14 Comments

McShane will be a multi inning RP out of the pen. They grabbed a couple of those guys on day 3 while saving Bob some money(500K I believe).

Teams that spend 150K on every Day 3 pick will always win Day 3!!

The Pirates did so last year but saved Bob 1.3M(I believe) on the entire draft. And that’s “real money” too. And no one talks about it.

I would imagine it’s the FO’s directive too. If you are spending the entire bonus pool(like in this years draft), you have to save money on Day 3 and UDFAs(which you can spend up to 150K on any available undrafted, draft eligible player and it not count against your bonus pool). And again, that’s real money, and cheap owners will never succeed in the UDFA market either.

But if you are saving money on the entire draft and not spending the entire bonus pool plus the overage, you can then spend 150K on every day 3 player, if you want.

I would be willing to bet it’s a directive to the FO for the draft and why we saw cheap Day 3 picks this years.

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Caro, YDLS, Severino, Blanco, etc. tore up the FCL this year and all very young! Can they make the same type of progress in A next year as they collectively did at the FCL level this year.

Promoting Gorski was one of my suggestions in early August. He is not going to get promoted in Sep either. The Pirates will just watch him go elsewhere - he may never get to the Show, but the 3 years of 20+ HR's should interest somebody . . . . . . someday?

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If I had to guess, Gorski probably has +500 k’s over those same three years.

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I was way off, averaging +100 k’s per year. Maybe the issue is that he doesn’t seem to be “developing” at all.

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Sep 2Author

Josh Hartle reassigned to Bradenton. Their last series is at Daytona, which does webcasts, so he should be watchable this week.

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I liked this pick. Not a bad idea to take a chance on guys who are first rounders coming into the year and then fade.

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Who exactly is beating the trade Keller drum? If it’s commentators on Pirates discussion boards like this one, then I give it no weight.

Keller has been pretty pedestrian of late, but that’s hardly a good reason to trade a prized veteran who just signed an extension.

Should the Pirates trade from their SP depth? Probably, but don’t expect a blockbuster that includes any of Pirates big 3.

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Sep 2Liked by WTM

It’s here, and it’s a load of malarkey. The funny part to me is some folks seem to think Keller’s production is easily replicated by Chandler and/or Harrington. Which ignores the fact that Keller himself took a few years to figure things out. Guys like Skenes are the exception.

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By any metric that you care to use, the Pirates have an average to below average pitching staff. ERA- 17th. ERA+ - 16th. FIP- 14th. FIP+ - 17th. XFIP- 23. WAR- 16. K/9- 20th. WHIP (my got to stat for pitching)- 23rd. SIERA - 21st. This is the strength that they are supposed to trade? It is not a strength until it is. Until Chandler, Harrington, Ben's bullpen brigade from the 2 drafts before this year and all these other prospects arrive and perform well, the Pirates are, at best, a middling pitching team, and this with Jared Jones and Paul Skenes. The solution to the Pirates' problem of sucking at baseball is to trade away a reliable and veteran starter from a staff that is middle of the road at best? This will "improve" the team? You have to be kidding me.

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Yep. It’s why I’ve been of the plan that if they’re going to contend, Chandler/Harrington/Ashcraft are the pool to trade from. Not Keller. Not that it matters with Ashcraft because he makes Brennan Malone look like Cal Ripken.

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You are not going to get 2 pre-arb. years and 3 arb. years on a middle-of-the-order bat for Keller. You either trade him for prospects or a like-value hitter, which means a lower-value pre-arb. guy or an equal value veteran on a comparable contract. The only way that you could "win" by trading Keller is to trade him for prospects, but that means being a better team, maybe, 2-4 years from now, when Skenes is entering his final arb. year(s), What is the point?

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Sep 2Author

I see it as fans buying into the low expectations set by the FO. They're just the Pirates. They can't have established, good players who cost more than a Big Mac.

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Sep 2Liked by WTM

If this team was as ruthlessly efficient as the Rays, with the ability to develop and identify talent and with the transactional history with it, I’d be totally cool with trading Keller. Because I’d trust the management team to get that right. But these guys? Nope.

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Sep 2Author

Been a lot here. I don't get the impulse where we should worry about how much Nuttin has to pay for a good player, or the notion that the money will be used sensibly elsewhere.

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