If those angry reacts mean anything, Neal Huntington is not very popular right now. It’s not all his, or even his boss’s, fault. Screenshot taken during the KDKA Facebook Live casting of Huntington’s press conference Monday.

One: The Erosion of Skills Over Time

Let’s look at Player A. Player A was once an MVP candidate, but was worth just 4.3 fWAR in 2016 and 2017 combined. He hit .267 over those two years, averaging 26 home runs, 28 doubles and 83.5 RBI a season. The downside is he has had very slow starts each of the last three seasons, ranging anywhere from a month to four. He also has become a liability in the field, with -42 defensive runs saved since 2016 — the worst among all outfielders. He is a free agent at the end of the year.

Let’s look at Player B. Player B was once a Cy Young candidate, but was worth 5.6 fWAR in 2016 and 2017 combined. He recorded a 4.12 ERA over those two years, striking out 8.29 per nine with a 45.7% ground ball rate. The downside is he has made three trips to the disabled list in that span. He also has become a home run liability, allowing 31 last year — the sixth most in baseball. He is a free agent at the end of the 2019 season.

You probably guessed where I am going with this. Player A is Andrew McCutchen. Player B is Gerrit Cole. Both were recently shipped out of town. Cole’s an Astro, McCutchen’s a Giant, and Pittsburgh is pissed.

But they’re pissed more because of the names being traded rather than the players themselves. Pittsburgh lost McCutchen to Father Time before they lost him to the Giants. Cole is a better pitcher than his results would indicate, but results pay the bills. This isn’t a MVP and Cy Young being shipped out of town. These are two guys coming off of 3 WAR seasons.

That’s a cold, hard truth. Here are some more:

Two: the Pirates didn’t get top prospects because neither one were worth top prospects

Do you know how valuable a Clint Frazier, Forrest Whitley or Gleyber Torres is? I’ll give you a hint: a lot more than current day Cole or McCutchen. Top prospects are a general manager’s drug of choice. Cole and McCutchen are roughly three win players who used to be, or could be, more. There are a half dozen free agent starters and outfielders who could do that, and those guys don’t cost prospects.

I’ll go on record for saying I like the Cole trade. I think I see what Huntington sees in these guys. They’re flawed, they’re young, but they all have plenty of upside. I guess I can see the same in the McCutchen haul, but I’m not as excited. Kyle Crick has upside too, but it took him three years to get out of AA hell.

Prospects are pure. They have no sin, just potential. Players either in the majors or on the cusp of the show have spots. Huntington chose the spots because it’s what his guys were worth.

Three: They weren’t good enough to make the playoffs the last two seasons with them, so why does trading them now end the 2018 season?

It’s not fair to pin all of the Pirates’ shortcomings the last two years on McCutchen and Cole, but they were part of the problem. They combined for 11.1 fWAR in 2015 and 3.1 in 2016. They missed a wild card spot that year by eight games in the loss column. If those two had matched their performance from a year ago, the Bucs likely would have gone to the playoffs a fourth straight season.

In 2017, McCutchen had an extended cold spell once Starling Marte was suspended and Gerrit Cole faltered once Jameson Taillon and the rotation were finally healthy. The Pirates needed them to throw the team on their backs, but neither one came through. They went on to have good, not great years on a bad, not terrible team.

Sure, there were other players who underachieved, suspensions, injuries and a certain owner who could have spent a hell of a lot more, but guys with high ceilings have to play near that ceiling for a team to be good. They didn’t, therefore, their team wasn’t.

The rotation will be fine without Cole, with Jameson Taillon most likely leading the charge. There isn’t a true fit for an outfielder right now, so don’t be surprised if Austin Meadows is called up in June. It’s trial by fire time.

If 2018 is punted, getting the new core another year of experience could be the difference for a run in 2019.

Four: We all knew this was coming someday. That someday just happened to be today

Pittsburgh has been spoiled for the past decade and a half. The Steelers have consistently been one of the best teams in the NFL. The Penguins have made the playoffs 12 years in a row and hoisted three Cups. They both have also been able to keep their superstars for their entire careers, whether that be Ben Roethlisberger, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Hines Ward or Troy Polamalu. Losing Marc-Andre Fleury to the expansion draft and cutting James Harrison twice are the most noteworthy times a former Pittsburgher donned different colors. If you become a key player for the Penguins or the Steelers, you stayed a key player.

The last time the city traded a superstar in this vein was when Jaromír Jágr was shipped to Washington in 2001. Before that, it was the mass Pirates exodus of the 1992 offseason. Before that…maybe those awkward couple games where Franco Harris was a Seahawk. Losing two faces of the franchise in a three day span is pretty uncharted territory for this city. Penguins and Steelers superstars stay Penguins and Steelers superstars, but Pirates don’t. Sometime in the next five or so years, there’s going to be similar outrage when Taillon, Josh Bell or Felipe Rivero leave.

Sure, blame the owner for his penny pinching. Blame the GM for choosing practicality instead of loyalty to a guy entering his 30s. But also blame baseball. The current state of the game makes it extremely difficult for small market teams to keep players throughout their career. 

The gap between large and small market teams is rapidly expanding. Be concerned.

Fifth, and finally: Huntington just did McCutchen a favor

Sure, Huntington just dealt Cutch to a team trying to win NOW, but this deal means more than that. He just absolved Cutch of sin.

McCutchen would have left after 2018 if he wasn’t traded. Even if the front office never made him an offer, some fans would have blamed McCutchen once he signed elsewhere. Maybe claim he didn’t love the city or just wanted to chase dollar signs.

This way, he’s not at fault. Cutch wants to be here. The front office screwed it up.

And in a weird way, I’m taking solace in that.

Thanks for the ride, Andrew and Gerrit. You both deserved better.

The post Some Cold, Hard Truths About McCutchen, Cole Trades appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

Neal Huntington turned Gerrit Cole into four players, three of which will be on the 2018 roster. Clockwise from Top Left — RHP Joe Musgrove, 3B Colin Moran, OF Jason Martin, RHP Michael Feliz
Photo Credit — Musgrove (John Bazemore, AP), Moran (Logan Bowles, USAToday Sports), Martin (Astrosfuture.com), Feliz (Rick Yeatts, Houston Chronicle)

Let me put this out there loud and clear, right from the start.  I didn’t think the Pirates should have traded Gerrit Cole (or any key player for that matter) heading into this 2018 season.  I wanted to add some bench and bullpen guys, make a run at it, then re-evaluate in July.

On Saturday night, though, the Pirates and Astros slow danced for the second time this week, but this time the deal was consumated.  Man, this analogy got super weird, real quick.

By getting back RHP Joe Musgrove, 3B Colin Moran, RHP Michael Feliz, and outfield prospect Jason Martin, this deal tells me a few things about this upcoming Pirate season:

• They’re going to try and be competitive and not totally rebuild.  Yea!  That’s good.  Right?
• There’s no more money for the payroll.  It’s as if a $50M check from the BAMTech sale isn’t coming 1Q or something.  Or that they’re still going to have a $100M payroll off of $250M of revenue.

It’s great that Neal Huntington is going to make an effort to be competitive and strive for a Wild Card in 2018.  The problem is that he just used his best trade asset during his tenure as Pirates GM to cover three holes on the roster with low upside players.

Gerrit Cole is a polarizing player, both among Pirate fans and fans of other teams.  My thoughts on him are pretty well laid out by this point.  Now, Cole is going from a Pirates team where he was the 2nd most important player for success to an Astros team where he’s maybe the 6th or 7th most important player for their success.

Cole doesn’t have to be the main guy in the rotation anymore.  He can learn from two Cy Young winners in Keuchel and Verlander and relax when he pitches.  I think he’s going to thrive and this trade is going to be scrutinized, as a result.

The part that’s more than a little alarming is that Huntington either felt, or was explicitly told, that there was no money for upgrades.  Musgrove, Feliz, and Moran will all be on the Pirates this year and all three will be making at or near league minimum of $550,000.  The trade could work if you put all three of them through The Hope Machine, of course.

Joe Musgrove

The 25-year old Musgrove will probably have the inside track to take Cole’s spot in the rotation over Tyler Glasnow and Steven Brault.  He’s a cromulent #5 starter that has five years of team control remaining.

If you believe in two things, you could talk yourself into liking this component of the trade.  The Pirates have had some great success recently with taking AL pitchers into the NL (Ivan Nova and J.A. Happ).  Also, it appears that even though Musgrove’s stuff is relatively average, his slider appears to be his best pitch (+1.72 runs/100 pitches in 2017).  Alex wrote recently about the need for the Pirates to throw more sliders, so there may be something there.

Michael Feliz

There’s probably going to be a follow up article this week on Feliz, specifically, but for now let me just say that he’s the only part of the deal I’m moderately intrigued by.

Feliz came up as a top prospect with some esteem through the Astros’ system.  Converted to a reliever full-time in the Majors, he’s had mixed results.  On the one hand, his strikeout rates are gaudy, due in part to his blazing 96-mph fastball.  But unfortunately, he’s been prone to the long balls to an alarming degree (1.50 HR/9 in 2017, 1.49 HR/9 for his career) and his control is not the best.

If this sounds vaguely like Felipe Rivero and you think that the Searage Effect still exists, this could turn out to be the best part of the deal.  This season is Feliz’s age-25 season and there are four years of team control.  Feliz, if harnessed properly, could be the setup man to Rivero.  That would keep George Kontos and Daniel Hudson in the 7th inning and allow Doydas Neverauskas to adjust to the Majors in a lower-impact role.

Colin Moran

I don’t like Colin Moran, as a player.  There. I said it.  And I feel better for having done so.

I hope he proves me wrong.  I hope that his 2017 season in the minors, where he finally hit for power befitting a 3B, was the breakout season of his career.  Maybe he took advantage of the altered swing path revolution to get more loft on the ball.  I’m just very skeptical of a player that used to have isolated slugging rates in the .110 range jumping up to .235 all of a sudden.

Until he proves me otherwise, I’m still thinking that Moran is a low power/good average option at 3B.  He’s a plodding runner with a thick lower half, so I’m not even sure he’s a 3B long-term.  He comes with a full six years of team control, but I’ll be shocked if he’s around for all of it, as he has ‘non-tender’ written all over him.

And although it probably goes without saying at this point, this all but certifies the fact that Jung-ho Kang will never suit up for the Pirates again.

***

I’ll touch on the fourth piece of the trade, Jason Martin, for a second.  I put him through our new SSL tool for his 2017 season that was split between High A in the Carolina League and Double A in the Texas League.  Once you do a quick weighted average for having spent twice as much time in Double A, he comes out to a 45.  That’s a bench/4th OF type.

As a point of reference, Martin was Rule 5 eligible and no one took him in December at the Rule 5 draft, which says something.  He’s not someone that I anticipate much out of, in terms of impact.

***

Gerrit Cole has two years remaining at below-market rates.  Even if you aren’t high on him and think he’s a #3, that’s still worth $24M of value.  He had probably $35-40M of surplus value, depending on how you run the numbers and what you rate him as.

Rather than use him to re-build and get high-impact future talent, Neal Huntington chose to use his best trade chip to do a Cover-All on his 2018 Offseason Bingo card.  In the event that this gambit of competition doesn’t work out, there are no building blocks for the next great Pirate squad in this trade.  There’s no Forrest Whitley (a long shot to get from the Astros), Kyle Tucker (a possibility, but a stretch) or even a Derek Fisher (quite realistic).

When the Pirates do inevitably embark on their rebuild, the timeline is going to be longer because of this trade’s inability to procure impact talent.

The post $1 Gerrit Cole Traded To Astros For Four Scratched Quarters appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

Yeah, I see you now, Cole.
Photo from Cole Tucker’s Twitter feed.

“You can’t scout a stat line.”

If you follow minor leaguers at all, you’ve probably heard or read someone say this.  It implies that you can’t just look at a player’s hitting or pitching line to determine if they are good or not.  And while there are some grains of truth to that, for the most part it’s a bunch of malarkey.

It’s true that looking a stat line can’t tell you if a starting pitcher has three functional pitches to navigate his way through a major league lineup.  You can’t see if a hitter has a gaping hole in his swing just waiting to be exploited.  But there are plenty of indicators just waiting to be teased out of the data to determine if a player could be good one day.

The idea for creating an algorithm that would synthesize a host of inputs for minor leaguers to determine if they are good or not has been percolating in my head for quite a long time.  Steve and I talked about the concept years ago, but it didn’t really crystallize until a discussion I had with Dave Cameron of Fangraphs.  This spurred me on to creating a formula that would correlate inputs on to the 20-80 scouting scale.

Once I created the formula, I fine tuned it with historical prospects that were pretty awesome in the minors.  Mike Trout practically broke the hitter formula — he came out to an 80, which is just about right when you realize he was a 20 year-old stud playing CF in AAA.  I calibrated the pitchers with Felix Hernandez and Rick Ankiel, both of whom I considered to be at least 70-75 for much the same reasons.  I was heartened by my success and decided to move forward with it last fall.

I thought about calling the stat ‘Ankiel’, like Marcel or Steamer, to be cool.  Rick Ankiel will always be the Guns ‘N Roses ‘what if?’ of baseball for me.  But since I’m a big jerk, I’m calling it the Stat Scout Line, or SSL for short.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, I’ve been doing a variation of this algorithm in my head for years.  For me, a #3 pitcher (a 60 on the typical scouting scale) is someone that gives up 1 hit per inning pitched, strikes out 1 hitter per inning pitched, and walks 1 batter per 3 innings pitched.  In the majors, a #3 pitcher should give you 180 innings and generate about 3 WAR.  For hitters, I’ve long held to the 10/20 maxim — 10% of plate appearances should be walks, 20% of plate appearances strikeouts.  I also like to look at a player’s isolated power to see if he’s a Punch and Judy hitter or not.

The big thing for me, though, has always been age.  A ‘prospect’ in the truest sense of the word needs to be succeeding at an age-appropriate level.  I like to equate this to when Kramer took karate lessons on Seinfeld, but all his classmates were kids.  Naturally, he was dominating them. (Until they all ganged up on him at the end.)  So when I see a 23 year-old with great stats in Low A, I heavily discount that performance.  Also, it’s not the player’s age in relation to the average age of players in the league — there’s a lot of overage players that raise the average age — but rather what age the prospect is to a typical prospect’s age at that level.  For instance, a prospect at the Low A level should be either 20 or 21 for me.

I also included league factors in to the algorithm.  Plenty of prospects over the years have dominated in the thin air and jetstreams of the California League, but failed to materialize in the majors.  The Florida State League is a pitcher’s haven, due to the humid summer air that suppresses carry on balls.  So these types of things were all factored in, as well, for each domestic league.

Uncovering Hidden Prospect Gems

I used to obsessively track prospects at all levels of the Pirates’ system.  But I’ve found over the years that I’ve been calcifying my views of prospects until they hit at least High A, if not Double A.  Let’s call this The Jarek Cunningham Effect.  In the year 2008, hope was springing eternal all over the place for the Pirates in the minor leagues.  The new, young, progressive GM named Neal Huntington just drafted the Pirates’ 3B for the next 12 years in Pedro Alvarez and drafted a whole host of young high school soon-to-be impact talents, like Robbie Grossman and Quinton Miller.

There was also a young shortstop named Jarek Cunningham that debuted in 2008 in the Gulf Coast League and proceeded to blow the doors off of expectations.  That’s what a .318/.385/.507 triple slash line (149 wRC+) will do for a system that was devoid of young talent.  With all these draft picks, we’ll all going to live forever!

Knee injuries hampered Cunningham’s game, but the rigors of full season leagues in subsequent years against increasingly better pitchers started to result in lower batting averages and far higher strikeout rates.  He was moved off of the premium defensive position of shortstop to 2B.  His last season with the Pirates was 2014 at Double A; he signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers in 2015 and played at Double A for them, too, but has been out of affiliated baseball since then.

So when I put the entire Pirates’ minor league system into SSL, there were some players in the Gulf Coast League that jumped off the page.  Lolo Sanchez, an 18-year old CF, graded out as a 65.  That puts him at All-Star level.  (In case you were curious, I put Jarek Cunningham’s stats for 2008 in SSL and got a 65, too).  Along with Mason Martin and his amazing power display, the GCL Pirates had some real star talent.  Both of those guys were getting some headlines already — Martin for his prodigious power and Sanchez for his $450,000 signing bonus in 2015.  But you have to tamp down expectations until these guys go through Low A in 2018 to see how they do outside of what are basically glorified practices in the GCL.

For the more casual observer of the minor leagues, I found that the GCL Pirates had some prospects under the radar like 3B Rodolfo Castro (55 SSL).  As I moved further up the chain, names like Alex Manasa in the Appalachian League (50 SSL) and Oddy Nunez in the Low A South Atlantic League (50 SSL) were ones that made me re-evaluate my thoughts on them.

Dispelling Prospect Biases

It’s not a secret to those that have read or spoken to me about Cole Tucker that I’ve not been a huge fan of his.  However, after putting his 2017 season through SSL, I’ve completely done a 180 on him.  His High A stint graded him as a 65, but his split season in Double A graded him out at an eye-popping 75.  If you equally weight his plate appearances and give him a 70, that makes him the #1 prospect in the Pirates’ system.  Most of that is due to him having success at a high level at age-20, especially at a key position such as shortstop.  So for me going forward this year, Cole Tucker is my #1 prospect for the Pirates.

I’ve also been a ‘sizeist’ over the years, meaning I’ve discounted players if they were deemed too short by me.  Pitchers under 6′-2″ and hitters under 6′-0″ have typically been given some serious side eye for future success by me.  SSL is size-neutral.  If a prospect can pitch or hit well, that’s good enough for the algorithm.

Using SSL Moving Forward

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been vague about what is specifically in the formula and how it is calculated.  That’s because I’m currently marketing it to online baseball sites and Major League teams.  As of this writing, I’m in discussions at various stages with three Major League teams and one online baseball site.  So I’m not putting the algorithm out there for public use at this point.

I’ll be using SSL for my use in evaluating prospects, both in the Pirates’ system and other organizations for trade purposes.  You’ll see ‘SSL’ pop up next to a player’s name from time to time.   But for now, it will be in the black box.

SSL is useful for quickly getting a feel on whether a prospect has been overhyped by other media sources or for finding hidden gems.  It can help Major League teams more efficiently focus their in-person scouts on prospects that they may not have been looking at previously.  Maybe that pitcher only tops his fastball out at 87 or maybe that shortstop has no chance of staying there moving forward.  But it helps draw attention to prospects that are currently producing at levels commensurate with success in the Majors.  It’s a snapshot in time of that prospect’s performance.

SSL is not meant to replace or diminish the need for in-person scouts.  It’s meant to complement that work and try to iron out some of the biases that humans and their ‘eye tests’ bring into the evaluation.  It doesn’t mean that Cole Tucker and his 70 SSL makes him a 70-level prospect (which would make him a top 5 prospect in all of baseball).  Rather it’s informing us that Tucker, as a 20-year old shortstop prospect that handles the bat well, is someone to be cognizant of in the future.

The post Introducing Stat Scout Line (SSL) For Hitting & Pitching Prospects appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

Todd Frazier is a man without a team. Could he fall into the Pirates’ budget? Photo by BubbaFan.

Baseball’s hot stove is ice cold. This is undoubtedly hurting Neal Huntington’s chances of getting an overpay in a trade for one of his stars, but it could help him if he wants to pull a 180, pick up a free agent or two and try to get the Bucs back in the playoffs in 2018.

This has been one of the slowest starts to free agency in recent memory. Last year, 17 of Fangraphs’ top 20 free agents signed before the new year. Only five of the top 20 have done so this year. The Dodgers and Yankees are determined to stay under the luxury tax threshold for a one time reprieve before 2018’s legendary free agent class mucks up their checkbooks for generations to come. Every other team doesn’t know how to respond. The Twins are somehow a favorite to land Yu Darvish and the Padres may get Eric Hosmer. The whole world’s gone crazy.

Sure, J.D. Martinez, Darvish and Jake Arrieta will still get gobs of money in free agency, but that second-tier of talent is still waiting for their offers. Those B-listers are going into the bargain bin soon. Max Rieper recently wrote a story for Royals Review that players who sign before the New Year average guaranteed money within five percent of Fangraphs’ crowdsourced estimates. Those who sign after Jan. 1 average only 74.7% of the guaranteed money they were estimated to. Travis Sawchik pointed out on Fangraphs that teams are taking notice. February signings have skyrocketed since the turn of the decade. This year is shaping up to have even more buzzer beater contracts.

The Pirates benefited from desperate players and late signings in 2016 when they landed David Freese and Matt Joyce for a combined $4 million. They combined for 3.6 bWAR, meaning they paid nearly 15 cents on the dollar compared to the going rate of $7 million per win on the open market. The Pirates need to get these types of bargains to stay competitive on their payroll. There are going to be plenty of players to pounce on between now and Spring Training.

Here are a few position players worth keeping an eye on.

Neil Walker (Fangraphs free agent ranking: 11th)

I already wrote about reuniting with Walker once this offseason, so I’ll keep this brief. The Pirates need to make Freese a platoon or bench player in 2018. Walker would be the perfect left-handed counterpart. He’d also give the team a much needed PR win.

Walker came into this offseason looking for a four year deal. The Fangraphs crowdsource projected him to get three. It’s starting to look like he’ll be lucky to get two. He would fit in nicely with several teams, but there’s no buzz around him. We’re also closer to opening day than the regular season finale. The clock is ticking.

He has an injury history and is going to look for as much guaranteed money as possible. There just won’t be as much as he hoped there. If Huntington can swallow his pride and Walker wants to become a fan favorite again, a reunion makes sense.

Todd Frazier (Fangraphs free agent ranking: 13th)

Frazier was one of 15 players who had significant reps at third and accumulated at least 2.5 fWAR in 2017. Of those 15, 11 are definitely staying with their team. Seven of them were on playoff teams (eight if you count Frazier and the Yankees). There’s nowhere for him to go. Mike Moustakas is a more appealing free agent option, too. Joel Sherman reported almost a month ago that 10 teams have “expressed various levels of interest” in Frazier. Not even a nibble has come from that since.

PNC Park may be murder for a right-handed batter, but Frazier has thrived here, recording a .968 OPS in Pittsburgh as a member of the Reds. Before you credit his success to just feasting on Pirates pitching, Frazier has a pedestrian .683 OPS against the Pirates at the bandbox Great American Ballpark. There might be something in the water.

The Pirates need a power hitter, and Frazier’s 67 home runs since 2016 would fill the bill nicely. He could take the everyday third base job from Freese and slide over to first to spell Josh Bell.

Going off of Rieper’s research that players who sign this late only get 3/4ths of the guaranteed money they were projected to, the median three year, $42 million pact Frazier was predicted to get turns into a deal strikingly similar to the one Francisco Cervelli received (three years, $31 million). That would still be a large signing for this franchise. To now, the largest contract they have handed out to a player who wasn’t on the team the year before is Russell Martin (two years, $17 million in 2012). This would be almost double that amount. The Pirates won’t have a third base prospect major league ready until 2019 at the very earliest, so they shouldn’t be afraid to give Frazier a multi-year deal (especially since so much money is coming off the books after this season). Still, it’s a big jump for them.

He would definitely help his market if he’s willing to take a one year deal, but he’s turning 32 in February and would just go through the same headache again next offseason. If he’s insisting on a multi-year contract, the Pirates should take advantage.

Jarrod Dyson and Jon Jay (Fangraphs free agent rankings: 20th and 50th)

One of the Pirates’ most apparent roster problems going into 2017 was they did not have a true fourth outfielder. Between Gregory Polanco’s injury history, Austin Meadows not looking major league ready and McCutchen potentially being dealt midseason, they cannot make the same mistake going into 2018.

Like the third base market, most of the contenders already have a set outfield. Those looking for an upgrade are going to target Martinez, Cain, Bruce, Gomez or Gonzalez because of their higher upsides. The Fangraphs crowdsource lined them both for $8 million per season, with Dyson getting two years compared to Jay’s one. The longer they stay on the open market, the greater the chance they have to settle for a Freese-like deal.

Dyson finally got a look as an everyday outfielder in 2017, and he showed he can handle the workload. He saved 15 runs defensively and recorded a 100 wRC+ in the first half of the season, but a sports hernia slowed him down in the second half and eventually ended his season in September. He may not be the sexiest name available, but he very quietly has averaged 2.5 fWAR a year from 2013-2017.

Jay has made a career of torturing the Pirates. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. He provides an average bat and can play all three outfield positions, though he should probably stick to the corners. Still, if the Pirates need a center fielder, he can hum a few bars. 

The main holdup for Dyson is playing time. If he is going to make a concession on salary, he’ll probably want to at least have a shot of being an everyday player again. If the Pirates do end up moving McCutchen, Dyson would be a logical caretaker in center until Meadows is ready. Jay has already played for three different teams over the last three seasons, so he’s used to moving around. He is probably the more likely option for a one year pact with reduced playing time.

The post How The Pirates Can Take Advantage Of A Slow Offseason appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

Barry Bonds started his HOF career with the Pirates. McCutchen compares well to the same timeframe.

In late December/early January, my Twitter feed starts to get overrun with tweets regarding the baseball Hall of Fame voting.  The incredibly dedicated Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) diligently chronicles every publicly revealed ballot and tracks the rise and fall of players on the ballot to forecast who will make the HOF.

This has led me to reflect on the career of one Barry Lamar Bonds while he was a Pittsburgh Pirate.  I’m not going to touch the 3rd rail on whether or not he should be in the HOF.  Rather, I was curious to see how one Andrew Stefan McCutchen compared to one of the greatest players to wear a Pirates uniform.

To set the comparison, I’m going to try and compare red apples to red apples as much as is feasible.  So that means just looking at Bonds’ 6+ years to McCutchen’s first 6+ years.  This will take McCutchen from his debut in June 2009 through the end of the 2015 season, which is good so that his two most recent down years don’t muddy the waters.  It also helps that these 6+ year periods also happen in the virtually the same age timeframe — Bonds debuted in 1986 in his age-21 season and left after his age-27 season in 1992.  McCutchen debuted in 2009 in his age-22 season and this article will cover up to his age-28 season in 2015.

First, let’s look at this from a 30,000 foot view.  During Bonds’ 6+ years with the Pirates and McCutchen’s first 6+ years with the Pirates, here’s some relevant cumulative stats:

Things get a little more interesting once you start to get into the rate stats and look at things season-by-season.  It’s odd to look back now at Barry Bonds’ nascent career and try to remember that he wasn’t very good to start out.  McCutchen, on the other hand, has been very good right from Jump Street.

The lowest wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created above average, which is adjusted for every era) of McCutchen’s first 6+ years was his rookie year when he had a 122.  By contrast, in Bonds’ 6+ seasons with the Pirates, he had three years below that mark.  Of course, that’s obfuscated by the fact that he started to ascend into demi-god mode in his last three from 1990-1992 when his wRC+ marks were 165, 155, and 198, respectively.  McCutchen’s three peak years were 2012-14 when he posted wRC+ marks of 158, 156, and 168.

Both of them were no stranger to the MVP voting, either.  Bonds went 1-2-1 from 1990 to 1992 and really should have won in 1991, but the voters bizarrely gave Terry Pendleton of the hated Braves the MVP that year.  McCutchen went 3-1-3 in his 2012 to 2014 run.  Maybe I could say he should have finished 2nd in one of those two other years, but the competition was quite stiff.  In all honesty, Paul Goldschmidt of the Diamondbacks has probably been robbed of a MVP along the way somewhere.

The one point of separation between these two is defense.  Bonds started off in CF, but as a result of Andy Van Slyke’s defensive wizardry, Bonds and his candy arm were put in LF.  He was not thrilled by this, but his excellent range resulted in the defensive rating system of his day, Total Zone, to give him very high marks and thus inflate his WAR more than it probably should have been.  And as we know, Andrew McCutchen should be in LF, but his pride has kept him stationed in the middle of the outfield.  This has led him to either mediocre or negative ratings by Ultimate Zone Rating, which has depressed his WAR more than it probably should have been.

By Fangraphs’ WAR, Bonds accrued 48.4 during his time with the Pirates.  In contrast, McCutchen accumulated 40.0.  I’m not one to typically parse data, but as I mentioned above I think their values are slightly closer than these raw numbers.  What’s interesting is if you chart their year-by-year WAR during the same stages of their careers:

Aside from Year 6 when Bonds got Fukushima hot, the negligible differences could be mostly attributed to the different defensive components to assess the players.  And here’s a look in chart form of their cumulative WAR totals, done year-to-year:

Now of course, I’ve constrained this exercise to just the first 6+ seasons for each player, since Bonds left via free agency at the first opportunity to join the Giants.  He went on to do some better living through chemistry, but put up numbers unlike any ever seen on a baseball field.  McCutchen’s path to the Hall of Fame has taken a head-scratching downturn since that 2015 season.  What was looking like a massive contract for him in the 2018 free agency bonanza may end up being one that some team will deeply regret just a few years in to it.

But in terms of early career excellence, Andrew McCutchen can make a case to be the 2nd greatest OF in Pirates history.  The key phrase there is ‘early career’ (i.e. first 6+ seasons).  Roberto Clemente was not anything spectacular in his first few seasons.  It wasn’t until his 6th full year that he crested 5 WAR, but he took off after that.  Players like Max Carey and Paul Waner were very good, too, but not as great as McCutchen.

The post Barry Bonds Was A Better Pirate Than McCutchen…But It’s Close appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

In my last article, which focused on Josh Gibson’s time in Puerto Rico and its effects, I asked one to list a personal top Pittsburgh player list.  I challenge the reader to do the same in this article.  If I was to ask you who the greatest African-American baseball player of all time and the greatest Latino baseball player of all time I would receive a lot of different answers.  Ironically, some might mention Josh Gibson, but I think many of the answers would include Willie Mays; while some of answers would include Roberto Clemente.

Is it surprising to you to hear that in the winter of 1954-55 those greats of Mays and Clemente played in the same outfield together in Puerto Rico?  

While Josh Gibson played in Puerto Rico to make more money, I’m not exactly sure why Willie Mays would have needed to play winter ball.  He was fresh off the 1954 season where he garnered 10.4 WAR, won the NL MVP and stole an out from Vic Wertz in Game 1 of the World Series with “The Catch.”

When the new year came in 1955, Willie Mays was in Puerto Rico manning centerfield for the Santurce Cangrejeros, nicknamed the Crabbers, the same team that Josh Gibson played for in 1938.  The other notable player for the Santurce squad was a young Puerto Rican outfielder named Roberto Clemente.

Clemente just got done with a year playing in the Dodgers minor league system in which the Dodgers were hiding him in their AAA team in Montreal.  After the season the Pirates selected Clemente with a pick in the Rule 5 draft.  Shortly after that, Clemente headed home to play for his San Juan club with Santurce.   Clemente had to be excited to to have such a great player to study and learn from.

The way Caribbean winter ball worked is that Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela and Panama would have their own leagues and then the champions would meet in the Carribean Series placing the champions against each other.  Not surprisingly, the Santurce Cangrejeros with their outfield of Clemente and Mays made the Caribbean Series.   Clemente played in the league’s All Star game and hit two homers as one of the league’s youngest players.

Baseball: Caribbean World Series: Santurce Crabbers Willie Mays (24) in action, at bat vs Venezuela at Estadio Universitario.
Caracas, Venezuela 2/16/1955
CREDIT: Mark Kauffman (Photo by Mark Kauffman /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images)
(Set Number: 2405 TK1 C6 F7 )

The Caribbean series took place from February 10 through February 15, 1955 featuring the champion baseball teams from Cuba: Alacranes de Almendares; Panama: Carta Vieja Yankees; Puerto Rico: Cangrejeros de Santurce, and Venezuela, Navegantes del Magallanes. The format consisted of 12 games, each team facing the other teams twice.  The games were played at Estadio Universitario in Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, which boosted capacity to 22,690 seats, while the ceremonial first pitch was thrown by Marcos Pérez Jiménez, by then the President of Venezuela.

Clemente and Mays both played well but were overshadowed by shortstop Don Zimmer who OPSed .971 and was the league MVP.   Clemente didn’t have any notable games but slugged .571.  Mays, however, did have the most memorable moments of the Series hitting a two out walkoff homerun in Game 6 of the Series.

While this short winter season and 12 game championship in Venezuela are a mere 50ish games of the 2000+ games of both Mays and Clemente’s career, it’s pretty exciting to think that one of the best combos of all time existed in Puerto Rico in 1955.

Baseball: Caribbean World Series: Santurce Crabbers Willie Mays (24) victorious with team after winning championship vs Venezuela at Estadio Universitario. Caracas, Venezuela 2/16/1955 CREDIT: Mark Kauffman (Photo by Mark Kauffman /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images)

The post Santurce “Crabbers” Once Had Clemente and Willie Mays In Same Outfield appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

Neal Huntington may pick a path to rebuild.
Photo via Twitter

I’m going to end 2017 with a bummer.  It looks like Neal Huntington might finally pick a direction for his club after 27 months of hoping his depleting roster regains its 2015 form. Unfortunately, it’s not the fun choice. Let’s just say I hope nobody here got a Gerrit Cole jersey for Christmas.

It’s not just Cole, though. Josh Harrison’s name has popped up in trade rumors, both as a chip in for a potential Cole deal to the Yankees and by himself. Francisco Cervelli hasn’t been as popular in the rumor mill, but his contract and declining production make him a salary dump candidate. And at this point, I’m sure Andrew McCutchen is so sick of seeing his name pop up on MLBTR that he’s blocked them on Twitter.

I’ll believe the rebuild when I see the rebuild. The way I see it, Huntington is a pixie-cut away from being baseball’s Katy Perry, trying to repackage what made them successful earlier in the 2010’s while being either too attached to the past or unable to adapt to a changing environment. Huntington winning in 2018 with a team that has finished sub-.500 the last two years seems about as likely as Perry dropping another “Teenage Dream.” Sure, if everything goes right, this team could compete for the division. And a C-G-Am-F chord progression can be a number one record, but eventually you have to move on. Don’t be known for one album.

So let’s take a look at the players who have two years or fewer of team control remaining who could bring in the pieces needed to restock the Pirates’ farm system and make it a speedy rebuild. And before we get started, I’m omitting McCutchen. There’s about 5,000 other pieces and trade rumors you can read about him. Also, I’ll go on a limb and say I think he will be starting the year as the team’s center fielder. There’s some bad PR around the team and they could use their superstar. Austin Meadows also needs at least a couple more months to grow. He’s the perfect short term solution.

Gerrit Cole

Why trade him? The short answer is prospects. The long answer is prooooooooooooooooospects. Gerrit Cole is arguably the best pitcher available because of his high upside, two years of control and cheap salary. Sure, he comes with a higher acquisition cost, but guys like Cole aren’t usually up for grabs. Kevin already pointed out that Sonny Gray and Cole had similar trade values, so look at what the Yankees gave the Athletics as a potential Cole return. It’s a fair argument, but don’t forget about the Shelby Miller trade. Yeah, that was a legendary overpay. That’s what Huntington is going for. Just be careful, Icarus.

The best argument for keeping him is the Pirates may get a bigger overpay if they try trading him at the deadline. Cole is coming off of back-to-back middling seasons, partially because of an inflated home run to fly ball ratio. If that normalizes and he strings four good months together, he may be worth more. There will also be more potential buyers. A team could enter the year set in the rotation and then start scrambling in July. A desperate team can be a stupid team.

If the Pirates catch the bounces they need, they can keep him and try to make a stretch run with their ace. He doesn’t need to be traded, but Huntington is continuing to burn a bridge that he set ablaze when he tried cutting Cole’s salary before the 2016 season. It’s tempting to cut the losses, roll with either Steven Brault or Tyler Glasnow as the number five starter and enjoy that shiny new Clint Frazier in the outfield. You want the Pirates to win a World Series like the Royals? The first thing they did in their rebuild was trade Zack Greinke when he had two years of control left. 

Josh Harrison

Why trade him? Because every team would love to have a Josh Harrison. There aren’t too many guys who can play a Gold Glove-worthy second base, strong third base and competent corner outfield. And at $10 million in 2018 with two option years on top of that, he falls in just about every team’s budget. There’s a reason why he’s becoming one of the most intriguing trade chips on the market.

The Pirates bought high on Harrison after his career best 2014. He hasn’t lived up to that season since, but 5.2 fWAR and an All-Star appearance for $15.3 million is relatively good bang for the buck. Still, his value may never be higher after a solid offensive campaign in 2017. Harrison added 28 points to his OBP last year. Four of those points came from being hit by 23 pitches. He had been hit just 26 times his entire career before 2017, so this might be a fluke. We can safely assume he’d be fine to going back to being hit five or six times a year instead. He’s never had a great walk rate, and you can’t rely on batted balls forever. His bat is volatile. Selling high makes sense.

Or, it would make sense, except the Pirates were looking to add an infielder this offseason to move David Freese into a backup/platoon role. Unless the Bucs get a major league ready infielder like Miguel Andujar in return, trading Harrison is counter-productive to that goal. 

Francisco Cervelli

Why trade him? Well, money. Cervelli hasn’t been particularly good at either the dish or framing since signing his extension, of which he is still owed $22 million over the next two seasons. Injuries have played a large role in that decline, but he came to Pittsburgh with an injury history. 2015 may have been the one year where he just stood upright.

Despite that, he could bring back a pretty good return. Perhaps not a top prospect, but at least a couple of lottery tickets or fringe major leaguers. There are so few quality catchers in the league right now. Even a bounce back candidate has plenty of appeal. That $22 million price tag isn’t outrageous, either. The Steamer projection has him pegged being worth 1.5 fWAR next year. At a very conservative estimate of $7 million per WAR, that lines up perfectly with his $10.5 million 2018 salary. That should yield a better return on investment than Jonathan Lucroy.

But a catcher’s most important job isn’t hitting or fielding, it’s managing the pitching staff. Last year, Jameson Taillon, Trevor Williams and Chad Kuhl had nothing but good things to say about Francisco Cervelli. The Pirates are relying on these young arms to lead this team. Why take away their security blanket? Sure, Cervelli might be overpaid, but they’re all pre-arb and underpaid. At the very least it evens out.

It’s hard to take that first step into selling, but if Huntington finally does it, I doubt he’ll stop at one move. Maybe I’m wrong and there’s new McCutchen gossip every day. Maybe he gets bold and flips Felipe Rivero for all the tea in China. Would he dare dangle a Starling Marte or Gregory Polanco if he gets a Clint Frazier or another high profile outfielder? It’s Pandora’s box, but, again, I’ll believe the rebuild when I see the rebuild.

I still believe this team could compete for a wild card with one or two bargain priced free agents. The downside is a 2018 run might detract from future teams. Small market teams need to reload every couple of years. It seems like it’s the right time for the Pirates to do that.

The post The Pros And Cons Of Selling appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

Hello, welcome to the doldrums of the Pirates’ offseason.  It’s the same as the rest of this Pirate offseason, just without the Gerrit Cole drama.

We’re in the part of the season where the Pirates are going to kick the tires on players in the scratch and dent section of free agency, but before the arbitration figure exchange portion of the offseason.  So here’s a thought experiment to while away the boringness.  What if every current player in the Majors suddenly became a free agent, but kept their existing contracts?

I’ve long thought that the Pirates should be operating on a $120M budget, based on the revenues estimated by both us and Forbes that put them in the $260M range.  That would put them, roughly, in the 45% revenue-to-payroll threshold.  So let’s see how good of a team we could put together under that budget.

But first, here’s a few restraints I put on myself:

1. I didn’t select any players on 1 year deals or players that are currently free agents.
2. I used MLB Trade Rumors’ estimates for players currently in arbitration, then ran out the remaining years using our 25%/40%/60% model (and the 20%/33%/50%/70% model for Super Two players).
3. In an effort to make this a sustainable team, I ran out the payroll projections for five years.  I upped the budget 5% in each successive season. In an effort to please my imaginary owner, I committed to meet the budget in 2018 and 2019 and would then re-assess after that.

I really wanted Mike Trout on my team.  He’s the best player in baseball and a potential future inner circle Hall of Famer.  It’s actually disappointing how underrated Trout is in the bigger picture.

But that $34M salary over the next three years is a bear to fit in on a $120M budget, especially when the young players I selected to counterbalance his salary started to hit arbitration.  My first iteration at this experiment came in at $117M for 2018 (great!), but the 2019 salary total was $155M and well over the $126M budget for 2019 (not great!).

I also had Kenley Jansen and Marcell Ozuna in the first iteration, but removed both of them because their 2019 salaries were part of the problem for the ballooning budget figure — Ozuna was estimated to be making around $18M in 2019 on our arb model and Jansen jumped from $11M to $20M under his existing contract.

So sadly, I had to cut these three players and go a little cheaper, but with more of a sustainable view in mind.  I went with Starling Marte in place of Ozuna in LF, George Springer in place of Trout in CF, and Roberto Osuna in place of Kenley Jansen at closer.

Here’s the 25-man roster with all the salaries for the next five years.  Arbitration estimates are in red.

As you can see by the 2017 WAR totals for these 25 players, this team would be practically unbeatable.  Using the rule of thumb that you take a team’s WAR and add it to a baseline of 48, this team would finish with 143 wins.

Now while this isn’t realistic, there are some observations to tease out from this experiment.  First, every team does some variation of this for their own 25-man roster.  When you hear Neal Huntington say that he’s thinking of making not only the current year’s Pirate team great, but also subsequent years, this is what he’s talking about.  He has to weigh how awarding a contract may affect decisions down the line, especially on the paltry budgets he’s allotted.

It also highlights just how vital it is to get impact contributions from players making minimum salaries.  The Dodgers and Astros are well-represented on my theoretical roster, with four players making the minimum next year and Altuve/Springer making below-market salaries .  It shouldn’t be a surprise that these two teams met in the World Series.

You can also see how signing homegrown players to early-career extensions can pay off.  I mentioned early on that I had to substitute out Marcel Ozuna for Starling Marte because of Ozuna’s potentially large 2019 arbitration salary in his final year.  Both Ozuna and Marte are roughly 4 WAR players, albeit in different manners.  But Marte stays between $10 and $11M on his contract, while Ozuna’s arbitration salary could be $18M next year.  That $7M was vital in my roster construction.

This roster, albeit virtually unbeatable, would raise some eyebrows amongst a subset of fans for being a “cheap” roster.  But as you can see, stars cost a lot of money in arbitration.  At some point, I’d probably have to trade off Roberto Osuna before his last season in 2020 in order to help make budget that year.  Or hope that my farm system could continue to churn out impact talent, even if I’m picking at the end of each round.

Assembling a roster of essentially All-Stars is easy.  Keeping them together and being able to afford them for an extended period of time is the challenge.

The post Starting The Pirates Over With $120M Budget appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

Who has grievances to be aired? Festivus pole photo by Matthew Keefe.

Warning: this is going to be stupid.

Last year, I retold “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” as my holiday post. This year, it’s themed after a Festivus for the rest of us. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be funny or something.

For those of you who don’t know what Festivus is, the mainstream winter holiday alternative rose to popularity 20 years ago as the “B” story of a single episode on a TV show that you can’t stream on Netflix. Let’s take a moment to see how the nomenclature came to be or just re-watch highlights of one of the best episodes of Seinfeld.

So after a year on the Pirates beat and writing about the club for half a dozen outlets, let me tell you all the ways (well, some of the ways) I’ve been disappointed over the last year. It’s time for the airing of grievances! (Starting with Kevin for making me post this on Festivus Eve instead of the 23rd. Party pooper.) Editor’s note — If you want to discuss with my wife why I’m editing a post and doing TPOP stuff instead of wrapping gifts and preparing for a dinner party, good luck.  KC.

Neal Huntington:

What the heck happened? You went from a consensus pick as one of the best GMs in the league just two years ago to a guy who has trouble committing to a team direction. I wrote that you were in no man’s land after the 2016 Winter Meetings, and you proceeded to spend the next 12 months staying put? Another Winter Meeting has come and gone, and you still haven’t taken any action on if you want to win now or in a year or two.

Now’s the time to rebuild. Francisco Cervelli, Josh Harrison and Andrew McCutchen’s best days are behind them. If you want to roll the dice with them again, fine, but you need to cash out on at least one player with value. Gerrit Cole is the best candidate, and let’s face it, he’s had a bag packed since he was almost screwed out of a pre-arb raise back in 2016. We don’t want to hear about how you explored all the options and couldn’t get a deal done while going back to Cole with your tail between your legs this spring. If the reports out of New York are true, this bridge is burned. Go for it!

And what was that quip at PirateFest about the Pirates paying a higher percentage of their payroll to McCutchen than the Penguins do to Crosby? That isn’t something to brag about. So you have more money allocated to your highest paid player than they do theirs in a salary cap league? Nobody cares.

Pizza Penny:

I can deal with Bacon Burt. I can even forgive the unjust exile of Potato Pete and making him the heel to babyface Cheese Chester. What I can’t stand is you!

Let’s start with the most egregious sin: the pierogi is Polish and pizza is Italian. What’s next, pączki and spaghetti? Hulupki and lasagna? Kutia and risotto? Mixing the two is an assault on my tastebuds, globalization and everything in between, you geographically confused dumpling.

You bring nothing new to the pierogi race. Jalapeno Hannah was already the Smurfette in the male chauvinistic world of anthropomorphic frozen cuisine racing. You are just Hannah with an extra layer of lipstick and a mole. If anything, you look more French than Italian or Polish!  What are you?

You have Hannah’s purse, Sauerkraut Saul’s red color and Potato Pete’s name alliteration (P.P.). Burt at least has a mustache. You offer…a checkered hat. I’m not clever enough to come up with a final punchline for this tangent, so here’s a clip of a 23 year old Simpsons episode that seems applicable.

Furthermore, Penny, you ruined the perfect symmetry of a four or five pierogi field. Dear Reader, I’m going to let you in on a secret: the race is usually rigged. In the good ol’ days, no one pierogi would get more than a couple games ahead, and home game no. 81 was the winner take all race, with all the contestants tied at either 20 or 16 matches. That 81st race was a beautiful crapshoot. You’re taking that away from us since 80 is not divisible by six. Last year it was two pierogies duking it out during the final game. Because of you, two-thirds of the field had to sit back and watch!

Actually, let’s fix the Great Pittsburgh Pierogi Race and start from scratch. Bring back the animated segments on the jumbotron. Have the Parrot sabotage whomever is in first place. Let Pete have another winner take all race with Chester. Penny, you can be the heel from now on.

Bob Nutting:

On a slightly more serious note…

The Pirate fanbase is convinced there is a mutual acrimony between them and ownership. It’s in your best interest to try to appease the masses and show that you do give a damn. After all, you want butts in seats and eyeballs on TVs before negotiating a new deal.

I believe you when you say you want to win. But you can’t run a ballclub like a regular business and be consistently successful on the field and profitable. Fans only care about the former, so be prepared for every money related question you get. Every fan, columnist, blogger and disc jockey is looking for a chance to strike.

So let’s say you happen to stumble upon $50 million dollars thanks to a transaction you barely had a hand in facilitating. And let’s say one of the longest tenured Pirate beat writers asks you a softball question about it during a one-on-one interview. Could you please give a better answer on what the plan for this windfall is than *shrug*?

Ok, the cash isn’t in hand quite yet, but surely you knew this question was coming. A $50 million bonus is conversation worthy. You have known about this sale for months.  We’ve been writing about it for months, back when 4/5th’s of the writers in this town thought BAMTech was related to the next Marvel superhero movie coming out. Couldn’t you have given a slightly better answer than patting yourself on the back for the few times you did shell out more than the average team?

There is no reason you couldn’t have talked to some of your partners and Huntington before this interview and said ‘we don’t know what we’ll do with all of it, but we are planning on spending a portion on BLANK.” BLANK could be almost anything. Helping to expand your franchise’s reach in Latin America or untapped baseball markets. Funding an extension for a player or two Huntington wants to build around. Signing a marketable name during the 2018 free agency smorgasbord. Facility renovations. Improving the fan experience at PNC Park in some way. Just…something!

So I’m cutting off my grievances there. Three seems like a good, round number. I’ll be on the lookout for any Festivus miracles. Coincidently, “Festivus miracle” is my new nickname for the Yankees farm system.

I’ll consider powering through this post as a feat of strength, so this brings Pirates Festivus to an end. Don’t worry. You don’t have to pin me. 

The post A 2017 Pirates Festivus For The Rest Of Us appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.

If I asked you to name the top five Pittsburgh baseball players of all time and leave off the noun “Pirates” that would be a clue for you to reference Josh Gibson.

Gibson, Bonds, Clemente, Honus Wagner and Ralph Kiner would probably be the five man Mount Rushmore of Pittsburgh baseball.

While I can tell you about Jordy Mercer’s college career, his minor league progression and major league career, I’m just learning all the nuances of Josh Gibson.  We all know about Clemente and his Puerto Rican roots, but not many may know much about Josh Gibson and his time spent on the island in the 30’s and 40’s.

Negro All Stars in Puerto Rican Baseball

The first pitch of Puerto Rican “beisbol” happened in Santurce, a neighborhood of San Juan, on January 11th, 1898,  three years before the Red Sox were founded.  Baseball seemed like a recreational sport until the late 1930’s when the Liga de Béisbol Semiprofesional de Puerto Rico (LBSPR) was christened.  The league quickly grew to six teams with teams from all over the island, ranging from the north central capital of San Juan to the western coastal town of Ponce (Carlos Correa’s hometown).

While Jim Crow laws prevented blacks and latinos from playing baseball in the majors, the Puerto Rican league was very welcoming of blacks, and in turn the Negro League allowed Puerto Ricans and Dominicans to join in.  This openness between the Negro Leagues and the island is how Josh Gibson (and Satchel Paige, etc.) got to be a legend in Puerto Rico and conceivably change the culture of baseball in Puerto Rico forever.

A 19 year old Josh Gibson played for the Homestead Grays in 1931 and went to the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1932 to catch for Satchel Paige.   After the 1932 season Gibson traveled to Puerto Rico to be a player/manager for the new Santurce Cangrejeros. He was paid $250 a month and was a star on this new expansion team.  In 1933, Gibson returned to Pittsburgh and played for the Crawfords in the new Negro National League through 1936.

Gibson was a bit of a circus sideshow with his prodigious power and keen eye.   He supposedly hit a home run out of Yankee Stadium, as well as stadiums in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela.  This Giancarlo Stanton-type talent brought in thousands of fans and made him a legend in a land where it was easier for him to assimilate with the common man.

In 1937-38 Gibson batted .342 for Havana, in the Cuban League, while back with Homestead in 1938 he hit .365 with 10 homers in fewer than 100 at-bats before hitting .380 that winter in Puerto Rico. In 1940 Gibson accepted a pay raise to join the Veracruz Azules in the Mexican League. Despite playing only about one-quarter of the season he tied for second in the league with 11 home runs. After the Mexican League season he returned to the Puerto Rican Winter League where he not only batted .480, but hit a home run that was estimated at 600 feet.
Courtesy of SABR summary of Gibson’s career.

Not surprisingly Gibson’s .480 batting average remains a LBSPR record to this day.

Could We Have Clemente Without Gibson?

It seems as if Puerto Rican baseball went from a local pastime to a regional profession in the early 1930’s.  It’s too coincidental that this was the time that the Negro League players, and more importantly Gibson, started wintering on the island.   Maybe it was a short term business move for the new league to invest in top flight talent from the mainland until the new league gained steam.  During Gibson’s first year with the Santurce “Crabbers” in 1932, the uniforms they used were blank and they had no sponsor.   By Gibson’s next trip a couple winters later they were sponsored by a national rum company and moved into a new stadium.  By his last trip in the winter of 1941-42 baseball was a national treasure with the All Star game occurring over “Three Kings Day” (the Christian feast of the Epiphany).

Is it a stretch to assume that when Roberto Clemente was working in the sugar fields as an 8 year old in 1942 he was swinging a stick of sugarcane pretending to be Josh Gibson?  Clemente was earmarked for his talent as a 16 year old and eventually signed a contract with the same Santurce Cangregeros as a 17 year old and he happened to have the same locker as “The Black Babe”.

You can make an argument that while he hit a home run out of “The House that Ruth Built”, Gibson himself might have “built” the stadium in Santurce…and ones in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela too.

I never realized how influential Gibson and other Negro league players were in the formation of the Latin American game and it’s crazy to see how it links arguably the two greatest Pittsburgh players ever.

The post Josh Gibson, Roberto Clemente and Puerto Rican baseball appeared first on The Point of Pittsburgh.