Anonymous Quotes

There have been some fairly interesting anonymous quotes concerning the Pittsburgh GM vacancy floating around baseball.

Courtesy of John Perrotto come some more terrific anonymous quotes. As previously noted on this blog, I like to get an "outside" perspective of my organization.

On NL GM says this: "The Pittsburgh franchise is a sleeping giant. The Pirates have a lot of good young pitching with (Tom) Gorzelanny, (Ian) Snell, (Paul) Maholm, (Zach) Duke and (Matt) Capps. They have a great ballpark and Pittsburgh is an underrated city that players fall in love with once they play there.

"You can win in Pittsburgh, it's not impossible by any means. You're always going to be at a handicap because of the small market but it's not something you can't overcome with a good player development system and a little bit of smarts in how you spend your dollars."

My Thoughts: Which NL GM said that? Is it a real-live competent GM who should still have a job and whose organization has a winning record and legitimate development program? Is it a competent GM who can actually identify talent who believes the Bucco pitchers he named are actually "good young" pitchers (italics mine)? Does someone who actually knows something about baseball actually see a few potentially talented players wearing the uniforms of the Pirates? For real? Seriously?

Secondary Thoughts: How long does it take to build a "good player development system," seriously, and not just to build that system, but to see the fruits of your labor in that area? And a "little bit of smarts in how you spend your dollars" assumes Nutting puts in place a CEO who will hire a GM who can do those things. Hardly an easy task.

For another "outside" perspective, there was a lovely ESPN Insider article this week. I didn't take issue with the assertion that Littlefield was highly incompetent, but I did find myself disputing Law's contention that Paul Maholm was a "marginal fifth starter." Maholm has been much more consistent (and good) in the second half of the season than the first half of the season. While Maholm currently could be considered, as a league-average pitcher, "a marginal fifth starter" on a legitimate World Series contender, a player who has 10 wins and an ERA+ of 102 for one of the worst teams in the majors would likely not be considered a "marginal fifth starter" on any of the teams in the Comedy Central in which the Pirates play the majority of their games. Still, however, to read that "outside the organization" perspective was interesting, even if the view of Maholm apparently contrasts to the quote from the wishes-to-remain-anonymous NL GM.

And as for the last "outside" perspective, it's again taken from Perrotto's article, from an assistant AL GM, who says, "You have nowhere to go but up and I mean nowhere else to go. If you go in there and win, you'll look like a genius because they haven't even had a winning season in 15 years. If you go in there and lose, well, it's not the end of your career by any means because you're not supposed to win there." And such is the rub for Bucco fans. It would be great if a GM could come in and win, but let's be honest and real: who really can sincerely expect that such a consistent onslaught of losing can be reversed in a short time?

And, of course, one question has to be answered, and that's about the ownership. Is Mr. Nutting will to invest what needs to be invested in order to build both a winning AND profitable team in Pittsburgh? Because if Nutting won't invest, all the anonymous quotes in the world about how "attractive" the Pittsburgh GM job is won't matter for naught when it comes to the dream of watching a season, sometime soon, where the Pirates win more games than they lose.

Seriously, why?

--Okay, so Paul Maholm apparently has a sore back. Hopefully skipping tomorrow's start means he'll be just fine, but really, one never knows these things with the Bucco medical staff. (I mean, they don't recognize broken bones!)

--On a serious note: Ian Snell has to pitch on the Labor Day holiday? Lately, and more than just lately (think: after the All-Star break), I have no earthly idea what to expect when Snell is pitching. Is he going to strikeout ten guys? Is he going to give up multiple home runs? Is he going to be good, bad, horrific, or some mediocre or depressing combination of many adjectives? I'd just like to know which pitcher to anticipate tomorrow (because, when it comes to my baseball team, it's much easier to expect your team to lose and to be pleasantly surprised when they win--something I've trained myself, most of the time, to do, albeit not during August's above. 500 run--rather than to be disappointed because you expected a win and they lost). I'd also love it if someone would originate nicknames for the "good," "horrific" and "so-so" sides of Mr. Snell because Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde is just not working for me. Thoughts? Ideas?

--If Snell pitches the way he did last time out and the way Gorzy did today, suffice to say I'm going to be screaming about shutting down pretty much all of the pitchers. For kicks, anyhow, it would be a royal hoot to trot out Colborn or Tracy for an inning or two, though no doubt Mr. Tracy wouldn't want to see the integrity of the game further compromised. But I say rather than worry about Tracy's view of the game's integrity, may as well preserve the arms of our pitchers--even if we're not yet sure--aside from personal health issues--the ultimate value of the arms we're going to preserve.

--I'm worried. Tracy didn't like the way Duke looked in Indy, and neither did I (albeit I'm not yet ready to draw conclusions for next year based on that 1 rehab start). But Tracy and I agree on something (and it's not the first thing we've ever agreed on, either, albeit we probably have more disagreements than agreements). Still, this "I agree with the manager of the Pirates" event is disconcerting. How disconcerting, I'll let you be the judge.