Do the bullpen shuffle

Some reliever-related changes over the weekend, which are probably worth analyzing in depth. Evan Meek is out on the big club, and Sean Burnett is in to take his place.

According to Dejan, Meek was designated for assignment, but I'm not sure how that's possible from the standpoint of transaction mechanics. It's always been my impression that a team couldn't designate a player for assignment unless their 40-man roster was full, and at the time I write this, ours is at 37 players. Teams have been known to skirt the rule by adding non-prospects to the roster to fill it to capacity before DFAing a player; the Rangers pulled that trick last year with non-prospect Adam Fox when they wanted to buy some extra time to find a trade for Rick Bauer, for example. I'm going to ask Dejan about the situation, to see whether he can clarify things.

The team's decision to cut bait on Meek is easy to understand in some ways. He had the highest remaining ERA (6.92) on a staff that had been struggling, and the general weakness of the pitchers around Meek made it harder for the team to hide him in low-leverage relief. He showed serious issues with both command and control, throwing 48% of his pitches for balls, and walking 12 batters in 13 innings, along with three wild pitches and a hit batsman. Still, the timing on the decision to move him seems a bit strange, as he was working on a streak of six straight scoreless innings when the axe fell. If they viewed him as a work in progress (and they should have - he walked 34 batters in 67 AA innings last year), then his struggles shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. The front office must have believed that he was more of a finished product than he turned out to be, although I'm not sure why they'd draw that conclusion.

Huntington is apparently talking with the Devil Rays about a potential trade for Meek, to let him stay in our system. This could potentially be a good idea or a bad one, depending on what they'd look for in return. If, as Dejan suggests, they're amenable to a fairly nominal cash payment, then that'd probably be OK. If, on the other hand, they want an actual prospect in return, I'd probably walk away. Meek has decent stuff, but even if he's able to harness it (not a given), he probably won't be more than a setup guy, and players with comparable celings are available as waiver claims and minor league free agents every offseason. With our lack of depth in both position players and starting pitchers, we really can't afford to trade prospects in those areas for a commodity that could be replaced freely elsewhere.

It's worth noting that Tyler Yates's command/control issues this year have mirrored Meek's in many respects. Like Meek, only 52% of Yates's pitches have gone for strikes, and like Meek, Yates has approximately twice as many walks as strikeouts. Yates has succeeded where Meek has failed because he's done better at keeping the ball down (one HR allowed to Meek's three), he's gotten more hitters to chase his stuff (swings on 41% of his pitches, compared to 35% of Meek's), and his wildness has remained at least somewhat in control (no WP or HBP, compared to Meek's four). Yates has traditionally had some trouble throwing strikes, but not quite to this level, and he needs to return to at least his prior level in this area or he'll likely start running into the same kinds of trouble that put Meek on the transaction wire.

The other side of the coin, of course, is the decision to promote Burnett to the pen. Over the offseason, I basically wrote Burnett off as a potential future contributor, and while I'm happy for him, I don't think his chances are very good. The move to the pen this spring has goosed his K numbers at AAA, which is a good thing, but he's still having problems with both walks and right-handed batters.

The more serious of these, from the standpoint of his overall development, is the trouble with walks. Back when Burnett was a shiny young prospect, he had a very low walk rate: 1.80 BB/9 from 2001-2003. He was successful despite a low K rate because he never put anybody on base and he never let the ball leave the yard. Finesse pitchers typically experience some erosion in those two rates as they ascend the ladder, but even so, the pre-surgery Burnett had performed at a high enough level that he looked like he could withstand some damage to his BB and HR rates and still remain an effective pitcher. The current version of Burnett is a different animal. He had 4.99 BB/9 at AAA last year, and has 4.15 BB/9 so far at the same level this year. If his performance this year isn't just a sample-size fluke, then he's pitching around hitters to compensate for diminished "stuff", or his command is too poor to let him work consistently within the zone. Neither approach is likely to translate well to the majors.

The usage question is less serious for Burnett as a pitcher, but is a significant factor in his expected performances with the Pirates this season. Meek was being used in long relief as a mopup man, and if Burnett is used in a similar fashion, he could encounter serious trouble against right-handed batters. Last season, for example, AAA RHBs hit .318/.416/.446 against him (compared to .276/.337/.368 for LHBs). Much of that disparity came from a gap in the relevant walk rates: he had 5.68 K/9 and 2.84 BB/9 against lefties, but only 3.64 K/9 and 6.32 BB/9 against righties. His overall ERA this season is better, but the drastic control split between lefties and righties has persisted. The sample sizes are small, so take these numbers with a grain of salt, but he's posted 12.27 K/9 and 2.45 BB/9 against LHB, and 4.50 K/9 and 5.4 BB/9 against RHB. For Burnett to succeed, he probably needs to be used as a situational lefty along the lines of Grabow, rather than a long reliever. With four lefties in the rotation, though, and two superior lefty relievers already in the pen, you have to wonder how many opportunies of that nature will be available to Burnett. With the role that's available, a righty like Salas, Chavez, or Beam might have made more sense.

The other interesting corollary to the situation is that we've apparently purchased Matt Miller's contract from the Red Sox, to take Burnett's spot at AAA. This is the Miller who spent parts of the last five seasons with the Indians (i.e. Matthew J. Miller), and while he's getting up there in years and has had persistent health issues for several years now, he's also been a very good reliever when he was healthy. Over parts of five ML seasons, he has a 2.72 ERA over 106 innings, with good component ratios (8.07 K/9, 3.74 BB/9, 0.34 HR/9). Indy's bullpen is a pretty competitive peer group right now, but you can never have too much quality depth, and if Miller is able to show that he's healthy, I wouldn't be surprised to see him get a few innnings with the big club down the stretch.

Welcome back, Craig

I would've posted about this earlier, but the news apparently overloaded some vital structure of my brain, and I collapsed into a twitching heap on the ground, rendered insensate by pure, unadulterated joy. The fan part of me doesn't care that he struggled last year, or that he failed a physical only a few months ago. Watching Craig succeed despite the best efforts of the Littlefield regime was inspirational, and seeing him return to the organization is like having a favorite cousin return from the war. Who cares if he's missing a few toes? He's back where he belongs.

It doesn't hurt that the move makes sense for the organization, either. We've been using the immortal Matt Kata to man first base at AAA Indianaopolis, and you'd have to think that even a diminished Craig would be able to beat that standard. If he's able to prove that he's healthy, he'd presumably put himself into consideration for a spot on the ML roster, which is good because doing so would help remedy one of the biggest flaws on the current team: A complete and utter lack of bench power.

The Pirates' current roster was constructed through a series of small decisions that all made sense in isolation, but when viewed in aggregate didn't exactly come together like Voltron. We weren't able to find a Nady trade over the offseason, and then elected to keep him as the RF starter rather than a primary 1B/LF/RF backup, which in turn shunted Pearce back to AAA. We entered camp with two positions up for grabs (catcher and CF), and in both cases the power-hitting player won the job, taking Nate and Doumit out of the running for the role of bench thumper. We non-tendred Phelps, since we were unwilling to risk paying him $1M+ in arbitration, and then we didn't attract any of the top NRI power threats (like John Rodriguez or Dallas McPherson). We signed Doug Mientkiewicz to be the backup 1B; while a decent player, he's no power threat. We signed Chris Gomez to be a UT IF, and then apparently concluded that he can't handle shortstop at this point in his career; this gave us a backup 2B/3B with no power and required us to set aside another roster spot for a backup SS, who would also have little power. We stayed committed to Morris in the rotation, necessitating a seven-man pen to help pick up the slack from his frequent early departures, eating up another roster spot. And here we are. We've got five bench bats, and none of 'em have ever hit even 20 homers in any professional season, majors or minors.

If Craig is healthy and productive, he should be an effective remedy for our ills. If not, we could spend a large slice of this year waiting in vain for a rally that'll never come.

Slaughter of the innocents

Baseball America just posted their latest minor league transaction log today. It includes some names on the cut list that should be familiar to anyone who's followed our minor league system over the last few years:

*Jason Sharber, a good-looking righty who hasn't been able to pitch since early 2004 due to a series of arm problems. He was trying a comeback this spring, but things apparently didn't work out, and this is likely the end of his pro career. A look back at Lynchburg's 2002 roster is a good reminder of the inherent instability of young pitching. Every starter on that team looked like one variety or another of prospect, but Burnett and Sharber got hurt, and Jacobsen, Connolly, and Borner were finesse guys who apparently didn't have the stuff to handle the transition to the upper minors. Bennett looks like he's finally establishing himself with the Braves, but even he didn't exactly have a smooth ride to the bigs: He got picked in the Rule 5 draft, had Tommy John surgery, got released, missed the entire 2006 season, and gained more than 50 pounds.

*Cameron Blair, a sixth-round pick from 2005. Blair had the misfortune of being an offensively-minded second baseman whose bat didn't translate to the bigs. He looked pretty lost from day one, and also spent part of 2006 on the restricted list for reasons that have never really become clear. I don't think he'll be missed, but it's a pretty strong indictment of your scouts when they miss this badly on a fairly high pick, and our success rate on middle infielders in particular has been low in recent years. Which brings us to our next guy...

*Taber Lee, the brother of former ML 1B Travis Lee. Taber was our third-round pick in 2002. The selection was pretty roundly criticized in the fan community at the time, as a microcosm for the Creech/Littlefield/McClatchy drafting preferences for gloves over bats, ML proximity over ceiling, and signability over everything else. Regarded as a future utility infielder, Lee was unable to reach even that modest ceiling, as his glove was not as strong as had been previously assumed.

*Mauricio Mendez, one of the three guys we took in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft this year. His stat line was interesting, and I wonder why they didn't take a longer look at him. He's actually the second of our Rule 5 picks this year to depart before suiting up in a game; we also sent Rafael Cruz Chavez to a Mexican team a few months ago.

*Vic Buttler, one of the longest-tenured players in the organization. Part of Mickey White's insanely productive 2000 draft, Buttler joined the franchise in the 14th round as a 19-year-old outfielder from El Camino College. Over eight years, he played at every level of the farm system, making league All-Star teams in 2002 and 2006. If you've seriously followed any of our affiliates for a few years, you've probably seen him play at least once or twice.

Those may be the big names (for varying values of "big"), but there were a lot of other cuts as well. Fairly anonymous guys, drafted in the 30th round, or the 40th, or not at all, who pitched a dozen innings in the GCL, or sat on the bench at State College. They all knew that the odds were long, but they've played baseball all their lives, and they wanted to believe that they'd be the next Mike Piazza (62nd round, '88) or Rob Mackowiak (53rd round, '96). Now, they'll try to catch on with an indy league team, or settle into that sales job. Maybe give coaching a try.

From an institutional standpoint, it's a good thing that the Pirates won't need to fill their short season team with late-round college players anymore, but there's still a certain pathos in watching the guys who didn't have The Right Stuff pack up their gear and go. That's baseball, red in tooth and claw. Every shiny new draft pick is taking someone else's job, and even if you are one of the lucky chosen few with an arm or a bat touched by God, you aren't going to be able to make it to MLB without stepping over the bodies of a dozen other guys who had the same hopes and dreams.

Mr. Kim, come on down

Byung-Hyun Kim is apparently your newest Pirate. Details are sketchy, but the world's most famous Korean submariner (beating out ROKS Chang Bogo) apparently got a major league deal, and will work out of the pen.

On an analytical level, I have absolutely no idea what to expect from him in 2008. He sucked on toast last year, but he hasn't spent the majority of a season in relief in five years, and he's got very unusual stuff and mechanics (as well as significant variations in the quality thereof). With a guy like him, you have to trust the reports from your scouts, because the past performance record may not mean much. This is a particular issue because of the environmental factors in play on his stat line. Kim spent '05 and '06 pitching in Colorado, where the thin air is hard on a guy with a big breaking ball, and then put in most of his '07 with the Marlins, home to the worst defense in the history of the universe. I exaggerate for effect, but not much. Florida had the second-worst DER in baseball last year, ahead of only their neighbors in Tampa. They earned it on merit: By my subjective judgment, a full 5/8 of the guys in their everyday lineup were stretched to the limit defensively at their 2007 position (Jacobs, Uggla, Ramirez, Cabrera, and Willingham, for those of you keeping score at home). As a result, all of the Marlins' pitchers look like crap when you eyeball their stat lines, even with the advantage of a favorable home park. Anyway, the Hardball Times shows a FIP and xFIP that are much better than his actual performance for both 2006 and 2007. The caveats there, of course, are that Kim's unusual characteristics might make him resistant to statistical modeling (since all projections are based around a set of shared assumptions about how pitchers "work", and those assumptions may not be accurate for a guy with his background, training methods, and skill set), and also that the adjusted numbers still aren't very good. Still, he misses a lot of bats, which gives us something that the staff didn't have last year, and a guy who's so hard to predict does have a significant amount of upside in the best-case scenario. We might find out that there's still some juice in his orange when we get him down to Florida.

On a fannish level, I like the move, because Kim's an interesting guy. First and foremost, sidewinders are fun to watch even when they don't pitch well, just because the delivery is so novel in the modern era. Kim's release point is extremely low even among the members of his exclusive club, making him one of the only guys capable of actually throwing a true rising fastball. He's also a genuinely unique personality: The black-belt son of a Tae Kwon Do instructor, who sleeps up to eighteen hours a day, and can drift off at the drop of a hat. There are all kinds of quirky human-interest stories about Kim all over the internet (with this magazine piece from ESPN being a good place to start). He may or may not succeed with the Pirates, but with his "different" nature and his Three True Outcomes style of pitching, at least he won't be boring.

The one cloud in the sky from my fan's perspective is the potential for clubhouse friction if Kuwata also manages to make the team. Historically, there isn't any great love lost between Japan and Korea, and that antipathy definitely extends onto the diamond. For example, Robert Whiting's great book "You Gotta Have Wa" has a story about former ML outfielder Richie Scheinblum, who spent two years in Japan. Scheinblum was having some trouble getting calls from Japanese umpires, but as an English-speaker in a foreign land he lacked any real means of communicating his displeasure. One of his teammates came to his rescue by promising to teach him a taunt that never failed, and soon, Scheinblum was mumbling "You lousy Korean" to the men in blue (and picking up substantial fines every time he did so). That was more than 30 years ago, but the two nations' feelings really haven't changed, as anyone who watched the WBC can tell you. Cross your fingers that both guys can look past the issue and act like professionals.

Sean! Sean! Come back, Sean!

I'll say one thing for Huntington: He hasn't been shy about allowing our failed prospects to ride off into the sunset (or about picking through other people's garbage, for that matter). The Bucs just made the sixth waiver claim of Huntington's brief tenure, grabbing shortstop Ray Olmedo on waivers. To create a spot on the 40-man roster, they designated long-suffering lefty starter Sean Burnett for assignment. If he slips through waivers, the team can either give him an outright assignment to Indy or cut him loose entirely. If he's claimed, they have ten days to work out a trade with the claiming team(s), and if they haven't made a deal at the end of that time, he's assigned to the team with the highest waiver priority.

There's probably going to be a lot of hand-wringing about the transaction among the sports talk radio set, since Burnett was a big part of the Littlefield regime's spin about the hopeful future, but at this point he's just a 25-year-old lefty with subpar stuff and multiple arm surgeries, who hasn't had a good season at any level since 2003. I wish him well (I wish nearly all ex-Bucs well), but I don't think his (probable) loss is particularly likely to come back and bite us on the butt. Before the injuries, he was always a guy whose bread and butter were his impeccable command and freakish ability to keep the ball in the park, and he hasn't shown either one in quite some time now. He walked seven batters in eleven spring training innings, pitched a fit about not making the team over Gorzelanny, and then walked 39 batters in 70 minor league innings (against only 31 strikeouts). He had put up a 2.45 ERA in 25 innings in the Venezuelan winter League this offseason, but his K/BB was still an uninspiring 11/8, and the level of competition wasn't all that impressive (check the names on their roster). The fairly reliable ZiPS projection system predicted a 6.14 ML ERA for him for 2008. He was also out of options, and as such would've needed to go on waivers if he didn't make the 25-man roster out of spring training. At this point, it's probably best for both sides to go their separate ways.

Olmedo, meanwhile, is a former Reds prospect who has spent parts of the last four seasons in the majors. He's reported to be a very good fielder, and he has spent a fair bit of time at both shortstop and second base. Offensively, he's significantly weaker. He has a career .228/.276/.293 batting line in 403 ML ABs, and a career .284/.340/.371 line in 1088 career AB at AAA. He's got pretty good speed, and his hit chart suggests that he's taking the optimal approach for a player of his skill set: using the whole field to put balls on the ground and run like hell. Like most players with that approach, he doesn't have much power at all, minimizing the chances of an age-related breakout. He's a switch hitter, but isn't notably stronger from one side than the other, and ZiPS projected him as likely being good for a .244/.296/.311 line in 2008.

Olmedo isn't hugely exciting, but I can understand why Huntington wanted to add him. We have fairly little middle infield depth, and Olmedo will provide competition for Brian Bixler and Josh Wilson as utility infield candidates in spring training, with the losers likely ticketed for regular duty at AAA. Bixler is at a double disadvantage there, in that he has an option remaining while the others do not, and that he has some mechanical flaws to his swing that might benefit from additional instruction and regular play in the minors.

To properly leverage a guy like Olmedo, who has basically the same skill set as Abe Nunez, you need to try to maximize his defensive innings and baserunning opportunities, while minimizing his trips to the plate. Ideally, that means pairing him with a good-hitting utility infielder with a weaker glove (probably portrayed here by Chris Gomez). It'll be a good early test for Russell to see how well he implements that plan; Lloyd McClendon failed his test with Noonie, serving notice that game management would be a serious issue on his watch.

Comings and goings

* Running a few steps ahead of a torch-wielding mob, former Pirates GM Dave Littlefield was welcomed into the friendly confines of Wrigley Field today. His new position as a "scout" may seem like a step backward from a career standpoint, but any port looks good in a storm. The Cubs obviously owed him a debt of gratitude after the Aramis Ramirez giveaway, and they could probably see a reasonable return on any investment in Littlefield by soliciting his opinion on baseball matters and then taking the exact opposite course of action.

* In other staffing news, the Pirates have added four new members to their minor league staff. Dejan has all the details. Carlos Garcia's name should probably be familiar to most Pirate fans, and as Dejan's article notes, there's a Cleveland connection to his hiring as well. Kimera Bartee basically built a ten-year pro career around running and throwing, so in that respect he's at least an interesting choice as outfield and baserunning coordinator. Troy Buckley was the college pitching coach of Jared Hughes, our fourth-round draft pick in 2006, and he had worked with Huntington on the Expos' minor league staff. BA has an interesting post about Buckley here. He's saying the right things, and while that isn't enough in and of itself, it's certainly an improvement on some past hires (like Jeff Manto).

* Ex-Pirate prospect Javier Guzman (see Wilbur's report here) signed a minor league deal with the Atlanta Braves. On the one hand, this is mildly disappointing, in that the Pirates already had little middle infield depth in the minors, and now we're losing a guy who spent several years on the 40-man roster. On the other hand, Guzman has never shown much promise with the bat since his 2004 campaign at Hickory, his fielding remains wildly inconsistent, and the Dominican visa scandal revealed him as being two years older than everybody had previously thought (although most web sources haven't taken note of the change - the Altoona Curve's website being one notable exception).

* Finally, it appears that the Pirates' AAA affiliate isn't going anywhere. The Indianapolis Indians are turning record profits, and they're giving signs that they'd like to extend their agreement with the Pirates when the existing deal expires after the 2008 season. Having good minor league affiliates is important for a number of reasons:
  A reasonable geographical location allows for quicker turnaround times on promotions, while also making it easier for minor league staff to travel between affiliates to evaluate and compare notes (we had gotten burned in this area a few years back, when our AAA affiliate was all the way up in Calgary).
  A neutral park and league environment makes it easier to evaluate players and teach them good habits; conversely, a skewed environment (like High Desert in the A+ Cal League) teaches players bad habits and makes it harder to sort prospects from suspects.
  A high-quality home stadium with good facilities makes it easier to attract quality minor league free agents.
All that aside, it's not entirely a good thing that the Indians are so happy with us. They like being our affiliate in large part because we've given them competitive rosters, and we've given them such competitive rosters because we haven't had many actual prospects to promote to AAA, and as such have had to make due with large amounts of (productive) veteran filler. Hopefully, they'll be happy with us in the future... but not ecstatic.