TUESDAY PIRATES RANT™ – Best 29-55 Team in the League!!

Live from Oklahoma City, home of local hero Freddy Sanchez, it’s the Tuesday Pirates Rant™!! Apparently a local sports radio station was promoting the fact that Freddy would be calling in for about a week when, less than an hour before Thursday’s early first pitch, Freddy did in fact call in and chat about what a great season he’s having and how much it sucks to lose 13 straight games. So how did karma treat the soon-to-be-named-to-his-first-All-Star-Game Sanchez? Well, about 4 hours after talking to Bob Barry, Jr., on the air, he breaks the Pirates’ losing streak with a walk-off HR in the 9th. Apparently in Sooner Land, karma is occasionally nice to you. What a concept. Anyway...

Good

* Well, my prediction of 24 straight losses came up 11 losses short. Oh well. As a good friend of mine (and Royals fan) said in a text message after Freddy’s walk-off, “Losing 13 games is easy. Pirates can’t hold a candle to the Royals.” Nope. Not in head-to-head games or massive losing streaks. As part of a long-running bet to further the vicious Royals-Pirates rivalry, I owe that buddy some Arthur Bryant’s next time he’s in KC. Thanks a lot, Pirates.

* The Pirates had to have set some kind of record this week by getting two players named to the NL All-Star team despite having the worst record in the NL. Hard to do. And both players were deserving, for that matter, unlike former Pirate Mark Redman, the Royals’ representative. Redman could actually challenge the Pirates’ Mike Williams for worst All-Star ever. I mean, at least somebody like Mark Grudzielanek has a .280 average.

* Rookie stud Tom Gorzelanny made his 2006 debut (finally) on Saturday and had a nice 5 IP, 2 ER performance. It took him 100 pitches to get through 5 innings, but hey...being that the Pirates’ win percentage for the week went from .000 the previous week to .429, I’m being generous. I mean, heck, they almost had a .500 record this week! Against the Tigers, Indians and Mets no less! If it weren’t Fourth of July, I’d still be calling for fireworks!

* I, at least, consider this a great thing: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette beat writer Dejan Kovacevic has officially lost hope in both GM Dave Littlefield and manager Jim Tracy. You could see the disillusionment coming in his weekly Q&A columns, but it was capped off with a lovely Mid-Season Grades article. Quick summary: Freddy Sanchez and Jason Bay get A’s, Littlefield and Tracy get F’s, everybody else gets C’s and D’s. Sounds about right.

* The “Will Tracy be fired?” rumor mill officially began this week. WOOHOO!!

* Last good point: thanks to the Cubs’ wretchedness, the Pirates still have something to play for! Well, as long as you consider “Trying to be the 2nd-worst team in the National League” something to play for.

Bad

* Jack Wilson is STRUG-A-LING!!

* Oliver Perez had a great performance Saturday night, striking out 13 in 7 innings and (if you believe ballpark radar guns) getting better speed on his fastball than he has all season. The bad news, of course, is that he did this for the Indianapolis Indians instead of the Pittsburgh Pirates. They finally sent him down for refusal to stop sucking. And, to top it off, he still lost.

* The Pirates lost two of three to the Tigers this week, in typical Pirates fashion...that is, falling behind by about 1,000,000-1, then battling back to lose by one in dramatic fashion (their 23rd and 24th 1-run losses this season...already just 20 from the all-time record), allowing Jim Tracy to say they’re “this close” to being a good team and ignoring the “Well, if you’d stop falling behind by so much, you might win more instead of relying on a late-game charge to salvage respectability” part of the argument.

* Here’s some brilliant Dave Littlefield, um, logic:

"Obviously, it's a little clouded right now because our record is not good, and it's been a disappointing season relative to this point and my own expectations," Littlefield said before a 9-8 loss Sunday to Detroit. "But I do feel good in that we've got some talent and I'm confident we'll play better and win more games sooner than later."

Pretty sure our president would call that the soft bigotry of low expectations. Sheesh...talk about setting the bar as low as humanly possible. “Win more games sooner than later”, Dave? You mean Pirates fans should expect more than a .354 win percentage sometime soon? My heart’s a-twitter just thinking about it!

And seriously, just how many times must I compare Littlefield to Dubya before one of them loses a job?

* Via Bucs Dugout, I find another lovely Irate Fans essay, this one comparing the Bucs to the young-and-cheap-as-hell-but-400-times-more-promising Marlins.

It's a shame their ownership group was too cheap to keep at least one of Josh Beckett or A.J. Burnett (especially Beckett, as Burnett was overpriced), but still, they wound up with a club that averages only about 23-24 years old, which is insane. This emphasizes another principle of the Florida Marlins system: push productive players through the system quickly. Find a 23 year old in the Pirates’ system, and I’ll bet you a Pokey Reese bobblehead that they’re either at Low-A Hickory or High-A Lynchburg.

These 2006 Florida Marlins handled some rough early adversity, and are now thriving. They may even approach — if not exceed — the lofty Pirate “goal” of .500 by the All-Star break, when Pirate fans can expect the national media to play up the “beautiful ballpark” angle of PNC as much as “Hey! Jerome Bettis is from Detroit!” because there simply won’t be much else positive to talk about.

And these Marlins are only going to get better.

* I almost put this on the “Good” list, but congrats to Jeromy Burnitz for making ESPN Page 2’s “Worst of the Worst” team (again, h/t to Bucs Dugout).

Blog

Bucs Dugout expands on the fact that Jack Wilson is STRUG-A-LING:

Baseball Prospectus' VORP stat says that Wilson has been just one and a half runs better with the bat than the typical backup or Class AAA callup. Essentially, this means that the Pirates would lose almost nothing on offense if they just dumped Wilson and replaced him with, say, Yurendell DeCaster. Obviously, Wilson is far better with the glove than DeCaster or just about anyone else, but it's very hard to be even an average player overall if you're only replacement level with the bat. If anyone can do it, it's probably Wilson, but it doesn't seem likely, especially since fielding stats like zone rating and range factor suggest that he hasn't been quite as effective with the glove as he was last year. (He certainly still looks good out there, of course.) I can't say exactly how much Wilson's defense has been worth this year, but it'd have to be beyond extraordinary to make Wilson's year a good one overall.

No liveblog from Where’s Van Slyke this week, but here’s a lovely summary of yet another 1-run loss:

Tell me if you've heard this one before. The Pirates fell down by a large amount, then battled back only to fall one run short. New stuff, huh? Today the suspects were Ian Snell (bad start before a strong finish), John GraBLOW, Jose Castillo (rallying killing DP with the tying run on third in the 7th, then a K with the bases loaded an one out in the ninth), and Humberto Cota (game ending groundout off of Todd Jones after Castillo's K). Here's fun fact, using the Win Expectancy Finder at walkoffbalk.com, the home team has historically won 56% of games that they trail by one run with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the ninth. I suppose when you're 28-55 you need more than a 56% chance against a team like the Tigers.

Bones from Honest Wagner takes on Dave Littlefield and his, what was the word I used earlier? Logic?

More meaningless bullshit from DL. Dave, your Bucs are now 28-55 (.337), the worst team in all of baseball. When I think of the Bucs, I feel terrible. Only the Worst. G.M. would waste his time attempting such turd-polishing. The Pirates are now an unthinkable 8-24 in one-run games. The AP report comments:

However, it also can be argued that one-run losses are indicative merely of a poor team. The expansion 1962 New York Mets, considered the majors' worst team in the last 50 years, had 19 one-run losses at this point of the season. Of those 120 Mets losses, 38 were by one run. They had only two fewer one-run losses than they did victories.

DL has proven himself wholly incompetent, and should be relieved of his duties at once.

Billy from Romo Phone Home worries the hell out of me. I mean, at least let me believe that Littlefield will be fired before the calendar flips to 2007.

Here's what I think the bad guys think:

1. We're making a profit.
2. We have a very young starting rotation. Teams that have young starting rotations often struggle but eventually improve.
3. We have a lot of other young players--Paulino, Doumit, Castillo, Sanchez, Duffy, Eldred, Bautista, McLouth--who are going to get better, and when they do, we will too.
4. Because of (1), the worst thing we can do is to panic. We need to stay the course and be patient.
5. Our new manager is the perfect leader to implement a strategy of patience. (UPDATE: Tracy articulates his philosophy, such as it is, here. Via Bucs Dugout.)
6. We have a great PR/marketing staff that is adept at accentuating the positive.
7. While the signings of Burnitz, Randa, and Casey may not have worked out, they did show the fans that we are willing to spend money and are not simply shameless profiteers.
8. Our success and profitability don't depend on wins and losses. We have the best stadium in baseball, and the fans love coming to it. We are selling something larger and more sustainable than just the fortunes of one baseball team; we are selling The Baseball Experience in Pittsburgh's Field of Dreams.
9. This strategy is working, and there is no need to change it, because
10. We're making a profit.

The Cubs have been failing forever. They're Chicago's lovable losers. The fans still love to go to Wrigley, and they love their Cubbies. As a business plan, owning a team of lovable losers that plays in a beautiful facility is every bit as viable as a plan that is built around on-field success. Maybe more so, because it is more predictable.Should the fates ever allow the Pirates to blunder their way into a post-season, all who read this are reminded not to be too quick to lunge for souvenirs and not to interfere with foul balls while they are still in play. Chances in the post-season for lovable losers are extremely rare.

And finally, Sell the Pirates dares to dream:

Top Ten Reasons the team should be sold to Mark Cuban:

1. The Dallas Mavericks were the worst team in basketball at one point in time. Cuban bought the team, spent money, and now they are one of the best, and are consistently in contention.
2. The Pirates will never have long term success with an owner that does not have resources like McClatchy
3. The City of Pittsburgh invested a lot in PNC Park, this investment needs to be protected
4. PNC Park sells a lot of tickets when the Bucs win games
5. Cuban would care about the Bucs and he would make money
6. McClatchy just wants to make money, he does not care about the team
7. Not one winning season
8. Derek Bell Contract
9. Jason Kendall Contract
10. Baseball does not have a salary cap

Let me just say that, while I was getting extremely sick of Cuban’s bitching and moaning about unfair refs during the NBA Finals, a high school friend of mine and giant Cubs fan (who was even more sick of Cuban in the Finals, being that he lives a lot closer to Dallas than I do and had to hear about it even more) are ready to fight to the death for the right to have Cuban buy our respective teams. He’s a whiner, but he cares about winning, not profits. What a concept.