Senior Leadership Council Is The Problem

So I'm late on this, but weeks ago, Jim Tracy summoned his team's "senior leadership council" (Bob Smizik's terminology) to his office to set, wait for it, the then-and-now impossible goal of 82 wins for the season. Why was 82 wins, if not impossible at season's start, an unlikely outcome for this team? Look no further than the team's "senior leadership council."

Look at this list of players. Seriously.

Jack Wilson,Freddy Sanchez, Jason Bay, Salomon Torres, Xavier Nady, Shawn Chacon, and Adam LaRoche.

On what planet where MLB is played are these players a team's "senior leadership council"? Truth told, as human beings, I like the players; they seem affable and decent guys. But as LEADERS on a team? Please.

All of these above players, at best, are complimentary players on a team that has any hope or dream of contending (and yes, in the NL Central, 82 wins is contending).

Sanchez, when healthy, can hit and field quite well. But he lacks speed and his recent power surge aside, he's not a power hitter. Sanchez has an important role to play on a legitimate contender, but it is not as a number three or four hitter.

Bay, when streaking as he so tends to streak, is a lovely supplementary star. He can get pitches to hit, and when he's hot, he's hot. But he never will be a star player whose mere presence catapults a team to contention.

Laroche, when streaking, is also a lovely supplementary power guy. But Laroche was successful in Atlanta perhaps due to the role in that lineup he played. Laroche was not a star clean-up hitter there. But he does hit for power, and on a contending team, Laroche plays a role, but further down in the batting order.

Wilson, despite muffing up that double play tonight and irritating me, can also play a role on a contending team as a number eight hitter and defensively reliable shortstop--or as a bench player.

While I personally like Xavier Nady (partially due to his awesome first name, I know, fan silliness), he is a platoon player on a contending team, and a valuable platoon player at that--or, on a team that is closer to the downside of .500 than the upside of .500 (a la contending teams in the NL Central), he bats further down in the order and provides some offense in that part of the order.

And the pitchers? Granted, tonight's 8th inning is perhaps a bad time to get me started on the pitchers, but seriously? Shawn Chacon who was jettisoned from a team that wanted to win and Salomon Torres, who is having a rough time despite forgiving David Littlefield? I mean, these players are experienced, sure, but are they even good? (Hint: No.) And lately, they've been less than average.

So, in sum, here is the problem: Aside from four young pitchers (Gorzo, Snell, Maholm, and Capps), the Pirates in this "leadership council" amount to the actual MLB talent on the roster. None of these players have any business being key cogs in the wheel of a contender; at best, even our "best" players, a la Sanchez and Bay, would be supplementary/complimentary players on a legitimate contender.

And yet Bucco management is currently stupid enough to believe that if the team builds around this "core" of players, the team might contend in 2009. Right. Sure. In an old kid phrase I'll use, As if.

If the Pirates are to contend in a division that remains as comically inept as this year's Comedy Central, they need to replace all the non-major MLB players in their lineup, or the charitably below average MLB players, with players who have the same level of complimentary skill as do Nady, Laroche, et. al.

And if the Pirates truly want to contend, they'd better start figuring out how to identify, acquire, develop, or obtain by any possible means those players who are not merely complimentary players but are legitimate All-Stars who can win 20 games a season as a pitcher or hit .320 and give you 45 homeruns and 120 RBI's. To legitimately contend, the Pirates need at least one bonafide position star and a few bonafide pitching stars supplemented by above-average MLB complimentary talent.

But, of course, there are currently 2 issues with my analysis:

1.) I'm not a baseball guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I can clearly state something I'm not sure anyone in the Bucco organization knows. No one on your team's leadership council is a star player around whom a lineup should be built--you have a few decent to good to occasionally very good complimentary players. That is all you have.*

2.) Does the team's ownership group even care so long as the team turns a profit? Somehow the team's win-loss record speaks to my doubt far more clearly than does anything else.

*Caveat: You do appear to have some potentially great starting pitching. Potentially great. It's not at the great level yet, and given this organization's horrific record with pitcher injuries, I'm just calling it very good potential. Talk to me about "actually very good" when 2 starters win 15 games in a season.