The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly From The Pirates Offseason

Wrote this post from RumBunter, and did just a terrible job trying to make a creative photoshop image. It's the effort that counts, right?

Anyways, I'll break it down here quickly before you go over and read the whole story. Here's what it boiled down to:

The good: Erik Bedard, Nick Evans, Casey McGehee, PirateFest
The bad: Nate McLouth, Yamaico Navarro
The ugly: Gustavo Nunez, Clint Barmes, Rod Barajas
Undecided: Budweiser Bowtie Bar

You have to read the post to understand some of those categories, so don't hold back, click the link:

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Another Step Closer

As I correctly predicted months ago, the NFL season came to an end tonight. The New York Giants once again beat the New England Patriots 21-17 and grabbed another World Championship (even though they only beat American teams, but that's another issue entirely).

Football ending means baseball is about to get a lot more attention. Other people keep telling me there are two other major sports still going on right now, but I don't know what those people are talking about.

As far as I'm concerned, the sports world is completely dead for the next two weeks while we wait for pitchers and catchers to report. After that, it's baseball baseball baseball until the end of October.

Now I'm a college student in my Junior year. I also play a varsity sport (well if you want to consider tennis a sport). Both of those things take a backseat to my coverage of the Pittsburgh Pirates. That's especially true this year, I'm really going for it in 2012.

As you may know, I have a relationship with the guys at TribLIVE Radio. I did weekly Pirates talk with them last summer, and we're ramping it up even more this year. As long as some other things fall into place, I will be doing a pre-game and post-game shows on weekdays for the Pirates with TribLIVE during the regular season. That means I will have be a credentialed member of the media covering the Pirates this summer. Obviously, this blog is not associated with TribLIVE so I can't use any of the information I get with the credential on here. However, I'll be most all of the Pirates home games and I'll be in the press box with a laptop, giving you all the Pirates information you'll need, and then some.

Pre-game notes, in-game updates, live chats, post-game notes, pitcher pitch F/X, recaps, quotes, links to audio and video from interviews, and much more. All that is going to be right here on The "Mc" Effect.

Another thing I now have going is the Pirate Round Table Podcast, which is looking to be a weekly thing that's going to be on iTunes for your listening convenience.

Another thing: I'm going to be looking for another writer or two. I did this last year and got a few posts out of the guy I picked, but I haven't heard from him in months, so I'm going to looking again. The main thing I want a writer for is game recaps. I'd like to have a recap for every game up here, but I just can't handle that by myself. If you can add more insightful baseball knowledge, that's even better. If you're interested, shoot me an e-mail.

Baseball season is right around the corner, and it's going to be one heck of a season. Stay tuned, Pittsburgh.

Pirates Round Table Podcast On iTunes

The podcast that I posted the other day is now on iTunes. Click here for the direct link, or just search "The Mc Effect" in iTunes.

We are going to try and get a podcast out every week or two from here on out, and they are going to get increasingly better as we go, so make sure you subscribe.

The Incredible Power of Twitter

RumBunter post, and this one's not even completely about baseball! Peep that:

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Can Jose Tabata Develop More Power?

"Jose Tabata has a big league bat capable of Manny Ramirez type numbers."

That's a quote from a scouting report on Tabata from 2007. Coming up, nobody really knew what to make of Tabata's power potential, but most scouts realized that it was certainly there. Now he's played 193 big league games and has just eight home runs. A career .284/.348/.383 triple-slash line is far from Manny Ramirez comparison, but fortunately Tabata is far from fully developed at the ripe age of 23.

So will Tabata develop more power in the next few years? Yeah, almost certainly, the question is how much more. Here's Tabata's spray charts from the previous two years:

Saturday 2/4 | News, Notes, and Links

• The Pirates signed Brian Tallet to a minor league deal yesterday, which is hardly worth even mentioning. If you want to read more, click here.
• Episode 1 of the Pirates Roundtable Podcast is up, featuring Brian from Raise The Jolly Roger, Jim from Northside Notch, Corey from Three Rivers Burgh Blog, and me. Check it out.
• Baseball Prospectus has an article up about Casey McGehee and stuff that goes along with him, that's certainly worth reading.
• If you haven't seen Yahoo Sports's column about our Twitter tomfoolery yet, you need to read it now

The Reality of a Garrett Jones/Casey McGehee Platoon

RumBunter post about the platoon of Garrett Jones and Casey McGehee.

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#eJaxToNationals

If you're not in the Twitter game, you certainly missed out last night. My fellow blogger @rtjr and I struck up a campaign to get Edwin Jackson to sign with the Pirates last night (credit goes to @mrhammar for the hashtag). It was unbelievably successful. Jackson himself and Pirates pitcher James McDonald tweeted about it and everything:


TWEET
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However, now Jon Heyman of CBS reports that Jackson has defied our wishes and is signing with the Washington Nationals. The deal is reportedly for 1 year and somewhere near $10 million.

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We never really thought the Pirates had any chance of signing Jackson, even though I'm sure this tweet really had him considering it:
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Despite the futile effort, the response for our efforts was quite entertaining. My man Patrick Reddick has the whole story here, but don't believe the part he wrote about me cheating on my Calculus test, that's just ridiculous.

It's really amazing what social networking can do these days. Two college kids with blogs and a few thousand people following them can strike up an online movement that gets recognized all over the country with just a few keystrokes from their dorm rooms. It's a nice world to live in.

Anyways, the Pirates will have to head into the season without Jackson, which isn't the worst thing in the world. They saved the money they could have spent on a bigger name free agent and they can use that more effectively in future years when they have a really solid core in the big leagues that includes guys like Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon.

Pirates Talk: Clint Hurdle and Ray Searage Interviewed

This morning has been filled with Pirates talk. First, Ken Laird and Guy Junker talked to Pirates manager Clint Hurdle on TribLIVE Radio. Here are some quotes from Hurdle from the show:


"Alvarez will get the first shot at third base."
This isn't huge news, but it's good to hear that starting at AAA isn't an option for Pedro, even though he will have another option on his contract.

Clint Hurdle on TribLIVE Radio At 10:30

Clint Hurdle will be on TribLIVE Radio at 10:30 this morning. Make sure you listen in.

Thursday 2/2 | News, Notes, and Links

• The Pirates signed Juan Cruz yesterday to add some bullpen depth. It was a minor league deal with a spring training invitation. Cruz could help the Pirates this year in filling in for Jose Veras. My guess is that he starts the year in AAA, but if he pitches well in spring training he could certainly make the 25-man when the team heads north.
• Last night, myself and @rtjr got the Pirate fan twitter world to make Edwin Jackson (@ej36) trend in this fine city by telling all of twitter to start tweeting at him with reasons why he should sign with the Pirates. This certainly won't help our cause at all, but Jackson's gonna wake up to a few hundred tweets. That'll piss him off. Check out the #ejaxtobucs hashtag for some laughs, special out to @mrhammar for the hashtag.
  
• Speaking of free agents, Tim at Pirates Prospects has a post up talking about if it would be a good idea for the Pirates to sign a big name free agent. Definitely a good read.
• As if the Brewers didn't have bough to worry about, Nyjer Morgan has been dabbling in his other sport. He practiced with the San Jose Sharks and got himself on Yahoo! Sports.
• Clint Hurdle will be on my favorite sports talk station, TribLIVE Radio this morning at 10:30. Hurdle is always a great interview, so if you're near a computer or have a smart phone, listen in to that interview.

Pirates Add Budweiser Bowtie Bar to PNC Park

Post I wrote for RumBunter about the new Budweiser Bar that PNC Park will have in the right field corner.

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Pirates Sign Juan Cruz

The Pirates have signed 33-year old right handed pitcher Juan Cruz to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training.

If you like the WINS statistic, you'll be ecstatic right now. Cruz went 5-0 last year in 28.2 relief innings with the Tampa Bay Rays. This guy simply cannot lose. No I'm joking.

Cruz posted a 3.88 ERA in 2011 with 8.5 K/9 and a ridiculous 5.2 BB/9, so he was extremely lucky to not give up a bunch of runs. He pitched just 5.1 innings in 2010 after posting an ugly 5.72 ERA in 2009 with the Kansas City Royals.

For his career, Cruz has a 4.13 ERA with 9.1 K/9 and 4.8 BB/9. He strikes a lot of guys out but also walks a bunch. That explains why his hits per nine is pretty low at 7.8.

This is a good, safe signing. There's basically no risk with minor league signings, and Cruz is a guy that can strike some people out and has had some experience. For right now he's just a AAA depth bullpen arm, but if the Pirates have some guys go down with injuries, he could step into the big league bullpen and get a big out when they need him too (or blow a game with a series of walks). I don't think he makes the big league club out of spring training (although he's certainly one of the competitors), but he will be one of the first guys to get called up if they are in need at some point during the season.

It's also important to note that Cruz pitched in the A.L. East last year, and spent a lot of his career in the A.L. Central. The lineups in the National League (especially the Central) are a lot more pitcher-friendly, so Cruz could definitely see an improvement in his numbers because of that.

Edwin Jackson Likely To Sign One-Year Deal

I stumbled across this post this morning that talks about how Edwin Jackson is now likely to sign a one-year deal. At the beginning of the offseason he was looking for big money in a long term contract, but since he's apparently not going to get that, he's going to settle for a short stay somewhere where he can put up good numbers and get his big money next offseason.

This is almost surely bad news for the Pirates. Chances are the Pirates never had any serious interest in the first place, and we who are writing about him are just chasing wind. However, even if the Pirates did have interest in him, it would have been interest in the form of a long-term deal. The Pirates are not going to spend that kind of money for a one-year deal. I'm sure management realizes that the Pirates chances of competing this year are slim. If they added Jackson, their chances could actually be pretty decent. However, a small market team like the Pirates just can't afford to spend big money on a player that they only get one year of service out of, especially when they don't have the other necessary pieces in place to make a serious run at things.

I'm not saying that the Pirates can't make a run this year, I think they could make some noise if everything goes right. However, the risk of signing Jackson certainly isn't worth the chances it adds to the Pirates playoff hopes. The signing just would not be right at this point in time. If they could get him for a multi-year deal, that's a different story, I think that could actually be a really good deal for the Pirates, but that looks to be out of the window now.

MLB Real Time Application Post

Pittsburgh Pirates Post - MLB Real Time - Jon Anderson

The Pittsburgh Pirates have not had a winning season since 1992, that’s 19 consecutive sub-.500 seasons for the Bucs. As painful as that is for Pirate faithful to hear, there is still hope. Pittsburgh is home to one of the best young players in the game, Andrew McCutchen. He came up in 2009 and has been fantastic ever since. Management has been having a tough time putting a winning team on the field the last few years, so they have taken a new approach. McCutchen has been so good on the field, that the guys making the roster decisions have began going after all players with similar last names as him, just to see if they can replicate that success. Since McCutchen’s call-up, the Pirates have brought in James McDonald, Michael McKenry, Nate McLouth, and Casey McGehee into Pittsburgh to help Andrew’s McCause. They have also promoted Daniel McCutchen to the big league level. The Pirates have tried a lot of different things over the last 19 years to change their fortunes, and they think that they might just be onto something with all these McPlayers on the roster. Only time will tell how many McWins the Pirates McBunch can get them.