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.

Pirates Hot Stove Report

Okay, so I'm a little tired of studying for my numerous finals this week, and stumbled upon Keith Law's ESPN chat today. I read through it and got all kinds of excited for the baseball hot stove season, which should heat up in the next few weeks, what with the winter meetings coming up shortly. So I decided I hadn't give enough news on the Pirates on here and rooted around a while for some Pirates news and linked to the stories below. There's not much here, but I intend to update the site a little more with this kind of breaking news stuff. Until then, enjoy what I've got.

-Check out Dejan Kovacevic's PBC Blog on the Post-Gazette (Link to the lower right) if you really want a breaking news type story on the Pirates. Here's a story he put on the blog about the Pirates-Tigers Jack Wilson trade that was rumored to be going down earlier today.

-ESPN has an AP story about Jack Wilson as the Pirates continue to like talking to the Dodgers for these trades for some reason. The hang-up, as they put it, is the salary for JackO next season of a way-too-high 7.25 million dollars. However, the Dodgers are expected to lose Raf Furcal in the next day or two, and they view themselves as legit contenders so they will need to shore that spot up somehow.

-Dirty Dougie Mientkiewicz is keeping the door very much ajar to return to the Burgh next season, but is definitely holding out for a starting job somewhere if one were to come open.

-The Pirates are talking to second baseman Mark Loretta, who looks like the latter-day Rogers Hornsby when he plays against the Pirates. Loretta would be for a super-utility position I'd assume, but would likely be given a shot to earn some serious playing time at the shortstop position unless the Pirates can somehow obtain a replacement shortstop when they inevitably deal SteveO Wilson.

-Joe Starkey of the Trib calls for a doomsday destruction of the Pirates in this rant. I'm oftentimes a little lukewarm on Starkey, but I rather enjoyed this piece, mainly because it reads like a rant. Seriously, it sounds like he set up one of those computer programs that type what you speak and just went on an absolute tangent about the Pirates. It starts off as him getting all sorts of irritated by the thought of the Pirates signing Adam LaRoche for 6-7 million for this season (a number that I agree is absurdly high) and then somehow morphs into them trading away everyone making good money and not half-assing this rebuilding effort and then comes full circle back to LaRoche with him being replaced by "the next upright, breathing mammal you see." And it ends with a truly bizarre "Be fruitful and multiply" line. I'm not sure what kind of reaction to produce to that one.

-Frank Coonelly has his monthly chat with the 11 loyal Pirate fans. I really do amire Coonelly for this little bit of PR. He doesn't seem to shy away from anything, either in these things. Among other things, he hints the Pirates will likely take a player or two off the 40-man pretty soon and use a Rule 5 pick to fill up a slot. He also says to look for a (my guess is lower-tier) starting pitcher and a right-handed bench man.

What He Really Meant to Say: Frank Coonelly

Frank Coonelly, who has been one of the most fan-friendly and media-friendly team Presidents in sports over the past few months participated in another of his monthly chats in which he fields a handful of questions from the fans and gives (mostly) surprisingly blunt responses. The full transcript can be found here, but we felt that it would be fun to translate what Connelly said into what he REALLY meant, because no one that high up in authority is going to spill all of their beans, right? Without further ado...

jm_bucsfan: Are the Pirates officially in a "rebuilding" mode now?
Coonelly: jm_bucsfan, the Pirates are continuing a "building" plan. That plan includes an aggressive international signing season this past July, an aggressive Draft in the First-Year Player Draft in June and obviously the recent trades we made to secure eight exciting young players who we believe will be an important part of our present and future.
What He Coonelly Really Meant: Uh, are you kidding me? Of course we're in a rebuilding mode. What do you call it when you trade away your best two hitters and your best reliever for a bevy of young players who need at least a few years before they reach their whole potential. But listen, the money we saved? Don't worry, I convinced Bob Nutting to stop sinking that dough into his newspaper business and it will be used to kidnap Scott Boras until after August 15th so that we can negotiate with Pedro Alvarez like civilized people.

schnoah2: It was said that the three-way trade with Boston, Pirates and Marlins that the Marlins said it was your fault, and we said it was their fault ... what really happened?
Coonelly: schnoah2, I am not sure that it is appropriate to attempt to place blame on any club. We ended up making a trade that we were very pleased with, so we don't feel a need to attempt to assess blame. That said, we were in a position in both Boston/L.A. and the Boston/Florida talks in which were dealing with Boston and Boston was attempting to secure from the other teams players that it would send to us.
So in some sense, we were not directly negotiating with clubs with whom we were going to receive players, and that made the negotiations somewhat more difficult. We had targeted two players from the Marlins who we felt we needed to secure in a trade involving Jason Bay. And we had targeted the two Dodgers players we ultimately received.
As I understand it, the Boston/Florida trade was not concluded not because of the players we were seeking but because of the money that Florida was seeking from Boston.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Florida said it was our fault? How dare they. Listen, of the original three team deal between us, The Red Sox, and The Marlins, only the Marlins dropped out because their owner is a worthless penny-pincher who wanted the Red Sox to actually pay him more then Manny Ramirez's salary for the season. How absurd is that? So anyway, we told him them to go to hell, and brought LA in instead.

sonnie11: How does the team plan to use the $20 million-plus it will save by not having Matt Morris, Bay, Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte on the 2009 roster?
Coonelly: sonnie11, We intend to invest budgeted payroll dollars on putting together the best Major League roster that we can assemble. We have nine players eligible for arbitration in 2009, including five players who are eligible for the first time and who all will receive significant raises. We also will, of course, evaluate the free-agent market and determine whether there are players who can help us win in 2009 and beyond.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Well first of all, if you knew your stuff, you'd know that Matt Morris was NEVER going to be here in '09, and that Damaso Marte's option had about as much chance of being picked up as Pittsburgh does to host the 2016 Olympics. But this team has a lot of young players with enough experience that they are close to needing to be seriously paid, which means we need to decide which ones are worth it and which aren't, which means that the trading of some of ML players likely is not yet at an end. As for the free agent market, we won't be very active except to scour the bargain bin for some veteran backups. And we certainly won't be looking for short-term 1 year starters like that idiot Littlefield used to do.

bucsfan69_2: Why do we continue to develop young talent and then send it away when the players are in their prime? Is it solely based on salary?
Coonelly: bucsfan69_2, that is a question that I have been asked on several occasions over the last week. I cannot speak for past leadership, but I can tell you that it is not our intent to develop players so that we can trade them to other teams.
In fact, our plan is to develop premier players and then retain them in Pittsburgh for as long as we possibly can. We concluded that trading Nady, Marte and Bay at this time put us in the best position to build a championship caliber organization as soon as possible. Once we have a Minor League system with the type of depth that a Major League club needs, we won't be in a position where we have to acquire eight quality young players by trading three players over whom we had just 2 1/2 years of control.
In other words, once we have more talent in the system, we will not need to utilize our valuable veteran assets to acquire multiple players in return.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Well, yeah, pretty much. Why spend all this money when we can finish last with or without Bay and Nady. I mean, hey, at least we aren't crazy like the Houston Astros who made deadline deals so that they can contend... and yet they are struggling to stay above us in the standings. We might as well save the money now, get a few decent players in return and sink the dough into signing more of these draft picks.
bay569: Who is up for arbitration on 2009?
Coonelly: bay569, the players are Adam LaRoche, Ryan Doumit, Nate McLouth, Jose Bautista, Denny Bautista, Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, Tyler Yates and John Grabow.
What Coonelly Really Meant: What am I, your slave? Look it up yourself.

cybixler: Frank, when can we expect to see Tom Gorzelanny back in Pittsburgh?
Coonelly: cybixler, Tom has worked extremely hard in Indianapolis to regain the command and confidence that he showed last year and throughout most of his Minor League career. His last two outings were particularly encouraging. If Tom continues his progress, I believe that we will see him in Pittsburgh sooner rather than later.
What Coonelly Really Meant: After stinking the joint out in Indy at first, Gorzo has gotten a little better in Indy, and is finally showing signs of the player we thought he could be. Albeit, those signs are in AAA. He may be back before the end of the year, but if Karstens and Maholm continue to pitch well, Snell can find his groove (as he has shown some signs of), either Dan McCutchen or Ross Ohlendorf can make an impact up here, Gorzo could find himself fighting for a starting spot with Zach Duke next spring. But hey, at least all this means the notorious JVB will never make another start for the Pirates.

bobkipper51: Will the signing of [top pick Pedro] Alvarez affect the signing of the other unsigned top-10 picks? Your recent interview makes it sound as if Alvarez doesn't sign you'll be able to sign the others, but there's been little said about whether we'll sign the others if Alvarez signs.
Coonelly: bobkipper51, That is a good question. What I said in the interview was that the Pirates would be foolish to meet the unreasonable demands of an agent for one player, because -- among other reasons -- that would make it far more difficult if not impossible to sign other talented selections who we are attempting to sign. If we're able to sign Pedro at a figure that is consistent with the market for drafted players, we will have sufficient resources in our budget to sign several other drafted players we have targeted.
Another fan asked how we were doing on the Alvarez negotiations. We remain confident he wants to become a pro player this year and is excited to start his career with the Pirates. Unfortunately, it appears that the agents for several high choices have concluded that their best deals will come at the 11th hour, in this case late in the day on Aug. 15. That is certainly frustrating for an organization that is anxious to begin the development of a player that we view as a cornerstone moving forward, and I'm sure it is also frustrating for the players whose dreams are to become Major League players and whose progression to the Major Leagues is obviously delayed by such a tactic.
What Coonelly Really Meant:
It sucks being delayed by this B.S. Tactic, which is why I'm trying to arrange for Boras' kidnapping. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Make no mistake, WE WILL SIGN PEDRO! We'll also do our best to sign these other high picks, including these two nuts from Fresno State, the injured one and the one who thinks that it matters at all to us that he pitched well in the College World Series.

gjs867: Why should we sign Maholm long term, after just half a year of good pitching?
Coonelly: gjs867, I'm glad that you asked that question. I am not sure where Dejan [Kovacevic] received information that we had made a decision to offer a multiyear contract to Paul. Paul has been our most consistent starter this year and has demonstrated the type of command and aggressiveness in attacking the strike zone that we are looking for.
I did stress to Dejan that we will be evaluating our arbitration-eligible players and making decisions regarding which players we will approach to discuss signing them to potential multiyear contracts. We have not made any decisions regarding which players we will approach as of yet.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Yeah that was Dejan's bad on that one. It's okay Dejan, I still you, you're still my boy. Doumit and McLouth could both be signed though, he was right about that, so 2/3 ain't bad I suppose.

bucabing: Frank, is there a game plan for the organization to address Jose Tabata's reported attitude issues?
Coonelly: bucabing, the game plan is the same approach that we follow with all of our players in the organization. We expect every player wearing a Pirate or Pirate-affiliated uniform to conduct himself as a professional, and that means playing the game the right way, respecting the organization and respecting the fans that support our organization. [Pirates director of player development] Kyle Stark and his coordinators and coaches do a terrific job instilling these values in all of our young players.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Yeah if he gives us any lip, we're gonna pop him one. No, no just kidding. I mean come on the kid is 19. When you were 19 weren't you getting into all kinds of shenanigans? I know I was. I mean, in case you didn't know, I did got to Penn State, needless to say, I know how to misbehave. And look at me, I turned out just fine. Tabata will grow out of it, and if not THEN we'll pop him one.

77bucco: If you have to wait till the last hour, doesn't that make it impossible to get all of your top 10 [Draft picks] signed?
Coonelly: 77bucco, your question is a good one and that is why we have been working hard to sign well in advance of the last hour all of the players we have targeted.
As you know, it takes two parties to negotiate a contract, and it's been difficult to get the agents to the negotiating table. We will continue to attempt to sign as many as we can between now and Aug. 15 and hope that not all of the negotiations will take place in the last hour.
What Coonelly Really Meant:
Weren't you listening before, we're going to sign as many of these as possible knowing that we will sign Pedro as well.

buccogrl81: With Doumit and McLouth both having a standout year, will you work hard at re-signing them? It would be a shame to lose those two.
Coonelly: buccogrl81, you are certainly right that Doumit and McLouth have been consistent producers all year long and are an important part of our present and future. As noted earlier, both players are eligible for arbitration for the first time following this season. We have said from the outset that -- in the right situations -- we will attempt to lock up our good young players to multiyear contracts that buy out one or more free-agent year. As I indicated earlier, we have not made decisions yet as to which players we intend to approach this offseason, but Ryan and Nate are certainly two strong candidates.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Look, these two are our two best young hitters, and we will do our best to sign these two to 2 or 3 year deals, but we are not about to break the bank for either as they are both still relatively unproven. McLouth's production has mostly come out of nowhere, and Doumit, while we always knew he could rake has been (mostly) healthy for the first time in his career.

cybixler: Frank, you just said the trade of Nady, Marte, and Bay was to put you in the best position to build a championship caliber organization as soon as possible. Back in June, you were quoted as saying you thought the team could compete. Why the flip-flop?
Coonelly: cybixler, I feel like a politician when I say I don't believe I've engaged in a flip-flop. We said at the outset of this year that we wanted to give this team a chance to make a run at the postseason. We did that, but unfortunately our starting pitching has been such that, even with one of the top offenses in the NL, we were not in a position to challenge the Cubs, Brewers or Cardinals for a postseason berth. As our inability to replace injured or ineffective pitchers with quality replacements demonstrated, we need more talent in order to be competitive.
Had we done nothing at the Trade Deadline, we would have continued to be short of the type of talent necessary to be a championship- caliber team. We believe that we accelerated the day when we will return to being a championship-caliber team by adding eight quality players to our system, seven of whom were playing at Double-A or above and four of whom are now playing in Pittsburgh.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Look, how was I supposed to know that our pitching staff would continue to crap the bed? I mean c'mon, we weren't going to contend this year or next with our crop, so it made sense to plan for 2010, right?

gjs867: Why wouldn't we overpay Alvarez?
Coonelly: gjs867, your question sounds like it may have been submitted on behalf of [agent] Scott Boras. We have been extremely aggressive in our efforts to sign Alvarez. We have been so aggressive that even our initial offer could meet some people's definition of "overpaying." We cannot, however, impair our ability to sign other drafted players, impair our ability to sign high Draft choices in 2009 and beyond or impair our ability to sign and retain our good young players like McLouth, Doumit and others, by simply giving every dollar that's available to this organization to one player who has never put on a professional uniform or taken a single at bat at the Major League level.
That would be irresponsible and would hamstring the organization for years to come. Pedro is an extremely talented player who has had a decorated amateur career, and we hope he will have a long and successful career with the Pirates.
What Coonelly Meant: We probably will.
shamtown: What would you say the chances of signing Alvarez are? If we can't sign high end Draft picks because of money, does it make sense to take them?
Coonelly: shamtown, all right this will have to be the last question of the day and, not surprisingly it is another question on the Alvarez negotiations.
It's impossible for me to place odds on our ability to sign Pedro. All I can say is that we very much want to sign him, and we continue to believe that he very much wants to sign with the Pirates. Returning for his senior year at Vanderbilt and coming out into the Draft as a senior with very little leverage or playing independent ball are not particularly attractive options for him, and while the third selection in the draft which we would receive as compensation if we are unable to sign Pedro is certainly a valuable asset, our strong preference is signing Alvarez this year.
We selected Pedro because he was, in our view, the best player available when we selected at No. 2. We believe that we can sign him, and we thought it was critical for us not to take a compromise or "safe" player. This is something that the organization has been accused of doing in the past. Whether this was the approach in the past or not is irrelevant. Our approach is to select the best player available when we Draft and to make every effort to sign him. We have sufficient resources to sign Pedro, consistent even with the escalated Draft values of today.
What Coonelly Really Meant: If I can get this mob contract put out on Boras? Our odds increase exponentially, probably all the way to 99.9 %. Otherwise, I'd say the chances are still very good that we will sign Pedro, probably upwards of 75%, simply because it's best for both parties to get this deal done now. However, any contract we reach with him will likely come very late at night August 15.
Coonelly: Thanks to all of you for joining us this month. We appreciate your passion for Pirates baseball.
What Coonelly Really Meant: Hey, if there are this many of you that care enough to badger me about Pirates baseball in a chat room for an hour, why in the hell aren't more of you at the games? We have promotions!

Pirates Finally Have The Right People In Place

This was published following the selection of Pedro Alvarez in the MLB Draft. Though Pedro has not yet signed, and the trades the team made are highly questionable right now, I stand by what I wrote here. Of course if they don't sign Alvarez...

Stop me if you've heard this before...
It's looking more and more like the Pirate organization finally seems to have found the guys at the top of the organization to lead them forward to (gasp) winning baseball and even (nearly passing out) contending in the National League on a yearly basis.
(CUE SCREECHING BRAKE NOISES)
Oh, so you have heard this before then? Well, that makes two of us. In fact, chances are that you have heard this before multiple times. It was written when Cam Bonifay and Dave Littlefield both came aboard, and was certainly written in 1997 when the Freak Show Pirates team put up a stunning march into first place for most of the season that culminated in a second place finish and the team's best record since '92. It was written about Dave Littlefield upon his hiring in 2002, and also in the opening months of his reign of terror when he made deals that actually weren't completely atrocious. And now, we are seeing these articles nowadays about Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington.
Make no mistake, though, this time it seems to be real. Nutting clearly has given the go-ahead to spend, something ne never did with Dunce Littlefield or Clueless Bonifay (this is how these two will henceforth be known). Coonelly clearly has demanded more from Nutting in all departments, and I feel that it is likely that this was the only way he would have taken this job in the first place.
Coonelly's commitment and determination has trickled down to both Huntington and new skipper John Russell, both of which were hires that I questioned heavily at the time, but now certainly look significantly better with time.
Sure, the Pirates are still mired in the depressing land of sub .500 ball, but given the vast wasteland that was their organizational depth chart last fall, I have been very much impressed with all that I have seen from the Buccos this year, and think that maybe, just maybe we can turn the corner with this squad.
However, like I've said, we have all heard this before, and it is definitely concerning to note that we have all been before, excited to see the Pirates in 2-3 seasons and thinking that with all of these young players they are expected to accrue, that the Pirates can contend long-run. This only further proves that the only way these idle words will ever mean anything is to get those W's. While the '08 Pirates will likely never be confused with their late 70's and early 90's brethren but management has taken a few minor steps in the right direction over the past several months, and a biggie came yesterday in the MLB Draft.
All week long, we had heard that Pedro Alvarez was the Pirates man, and every scout was very high on him, many even going so far as to say that he was the best player in the draft. But regardless of all this, I was abjectly terrified when it came time to make the pick. I know, I know, every sign on planet earth pointed to Pedro Alvarez going here, but 15 years of losing has jaded me to the point where I was afraid of seeing "Brian Matusz RHP" pop up when they were picking or maybe even someone I'd never heard of, a la Moskos last season. When one of the longest 5 minutes periods of my life came to a conclusion and the live Draft Tracker informed me that the Pirates had, in fact, taken 3B Pedro Alvarez from Vanderbilt, it took every fiber of my being to avoid hopping up from my chair and doing multiple fist pumps and terrifying the bejesus out of my co-workers.
The rest of the day yesterday, especially the two plus hours I was still at work for, I was pondering the long-term future of the Pirates and really began to feel pretty positive about the organization for the first time in many years. This club isn't afraid to spend, as long as it's in a smart long-term investment that could pay off enormously long-term. This club knows that the best and most logical way for a small market team to contend with youth and long-term, smart cotnract. And, perhaps, most important, this club knows how to appeal to its long disenchanted fans, by being honest with the fans and not feeding us the typical B.S. that we have seen. Instead, they acknowledge the obvious, that both the fans and the team know this a long-term effort, and that signing the likes of Kenny Lofton, Reggie Sanders, and Jeromy Burnitz in order to win 75 games instead of 68 is a useless tactic. I mean heck, even fans who have been beaten down for 15 years and have become completely and totally apathetic can understand that, and will certainly respect the organization more when, for the first time in 15 years, they actually begin to do something right.