OT - Pirates are one of the worse franchise in sports
The pirates have traded another of the best players, this time Adam LaRoche, to the red sox. After the last trade, players publicly asked what the front office was doing trading away the best players time and time again. Both Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez have turned down contract extensions due to comically small offers. If you were a professional athlete, which franchise would you dread playing for more, the Pirates, the Clippers or the Lions? Or is there a mythical franchise even more filled with poo?
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4348069
Xavier Nady, Jason Bay, and Nate McClouth would have been a decent outfielding threesome this year.
I know Nady is hurt, but you could also include Nyger Morgan or Andrew McCuthchen (who had been pretty solid since arriving in the majors) in that group too.
Kinda ironic that their name is the "pirates" when they continue to allow their team to be pirated
they are as stupid as the lions when it comes to dealing with players. but what does it matter? every time the lions draft a great college player, their careers end up ruined. with the exception of calvin johnson. but its like all 3 of those teams are just a cancer.
The Clippers get talent, who wouldn't with a lottery pick every year, they just refuse to resign when the players start getting good.
the lions and the pirates are not the same situation. the lions are in a salary cap environment and the NFL enforces revenue sharing. it's almost impossible to lose money in the NFL and every one has the same amount to spend. they field an incompetent team because they have been atrocious at picking talented players.
the pirates are fine at picking up talent - that's why you can make a semi-decent team out of the players they have traded. unfortunately, their ownership doesn't believe they can afford to pay those players when they become eligible for free agency and MLB isn't redistributing the team revenues or enforcing a cap.
both franchises, win-loss wise, are terrible, but i think it's a very different situation. with more money, the pirates would be fine.
Salary cap is just an excuse. Does it make it harder? Sure does! But when teams like Minnesota, Tampa Bay, Oakland, and even Florida can put out a successful or decent team it shows that it can be done.
Pittsburgh just continues to be in this 16 year rebuilding mode and there is no excuse to field a losing team for so long. Especially in the NL Central. St Louis and Houston are both mid-salary leveled teams and each have gone to the World Series since 2005.
I honestly think that between the Pirates, Clippers, and Lions that the Pirates are by far the worse of the 3. However I would have to add the Washington Nationals in the mix. They're just as bad as the Pirates.
I'm not "excusing" the Pirates - they have TERRIBLE ownership and that's why they suck. I'm saying they aren't the Lions. The Lions have no competitive disadvantage. They have just sucked at drafting, free agency, coaching hires, every facet of the organization.
The Pirates HAVE talent, they just trade it away rather than play it. They know the guys are good. They draft decent. They just don't keep them. I agree it's a bit of a bullshit excuse. Just saying that as far as picking players, they aren't bad. They just don't put forth the effort, on the ownership front, to retain them.
the NFL is built for parity whereas the NFL is not. The Twins and Marlins are the exception in MLB. A's have never been able to sustain their success and it took TB how many years and top prospects to finally be competitive? Look at the Pirates, Royals, Reds, Padres, Orioles, etc. Small market teams with mid-level to poor ownership / front offices and they can't build a winner.
I think this makes it look worse for the Lions, who have just been pathetically awful at scouting / drafting. The NFL is set up for not only parity, but also quick turnarounds, and the Lions can't achieve either. They are truly a joke.
26 teams out of 30 have appeared in the World Series over the past 30 years. 27 teams out of 30 have appeared overall. Show me any other league with that degree of parity.
The Clippers are moving in the right direction. I actually think they've got a chance at being a force in the West.
Davis
Gordon
Thornton
Griffin
Camby/Kaman
decent...yes
above average...yes
maybe sneak into the playoffs...yes
force...no
**double post
The Pirates owner wants to sell. He's trying to trade off payroll liability to make the club more financially attractive. I believe that's what I heard.
I don't think that's true. Mark Cuban wanted to buy the pirates, but they rejected. The owner and management are literally the bane of the city, it's a shame to see a once-great franchise flushed down the drain for the last dozen years.
That's a baseball thing. Baseball likes to keep it's gentleman's club atmosphere... Cuban will never get in.
No.. It's just stupid. I moved out of Pittsburgh 4 years ago and things haven't changed. At all. You can go through the list of players they trade away.. and yet, no changes.
The sky is also blue.
um Nationals
I know they haven't been around as long, but I would contend that from 2005 to today, no MLB franchise has been more inept than the Nats.
The Nationals, unlike the Pirates, have at least decided to make a plan to achieve success. Their problem is that they are unwilling to make deadline moves (exp. Soriano, Cordero) and suck at signing/resigning players. The Pirates, on the other hand always trade away any player who is successful in the majors for prospects because they don't ever look to the present.
That's a reasonable statement. My comment was full of snark so it wasn't as substantive as it could or should have been. I actually agree with you fully--the Pirates' front office seems to purposefully ruin its own future despite consistent returns from its young AA and AAA call-ups, whereas the Nationals' woes can't necessarily be pinpointed on bad personnel decisions.
I'm only suggesting that the Nationals' entire body of work, let's say this season instead of the past five, has been the most dismal and embarrassing and unprofessional. Spelling your own team's name wrong on the jersey; spelling a president's name wrong on bobblehead night; finding out your GM is skimming signing bonuses off Latino players' contracts because they can't speak English; balking in a winning run on an attempted intentional walk; benching your center fielder for coaching kids at a community outreach center. The Pirates are run with more aggressive incompetence, but the Nationals are probably a bigger joke.
The Lions were 8-8 and in playoff contention two years ago.
but the point stands.
It's funny too. The Steelers and Penguins are (at least in the present) two of the best run franchises in sports. The Pirates don't have to look all the far to get a clue of how to run a sports team successfully.
Though, being a small market team in a sport without a salary cap, there's so many road blocks for them to truly be competitive. Until they implement some sort of cap system and the American League forces their pitchers to hit, I doubt I'll ever be able to really get into baseball.
I'm sorry, but why is the DH rule such a big deal to people? We all want our teams to have a massive offensive liability batting? We want to see players careers die because they can't field as well? We want the AL and the NL to look exactly the same and make things like the World Series and Interleague Play even more dull?
Wow. Brodie, I have not agreed with a lot of your posts but +1 for this one.
I occasionally stop acting like a dick and make good points.
I agree w/ you man. When the Pirates play the Cubs, Cardinals, Giants, Diamondbacks, etc they're all on even grounds. The pitcher has to hit so I see no real difference there. Also whenever they play an AL team on their home field they are actually at an advantage since the AL pitchers rarely hit. So I think the DH argument is pretty lame.
The salary cap argument. Blah. The Cubs spend $100+ million every year and how many World Series titles have they won since 1908? There are houses in Miami that cost more than the Florida Marlins' salary cap yet they have 2 world series titles since 1997.
Plus Pittsburgh is a mid-market. They get overlap from the Cleveland and Philly markets.
I would actually say the Florida Marlins 2003 championship strongly suggests that money plays a role in winning championships (without any sort of salary cap that is).
They essentially bought their team that year in free agency, won the world series, and let everyone go after that year. At this point, they returned to mediocrity.
Can you really say that teams like Boston and the Yankees don't have a better chance of winning than small market teams? Sure, it doesn't work out every year. And sometimes, a low salary team manages to win it all. But I would bet that year in and year out, the favorites to win the World Series typically have higher payrolls.
As far as the designated hitter, I would say two things.
1.) It takes away strategy. Building and managing a team when your pitchers have to hit is quite a bit different than when you can send in a slugger in his place.
2.) Pitchers CAN hit. So why shouldn't they? I mean, why don't catchers get an exemption? Baseball players should in my opinion play offense and defense. Why should pitchers be held to a different standard? They never used to be. I think most of the "dullness" of baseball that was present when they concocted the idea of the designated hitter was fixed with the changes in the mound and strike zone around that time.
The Pirates have won 5 World Series, the Lions have won 4 (championships).
But here's the clincher for me as a fan, the Pirates have won 2 in my lifetime; the Lions, not so much.
They might both be laughingstocks, but if Pittsburgh really wants that crown they'll have to go that extra mile that the lions did and lose all their games.
the Pirates have been pitiful lately, but they have fielded some pretty decent teams in recent memory.
As our full-figured friend Boutrous pointed out...the Natinals (they forget the O, I forget the O) franchise is the fucking Stephen Baldwin of professional sports.
Worst, not worse.
At least not now that Huntington has taken over. LaRoche has a 108 OPS+ and he plays 1B. He is 30 years old and makes 7 million dollars. That ranks 12th of 16 NL first basemen. Ahead of such stars as Travis Ishikawa and Daniel Murphy. So they pick up two decent prospects and bring up Steven Pearce who has shown some potential in AAA. This is a good trade, so was the Bay trade, the Nady trade and the McLouth trade. This isn't Dave Littlefield anymore. Huntington knows what he is doing.
What are you doing bringing stats and being educated on the Pirates?
I think you are supposed to just say "rabble rabble Pirates suck".
It's tough when you are one of the worst major leagues while simultaneously having one of the worst farm systems. I think most people ignore the farm system part.
Neal has delivered lots of young talent that is as good or better than those who they are replacing. The only move he's done so far that hasn't proved to be a winner was the Jason Bay trade. Laroche is finally starting to realize his potential but I think Moss needs to pick it up in order for this trade to be viewed as a success. The pitchers we score in that are just a train wreck.
The Nady deal on the other hand has been a total steal.
Aren't the Pirates just the Triple A team for the Red Sox?
Why Jack Wilson has remained there so long just perplexes me. When they played the Astros before the break, the Astros commentators went off for a good long while on just how bad of a team the Pirates perennially are.
The Nationals can't touch the Pirates when it comes to it either. It wasn't too long ago that the Expos were contending with players like Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Larry Walker. That '94 strike shortened season had them in first place when the players walked (.648 winning percentage). The Pirates haven't had a winning season since 1993. The Nationals have had 5 (including the strike season). While that by no means OMG PLAYOFFZ!1!, they've at least competed.
The Expos were my favorite NL team. The 1994 strike, and the subsequent fire sale, absolutely killed the franchise there. Up to that point, it was perfectly viable in Montreal. The Expos had had respectable attendance up to that point, and there was talk of building a new stadium (which was definitely needed; Olympic Stadium is a piece of shit). But then their dream season was cut short and the ownership panicked and dumped all the star players when play resumed. Fans became alienated and, when it became clear that the owner would never pony up for talent again, never came back. It was a shame.
Cosigned. I still wear my Expos hat sometimes, I miss them.