57 Comments

With the Halos looking for pitching, would love for BC to see if they could pry Schanuel away from them. Something like Priester, Ro, NickyG and Harrington or something similar for Schanuel.

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Man, you guys with Schanuel...I don't get it.

He was a 45-grade prospect. He's a slap hitter playing a position that demands power. Hard pass, especially with the talent you have proposed going the other way.

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The dude's a samurai warrior, man. He has that high sword stance, parrying down with speed, cleaving limbs. You have to love him.

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I still believe his power will show up. Not huge but 20 to 25 homeruns and over 30 doubles while keeping an on base percentage over .400.

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Interesting article on Marco at Fangraphs: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/pirates-add-veteran-throwback-gonzales-to-bolster-young-staff/

Quite positive about the trade, if not about our chances at the postseason or our system in general.

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I thought it was sort of a dumb article connecting Gonzales to a GM and (mostly) staff who left town coming up on 5 years ago. We haven't done the sinker thing for a long time. Also calling out that the system ranks 9th after drafting Skenes fails to mention how many prospects graduated last year. Davis, Endy, Triolo, Peguero, etc etc.

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The sinker thing is back.

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The sinker thing was never a bad idea, and a focus on pitching to contact with infield shifts was an innovation that the Pirates helped pioneer: an organizational philosophy superior to the current model. However, it was never a one-size-fits-all solution to pitching, like Huntington insisted. Some pitchers benefit from increasingly reliance on a sinker; others no.

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The amount with which this completely bullshit media narrative has re-written history is incredible to me.

Anyone paying attention can see that the Cherington Front Office has *re-introduced* more sinkers/two-seamers than they have shifted them to alternates. A physical impossibility if the Huntington Front Office did in fact have a "one size fits all" development strategy. Taillon, Glas, Keller, Kingham were all primary 4-seam guys.

Yes, they focus on sinkers through the early 2010s when such a strategy was exceptionally beneficial, absolutely no different than the Dodgers, Astros, and Rays focusing their dev on 4seamers high paired with curveballs later in the decade. The Huntington org was slow to pick up on this, but that makes them no more "on size fits all" than those other lauded orgs I mentioned and absolutely nobody is out their claiming they develop with a "one size fits all" approach.

It was a lazy narrative crafted by a media who didn't understand the complexity of what they were covering.

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Sawchik wrote about it in Big Data Baseball, too. It wasn't _just_ the sinker but also low in the zone pitching to contact. Glasnow was absolutely awful under the regime. Cole was nowhere near as good as when he left.

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well you sure as shit aren't gonna throw them at the letters. This isn't the critique you seem to think it is.

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It was not so much the sinker that was Huntington's one size fits all. They wanted everyone to pitch-to-contact and keep the ball down in the zone as much as possible: using 4-seamers in the cases of the guys that you mentioned.

Go back and look at comments from Huntington. He made a lot of statements to this effect: i.e. about Taillon (I think it was) needing to learn how to pitch correctly (meaning to contact); about how it may seem contradictory to tell Glasnow to be aggressive and pitch-to-contact; and so forth.

Everyone just associates the sinker with a pitch-to-contact style, and this association is the media narrative you describe. You are right that the current staff has actually done more to promote 2-seamers than Huntington ever did, because Huntington did not think that a sinker was an essential pitch for pitching-to-contact and that a four-seamer could be used for generating weak contact as well.

Anyway, it is not just a media narrative. Look at the sections here about the Astros' acquisitions from the Pirates: Morton and Cole. Here are baseball insiders describing the Pirates' pitching system literally as "one-size-fits-all." https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2019/6/3/18644512/mvp-machine-how-houston-astros-became-great-scouting

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Dec 8Edited

Gerrit Cole debuted in 2013! Huntington managed through 2019.

You're willfully ignoring the specific period I'm talking about because said period is irrefutable proof of their change in development practices.

John Baker got the fluff treatment around this narrative of "individual" development and yet has abjectly failed to improve Huntington Era success *precisely* due to the fact that there simply is not any practical difference between the two.

Sonny Gray failed in New York after they tried to drop his fastball usage and increase breaking balls like they and everyone else in the league were doing during that period. Precisely equivalent what Huntington did with the equally-successful pitch-to-contact strategy in the early 10's.

Why don't the Yankees and the rest of baseball get hit with the one-size-fits all narrative during that period? Because it's bullshit to begin with.

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File this one under Tim Williams Fiction.

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Keller and Oviedo both added one, sure.

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Also drastically increased Brubaker's usage and converted Chad Kuhl back to sinker/slider before cutting him.

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My Erod dream has passed so now my next hope is that we can pull a Lugo into the rotation

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I'm still holding the smallest amount of hope for Shota Imanaga.

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Would love that as well!

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I put up player pages for the new guys, fwiw. They’re under Indy because that’s where they technically got assigned for now.

BA thought Finn was one of the more intriguing MiL R5 guys. Lot of movement on his pitches.

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Just read Brennan Malone. Insane he has only pitched 27 innings in his career so far.

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I'm really hoping Malone has a Braxton Ashcraft breakout this year and health from here on out. I can see him being an opener for 2 to 4 innings working his way through A ball this year. Would absolutely love it if he could do well enough to get a cup in Altoona at the end of the year.

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https://www.immaculategrid.com/

You or any one ever play this game?

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I have.. I also enjoy an occasional https://www.sporcle.com quiz. I am a 70s nerd so I'll do the opening day starting lineup of 1974 (example) quiz.

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Yep. Love it!

All that Strat-o-Matic back in the late 70s & 80s really comes in handy sometimes!

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I haven't

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Do it. I am on the verge of getting a perfect one. Just have to think of a guy who played for the Braves and Chi Sox at some point in their careers. Grid #240.

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Javier Vasquez

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He’s toast.

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Probably, still got my fingers crossed he can get healthy and stay healthy, odds are definitely not in his favor.

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Thank you Wilbur.. .I am a regular using those pages.

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There is a minor typo under transactions for Finn listing Cleveland as the drafting team instead of Colorado--thought you'd want to know. Otherwise, great work as always. At least with each of these guys you can see why they're worth taking a look at even if each is an extreme longshot.

I hate losing Lopez but the bigger concern is for his health as serious concerns about the knee is the only logical explanation for leaving him unprotected.

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Thx

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I think you posted you think Lopez was a loss you didn’t like, correct? Why did he miss all of 23? Broken leg?

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Dislocated knee

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Ouch…had forgotten that. Probably that is why he was not protected as you mentioned yesterday. His knee may not be that sound still and that is why he was not protected.

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So the Padres now have Marcano and Omar back from the Frazier trade......

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I think we sorted it correctly.

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I just checked, Cruz was not part of that trade....faulty memory!

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That one, too.

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Biggest news is the Yankees getting Juan Soto - the biggest piece of the return to the Padres is probably Drew Thorpe, a 22 year old who had 22 Starts, 139 innings in A+/AA with 182 K's and an ERA of 2.52. Excellent, but, 109 of those innings were at A+ and only 30 were in AA.

Jared Jones of the Pirates, a younger 22 year old than Thorpe, had 25 Starts, 126.1 IP at AA/AAA with 146 K's an ERA of 3.82, and 15 of those Starts and 82 of those innings were at AAA, where he also had 99 K's. Don't overlook this kid when thinking about the Pirates Rotation in 2024.

Also, at A+ Drew Thorpe had 109 IP, and 138 K's. Bubba Chandler, almost two years younger pitching in the same A+ League had 106 IP and 120 K's in his first season dedicated to pitching only!

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King is up there in terms of value in that trade for sure, but really fun comparisons that you put up there especially since the Pirates' side comes out ahead!

Interesting trade market out there as well with the verdugo trade given the pitching prospects going back were pretty mediocre

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Good comp with Jones. Also, since Ty Glasnow is the hottest hurler on the market this off season it's good to remember why he is a Ray. His first full season with the Bucs he put up an impressive 7.69 ERA which the Pirates addressed by trading him for a busted arm. He was at about the same point in development as Roansy and Ortiz are today. Instead of acquiring 2 more starters I would rather see more investment in player development. The new Assistant GM/analytics guru Sarah Gilles may be a step in the right direction.

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Most Pirate fans forget the troubles Glasnow had trying to transition to MLB - good points. Also remember that he could not harness his riding 4 seamer which would end up out of the zone high most often. Did the Rays change that? No, Baseball raised the strike zone and it has fit him perfectly ever since. When he first came up with the Pirates, balls above the belt were rarely called strikes.

The kid had the pitches to succeed, but being traded was also a wake-up call to the

realities of the game and helped him develop a little meanness that pitchers need to have.

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I remember this a little differently. I watched Glasnow in Altoon and it was upper 90's pitching downhill with a hammer of curve.

He got to Pittsburgh and he was nibbling and throwing 92-94 and couldn't command his curve. Hitters were sitting on his heat and smoking it.

He went to Tampa and they told him to let loose and throw it down the middle and let the natural movement take over.

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They made him throw a sinker, when his four seamer up had ride and cut.

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I am very excited for the Gilles hire and I hope they give her plenty of resources and free reign to make the role her own. I think there could be big room for growth there

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At least the R5 draft was a wash, so we got that goin' for us.

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