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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Post-Gazette: Coonelly, Huntington: Pirates seek rich, deep draft

“President, GM address questions about No. 2 pick, money matters, and what happened with Wieters”

Q: Obviously, neither of you was here when the Pirates bypassed Matt Wieters last summer. But I also know that both of you have done due diligence on what came before, just as I know you have scouts still on your staff who were involved. What is the best way, based on the information you have, to explain what happened?

COONELLY: Let me start by saying I don’t think it’s very productive to engage in that. But my diligence has led me to believe that, one, the scouts we’ve retained, we like and think are productive members of the organization. Two, the decision was made by the former baseball operations department to take Danny Moskos over Matt Wieters. That was their decision.

Q: For baseball reasons only?

COONELLY: That was their baseball decision. It was not a decision that was dictated to them by ownership. I do know that much.

Thanks to Bucs Dugout.

Repoz Posted: May 27, 2008 at 07:40 AM | 8 comment(s)
Related News: General, Pittsburgh

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1. ECBucs Posted: May 27, 2008 at 08:06 AM (#2795280)

Who will get to majors first Wieters or Moskos?

Reports have Moskos hitting 87-91 on rader gun consistently.

I know the Bucs over drafted him at pick number 4 but he was still rated as first round talent.

Is he trying to hard now or was he just not first round talent in first place?

On the other hand, struggling as a starter while working on pitches, command issues could help his develop in the long run.

2. Shooty Is A One Man Legion Posted: May 27, 2008 at 08:16 AM (#2795284)

I recommend they go for the Belgians if they want a rich, deep draft. The Germans get the hype, but no one crafts a beer the way the Belgians do. I'm getting thirsty just thinking about it. Thanks Pirates!

3. rfloh Posted: May 27, 2008 at 09:29 AM (#2795339)

Duvel. Chimay. Leffe.

4. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Griffin (Vlad) Posted: May 27, 2008 at 12:26 PM (#2795536)

"Is he trying to hard now or was he just not first round talent in first place?"

I think it's more the latter. It shouldn't come as a surprise that he had better stuff as a reliever than as a starter, since that's the way it works for most pitchers. He probably had first-round talent anyway since he was a college lefty with a good slider, but I had him pegged before the draft as the one guy who was way too high in BA's rankings. That's at least half of the reason why I predicted pre-draft that the Pirates would take him, actually...

I'm convinced that Littlefield took Moskos because he thought that Moskos could be moved quickly enough as a reliever to potentially give Littlefield some job security if he managed to hold the job into 2008. That'd explain why they used him exclusively out of the pen after he signed. The actual needs of the franchise didn't factor into it.

5. Shooty Is A One Man Legion Posted: May 27, 2008 at 12:31 PM (#2795544)

Duvel. Chimay. Leffe.

Those are great beers, and they're just run-of-the-mill for the Belgians. God, how I love that country.

6. Kyle S at work Posted: May 27, 2008 at 12:41 PM (#2795560)

The truth is, not every player we pick is someone we think can make it to the majors. There are some in later rounds we're just taking a flyer on, maybe someone who asked for too much money but we want to see if he bluffed and was wrong. There are other guys we might not think can play above Class AA, but they're a gamer and can set the right tempo for other players in our system. And some of those guys do make it.

I thought this quote was interesting and an honest admission of the sort you rarely see by GMs in interviews. Unfortunately for the Pirates, Littlefield used to take those guys starting in the second round.

7. WTM Posted: May 27, 2008 at 04:19 PM (#2795838)

I thought this part was pretty interesting:

I can tell you that, of the top nine or 10 players on our board, almost every one of our supervisors has seen every one of those players. That gives us nine or 10 reports on each kid. We could have three looks on a 10th-rounder.

Overall, our number of scouts now is in the upper half of the industry. We're a little heavier on the top than we'd like to be, but we have some very young area scouts, and we feel we can get a lot of energy, a lot of production from them.

Plus, we've changed the valuation process for each player to a system that allows for us to have a detailed, comprehensive look where we're all on the same page.

I wonder whether the "top heavy" part indicates that they've added more supervision than usual to make up for the fact that most of their area scouts are the same guys who scouted under the previous regime.

8. Dr Love Posted: May 27, 2008 at 04:23 PM (#2795843)

I wonder whether the "top heavy" part indicates that they've added more supervision than usual to make up for the fact that most of their area scouts are the same guys who scouted under the previous regime.

Sounds like they've got a few more supervisors than usual because they've got a bunch of young, inexperienced scouts.

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Post-Gazette: Coonelly, Huntington: Pirates seek rich, deep draft

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