2010 Year in Review

2010 was a year that really illustrated the manic nature of rooting for a rebuilding baseball team. If you’d told me on December 31, 2009 that the Pirates would end 2010 as a 105-loss team, it would’ve been easy to assume then that 2010 was a terrible year for the Pirates. As always, though, things run deeper than that.

Obviously it was a terrible season in some regards; the team played about as poorly as possible for much of the season and just about every single “this talented guy failed with Team X but maybe the Pirates can bring him around” player flamed out in spectacular fashion. Lastings Milledge and Andy LaRoche aren’t even Pirates anymore, Jeff Clement is an afterthought, Charlie Morton had a terrible year, Brad Lincoln threw batting practice, Aki Iwamura, Ryan Church, and Bobby Crosby were disasters, and Garrett Jones confirmed our worst suspicions about the staying power of his storybook 2009 breakout. It was awful stuff to watch. It was why the Pirates lost 105 games. 

But we knew the Pirates were going to be bad and we knew all those players wouldn’t hit and it’s hard to call any one of the guys listed above a vital part of the team’s future. The younger, more important players had good years. Andrew McCutchen’s rookie season wasn’t a flash in the pan as he just about duplicated it statistically, despite a mid-season swoon. Neil Walker was a hugely positive surprise with a rookie year that came out of nowhere. Jose Tabata kept hitting in the Majors the same way he did all the way through the minors. Pedro Alvarez’s rookie performance was spotty, but occasionally excellent and certainly enough to provide hope that he’s got good things in the future. Once Ross Ohlendorf recovered from his back problems, he pitched better in 2010 than he did in his surprising 2009 season. Even Charlie Morton showed a little flash in the pan at the end of the season

And despite a slew of injuries, the season wasn’t lost in the minors, either. The Pirates ended the year with four pretty decent pitching prospects in Double-A Altoona in Bryan Morris, Jeff Locke, Rudy Owens, and Justin Wilson. Tony Sanchez and Starling Marte sandwiched good numbers around their injuries, and the high-upside pitchers from the 2009 draft all had decent debuts. The Pirates added a ton of talent in the draft in the form of Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie, while they probably made the steal of the trade deadline in turning Octavio Dotel into Andrew Lambo and James McDonald. The injuries, especially to guys like Sanchez, Marte, Brock Holt, Victor Black, and others are tough to deal with, but the Pirates’ system is still in good shape entering 2011, and that’s especially impressive as they graduated Walker, Tabata, and Alvarez from the prospect ranks this past year. 

Prior to 2010, I was pretty vocal in my opinion that if the Pirates were going to be bad, I didn’t care how bad they were. That the difference between 105 losses and 80 losses is meaningless. That it’s better to get the best pick possible in the draft to rebuild the system than it is to try and win 82 games just to say that you won 82 games. I’m still pretty sure these things are true, but I hope I never have to watch the Pirates lose 105 games in a season again. I don’t think they will, mind you (of course, I would’ve said the exact same thing a year ago, but I digress), but I’m not sure I can handle watching another team that only wins 23 times total in June, July, and August. Maybe in three or five or seven years we’ll look back at this awful season as the season that let us draft Anthony Rendon and he became an important cog in the World Champion Pirate Machine, but at some point fandom and self-respect and sanity begin to encroach on logic and the Pirates came awful close to reaching that point in the year that ends today. 

I guess it’s most fair to say that 2010 can only fairly be judged in the context of the team’s future. If they do turn things around under Neal Huntington’s watch, maybe some of the things that happened with the young players in this past season or some of the players that this disaster allowed us to draft will be hugely important and then we’ll be able to look back on 105-losses and laugh. I don’t see that coming in 2011, though, even if I don’t have a huge problem with the offseason signings the Pirates have made. 

That being said, I’m still weirdly excited about the 2011 season. I want to see Andrew McCutchen and Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata and Neil Walker and how their careers progress. I want to see if Ross Ohlendorf and James McDonald and Charlie Morton can thrive under a new pitching coach. With the 2009 draftees making full-season debuts and the 2010 draftees entering the system, the lower minor leagues should be fun to watch this coming year. There’s a lot to worry about with the logistics of how the minor league talent will mesh with the players already in the Majors and if it can all actually come together, but I think even being able to worry about that kind of thing puts us ahead of where the team was in 2007. And really, I’m pretty sure the Pirates won’t lose 105 games in 2011. I’m serious this time.