The Pittsburgh Pirates failed to sign any significant free agents this off-season, nearly guaranteeing themselves yet a record 17th consecutive losing season.
Good for them. They're finally on the right track towards success. If anyone doubts this, may I present the Tampa Bay Rays.
Remember 2000, when the Devil Rays cashed in their draft chips for sluggers Jose Canseco, Fred McGriff and Vinny Castillo three years beyond their expiration dates? Calling that the "Hit Show" was a typo: they left out an "S." Remember 2003, when the same desperate outfit relinquished a useful cog in their youth movement -- Randy Winn -- for a manager? A manager! Billy Beane must have peed his pants over that one.
The erstwhile Devil, now Rays, learned their lessons the hard way and turned a six-pack of first picks into the talented core that skipped to the World Series last season. And that is what you call a blueprint.
It's a blueprint that president Frank Coonelly and GM Neil Huntington have demonstrated they will follow carefully in the Steel City. The trades during the 2008 campaign of Xavier Nady's career year, Damaso Marte and Jason Bay for a boatload of youngsters is the right idea not withstanding questions about the quality of the haul. During the offseason they dangled aging shortstop Jack Wilson to the rest of MLB, recognizing that his halcyon days, such as they were, will not coincide with the franchise's. When no one appeared desperate enough to offer attractive prospects for him, the Pirates put him back in their pocket for in-season discussions with a contender that loses its shortstop and is willing to pony up what Pittsburgh needs.
The team now has an intriguing roster of young (and inexpensive) pitchers -- Snell, Duke, Gorzellany, Maholm -- and players -- Ryan Doumit, the LaRoches, Freddy Sanchez and Jose Tabata that is at least two years and two sluggers away from contention, a country mile closer than they've been all century.
Peter Angelos, of all people, is learning this lesson as well. After dabbling in the decrepit sluggers market (Miguel Tejada, Javy Lopez, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa) with disastrous results three years ago, the Orioles reversed field last year and dropped the Human Insurance Premium Inflator, Erik Bedard, on Seattle for mega-prospect Adam (not Pac Man) Jones and a package of minor league hurlers.
The Orioles' pitch for Mark Teixeira last week was based on the presumption that he'll be productive long after Jones, Ryan Freel and some minor league call-ups ripen. Baltimore is at once farther along and farther from contention than Pittsburgh because they play in the AL Beast. They will need to cultivate the farm and enter the Big Boy auction each year, making sure to get the right parts -- as Teixeira would have been -- in tandem with the development of their prospects. More than anything, the O's need pitching, pitching and more pitching.
Why are teams suddenly figuring it out? One part of the answer is obvious: there are no longer any Major League franchises operating on the outmoded principles of the 1970s. Every club has a stable of analysts crunching the numbers like Bill James in Boston, Keith Woolner in Cleveland and Oakland's Billy Beane. While baseball reporters still hang their hats on misleading stats like RBIs and pitching wins, every team in baseball understands the superiority of VORP (value over replacement player) EQA (a hitter's value expressed in a single number that looks like a batting average, but taking into account his on-base ability, base runing and power) and other more subtle and revealing measurements. The inefficiencies in the baseball marketplace that Oakland cherry-picked for a decade are now smaller and more difficult to exploit, because everyone is doing the same thing, at least to some degree.
GMs don't have the luxury that columnists and broadcasters have to be 30 years behind the state of the art, because the results of their stupidity are published in the sports section daily. The columnist versions of Dave Littlefield -- he of no clue -- are voting members of the BBWAA enjoying job security and devoted followings.
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