Blogs

SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – So when Neal Huntington pulled up to baseball’s symbolic drive thru and ordered off of the discount pitcher menu this offseason, who knew he would be getting this return?

We’re inching close to June and throughout the first two months of the season I think you can argue the Pirates are enjoying the best values in baseball when it comes to starting pitching. (This is a story we might explore in greater detail in the print version.)

Entering today, the Pirates have the second best ERA (3.29) in Major League Baseball, trailing only division foe St. Louis. And they’ve done it at a minimal cost.

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SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – Major League teams and parospect hounds have valued prospects more and more over the last two decades, particularly as the price of free agents have skyrocketed. Never has it been more imperative, especially for mid- and small-market teams. to build around cheap, productive, homegrown talent.

But have teams begun to overvalue prospects? To see a team trade a top 10 overall prospect like the Royals did, sending Wil Myers to acquire borderline ace James Shields, is extremely rare. There’s been only a handful of top 10 overall prospects to be traded over the last decade.

But if you examine this study , which I have cited here before, you wonder why more prospects are not flipped. You wonder if the Pirates really ought to consider being buyers, and not buyers in an insignificant way, like trading for a fifth-starter or middle reliever at the deadline, but in a big way.

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SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – The advanced numbers and the sabermetric community contend Pirates lefty Jeff Locke cannot sustain the performance he has authored to date.  After seven shutout innings against the Astros on Sunday, Locke has lowered his ERA to 2.73.

Locke continues to strike out too few batters and walk too many. He’s throwing the same three-pitch mix as in prior years – according to Fangraphs.com – and the same three-pitch percentages as he did last year when he struggled.

His ERA is a sterling 2.73 but FIP – a metric of fielding-independent run prevention – suggests his ERA should be 4.47. His FIP last year was 4.43. The advanced stats think he’s the same pitcher he was last year.

But I contend that he’s not.

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PNC PARK  - On Thursday I did my best, and perhaps failed miserably, to rank the Pirates’ 25 most valuable assets.

Trade-value lists are interesting exercises. And engaging in a team-specific exercise offers something the popular league-wide lists do not: you are able to better identify an individual organization’s surpluses and weaknesses.

The Pirates have what I think are clearly defined surpluses and deficits when looking at Thursday’s list, even if you disagree with some of the rankings:

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SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – This is not a list tied only to 2013 value, rather, it’s all-encompassing value ranking. The list takes into account present skills, future projection, age, contract and club control. It’s essentially the trade value list ESPN’s Bill Simmons made famous.

It contains a wide range of players from current Pirates regulars to minor league players yet to play in Low-A ball, from ages 36 (Jason Grilli) to 18 (Luis Heredia). It’s a delicate balance between current and future production.

It becomes much harder to rank after the first tier, a tier that should have Pirates fans excited because those four blue-chip talents are under club control through 2018. And even that tier’s ranking was subject to internal debate here at South Hills Command Center. Enjoy!

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SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – When Andrew McCutchen barreled-up a Mike Fiers 2-2 fastball in the bottom of the 12th last night at PNC Park, he had little confidence it was going to clear the fence. After all, he had made solid contact with two pitches earlier in the game, fly balls that seemed to lose life and velocity in the cool air above the playing surface.

“I hit the crap out of those (first) two balls, and they went nowhere,” McCutchen said. “So, right off my bat, I didn’t know. I figured I would book it and try to get a triple out of it. I still didn’t know, even when it went out.”

McCutchen’s drive just did clear the right-center field fence for his fourth career walk-off home run, and a rare Pirates’ win over the Brewers.

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SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – On Monday the Cubs locked up their young, talented first baseman Anthony Rizzo with a seven-year, $41 million deal, a contract that includes a couple club options. While it’s life-changing money for a 23-year-old, it’s probably going to be a mega bargain for the Cubs.

In the early 1990s, then Cleveland GM John Hart began the trend of signing  young, core players to long-term contracts, buying out arbitration years and in some cases several years of free agency. It was smart business for the small-market Indians, allowing the Tribe to keep their core together through the mid ’90s.

Most recently Tampa Bay has been the most aggressive in locking up young talent, most famously signing Evan Longoria to a six-year $17.5 million deal six days after he was called up in 2008. In total the deal will be worth $44 million over nine years, as it included three club options which were incorporated into his recent 10-year contract extension.

It’s widely regarded as the most club-friendly deal in modern history. Read more »

PNC PARK – If all things were equal, Jordy Mercer would be on the Pirates’ 25-man roster. Mercer was mostly impressive during his nine games with the Pirates while Neil Walker’s hand laceration healed.

Mercer hit a pedestrian .258, but he provided punch with three home runs, including two Saturday in New York. In nine games, Mercer made just one error. He’s clearly a more dynamic player than veteran utility man John McDonald.

But when Walker was activated from the DL prior to today’s game, Mercer was sent down to Triple-A because he still had options. Other veterans did not. It can be debated, but the Pirates want to keep as many assets as possible.

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SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – I offered the following observation on Twitter yesterday after watching two innings of Francisco Liriano’s Pirates debut:

I don’t think this is hyperbole: Liriano’s stuff in the first two innings was the best of any Pirates starter this season.

Liriano with the best stuff on the Pirates staff? Crazy? Maybe not.

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SOUTH HILLS COMMAND CENTER – Relievers are the most volatile players in the game. I believe it was the Cleveland Indians’ front office conducted a study a few years back that revealed relievers’ year-to-year performance varied more than any other position in the game.

There are a number of theories as to why this is true: relievers pitch fewer innings than starters, so their numbers are subject to the volatility inherent in smaller sample sizes; relief pitchers are often more max-effort type guys, which perhaps makes them more injury prone; relief pitchers often lack a third pitch or repeatable delivery, making them subject to decline.

This is why some GMs – most famously the A’s Bill Beane – have often traded closers at their peak value. The A’s traded Andrew Bailey to Boston for Josh Reddick before the 2012 season, and with Bailey’s subsequent injury struggles it’s been a clear win for Beane.

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