Murray Chass spouts non-sense

Murray Chass is an idiot. I know he worked for the New York Times, but that may just prove my point. His article attacking the Pirates is ridiculous. It is ridiculous for several reasons.

I will be the first to admit that Morgan/Burnett deal to the Nationals for Milledge/Hanrahan is a deal where I think the Pirates may lose out in the end. But it needs to be judged fairly. Chass dismisses the age difference and notes that Morgan was a “rookie who showed he was ready to play in the majors.” True, but he had been up and down the year before never able to show he was ready. And a 29 year old rookie is pretty old. The years he should have been ready he was unable to beat out Chris Duffy for the center field spot. That is reason to worry that maybe the results this year are atypical.

The second problem I have is that he does not take notice of the two player deal. He gives it an off hand mention. Burnett was decent against lefties, but horrible against right handers. Burnett was never going to be a dominate bullpen pitcher. I still believe that Joel Hanrahan was the main player in the deal. The Pirates may have had to give up what they did to get the hard throwing bullpen guy who himself was a former closer. The Pirates pen needs that sort of help.

It was also unfair to evaluate the deal as if Morgan was being replaced by Milledge. Chass rightly notes that McCutchen was already in the majors with Morgan so there was no need to make room for him. But Chass fails to note that Milledge was on the DL and then rehabed in the minors for some time before joining the Pirates. Who then replaced Morgan? It was none other than Garrett Jones who is hitting about .300, just about the same as Nyjer Morgan with a notable difference. Garrett Jones hits homeruns. Maybe Chass should have at least interacted with the idea of making room for Garrett Jones. Jones is a completely different type of player than Morgan. Morgan is a speedster without power. Jones (who is fairly speedy himself) is power hitter something desperately needed by the Pirates. It appears Jones will led the Pirates in homeruns despite not playing the full season. Oh, and when Milledge did come the majors, they moved Dwelven Young to second to make room for Milledge.

The worst part of the article was the horrible attack on the Pirates as wasting money. The Pirates are paying their players post trades about 20 million and are going to get about 40 million in revenue sharing. Thus for Chass the money is wasted and not being spent. That ignores the fact that the Pirates are spending large amounts of money on draft picks. See what they did with Pedro Alvarez as proof. They spent about 10 million in signing their draft picks including inking all of their first 14 picks and 15 of their top 20. They used more than the slot suggestions to get good talented high school pitchers to skip college and come to the Pirates. This does not even cover their new facility in the Dominican and their efforts to sign a big name 16 year old down there, which takes money.

The Pirates are close to returning to prominence. It is popular to kick them now, but they are really taking the right steps. They will have no problem showing MLB where the money is going, and in a few years they will be a force on the field. I hope Chass issues an apology when they do. But more importantly, I hope he understands baseball a little better. Not every team can do what the Yankees do and just buy everything that moves.

I will be writing some follow up posts on some of the issues brought out by Mr. Chass and his sorry excuse for an article.