Thursday, February 6 Updated: March 13, 12:07 PM ET Pittsburgh Pirates By Gary Huckabay and Joe Sheehan Special to ESPN.com |
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2002 in review Kip Wells. The booty from another good trade, Wells came over along with two other pitchers for Todd Ritchie. While Ritchie was busy providing practice for Patrick Hayashi and Alex Popov wannabes, Wells was giving the Pirates a good start every fifth day, finishing the year with a 3.58 ERA in 198 1/3 innings.
What went wrong? The Pirates "offense" scored just 641 runs, beating out only the pathetic and battered Brewers squad, despite having the NL's second best offensive player in Giles. Aside from Giles, the Pirates hit an aggregate .238/.297/.356. To put that in perspective, the Pirates offense would have been about the same had it consisted of Giles and eight Deivi Cruz clones.
In retrospect, the critical decisions were:
2. Raising ticket prices after a disastrous 2001 season. Last year, attendance dropped by more than 25 percent from PNC Park's inaugural season. The Pirates thought the city's honeymoon with the new ballpark could support a price increase, and fans responded by staying away, leaving the team in a public-relations lurch. Given the bad contracts the Pirates have had to deal with, they can ill afford to have a lot of variance in their attendance and the resulting revenue stream. 3. Failing to revamp the player development system. The Pirates haven't produced a truly great hitter in ages. They no longer have the capability to build an offense from within, and instead have spent the last few years bringing in overpriced second- and third-tier players like Mike Benjamin, Pat Meares, and Derek Bell. They're now free of the very worst of those deals, but it won't matter if they can't figure out how to start developing productive offensive players.
Looking ahead to 2003 2. Who's going to hit? It's more of a rhetorical question than anything else. Going into 2003, the lineup aside from Giles looks like something that might have been put together by Rachel Phelps. Maybe Matt Stairs, Adam Hyzdu, and a revitalized Aramis Ramirez hold the key to an offensive renaissance, but with an infield populated by some combination of Pokey Reese, Jack Wilson, Kevin Young, and Randall Simon, the Pirates' few good hitters will have to play out of their minds in order for Pittsburgh to escape the bottom third of the league in offense. 3. Will the fans show up? The short answer is "Why should they?" Due to a price increase, the end of the honeymoon, and the Pirates slogging through their 10th consecutive losing season, attendance dropped precipitously in 2002. The 2003 Pirates don't look like a contending team, and the grace period provided by PNC Park appears to be over. If attendance continues to decline, it could contribute to a vicious cycle of decreasing revenues, poor performance, and even lower attendance.
Can expect to play better
Can expect to play worse
Projected lineup
Rotation
Closer
A closer look The Pirates are the only team in the National League whose hitters have been below the league median walk rate in each of the past seven seasons.
To put runs on the board, you need to get runners on base, and there are two ways of doing that -- getting hits and drawing walks. The Pirates don't seem to have learned that walks aren't just something that pitchers mistakenly allow. Walks are seized by hitters who come to the plate with a plan, and control the strike zone. This blind spot isn't just limited to the major league roster. The Pirates organization has preached "aggressiveness at the plate" to the point where it doesn't coexist with a disciplined approach, and as a result, the Pirates have failed to convert the raw offensive potential in their farm system into productive and patient hitters. Players once considered top prospects, like Chad Hermansen and Aramis Ramirez, have lost command of the strike zone and seen their careers stall or crash. Here's Hermansen's trek through the Pittsburgh minors and beyond:
Hermansen was once one of the top prospects in baseball, showing the ability to hit for average and power with solid plate discipline. It's not as if he's turned into the second coming of Oscar Azocar or Ozzie Guillen -- he's just stalled out in terms of differentiating between balls and strikes, and good pitchers have taken advantage of that weakness. Of course, it would be unfair to judge the entire Pirates player-development system based solely on one player's development. Nagging injuries or individual variance could be responsible for the entire difference. It's also possible that Hermansen, still young and in a new organization (he's with the Dodgers now), could break out and become the star that many once predicted he would be. The Pirates need to learn the value of walks and on-base percentage. From little things like using some combination of Pokey Reese, Jack Wilson, and Tony Alvarez (27 walks in 507 Double-A at-bats) at the top of the lineup, to potentially big problems like signing Randall Simon, who starts flailing at pitches when he falls out of bed in the morning, the Pirates just don't get it. Life is OBP, OBP is Life, and you just don't get a big OBP without walks. And luck doesn't have much to do with it. You can check out more work from the team of writers of the Baseball Prospectus at baseballprospectus.com. Baseball Prospectus is a registered trademark of Prospectus Entertainment Ventures, LLC. |
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