The Buc Stops Here

A couple of days ago the Pirates signed Ryan Doumit to a contract for 3 years with a possibility for the deal to reach 5. Doumit is a rarity in baseball nowadays a catcher who could hit. Given the opportunity to play alot last year for the first time in his career he put up very good numbers. In 431 ABs his line was 15/69/318 with a slugging of 501. His 128 OPS+ told us he was 28% better than the average player which is a very high number. Doumit is either a late bloomer or someone the Bucs finally decided to trust. Last year he was 27 which is a pretty advanced age to get your first crack at starting. If you look at his defensive numbers they are not that bad. With Ronnie Paulino being traded earlier its truly Doumit's ball game.

With the Doumit signing hopefully the Pirates are going to try to do something positive for the future. I heard they are also trying to sign Nate McLouth long term. Though I'm no economist I would think the city of Pittsburgh is being hit hard by the current sluggish economy. With Jason Bay being a free agent after the 2009 season I think they made a smart move trading him when they did. Andy LaRoche is a big time prospect who should be in Pittsburgh for quite awhile. What I'm thinking about this morning is why have the Pirates been so bad for so long. In my opinion some franchises are run alot better than others. While market size and payroll obviously have something to do with it. Its certainly not everything. Two franchises that also seem to be competitive on a small budget are Oakland and Minnesota. With the sabermetric revolution there is alot more young GMs who are much more savvy when it comes to making decisions about player evaluation. Now alot of the GMs who are running successful teams are not old player/managers they are smart young people who know how to intrepid stats and run a business. Billy Beane may have been the first but now Theo Epstein has won 2 World Series in Boston with a mix of homegrown players and guys traded for before right before they blew up. Epstein also knows when to cut bait on a vet on the backside of his career. Here in Florida Andrew Freidman has done an amazing job with the Rays. And before anyone wants to say the Rays were only successful because they has so many high draft picks take a look at their roster. Of the core guys the only high picks are Evan Longoria, Carl Crawford, and BJ Upton. Yes Delmon Young was a number 1 pick but Freidman was smart enough to turn him into Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett. Which brings me back to my original thought about the Pirates. The Bucs have only won more than 75 games twice since 1993. I first looked at how they drafted since 2000 here is a list of all the players the Pirates drafted that amounted to anything thus far 2003-Paul Maholm and Tom Gorzelanny 2002-Matt Capps 2001 Jeremy Guthrie, Jeff Keppinger, Chris Duffy and Zack Duke 2000(a VERY good draft) Chris Young(pitcher unsigned) Nate McLouth and Ian Snell. So its obvious they have drafted very poorly. According to Baseball Prospectus 2008 of the top 100 prospects in baseball the Pirates only have 3 Andrew McCuthchen #24, Stephen Pearce #43 and Neil Walker #94. So the minors are pretty dry. So player development is not a strength. Being a small market team means they won't get the Mark Teixera's of the world but it does not mean they can't sign anyone. Every year there are some 2nd or 3rd tier guys that fall through the cracks that turn out to be good values. The Pirates have done an awful job finding those guys. With some young pitchers with major league experience the Bucs should try to built on that strength. Try to built a good defense behind them. For the next few years player development will have to be the key for them. Also trade established players who they are not going to sign for as many young studs as possible. Getting Andy Laroche was a very good start. By the way LaRoche was #14 on the prospects list. It won't happen overnight. But if we learned anything from the Rays it can be done if you have good young players.