19 to 21

Actually, that is about how many All-Stars the Pirates have supplied to the major leagues over the past 15 years or so, it’s also,

Baseball... Then and Now

Volume 6, #26, July 29, 2008

News Item: July 29, 1915 – A 41-year old Honus Wagner hits a grand slam to help the Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 8-2.

It may be hard for baseball fans under the age of 20 to believe, but major league baseball was once played in Western Pennsylvania.

Even harder to swallow, in light of the current minor league status of the Pittsburgh Pirates, is the undeniable fact, found in many history books, that, not only was major league baseball played near the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, but it was indeed played there for more than 100 years (or up until 1992.) Possibly most remarkable of all, the best team in baseball called Pittsburgh home around the turn of the last century and, as recently as the late 1970s, Pittsburgh still had a pretty good claim to hosting the best diamond aggregation in the land.

So what happened? How is it that what was once the home of The Flying Dutchman, Frank Clarke, the Waner Brothers, Max Carey, Pie Traynor, Roberto Clemente, Maz and Willie Stargell (among others) was apparently relegated (to use the British soccer term) to the second division (ditto) following the 1992 season? How is it that this same organization has practically assured itself in 2008 of a 16th consecutive losing season – an accomplishment that will match that of its brethren from the eastern end of the state during a period (1933 to 1948) when they were so undercapitalized that even the “Lifebuoy” sign on the Baker Bowl wall couldn’t hide that fact that they stunk? How is it that this same crew of Buccos (as they were colloquially known) is now most certainly a minor league team, while still being erstwhile members of the National League?

Make no mistake – there is a de facto minor league team playing in that tiny new ballpark in Pittsburgh. You don’t agree? Then why build a stadium that seats less than 40,000 people? You ever see a minor league crowd of more than 38,000? Furthermore, what has been the only, the sole, function of Organized Baseball’s minor leagues since the Giants and Dodgers moved west some 50 years ago? Since the demise of the Pacific Coast League as a somewhat viable stand-along entity, minor league baseball has existed for one reason only – to act as a farm system, to provide players to major league teams. And that is exactly what the Pittsburgh Pirates have been doing since the close of the 1992 season. Pirates fans – such as there are any left – can make all the excuses they want about small markets and under capitalization (What’s the problem in Pennsylvania… hasn’t there ever been enough money in the state?) but that doesn’t change the fact that the Pirate organization has been hit with a plague of biblical proportions since 1992. A plague of several generations of bad management. Since the close of the 1992 season, the Pirates have divested themselves, by one means or another, of a veritable All-Star team of players, and all in deals that netted the Bucco organization little, if anything in return. Sure, all major league teams make bad trades, waive the wrong players, let some stars walk through free agency. But not like this. Looking strictly at transactions wherein the players leaving Pittsburgh had at least, a couple of above average years remaining in their careers, and where the players who came back to Pittsburgh didn’t come near to providing the Pirates with matching value (or, in some cases, the Pirates received no players in return), you can put together a pretty fair team of ex-Pirates who were sent packing from the Smoky City for one reason of another…

C – Jason Kendall

1B – Matt Stairs

2B – Jeff King

SS – Jay Bell

3B – Aramis Ramirez

OF – Barry Bonds

OF – Jose Guillen

OF – Reggie Sanders

PR – Kenny Lofton

SP – Doug Drabek

SP – Jason Schmidt

SP – Bronson Arroyo

SP – Tim Wakefield

SP – Esteban Loaiza

RP – Dan Plesac

RP – Duaner Sanchez

Stairs, with a 119 career OPS+, Guillen (OPS+ years of 142, 121, 116 and 116 since leaving Pittsburgh) and Jeff King, who hit 52 home runs with 205 RBIs for the Royals in two years, are the only position players not to make an All-Star team, and Wakefield is the only starter not to make it, despite being good enough to pitch for 16 years. And this is just a partial list of the players the Pirates have gotten rid of without equal return over the past 15+ years. (You could even throw in a pretty fair manager, Jim Leyland.) You’d have some pretty fair additional starting pitchers if you need them, including three 20-game winners, namely Danny Jackson, Denny Neagle and Jon Lieber. (Plus Elmer Dessens, for good measure.) The only stretch on this list is Kendall, who has been sort of mediocre since leaving Pittsburgh, but is still a starting catcher, a former All-Star, and is now starting for a team contending for the NL Central title, the Milwaukee Brewers. Every other player on this list, 20 in all, either left Pittsburgh due to a bad trade, or was waived/released (Wakefield, Arroyo, Sanchez, Dessens), or hit the road as a free agent (Bonds, Drabek, Sanders, Stairs), or, in the case of Jackson, left as part of the expansion draft.

How unbalanced a record is this? Only four players of any significance (that is, players who were decent players after they left Pittsburgh) brought back any kind of equal return for the Pirates. Those trades were…

Pirates traded…for

Ricardo Rincon for Brian Giles

Brian Giles for Jason Bay and Oliver Perez

Oliver Perez for Xavier Nady

Mike Gonzalez for Adam LaRoche

And what do the first three of these deals have in common? The Pirates made a great trade for Giles… and then they shipped him off to San Diego for two pretty good players, one of whom, Perez, was then sent away to the Mets for Nady. Of course, Nady was just traded over the weekend to the Yankees for a couple of CDs of Bob Prince’s Greatest Hits. In other words, at this point, despite actually making four good trades over the past 15 years, all the Pirates have to show for them are Jason Bay (also rumored to be on his way out the door) and Adam LaRoche. Giles, Perez and Nady are now gone (and thriving elsewhere) as well.

This, if nothing else, gives some historical perspective to last week’s trade between the Pirates and the Yankees. Xavier Nady (and his 141 OPS+) and Damaso Marte (and his 122 ERA+) to a team desperate for corner outfield and bullpen help, for four minor leaguers, none of whom was named Ian Kennedy or Phil Hughes, and who no one outside of the editorial staff of Baseball America has ever heard of. Nor are they likely to be heard from again, for that matter… unless Jeff Karstens gives up 10 runs in his first start in black and gold. (Check out his record with the Yankees – it’s not pretty.) Just before the deal went down, one pundit wrote to the effect that the Pirates were not obligated to trade anyone, since they weren’t a farm club for the rest of major league baseball and they were currently committed to building a better team while trying to avoid a 16th straight losing season. Guess again.

Bottom line? The Pirates have been supplying a lot of talent, in some cases established talent, in some cases future talent, to major league clubs over the past 15 years, and they haven’t been getting anywhere near equal value back. They have been MLB’s farm system. They have been a minor league operation. They serve a minor league function.

This distressing state of affairs, it should be noted, is NOT a product of the same set of circumstances that surrounded the Pirates’ second-worst stretch of futility in the middle years of the 20th Century, that being from 1949 to 1957. During that time, Pittsburgh ran off nine straight losing seasons, finishing sixth, eighth, seventh, eighth, eighth, eighth, eighth, seventh and seventh and losing 100+ games in three consecutive years (52, 53 and 54). The difference in that swoon was that Branch Rickey took over a going-nowhere Pirates franchise before the 1951 season and eventually, if painfully, built the team (originally known as the Rickey Dinks) that won the 1960 World Series. The 1955 Pirates that finished last with a record of 60-96 had Roberto Clemente, Bob Friend, Vernon Law, Dick Groat and ElRoy Face on the roster.

It may not be any consolation to the present day Bucco Boosters, but the phenomenon of a so-called major league team serving as a feeder to other major league teams is hardly unique to the current situation in Pittsburgh. The Boston Red Sox served that function for the Yankees in the early 1920s while the Kansas City Athletics performed the same duties for the same team in the mid and late 1950s. Another, more general parallel could said to be what happened in Philadelphia in the years immediately before World War 1 and during the depths of the Depression, when Connie Mack broke up his two great teams by sending stars all over the American League and getting almost nothing in return. And, if you go back into the syndicate era of the National League (the 1890s) you will find Cleveland doing the honors for St. Louis, Baltimore sending players to Brooklyn, and Louisville acting as a farm club for, that's right, the Pirates. How do you think Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke ended up in Pittsburgh? You know the saying… what goes around, comes around.

-- John Shiffert