Thoughts on Jay Bell

I started getting really into the Pirates when I was around 7 years old. That was around 1997. I distinctly remember the names Jeff King, Al Martin, Kevin Young, Francisco Cordova, and yes, the man of the hour - Jay Bell.

Apparently Bell spent some time recently as a double-A hitting coach in Arizona's system. He's also coaching the New Zealand national team, which is ... interesting.

The next thing I should say here is that I don't think hitting coaches really do all that much. I wrote about Gregg Ritchie a lot this past season, and I arrived at the conclusion that any offensive struggles or successes cannot be attributed to the hitting coach on the team. The players are in the major leagues for a reason, they don't need to be taught any longer. They need another set of eyes to help them make corrections when needed, so the hitting coach does have some hand in the players' successes, but I really don't think it has a very significant impact.

Saying that, it's obvious that I wouldn't have really cared who the Pirates got to be their hitting coach for next year. The name Jay Bell is generating buzz just because people know who he is and remember him doing some good things for this team. Let me ask you this, if the Pirates signed another team's AA hitting coach to be their major league hitting coach, and you didn't know who he was, would you be excited about it? I don't see why you would. If Jay Bell had never played or the Pirates, would he even have been considered for the job? I doubt it. Did any other team ever consider giving Bell a hitting coach at the big league level? That's possible, he was a bench coach for the Diamondbacks between 2005-2006, but hasn't had any major league action since then. It's hard for me to believe that he was a name that was sought after by any other team.

Bell was a good defensive shortstop and he had one huge offensive year (38 home runs in 1999, his next highest home run total was 21). For his career he hit .265/.343/.416, which isn't great. Just because he wasn't a great hitter in his time in the majors doesn't mean that he can't be a good coach, but again, he just doesn't seem like a guy that was a hot name on the hitting coach market.

It's hard for me to be upset about a position that I don't feel has any real influence on the win-loss total of the team, but I'm just a bit surprised by all the positivity coming from this move. Although some positivity is a good thing, since all we've had since August is negative, negative, negative.

Weighing Interest

The World Series starts tomorrow night, and the Pirates are not in it. To be honest, this is the least interest I have had in the baseball playoffs in years. There's no doubt in my mind that the Pirates collapse had everything to do with that.

I haven't been writing on here or tweeting about baseball since August, and I'm sure nobody has really missed either of those things just because of how disgusting this season turned out to be.

But how long will it take us to get back into it? It's always nice to take a month or two off at the end of a long season to try and think about other things, but I'm usually antsy to talk baseball again by December. I'm not sure if that's going to be true again this year. To be honest I have no desire at all to think about what the Pirates should or shouldn't do this offseason, and I'm hoping that that desire comes back. The blog and Twitter have made the past three years of my life a lot of fun, and I don't want it to end even as I move on from college and head into the real world next year. Only time will tell where I'll be come this summer, but for now I'm just hoping for one more offseason of good-hearted speculation and prediction as we all look forward to another 0-0 record.

So where is your interest level at? Are you going to be following the offseason and winter meetings as closely this year? Will you care more? Less? The same? let me know below, and I promise to start writing here more frequently, although it might be more emotional and philosophical than in previous years.

Did the McEffect Have a Positive Effect in 2012?

by: Patrick Reddick

Nate McLouth was named the Player of the Game for the fourth game of the Yankees, Orioles ALDS last night after a solid defensive performance and hitting a solo home run in the fifth inning. Yep, that same McLouth whose namesake was on the McEffect shirt I wore as I watched the game. But was there really a “McEffect”? And did it have a good or bad effect on baseball and the Pirates this year?

The Pirates had seven Mc’s; more than any other team in the Major Leagues and likely more than any other team has had at any point. McCutchen, McGehee, McKenry, McLouth, McDonald, McPhearson, and McCutchen.

Andrew McCutchen was easily the Pirates’ star in 2012. He missed just five games, was in the top three in the NL in batting average, on-base percentage, and total bases. He led the NL in hits with 154. Cutch was an All-Star and had a WAR of 7, just .2 behind NL leader Buster Posey (he was fifth in all of MLB, even ahead of Cabrera who will win the MVP just because of that lame Triple Crown thing).

Casey McGehee played 92 games for the Bucs as the team’s main first baseman. McGehee had a .297 OBP and a .377 slugging average that were an improvement over last season, but nowhere near his 2009 performance with the Brewers that the Pirates were hoping he would recapture. McGehee played in 22 games after he was traded to the Yankees, but performed poorly and is not part of their post-season team.

Mikey “The Fort” McKenry caught every pitch of a 19-inning game for the second consecutive summer, but only appeared in 87 other games because of something weird going on in Clint Hurdle’s brain. McKenry had a .320 OBP, nearly 40 points higher than Rod Barajas’s, and set multiple new career marks including his 12 home runs. McKenry threw out just 18% of base stealers (13-for-61) although that was triple the rate Barajas performed at. The Fort should be the main catcher for the Pirates next season or there’s something wrong.

James McDonald is the youngest member of the Pirates starting rotation and he started the second-most games of anyone on the staff. In his second full year as a starter McDonald matched exactly the number of innings he threw last year (171) as well as earned runs he gave up (80) also meaning his ERA stayed the same (4.21). That being said, he walked fewer batters, allowed less hits, and struck more hitters out. His WHIP decreased 0.2 to 1.263 and he had the lowest H/9 among Pirate starters (7.7).

Daniel “White Cutch” McCutchen did not do much in the Majors in 2012, although most fans might have liked it if he had done even less. His only appearance came in the bottom of the 10th inning on August 21, when he promptly walked a guy and gave up a walk-off homer to the next. He did have a 2.98 ERA and 1.07 WHIP in AAA where he spent most of the summer, so we might see him again next year.

Kyle McPhearson made ten appearances for the Pirates in late September and August, starting three games. He finished with a 2.73 ERA in 26.1 innings with seven walks and 21 strikeouts. He is only 24 years old, so it seems likely that we’ll see him again next season.

Which brings us back to our old buddy Nate McLouth who appeared in 34 games for the Pirates in April and May. He was bad (.140/.210/.175) and the Pirates released him as they should have. Five days later he signed with Baltimore where he played in 55 games and went crazy compared to his time with the Pirates (.268/.342/.435). He even stole 12 bases (12 more than he had with the Pirates) and has been a nightly leadoff man for the Orioles in the post-season.

Overall the Mcs had a combined WAR of 8.9 in their 2012 work in Pittsburgh, and while the Pirates will probably have a decreased number of Mcs on the roster next summer it seems overall, the McEffect is a positive one.

Another Offseason Begins

Well the 2012 season is coming to an end today as the Pirates are getting ready to try and finish their campaign off with a three game sweep of the Atlanta Braves, who will be playing in the one-game Wild Card playoff on Friday after a season in which they won 93 or 94 games. The fact that a 93/94 team might be eliminated by the 87/88 win Cardinals in a one-game playoff is absolutely ridiculous, but that's not the point here.

We all know the story of how this season went, and honestly to me I don't see how this isn't going to end up being one of the most disappointing seasons in Pirates history. Sure, it's an incredibly long history that I know very little about, but I just can't see how anything could be much worse than going from 16 games over in July to not even winning half of your games, especially after the past 19 years and even more especially how a similar thing happened last year. If someone else has a season they would elect to run against this one for most disappointing in franchise history, I'm all ears, but for now I'm going to stick with 2012.

All of that negativity out of the way, you can still take some positives from this season. I've been saying this for awhile now, and I know not a lot of people want to hear it. This team won 79 or 80 games, and they didn't look like a team that could do that well at season's beginning. Just ignore how they got here and take that as another stepping stone. Sure, the five year plan is taking longer than five years, but the organization is much better right now than it was when the plan started, so why not stay on board for awhile longer?

That's an interesting question to ask I think. How will fans react after a season like this? What will 2013 ticket sales look like? How will the TV ratings look? I know that this season took quite a toll on me. It took a toll to the point where I have honestly been completely apathetic about baseball pretty much since September started. I haven't watched more than a few innings of any game in at least four weeks, which is uncommon for me to say the least. I'm sure it has been this way for a lot of people, but the question now becomes how will this translate into feelings about the 2013 season? Will we forget about this and be just as excited and ready for next year to start? Or will baseball bring back the bad taste in our mouths that we have now. Only time will tell, but I'm guessing that we'll be pretty excited to be 0-0 once again.

This franchise has a lot of decisions to make in the offseason, and I promise that I'll start writing more regularly on here to talk about such decisions. Despite my lack of writing this last month, other Pirates bloggers and writers have kept strong through the collapse, and I respect them a lot for that. I also have the excuse that I'm a college senior and I do have some other things that take up my free time, but if this team were winning I'm sure I would have been on here more often. I don't really have to apologize, because I'm sure your day to day lives didn't change at all while The "Mc" Effect was idle.

Anyways, the offseason is starting and I for one am a bit relieved of that fact. While the offseason seems far too long every year, it will be nice to have a few months to think about things other than baseball and the travesty that is the Pittsburgh Pirates 2012 season. I've been honestly thinking about making another blog that has nothing to do with baseball, just because I have a lot of stupid stuff to talk about that most people that read this stuff would think is ... well ... stupid. I'll keep you updated on that.

Go Orioles... right?