the last thirty-eight years (and going on thirty-nine), you can make a very strong case that the Pittsburgh Pirates have been THE WORST TEAM IN ALL OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL.

********

Hey, have a great week, Pirates Fans!!

Bad Sports Day in Pittsburgh, Part Two - The Andrew McCutchen Era Ends

Two days after trading their best pitcher, the Pirates traded their best player in this century and the Face of the Franchise,  Andrew McCutchen, to the Giants for a rookie pitcher, Kyle Crick, and a minor league outfielder, Brian Reynolds.

If you follow the Pirates, you certainly knew that this day was coming, but that doesn't soften the blow of losing the guy who was such a good player - an MVP and a five time All-Star - who was so much fun to watch play, and who just seemed to be such a good teammate and a good guy off the field (he was an MLB Roberto Clemente Award winner).  It may be silly that you put such an emotional investment in a person who plays baseball, or any other sport, for money, but that is what fans do, but Andrew McCutchen is a guy who seemed to earn that attachment from Pirates fans.  

From a pure baseball standpoint, the trade of McCutchen cam be defended (as can the trades of Gerrit Cole on Saturday and of Neil Walker in 2016).  He'll be 32 years old this year, his skills were declining, although he did hit 28 HR's in 2017, and on and on, but the theme that runs through the two trades this weekend (and the Walker trade two years ago, and other trades over the years) is money, and the Pirates unwillingness to spend it.  In a vacuum, every single trade that Neal Huntington has made, or been forced to make, can be defended from a baseball point of view, but when you look at them in their totality, the one common theme is that the Pirates just will not spend money beyond whatever their predetermined bottom line is as decreed by Bob Nutting.  It is just so unbelievably frustrating to see this happen year after year after year.

Now as for Crick and Reynolds, I hope they become stars for the Pirates, just like I hope the four guys who came from the Astros for Cole do, but here is something I know.  Twice before in his tenure, Huntington was called upon to trade one of his stars, Jason Bay in 2008 and Neil Walker in 2016, and on both occasions, he whiffed big time.  Will it happen again in these deals?  I sure hope not, but how would you bet if you were forced to?

As for the 2018 Pirates, well, how can you be optimistic, despite the b.s. being spouted by Huntington and Nutting yesterday?  In a town where the Steelers and Penguins continually give their fans winning, contending teams, the Pirates can only be seen as a bunch of penny pinching skinflints who want to win only if it can be done on the cheap, which it can't be in MLB.  The Pirates, rightly or wrongly, appear to have lost the hearts and minds of a huge portion of their fan base, and they are going to have an enormous and perhaps impossible job in winning them back in 2018.

Locke'd Out

After watching yet another ineffective start from Jeff Locke on Wednesday night, it is my opinion that the Pirates need to move on and away from this guy.  I am tired of the dance that the Pirates have been doing with guys like Chad Kuhl and Tyler Glasnow and Jameson Taillon and Steven Brault.  You know what I mean...bring him up, give him a spot start, send him back to Indy, bring him back from Indy, put him on the DL....yet Locke keeps getting sent out every fifth day in hopes for another "lightning in a bottle" start, like the one against Madison Bumgarner a few weeks ago, only to see him not make it out of the fourth inning AGAIN.

Taillon certainly seems to be here to stay, and, yeah, I know Glasnow still has that Too Many Walks Box to check,  but why was Chad Kuhl sent back to Indy after going toe to toe, pitch for pitch against Max Scherzer on Sunday?

Taillon, Glasnow, and Kuhl may become the Pirates equivalent of a Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz rotation someday.  Or, they may turn out to be the second comings of Kip Wells, Josh Fogg, and Oliver Perez.  I don't know, but I do know what Jeff Locke is, and it is time for the Pirates to move on.  It is my hope that Neal Huntington will make some sort of move or moves at the August 1 trade deadline that will allow the Pirates to revamp the rotation that will include guys like Taillon and Kuhl.

Speaking of Taillon, and it does appear that he now is a part of the rotation, I was fortunate enough to have seats right behind the Pirates dugout (thank you, Tim Baker) on Tuesday night so I was witness to the frightening scene of Taillon being hit in the head by a line drive.

"Frightening" is the best word I can use to describe it, and it is positively unbelievable that he was able to stay in the game and continue to pitch, and pitch quite well.

Tough kid.

The Walker Deal

If you follow these things closely, the news of the trade by the Pirates of Neil Walker came as no surprise, but it was nevertheless jarring because of Walker's popularity with the fans, his overall skill level, and, of course, the fact that he was "The Pittsburgh Kid".  The deal, however, once again brought home the fact that baseball is, as are all professional sports, a business - on both sides of the negotiating table.

Bob Nutting and his fellow fraternity members in MLB are business owners who have every right to turn a profit and set and live within a budget.  We may not like it, but there you are.

Neil Walker and his fellow players are Hessians who have every right to seek the top dollar from whomever employs them.  The people who are now berating the Pirates for getting rid of Walker need to be aware that while the Pirates were working long term deals with Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, and Charlie Morton, they were also making offers to to do the same with Walker, and Walker said no, not once, but twice over the years.  That is his right, and he will now have the chance to seek a deal more to his liking from the Mets this year, or any other team in 2017 if he opts for free agency.  And I hope that he gets it.

Also, let's abandon the idea that the Pirates have somehow "betrayed" the fans by trading the local guy.  Neil Walker is going to a good team, the defending NL champion, and I doubt that he will feel bad in the least that he is not playing in his home town when he gets his money from the Mets.  Plus, outside of the Walker Family, I doubt that the Pirates sold a single extra ticket over these years because a kid from Pine-Richland was playing for them.

Okay, how about this deal from a baseball standpoint?  Well, there is no doubt that the Pirates need starting pitching to replace A.J. Burnett and J.A. Happ, and maybe, possibly (hopefully?) Jeff Locke.  Who knows at this point if Jonathon Niese fit the bill?  If he duplicates what Burnett did (9-7, 3.18) last year, will that be enough to make up for losing Walker?  On such things will Neal Huntington and the Pirates be judged come October 2016.

It can also be stated that with the loss of both Walker and Pedro Alvarez, the Pirates are a severely diminished team from the one that won 98 games last year.  With those players' departure, the Bucs are losing 43 home runs, 148 RBI, and 129 runs scored.  That ain't going to be easy to replace.  The good news, though, is that the Pirates don't have to play a single game until April, so there is time for Huntington to assemble new pieces to the Pirates puzzle.  Three years ago, I would have been railing at Huntington and the Pirates, over these moves, but the last three years have shown that NH can assemble good teams given the resources his bosses have given him, so I'll draw no conclusions until the final 25 guys head north from Bradenton at the end of March.

However, a final word on those resources that Huntington is given.  One has to wonder if the Pirates will EVER make the one big move that will put them over the top and make them truly elite.  Last year, the Nationals GM Mike Rizzo had to go to his ownership to see if they would swallow hard and make the move to sign Max Scherzer.  They did, and Scherzer performed up to expectations, even though the Nats did not.  This winter, the Diamondbacks did the same thing in signing Zach Grienke, and who knows how that will work out for them.  Will the Pirates EVER do something like that?

Sadly, I'm afraid that we all know the answer to that question.

The Deadline Deals

More than a month has passed since the July 31 trade deadline in Major League Baseball.  Neal Huntington was criticized in some quarters for not giving up some of his prized prospects in order to obtain such big name and expensive players like Cole Hamels or David Price.  Instead, the critics said, the Pirates clung to their penny-pinching, dumpster-diving ways.

So how have the five players that Huntington procured done?  Here are the numbers, through the games of September 9:

HITTER	At Bats	Runs	HR	RBI	BA	OPS
Aramis Ramirez	136	12	5	26	0.250	0.716
Michael Morse	41	4	0	0	0.317	0.830
PITCHER	Games	IP	W-L	SAVES	ERA	K	BB
Joe Blanton	11	21.1	3-0	0	0.84	25	6
J.A. Happ	7	40.1	5-1	0	1.79	42	7
Joakim Soria	17	15.0	0-0	1	3.60	14	6

For comparison purposes, the three biggest name pitchers that were moved at the deadline have performed as follows:

David Price 5-1, 2.15 ERA

Johnny Cueto  2-5, 4.86 ERA

Cole Hamels 3-1, 4.07

Yeah, it would be nice to have David Price in a Pirates uniform, but Happ has done just as well, and at a much cheaper price.

As far as Ramirez is concerned, I wrote the following in The Grandstander last July when the trade was made:

Finally, there is the delicious karma of Ramirez coming BACK to the Pirates in the midst of a pennant race.  No need to recount the painful circumstances of the horrendous salary dump deal in 2003 when Kevin McClatchey forced Dave Littlefield to get rid of perhaps the team's best player and brightest young star in years for a collection of used jock straps and batting practice baseballs.  (Someday, I hope Dave Littlefield will write a book and explain HIS side of that awful transaction.)  If A-Ram can manage 8-10 home runs and 30 or so RBI's over what time he has here, it will be one terrific story.

Looks like Ramirez is going to come in right on those numbers, or damn close to it.

So, what do you think?  I'd say that considering what was given up for these players, Huntington gets an A grade for his deadline deals.