AGRI Biz

All other things being equal, it's clearly better to chalk up a "W" than an "L." Nevertheless, some wins are better than others. The wins to be happy about are ones where opponents were clearly out of it, and are likely to stand up under most different sets of circumstances. On the other hand, the Pittsburgh Pirates won last night, not because they posted winning metrics, but because they were playing an ...

Dan McCutchen has won the "fifth starter" job for the Pittsburgh Pirates beating out Kevin Hart. The FIRST fifth starter role, that is. But if history holds, there will be plenty more "fifth starter" chances for people like Hart, and even Jeff Karstens. Last year, according to FanGraph's Marc Hulet, only two teams, the Colorado Rockies and Chicago Cubs, had five full time starters who all pitched in 24 or more games. By ...

At the beginning of the 2008 season, the bookmakers gave 250 to 1 against the Tampa Bay Rays winning the World Series that year. The Rays in fact failed to do so, but came a lot closer than almost anyone would have expected. Going into the Fall Classics, the odds were 7 to 5 in their favor, which is to say that someone who had paid "$1" for the bet, could ...

I was never a fan of Andy LaRoche's brother Adam, and sharp-eyed readers may have noticed my tepid acceptance of Andy in the past. But in one respect, the younger LaRoche is already "Jack Wilson," which is high praise coming from yours truly. That is, in terms of "citizenship." He spent half an hour giving the "grand tour" of PNC Park to a boy in wheelchair. That was above and beyond the ...

A few years ago, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a superstar outfielder named Jason Bay and a very questionable pitcher named Oliver Perez, while the Mets had a promising, if undeveloped, outfielder, Lastings Milledge, whom they traded to the Washington Nationals for Ryan Church. Now the Pirates have both Milledge and Church, while the Mets have Bay and Perez. Neither the Pirates nor the Mets have outfielder Xavier Nady, who was the consideration ...

All right, it's only grapefruit league. These games don't "count." Even so, there are a couple of former cellar dwellers that were touted as turnaround prospects, that don't look like such in spring training. One of them is the Washington Nationals. Another is the Pittsburgh Pirates. As a consolation, the World Series champion Yankees are 5-7, with their formerly vaunted starters, CC Sabathia and Joba Chamberlain, struggling mightily. The Pirates are ...

At the end of 2007, the Detroit Tigers needed a new shortstop. The Pirates had one, Jack Wilson, that they were willing to trade. Detroit was willing to part with an advanced pitching prospect, Jair Jurrjens, who almost came to Pittsburgh, but the Tigers finally took the Atlanta Braves' Edgar Renteria instead. This choice was made through the rearview mirror. Renteria did have a better 2007 than Wilson. But the value of the ...

Charlie Morton's 2009 ERA of 4.55 shouts "league average."  But that's exactly what he is not, because he got there in a funny way. My father (a retired civil engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University) used to say that there were two types of "B" students.  One type made "straight Bs." The other (rarer) kind made half As and half Cs. The latter were the ones to watch, because if they brought ...

Paul Maholm may or may not be the best pitcher in the Pirates' rotation. But he is clearly the one to beat for front-runner. A stalking horse, by definition, is a pretty good racehorse that may or may not be the best, but is certainly good enough to set the pace for the others. In short, his defining characteristic is reliability. That pretty much describes Maholm. As late as the beginning of ...

Imagine a Pirates rotation with the 2007 ("star") versions of pitchers Ian Snell and Tom Gorzelanny, together with Paul Maholm and Zach Duke at their later (2008-2009) selves. Imagine that the fifth starter is actually better than fifth starter-caliber. That's what the Pirates may finally have in 2010. Old Pirate standbys Maholm and Duke are (slightly) better than league average pitchers (by half a game or so). They don't look that way because ...