OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Dull days of July

[DJ Spinoza]

Well, it took 7 years for us to be a winner under Huntington, who also never saw this franchise capture a division title or win a playoff series beyond a play-in.

I think what gets lost in this discussion sometimes is that Huntington had to literally build everything from the ground up. There was no analytics department when he started and the resources such as the Dominican Academy didn't exist at all.

I won't make any argument that Nutting isn't the root of most every problem we can point to, but Cherington has done an awful job, and for the most part, he didn't replace many people actually working with the team. The one exception is that he brought Baker in, and the player development results are at best a very mixed bag.

 

[ChaosAgent]

And I absolutely give no credit to GMBC for picking Skenes. Any player THAT OBVIOUS, that he was a clear cut pick to me, as a "Joe Fan", deserves only, "well at least he didn't F that up" praise. Which is faint praise at best.

I would have probably picked Langford and been wrong (though Langford could be a McCutchen 2012-2015 level player in his own right).

It took guts to take the pitcher and I give Cherington credit for doing so. On the other hand, the rest of his 2023 draft looks meh and the 2021 draft is being held together by Bubba Chandler right now.

I mean the system is average at best despite the unlimited tanking license and the high picks. How?

 

[ChaosAgent]

WAR is something that nerds like Cherington use for fail. In the real world, putting Langford in this lineup would raise all sails.

Notice that I said you could "make the argument" and respond with a fantasy stat that doesn't count so many other factors as "fact".

Wake up

The only way that Langford > Skenes is if Skenes arm falls off or if his ability dips big-time after his arm injuries happen.

My gut says that Skenes is a bigger, beefier guy than the guys who are typically hurt. Like Jones, as awesome as he has been, is going under the knife in the next couple years. But I don't see Skenes delivery as injury-prone nor do I see his body type as an injury risk. Verlander didn't need TJ until he was almost 40.

As I said earlier though, Langford could be an elite hitter for years. The only wrong choice was Crews or Max Clark.

 

[TNT87]

The turnaround from Tellez is remarkable.

 

[ChaosAgent]

The turnaround from Tellez is remarkable.

I like the aggression at the plate. I still feel like his swing is way too choppy which is why he hit/still hits so many grounders.

With the way Joe is trending maybe Rowdy even gets some starts against lefties

 

[Jaded-Fan]

I think what gets lost in this discussion sometimes is that Huntington had to literally build everything from the ground up. There was no analytics department when he started and the resources such as the Dominican Academy didn't exist at all.

I won't make any argument that Nutting isn't the root of most every problem we can point to, but Cherington has done an awful job, and for the most part, he didn't replace many people actually working with the team. The one exception is that he brought Baker in, and the player development results are at best a very mixed bag.

Maybe. Maybe not entirely.

This article from today doesn't exactly give Cherington a pass, but does tell how he was misled and operated at a huge disadvantage but didn't complain about it.

Source: Pirates Front Office Was ‘Furious’ With Bob Nutting’s Comments

When Bob Nutting last addressed the media on June 21, the Pittsburgh Pirates owner provided fans with hope. Nutting sounded like he was willing to expand the Pirates’ payroll – at least, within reason – so general manager Ben Cherington could bolster the team’s offense in hopes of making a run...

pittsburghbaseballnow.com

 

[BusinessGoose]

Maybe. Maybe not entirely.

This article from today doesn't exactly give Cherington a pass, but does tell how he was misled and operated at a huge disadvantage but didn't complain about it.

Source: Pirates Front Office Was ‘Furious’ With Bob Nutting’s Comments

When Bob Nutting last addressed the media on June 21, the Pittsburgh Pirates owner provided fans with hope. Nutting sounded like he was willing to expand the Pirates’ payroll – at least, within reason – so general manager Ben Cherington could bolster the team’s offense in hopes of making a run...

pittsburghbaseballnow.com

Jaded, this is the article that's had us talking for three pages!

 

[ImporterExporter]

I think what gets lost in this discussion sometimes is that Huntington had to literally build everything from the ground up. There was no analytics department when he started and the resources such as the Dominican Academy didn't exist at all.

I won't make any argument that Nutting isn't the root of most every problem we can point to, but Cherington has done an awful job, and for the most part, he didn't replace many people actually working with the team. The one exception is that he brought Baker in, and the player development results are at best a very mixed bag.

That is true, but Cherington also blew the entire thing up and inherited a payroll of just over 20 million. So while he didn't have to create a Dominican Academy or implement certain analytics, it's not like he walked into a glorious spot. If you look at the list of transactions over the last 4 years, he certainly made more than 1-2 changes of note as it pertains to coaches throughout the franchise. People can look that up for themselves.

I'm not here to play who's worse.

My point is that the previous GM got 7 years of rope until his works bore fruit. The fact that after 3-4 years people were already clamoring for Cherington's head (it's near universal now among fans) just goes to show you we live in an ultra, "what have you done for me lately" world, where people forget history that happened just a handful of years prior. It's mind boggling to me, that people are willing to shit on the GM, nearly as much as the owner and then actually try and convince others that it's a worthy position.

Nobody wants to answer these questions.

1. How many division titles did we win under THIRTEEN YEARS of Huntington? 0

2. How many times did we win a division playoff series? 0

3. We had 3 winning seasons. None of those produced anything beyond a flash in the pan, in and you're out finish once the playoffs started. We middled around with middling trades and mostly half hearted FA signings, instead of actually going for it when the roster was good enough to go deeper. That's a massive problem I have with Neal. He spent his entire career working around half measures and ended it with an awful trade that punctuated the collapse.

If we're going to judge people on their win/loss record, NH was a failure. He had well over a decade to produce something of merit and really, never did (the height was that WC win over Cincy). Now, in year 5, as we're finally seeing the talent that Cherington and company drafted, arrive, people want to blow it all up?

The rotation is where it is, because of Cherington (Marin). The rotation, already, is playoff caliber and one arm away from being WS good. I'm willing to bet some stake that arm will show up in one of the guys in AA/AAA now, if we don't see a Priester or Ortiz carve out that role as late developers, ala, Keller.

Pittsburgh Pirates | Cot's Baseball Contracts

What the hell was Cherington to do with a 23M payroll in 2020? 45 in 2021? We're up over 80M now so it finally (mainly on the backs of Keller/Reynolds extensions) should be expected that we produce a winning result. Jury is still out on this year but considering how bad the manager and hitting coach are, is still a possibility, which says a lot.

If we make the WC in year 5....how in the hell does that put us on a worse timeline than GMNH?

How could people act like we're in some awful place if we finish with 83, 84, 85 wins and get a shot via the WC play-in?

Cherington's tenure has been a mixed bag (at best) for sure, but he's not being given the rope the previous guy was, and has had shit to work with in terms of money for much of the time thus far. And yet, he tanked the team (right move, ala the Astros) into Skenes, among others. Pitching is the hardest thing to find and develop and yet we're seeing, in real time, that panning out extremely well.

Shelton (former hitting coach) and Haines are the biggest problem because they're negatively impacting the ML roster every single game. These are not serious, WS caliber people. Our hitting development is quite poor, beyond what we see at the ML level. That must be fixed/improved.

Now, to be fair, Cherington hired them, so that's my biggest problem with him. He's attached to them, and seems reluctant to pull the plug, as it would then shine the light on him as the next to go. I'd like to see this remedied in the winter, but at this point, no one seems to believe that will happen. The national media couldn't care less (outside of Skenes), most of the local media doesn't care enough to make much noise.

At the end of the day, I think the problems are:

Nutting/Williams (whoever else is in that circle)








Shelton/Haines

Cherinton and the rest of it.

 

[NewAgeOutlaw]

Using body type to determine a pitcher's likelyhood of needing TJ is so bizarre.

You could be Brock Lesnar but when you throw a baseball all the force is on that ligament. You were either born with a freakishly durable UCL or you are going to need to get it fixed at some point.

Pedro Martinez never blew out his arm and he was hitting 98 as a twig.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

That is true, but Cherington also blew the entire thing up and inherited a payroll of just over 20 million. So while he didn't have to create a Dominican Academy or implement certain analytics, it's not like he walked into a glorious spot. If you look at the list of transactions over the last 4 years, he certainly made more than 1-2 changes of note as it pertains to coaches throughout the franchise. People can look that up for themselves.

I'm not here to play who's worse.

The bolded part is not true, which was my initial point. There's been almost no staff turnover under Cherington at all. The head amateur scouting director only recently changed, and Cherington brought Sanders with him and added Baker, but that's basically it.

That said, I agree that it's a moot point to debate endlessly about which GM was worse, and that Huntington was ultimately not successful. However, it's ridiculous to act like Cherington was hamstrung by low payrolls during his first years while simultaneously bashing Huntington for half measures.

One thing we know beyond any doubt is that Huntington was forbidden from rebuilding at the end of his tenure, whereas Cherington had full reign to completely tear down the team to the studs. Again, I don't mind avoiding a circuitous argument about which GM who didn't succeed is worse, but if we want to broach these kinds of claims, then it's worth bearing in mind that the best batter on the team is a guy who Huntington acquired for a rental of Cutch.

Cherington was a total failure in Boston other than lucking into a journeyman team that made a big run. Dombrowski then came in and fixed the mistakes Cherington made, which is why Dombrowski runs one of the better teams in the league right now.

I do think Cherington deserves credit for some things, such as the pitching program. I won't ever be convinced that a manager is that important and in any case, excessive focus on Shelton or Haines is pointless if it ignores the offensive players that the GM has given them to work with. If we want to say they are failure to produce internally, it's a fair point but that goes right to the heart of Cherington, because besides a total rebuild, the one thing that was Cherington's pitch nonstop after being hired is that the Pirates had been outpaced by the player development boom which saw other teams make huge strides (Houston and Tampa being the most obvious examples).


I just find the Perrotto stuff to be empty at the end of the day. It's conveniently light on details and reads to me like something that plays into longtime fan frustrations which are raging higher because of the optimism that Skenes obviously brings if the rest of the team were good.

We now also apparently have DK saying an anonymous source told him that Baltimore offered Holiday for Jared Jones, but Cherington backed off. Both of these stories seem like obvious fabrications to drive clicks and engagement for a team that is perfectly mediocre and whose playoff hopes basically amount to the question of whether it can have a two week hot streak at the right time.

 

[ChaosAgent]

When the Pirates ascended in 2012-2013, they had one of the top farm systems in baseball. Now it is middle of the pack. How did Cherington not create a better farm system to where we are paper thin now?

We have no hitting prospects above A ball outside of Termarr Johnson. How?

 

[ChaosAgent]

The bolded part is not true, which was my initial point. There's been almost no staff turnover under Cherington at all. The head amateur scouting director only recently changed, and Cherington brought Sanders with him and added Baker, but that's basically it.

That said, I agree that it's a moot point to debate endlessly about which GM was worse, and that Huntington was ultimately not successful. However, it's ridiculous to act like Cherington was hamstrung by low payrolls during his first years while simultaneously bashing Huntington for half measures.

One thing we know beyond any doubt is that Huntington was forbidden from rebuilding at the end of his tenure, whereas Cherington had full reign to completely tear down the team to the studs. Again, I don't mind avoiding a circuitous argument about which GM who didn't succeed is worse, but if we want to broach these kinds of claims, then it's worth bearing in mind that the best batter on the team is a guy who Huntington acquired for a rental of Cutch.

Cherington was a total failure in Boston other than lucking into a journeyman team that made a big run. Dombrowski then came in and fixed the mistakes Cherington made, which is why Dombrowski runs one of the better teams in the league right now.

I do think Cherington deserves credit for some things, such as the pitching program. I won't ever be convinced that a manager is that important and in any case, excessive focus on Shelton or Haines is pointless if it ignores the offensive players that the GM has given them to work with. If we want to say they are failure to produce internally, it's a fair point but that goes right to the heart of Cherington, because besides a total rebuild, the one thing that was Cherington's pitch nonstop after being hired is that the Pirates had been outpaced by the player development boom which saw other teams make huge strides (Houston and Tampa being the most obvious examples).


I just find the Perrotto stuff to be empty at the end of the day. It's conveniently light on details and reads to me like something that plays into longtime fan frustrations which are raging higher because of the optimism that Skenes obviously brings if the rest of the team were good.

We now also apparently have DK saying an anonymous source told him that Baltimore offered Holiday for Jared Jones, but Cherington backed off. Both of these stories seem like obvious fabrications to drive clicks and engagement for a team that is perfectly mediocre and whose playoff hopes basically amount to the question of whether it can have a two week hot streak at the right time.

Thank you also for pointing out the manager dynamics with some of the folks here. When I read Moneyball the takeaway sure as shit wasn't "and Art Howe drove the Athletics to glory." It was that managers' roles are totally exaggerated and that the GM position is the thing that matters. And that is why GMs and front offices make much more money than coaches today.

Some of the comments here reek of youth sports parents complaining that the coach is messing up their kid. If "the man in the arena" wasn't the guy in the batters box but the portly leather-skinned old dudes standing at thr top of the dugout.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1811064464306827480

Very bizarre, I do not associate Zeise with having sources let alone having baseball sources.

 

[ChaosAgent]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1811064464306827480

Very bizarre, I do not associate Zeise with having sources let alone having baseball sources.

Zeise does not know anything. That said this would be a good fit. Maybe for Harrington + Cheng or thereabouts.

 

[OnMyOwn]

Would be a good add for RF.

 

[Empoleon8771]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1811064464306827480

Very bizarre, I do not associate Zeise with having sources let alone having baseball sources.

Please please please please please let this be true.

https://x.com/i/web/status/1811072743976358073

Seems like it's not, though.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Yeah I don't trust Zeise at all. It feels baseless to just accuse guys like Perrotto, DK, and Zeise of completely fabricating stuff, but I just find all these latest things to be totally unbelievable.

The Zeise thing is pretty random though. I guess if you want to get conspiratorial, Ward seems like a more "attainable" guy than Robert or even Chisholm (I don't think Jazz will cost a huge amount, but that's a topic for another day), but if you are gonna gun for attention, it makes more sense to say stuff about a flashier guy. Like "Chandler has been on fire in his last several starts and is being talked about as a headliner in a Robert trade"

 

[Empoleon8771]

Even though the Zeise report is assuredly fake, I do think Ward makes a boatload of sense for this team to target. I think both he and Chisholm make a lot of sense to target due to having 2 arb years left at sub-$10 million (most likely). They're not long term players but they'll at least help the team for the next 2 years or so.

I figure any deal for either of them would be Suwinski plus prospects. I really want them to move on from Suwinski at this point, even with his recent play that seems to be the start of one of his hot runs. I hope that he goes on like a 3 week tear and then the Angels put value in him as a piece back for Ward, but I'm not holding my breath on that.

 

[ChaosAgent]

I flipped on the Fan and Zeise is talking about the Steelers, going off about blocking people but the fan isn't even mentioning the Ward trade.

So it's a quiet walk back already. What a moron Zeise is.

 

[WheresRamziAbid]

I flipped on the Fan and Zeise is talking about the Steelers, going off about blocking people but the fan isn't even mentioning the Ward trade.

So it's a quiet walk back already. What a moron Zeise is.

He said they were “in on” Ward and want to push to get it across the finish line.

A bunch of people then ran with that as “close to acquiring” or “on the verge of” on twitter etc.

So he now goong off about people giving him shit about a thing he didnt exactly say.

Well that and a lot of mumbling and guttural noises

 

[Empoleon8771]

He said they were “in on” Ward and want to push to get it across the finish line.

A bunch of people then ran with that as “close to acquiring” or “on the verge of” on twitter etc.

So he now goong off about people giving him shit about a thing he didnt exactly say.

Well that and a lot of mumbling and guttural noises

I don't see "trying to get it across the finish line" and "close to acquiring" as being all that different.

 

[ImporterExporter]

The bolded part is not true, which was my initial point. There's been almost no staff turnover under Cherington at all. The head amateur scouting director only recently changed, and Cherington brought Sanders with him and added Baker, but that's basically it.

That said, I agree that it's a moot point to debate endlessly about which GM was worse, and that Huntington was ultimately not successful. However, it's ridiculous to act like Cherington was hamstrung by low payrolls during his first years while simultaneously bashing Huntington for half measures.

One thing we know beyond any doubt is that Huntington was forbidden from rebuilding at the end of his tenure, whereas Cherington had full reign to completely tear down the team to the studs. Again, I don't mind avoiding a circuitous argument about which GM who didn't succeed is worse, but if we want to broach these kinds of claims, then it's worth bearing in mind that the best batter on the team is a guy who Huntington acquired for a rental of Cutch.

Cherington was a total failure in Boston other than lucking into a journeyman team that made a big run. Dombrowski then came in and fixed the mistakes Cherington made, which is why Dombrowski runs one of the better teams in the league right now.

I do think Cherington deserves credit for some things, such as the pitching program. I won't ever be convinced that a manager is that important and in any case, excessive focus on Shelton or Haines is pointless if it ignores the offensive players that the GM has given them to work with. If we want to say they are failure to produce internally, it's a fair point but that goes right to the heart of Cherington, because besides a total rebuild, the one thing that was Cherington's pitch nonstop after being hired is that the Pirates had been outpaced by the player development boom which saw other teams make huge strides (Houston and Tampa being the most obvious examples).


I just find the Perrotto stuff to be empty at the end of the day. It's conveniently light on details and reads to me like something that plays into longtime fan frustrations which are raging higher because of the optimism that Skenes obviously brings if the rest of the team were good.

We now also apparently have DK saying an anonymous source told him that Baltimore offered Holiday for Jared Jones, but Cherington backed off. Both of these stories seem like obvious fabrications to drive clicks and engagement for a team that is perfectly mediocre and whose playoff hopes basically amount to the question of whether it can have a two week hot streak at the right time.

Cherington's first year payroll was under 25M. There were numerous teams that had a single player making more money.

He has not seen spending increased to the highest levels of Huntington's tenure. That's a fact. Money has not been made available until really the last 12 months, so one should never have expected us to be winning 80+ games given he was operating with 25-35-45-55 million.

If managers aren't that important, then Shelton should be doing better with the talent we have today. He's not. Our hitters should be producing more with Haines. They aren't. And Haines was a massive failure in Milwaukee. I find this to be a lazy, and uniformed take by a person who's never played competitive baseball above little league/HS. Managers are extremely important because baseball is a tactical game of chess. Not checkers as you see in basketball. Shelton's essentially John Russell and that should scare the living shit out of everyone.

Again, those are Cherington hires and I hold him responsible for putting subpar coaches in places of importance, so I have no problem bashing him from a managerial standpoint.

But to act like his player development and acquisitions are uniformly terrible, is a nonsense take. We're flirting with .500 in year 5 and now have arguably the best P in baseball, already (drafted), another one who's clearly a top of the rotation type (Jones, drafted) and another in Keller (developed) who's been turned into a near ace. Gonzales has turned himself into a viable regular (though noting spectacular) and we have yet to see how Termarr will impact the ML roster. We haven't seen the final call on Davis either, even if he's been shit at the ML level. Let's give him some more time. Those are just 1st round picks, not to gloss over the rest of the draft picks from 2020/2021 specifically.

You and many others banged the Dylan Crews drum and had that come to pass, where would we be? Bitching and moaning about how we let the Nationals have the best prospect to come out of the draft since Harper and Strasburg. And people acting like it was a surefire lock are full of shit. I was on the Skenes train well before the college season ended and was certainly in the minority of people in that regard.

Cherington hired WS winning manager John Farrell before 2013, and he immediately piloted the team to a title. So yeah, managers can make a difference.

Cherington won that WS and then drafted/signed numerous players who were on the next WS winner after he had resigned. His contributions were not awful when you consider he was very integral to 2 TITLES. TWO.

When is the last time this franchise won a playoff series again?

If you want him fired, fine. But let's not act like he's been given enough rope (money OR time) to produce a winner for a franchise that loses as much or more than anyone else, for decades.

Cherington then set out to rebuild the team for 2013. He hired John Farrell as his manager, acquiring Farrell's rights in an October 21 trade with the Toronto Blue Jays. He signed seven key free agents — David Ross, Jonny Gomes, Stephen Drew, Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino, Koji Uehara and Ryan Dempster — none of whom required sacrificing a draft pick. Although a midwinter trade for relief pitcher Joel Hanrahan was ruined by Hanrahan's season-ending elbow injury in May, Cherington obtained a useful bench player, Mike Carp, in a preseason trade. Then, on July 30, he engineered a three-team transaction that brought starting pitcher Jake Peavy to Boston.

Farrell, the free agents, Carp and Peavy, as well as a return to health of core players such as David Ortiz, Jacoby Ellsbury and John Lackey, all contributed to Boston's surprisingly successful 2013 season.[11] The club improved by 28 games, rising from last place in the American League East Division in 2012 to the division championship, 97 regular-season victories (tied for the most in Major League Baseball), the 2013 American League pennant, and the 2013 World Series championship.[12]

However, Cherington left behind a group of young players (Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, Brock Holt, Eduardo Rodríguez, Blake Swihart, Travis Shaw, Henry Owens, Christian Vázquez, and others) as a potential core of their 2016 team.[14] Much of this core that Cherington acquired contributed heavily to the Red Sox's 2018 championship

 

[WheresRamziAbid]

I don't see "trying to get it across the finish line" and "close to acquiring" as being all that different.

Then your reading it wrong.

One is trying i.e. pushing or being aggressive with no comment on actual result. It doesnt imply theyre at the finish line, just being aggressive to get there.

One is close, i.e. results based. Close implies there is not much in the way of a deal, the hard part is done etc.

 

[WickedWrister]

Pennsylvania state representatives requested an economic impact assessment for the states two MLB teams since they receive funding from the Commonwealth.

I've only skimmed the report but it examines things like the relationship between payroll, attendance, wins, and the economic footprint etc...

Some good stuff in here.



And of course the Pirates are complaining about their methodology because it makes them look cheap.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Interesting tidbit from DK about the Pirates: the Orioles apparently offered Jackson Holliday for Jones and the Pirates said no. Which honestly I can't really blame Cherington for saying no to, but it's a wild suggestion when you realize that Holliday is the best prospect in baseball.

That's a case where I'd say no because I love Jones but I also understand why people would be furious at the Pirates saying no to that.