Pirate fans are, as a rule, a pretty damaged bunch when it comes to evaluating baseball decisions. That’s warranted given some of the awful decisions this club made between 1998 and 2007. But it’s worth remembering that to have 18 (or 19) straight losing seasons, there has to be some bad luck involved, too. Bad luck like dumping off a 27-year old player almost 1600 career plate appearances and a slugging percentage of about .400 and watching him turn into Harmon Killebrew within two years.
Waiting for every player under the age of 30 that the Pirates get rid of to turn into Jose Bautista is just cruel and unusual punishment. Players with 1600 at bats don’t go from fringey utility guys to AL MVP candidates overnight. It’s why Bautista was such a crazy story last year. Neal Huntington undoubtedly made a mistake in not seeing something that JP Ricciardi and Alex Anthopoulos saw in Bautista, but no one in Toronto saw what was coming last year, either.
Think of all of the youngish players with potential upside that Huntington has traded away or dumped off in the last three years: players like Nate McLouth, Nyjer Morgan, and Ian Snell, to name a few. Maybe the Pirates didn’t get huge ransoms in return for those guys, but the team certainly doesn’t miss them. As Pirate fans, there’s plenty to worry about this year without worrying over whether Andy LaRoche or Lastings Milledge are going to somehow become “the next Jose Bautista.”
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