So the Minor League Baseball site has this fluff piece up on the Pirates’ new scouting philosophy
Five people have been added to the amateur scouting side, and the areas for which each scout is responsible have been shuffled and restructured to ensure that no area goes uncharted. There has also been a complete revision in how scouts evaluate players.
“We’ve put a whole new structure and a whole new system in,” Huntington said. “We have established a Pittsburgh Pirate-type player and established what we’d like from a player at all different positions.”
With the caveat that I may be reading WAY too much into an eight-word quote, that sounds like 1) a recipe for bad drafting and 2) a lot like the problem Cleveland has had in its own drafts, where their criteria in early rounds are quite narrow and they’ve ended up with a lot of low-ceiling college guys who haven’t panned out.
Again, could be nothing, and my general belief on quotes from GMs is that they’re 90% bullshit (what incentive does a GM have to reveal details of his baseball strategy?), but this sounds a lot to me like they’re trying to re-create the Cleveland organization. If that means Huntington can flip Jason “Bartolo” Bay and Ronny “Einar” Paulino for some major building blocks, hey, great. But if it means they’re doing to adopt the same semi-closed drafting philosophy – not the best player available, but the best player available who fits into what we’ve already decided we’re looking for – then the draft is not going to be a major contributor to Pittsburgh’s future success.
Isn’t that kind of how they ended up drafting all those low-ceiling relief types in the first round for, oh, seven years?
Neal Huntington has said a lot of stuff, especially compared to his predecessor who rarely said anything about his strategy. Pittsburgh fans still have no idea what he is going to do though. Query from a Pirates fan, Keith –
Is turning Daniel Moskos into a starter a good idea or his ceiling too low anyway? As a corollary question, I know that converting a starter into a reliever tends to increase their strikeout rate, but does it help with control as well? Thanks!
I don’t know if you saw this, but you know the mailbags on MLB.com? A few months ago, there was one for the Pirates, and there was a question for Huntington concerning what they look at in a player (the question mentioned something about the Pirates ignoring OBP for a while.)
Huntington proceeded to spew out all kinds of “advanced” (maybe “good” would be a better word) statistics, including ERA+, OBP+ and SLG+ (I’ve never even seen them before, just OPS+) and Zone Rating.
It was on FJM.
As long as Huntington as good a job as Shapiro making trades and signing foreign talent, I’m sure the Pirates faithful won’t complain.
Neil – I did see that, but it’s easy to pay lip service to a huge laundry list of stats. It’s another thing to realize that Freddy Sanchez is a terribly overrated player who is best traded, not signed to a multi-year deal.
SI’s Jon Heyman posted his rankings of GM’s. Over at Lone Star Ball, here is what one fan had to say:
“If I could have any GM, no question. I’m picking Shapiro.”
Over at Baseball Think Factory, not one poster had anything bad to say about him or his ranking (4th best). In fact, it was Levski who mentioned Shapiro, saying that Byrnes was trained by Shapiro. Other than that, nothing. So, I think that a lot of people would be impressed by the fact that the Pirates are trying to become the next Cleveland Indians.
I don’t see how any of that is a rebuttal to the fact that Cleveland has not done well as a drafting/developing organization, at least not when it comes to US-born talent, under Shapiro.
Byrnes also worked under O’Dowd and Epstein; I’m not sure how you can ignore that and just credit Shapiro for whatever Byrnes does right.
Bay for Kershaw & LaRoche.
Who says no?
As an Indians fan, I appreciate your comments because they’re honest. I’ve been a big Shapiro supporter over the years, and have defended him from the idiots who are still pissed that we “traded” Omar Vizquel, Sandy Alomar, and Jim Thome, but that doesn’t mean I think his tenure has been perfect. Some of my fellow Tribe fans act like you’re a bad fan if you question the organization for its failure to draft more than a couple of worthwhile players since CC Sabathia.
How many times are we going to watch Detroit load up on top talent in the draft before we get a clue, go over “slot”, and draft the type of high-ceiling talent we can’t get anywhere else? It is clear that the Indians are never going to be in a position to buy a player who is already a superstar, and the ONLY opportunities for this organization to acquire top-shelf talent are the draft, overseas, and continuing to pick-pocket guys like Bill Bavasi. We’ve had a great run in Latin America and gotten great results in some of the trades, but it can’t last forever, and if we keep drafting 1B/DH types, we are going to be sorry.
As for Kershaw & Laroche for Bay:
Sanity says no, from the Dodgers’ side…
That Dodger deal looks even worse considering they’re full up in the outfield, unless you want to push the $55 million Juan Pierre even farther down the depth chart (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
If the Pirates are smart (that’s kind of under scrutiny right now), they wouldn’t trade Bay until July at the earliest. They need to let him reestablish his value before they unload him.
Tom- You assume Bay’s value isn’t destined to decline…
I’d rather see if perhaps last year was an aberration than trade him for a discount. His value now has to be lower than it has been since he was a Padre, and it won’t be lowered much more if he continues to struggle.
Besides, even if he does struggle, there’s bound to be a team in contention in July that’s desperate for a 29-year-old power hitter (maybe back to the Padres? I’m just spitballing here).
Tough call on when to trade Bay.
Obviously he could lose value, but if you’re only getting Cliff Lee and Kelly Shoppach in return, aren’t you better off holding him and hoping his value goes up? Lee and Shoppach are both nice players, but for a team so far away from being any good, part of me says you might as well hold Bay and hope that you can deal him for something that really makes a difference down the line.
Of course, if you think there’s something really wrong with him and you’re pretty sure he won’t be his old self, you have to cash him out. But I think if that were true, Bay would be an Indian already (or at least not a Pirate).
“I don’t see how any of that is a rebuttal to the fact that Cleveland has not done well as a drafting/developing organization, at least not when it comes to US-born talent, under Shapiro.”
It isn’t. My poorly made point is that the general public (and even websites that consider themselves baseball savvy) view the Indians, and by extension Shapiro, in high regard. You can argue that they are now held in higher regard since they reached the ALCS. I think that trying to convince others that the Pirates should not try to imitate the Indians will be a tough sell.
The problem is that Huntington probably isn’t going to be able to turn Einar Diaz, Ryan Drese, Eduardo Perez, and 2 months of Bartolo Colon into Travis Hafner, Asdrubal Cabrera, Grady Sizemore, and Cliff Lee (leaving Brandon Phillips out of the equation because he was given away).
The likelihood of recreating those trades in Pittsburgh is very low (even if Huntington does everything right), and if you leave those deals out, you’re left with great Latin American scouting and not much else…which is a big problem for a team that is never going to sign big-time free agents.
There are obviously things about the Indians that are worth emulating, but their draft approach is not one of them. If the Tribe does not shape up soon in this area, we fans had better pray that Shapiro can keep pulling off these miracle trades.
Regardless of any criticism, it’s at least refreshing to ‘hear’ a plan by the Pirates management moving forward. To think that they’ve had no presence in the Dominican, and have drafted pitchers in the first round (in recent history) almost every year with the exception of McCutcheon and Walker, how do you ever expect to develop major league talent? I truly respect your knowledge, viewpoints and experience Keith, but how does your strategy or methodology differe so greatly considering the Pirates sad state of affairs?
Lets be honest here about Shapiro’s drafts. He’s had 2, maybe 3, drafts that should be expected to have produced major league talent by now? In those drafts, he got a few major leaguers, Guthrie, Garko, Kouzmanoff, Laffey and a couple cups of coffee in Francisco and Slocum. Also, Miller, a pretty talented prospect. In no way, shape or form am I saying this is a studly group, or worth bragging about. But I also don’t think its a group that’s worth ripping on.
Chip – Two points. One, my original argument about Cleveland’s drafts sucking for about a decade includes several drafts prior to Shapiro’s tenure.
Two, I think their haul during the Shapiro era is pretty underwhelming when you consider the extra picks they had in some of those drafts – two supplementals and extra second- and third-round picks in 2002, an extra first-rounder and a supplemental in 2003, and a supplemental and an extra third-rounder in 2005. Plus, in 2004, they picked sixth overall and whiffed.