Least talked about manager's job (Pirates)

I would, too. And he is a great guy.

I wonder if they still stick him with Robert Morris men's basketball in the winter. I know Meyer still covers them for the P-G. I would think sitting next to those two on press row a conversation about baseball would be a hell of a lot more interesting than anything that happens on the floor.

 

Casey hits singles, clogs the bases, has no defensive range and gets hurt all the time. In four months with the Pirates, he hit three home runs playing in a park with a short RF. He didn't take a pay cut. He wasn't a free agent. Pittsburgh traded for him. He was on the last year of his Reds contract that paid $8.5 million. The Reds picked up $1 million of that. The Reds also had a party they unloaded most of that oblgation. Casey is a wonderful guy and a deceptively horseshit player. It's insane for a team like the Pirates to pay $7.5 million for a player with his limited ability.

 

I stand corrected.

 

Cleveland has done it, Oakland has mostly stayed competitive even though the system works against them. No question, the Pirates would be dead in the AL East. But the NL Central is very forgiving and they could at least be competitive. You have to draft better, you have to do better with the minor leagues and you have to correctly evaluate talent. They've been horrible in all those areas.

If they hadn't given away Ramirez because of some short-term financial snafu, they may have been competitive in recent years.

Littlefield was a disaster, and so was the guy before him who gave the huge contract to Kendall.

 

Pittsburgh still has a major league baseball team?

 

Least talked about major league team: Pirates. Goes hand in hand with managerial searches.

 

Yeah. They've got uniforms and everything.

 

And who do you think keeps bringing in these disasters at GM?

It's not just the system. It is ownership. It is a parade of piss-poor general managers. I just wonder if any baseball man can fix things with this ownership group fucking it up.

You have to understand. McClatchy was the public face, but the Nuttings were the most powerfull voice in that ownership group when Ramirez was dealt. That was a fuck-up by ownership. They not only insisted on dumping salary IMMEDIATELY, they made sure all of baseball knew it. They were more concerned about making excuses for dumping players than actually giving their GM a chance to get some value in return.

Cheap or not, I don't see the ownership in Cleveland or Oakland so actively fucking things up like the idiots running the show in Pittsburgh have done.

 

I've only spoken with John on two occasions. He had great stories about Barry Bonds' days in Pittsburgh as well as when he came back to the city with the Giants. John told me the old-school Pittsburgh writers who covered Bonds when he was a Pirate speak however they want to the aging outfielder (DH?). "When he gives a lame quote," Perrotto said, "we tell him, 'Come on, asshole, you can do better than that.'"

I'd like to see that, though.

 

Skinner would be perfect. It's not like the Pirates get any guys on second to wave around anyway.

 

Admittedly I'm not looking at this with fanboy glasses, but come on. The "parade" of GMs consists of two guys, both of whom were allowed to stay too long. And I'm pretty sure the guy who preceded Littlefield was on the job before McClatchy/Nutting took over.

Ownership didn't make them draft badly. And before you scream that they wouldn't pay signing bonuses, better players were taken <i>after</i> the Pirates made terrible picks. Those players signed for less money than the Pirates' pick got. Milwaukee gets Prince Fielder after the Pirates pick a mediocre pitcher.

More to the point, the stuff that happened doesn't matter now. They're re-inventing the organization, which means they have a chance to do what Cleveland and Oakland did.

 

Smasher, please take your fanboy comment and shove it up your pumpkin. It was unwarranted and disrespectful of my opinions on the subject.

I'm not screaming anything. Yes, the parade comment was hyperbolic. It's a message board. Allow for a little creative freedom, will ya?

Actually, it was three shitty general managers in a row at least, not two, though you are correct that the McClatchy/Nutting goup isn't to blame for all of them. Ted Simmons, Cam Bonifay and David Littlefield all qualify in that category. And it was ownership bringing them in. It was and is ownership going cheap on the managerial hires. That's why Lloyd McClendon was hired and why he lasted so long. Because he would work cheaply in the job. By all accounts, a good baseball man and a good guy, but not a good major league manager.

And if signability pushes you away from drafting the best possible player, that is ownership's fault, too. And the fiasco with Aramis Ramirez was absolutely ownership's fault.

Sure, others are partly responsible. But that ownership group has combined incompetence with bottom-line first mentality to dig the hole deeper and deeper for that franchise.