Absolute zero is the coldest temperature theoretically possible, but this temperature cannot possibly be reached by any means because no matter how insulated the system, no matter how remote the nebula, nothing can be completely detached from the entropy of the universe. This is oddly comforting and is also the reason that even the Pittsburgh Pirates can have an all-decade team, even without a winning season. You can find the other entries in this series here.
Right Field, Brian Giles- 2000-2003
As I mentioned in the Jason Bay post, there are two corner outfielder that deserve to be on this team regardless of positional designation. Giles gets the right field nod because 1.) he played there a little bit early in his Pirate career and 2.) Jason Bay’s arm shouldn’t be in right field, even on a fictional team.
Giles was, simply, the best player to put on a Pirate uniform at any point during this 17-year skid. His first year in a Pirate uniform (1999, which technically can’t count for consideration here) was good, and his 2000 season was better as he topped his .418 OBP in 1999 with a ridiculous .432 number in 2000. His 2002 season was one of the best offensive seasons in team history; he hit ..298/.450/.622 with 38 homers and 37 doubles. His OPS+ was 177 that year on a team where the next best regular was Craig Wilson at 107.
It’s not easy to understate how good Giles was in his short time as a Pirate. His name is all over the team’s all-time leaderboard. He’s got the second best career OBP (behind Jake Stenzel, who had 1000 fewer plate appearances), the best career slugging percentage, OPS, and OPS+, he’s sixth in home runs despite a relatively short Pirate career. I could go on forever; he homered more regularly than Willie Stargell (and anyone in Pirate history not named Ralph Kiner), despite his huge power numbers he never struck out more than 80 times in a season, etc. etc.
I’m finding it hard to say more nice things about Giles’ offense (maybe because he had a reputation as a bit of a jerk and so he was never really my favorite player), but in his two years and change as the left fielder at PNC Park, he delievered two of the better memories most people have of the park. The first, of course, is his walk-off grand slam off of Billy Wagner that capped a seven-run ninth inning rally against the Astros in July of 2001.
I mean, are you serious? That green line flat-lined at zero when the Astros scored two in the top of the ninth to go up 8-2. If you check the play log, the Pirates’ win expectancy was actually at 0.0% after John Vander Wal flied out to make the second out with nobody on base in the ninth. When Giles stepped to the plate, the WE was still only 9.9%. Just an unbelievable game.
The second moment that sticks out in my mind is his amazing catch at the short left-field wall in 2003, where he dug his spikes into the wall and elevated way above the six foot wall to steal a home run away from Brandon Phillips, then of the Indians (the only account I can find of it is this Ron Cook column). That catch kept the Pirates within striking distance of the Tribe and eventually win in 15 innings for the second straight night (the first night was on a Randall Simon walk-off homer, the second on a wild pitch that allowed Abe Nunez to score … what a team).
If Giles had played for someone other than the Pirates, he might have an MVP award to his name from some time between 1999 and 2002. Instead, we get to remember him as the best player from an awful stretch of baseball.
Honorable mention: Strictly in terms of right fielders, Reggie Sanders deserves a mention for his great 2003 season. And Xavier Nady was pretty decent in his time in Pittsburgh, especially considering his career year in 2008 and the nice haul trading him to the Yankees brought in return.
Dishonorable mention: Jeromy Burnitz. We’re not going to say any more about him. And also, Matt Lawton’s ridiculous defense in front of the Clemente Wall in 2005 deserves a mention, though he was a very good hitter for the Pirates that year. I think I tried to keep a running tally of how many singles he misplayed into triples that year during this blog’s first season and eventually gave up.
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