The Doumit-Clement-Moss-Bowker Problem

There has been a lot of questions about Ryan Doumit's future with the Pirates since the Pirates brought in Chris Snyder at the trade deadline. Doumit has made some rehab starts and will be rejoining the Pirates soon. It seems that management has a decision to make about what they will do with Doumit for the rest of this 2010 season.

The bottomline on Doumit is that he's a one-way player. He is an above average bat when he plays catcher, but probably a below average bat when he plays first base or right field. And anywhere you put him, the defense stinks. In years past his defensive struggles have been overlooked because of the excitement he brings at the plate when he's going good. However, in 2010 his defense seemed to hit an all-time low and now there isn't a Pirate fan out there that wants to seem him behind the plate starting next season.

So now that Chris Snyder is the starting catcher, the question remains to if and where Doumit will play. The Pirates have been working him in right field during his rehab and he previously played a couple games at first base earlier this year. It's no secret that the Pirates have an interest in trading him, and they think that giving him playing time will up his trade value. While it's important to show the rest of the league that he is healthy and capable of playing everyday, I don't believe that making him the everyday right fielder will give him any significant trade value. The rest of the league knows what Ryan can do, and seeing him do it for 2 more months isn't going to change anything.

So what do I want? Honestly I'd like to see Brandon Moss and John Bowker get some starts out there while Lastings Milledge still takes most of the action. There really aren't too many games left, so there isn't enough time to get a fair evaluation of both Moss and Bowker, but I think they have definitely both done enough in the minors to earn a chance in the bigs.

In 54 minor league games this season, John Bowker has hit .319/.393/.604 with 14 home runs, 15 doubles, and 38 RBI. He is 5/10 so far with Indianapolis. His major league stats aren't impressive this year (.207/.256/.354), but it's a small sample size of only 82 at bats.

Brandon Moss has hit .267/.332/.483 in AAA so far this year, but that was after an absolutely dreadful first couple of months. Moss has been Indy's best hitter since the call ups of Jose Tabata and Pedro Alvarez, and he attributes it to a chance in his batting stance, which is encouraging news. He has hit 19 bombs and driven in 77 in his 106 games played. Moss has always been a guy with a lot of potential and was pretty much written off after his awful 2009 season. However, looking at what he's done after changing up his batting stance, I think he needs some more big league at bats before he's written off for good.

The other guy that still has a lot of potential is Jeff Clement. Clement hit .305/.335/.555 after being demoted to AAA a couple months ago, and has since been recalled and has shown some pop, hitting 2 home runs in 7 at bats since July 31st. While there really isn't much room for him to play, I'd like to see him start a couple of games.

There has also been some talk of the Pirates starting to give Andrew McCutchen and Jose Tabata some significant time off for the rest of this year, just to avoid overplaying them. I don't really believe that that's a smart thing to do. These guys are extremely young and extremely athletic and they aren't the kind of guys who are going to get fatigued and have it effect their long term play. While taking them out of games would decrease the chances of an injury, I think it's best to let them get their regular at bats for the rest of the year. They still have room to improve, especially Tabata.

So what does all this say in the end? It says that the Pirates have a lot of players that deserve playing time, but not a lot of playing time to give them. I still say that Lastings Milledge is the best option to start in right field next year, so he should get a majority of the starts, but I really want to see Jeff Clement and John Bowker get some at bats. The Clement situation would require Garrett Jones to move to right field, obviously. As I said, I would also like to see Brandon Moss get starts too, but I would probably pick Clement and Bowker over him.

The 2010 season is over for the Pirates, they are doomed to finish in last place again this year, so right now the Pirates need to start evaluating talent that they haven't fully evaluated yet, and Ryan Doumit has been fully evaluated. I don't want to see Ryan Doumit starting too often, I want to see guys like Clement, Bowker, and Moss, who we don't fully know what we have in yet.