Jack Wilson Drops a Bombshell on the Pirate Ship

For the first time since their annual appearance at the trading deadline, the Pittsburgh Pirates have a front-page story on ESPN.com, and the guess here is they probably would have preferred not to have one this time. In case you somehow missed it, Jack Wilson sounded off about the mess that is the Pittsburgh Pirates. The link to the PG's story is here, as well as a link to the Q&A coverage in the PBC Blog. It mostly seems like harmless, quite obvious stuff that Wilson says (though you wouldn't know it from my deceiving headline), and Frank Coonelly mostly confirms that in his response, though I'm sure it was a bit different behind closed doors than it was in his press release.

The most interesting thing I took from this was Wilson's quote, "The biggest thing stressed over the past year was accountability. That includes everybody in the organization, as far as having accountability for themselves and in wanting to win. It's not just the players." On the surface, this doesn't seem like much, and Coonelly more than accepts it because it is the team's mantra and claims that they have made sure that players and management is accountable, but to me, this is Wilson saying, "Yeah sure the players are held accountable, but have you seen the moves these guys are making? Have they brought in one piece at the major league level who has looked even serviceable so far? HELL NO! Where's the accountability for them? There isn't any!" Of course, this might just be me saying crazy things and overreacting, but I think Wilson, and who can blame him, is just tired of the same old crap from management. I also think, as he openly admits, that he got excited about playing for a contender in Minnesota or LA or Detroit or wherever, and now that its looking like he'll be back in the Burgh for another season, he's just flat out depressed.

Finally, one last thing I felt necessary to mention, is Frank Coonelly's laugh-out-loud hysterical (and clearly delusional) quote in which he had the gall to compare the Pirates roster to the Red Sox. It was quite innocent in all honesty, but there is no way you can seriously draw any sort of parallel between our Succos and the most successful team of the last 5 seasons. The quote was: "I am sure that Jack misses some of the players who were here when he signed his contract three years ago, but he is not alone in playing for a team that has experienced significant turnover. Indeed, only seven players who were on the Red Sox World Series team in 2004 were on the Series roster of the 2007 team." Yeah Frank, but the Red Sox holdovers were okay with that because the guys that the team brought in were guys like Josh Beckett, Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, and JD Drew. Meanwhile, poor Jack watched the Pirates bring Jeff Karstens, Andy LaRoche, Chris Gomez, and Ramon Vazquez. I mean good lord. Clearly those are not equal situations.

But this is really just a case of people making a story when really, it's just a bunch of obvious quotes from a long-time, well-respected vet like Wilson. It's the off-season, so everyone's looking for even the smallest bit of info to talk about regarding our Pirates. I don't think this is anything worth worrying about if you are the Bucs, and certainly Wilson has never given even the slightest inclination he could be a locker room distraction.