Castillo, I've got some bad news: you suck. Hate for you to find out like this.

Littlefield has put himself in this position. The Pirates talent evaluation in the last 10 years has been so piss poor that players who aren't playing really have no idea whether they're good or whether they're just rotting the bench. A guy like Castillo could have been potentially useful with some instruction, but they over-promoted him. The guy only has 13 AB at AAA in his career. He hasn't gotten over 400 at bats in either of his two MLB seasons. The guy had a rough age 22 year at Altoona in AA (287/339/390). If you bring a guy like that up straight out of AA, what do you expect will happen? The one thing about Castillo is that his fielding went from good to awful so dramatically that it makes it hard for me to stick up for him.

In general though, just another screw up by a screwed up organization. I heard something about another organization the other day that applies to the Pirates:

It's not that the Pirate organization seeks out guys who have no initiative. The organization itself seems to destroy the initiative of all players who come into contact with it. The whole situation is rapidly approach St. Louis Browns proportion.

If you're not playing regularly with the Pirates, where in God's name could they trade you to get that opportunity?

If you're not playing regularly with the Pirates, where in God's name could they trade you to get that opportunity?

The Royals.

Yeah, I guess so. Boy, taking out the fact that the Royals, for a while, were a well-run franchise, Missouri's American League entry has been the baseball equivalent of Devil's Island for a century.

Jose, if anybody wanted you, do you think you'd still be in Pittsburgh? Keerist.

I kinda feel sorry for the Pirates..they have decent pitching core, and what looks like a decent offensive core, and they are flushing it away.
Watched the game yday. Just looked like noone was having fun on the Pirates. Everyone was crawling to the plate, shoulders were slumping when there was an out made, just a bad bad vibe from the team. Maybe Jim " I am better than you, I don't deserve this bunch of bums" Tracy is not the answer.
Last year, even the Braves were getting thrashed, they looked like they were enjoying being out there. The Pirates looked like they wanted to be home....

"...and what looks like a decent offensive core..."

You need to look more closely. We've got Bay and LaRoche, and then a bunch of guys who are about 30th-40th percentile for their respective positions, with almost nothing on the farm.

I agree about the Tracy thing, though. He's really good at claiming credit when things go right, but when they fall apart it's never his fault.

Operation Shutdown Jr.?

I agree about the Tracy thing, though. He's really good at claiming credit when things go right, but when they fall apart it's never his fault.

Primary exhibit: The 2005 Los Angeles Dodgers.

Most of the things that went wrong with the Dodgers that year weren't Tracy's fault. Sure, he made some questionable moves, but all managers do. I still want him to take the blame for giving Jason Phillips more starts at first than he should have, but whatever.

At the end of the season, DePo did the rounds on the TV and radio broadcasts and kind of issued a "my bad" type of thing. Through the whole thing, Tracy maintained his innocence thing and I'm pretty sure that he never played the "When crap goes this bad, we all share fault".