ChadBradfordWannabe Posted: (#2463733)
I think I'm going to apply for the job with the Pirates....Do you think they might make me Scouting Director/Asst GM off a few articles?
Who throws hard for the Pirates that I can analyze to kiss up to them?

they would surely give you a job if you can fix the Duke.

Rajai Davis still has a chance to be a major league center fielder. Not a star, but he's not far from being a .280/.340/.410 guy with blazing speed and plus defense, and that plays. I watched Davis play every day for a year when he was in Altoona (I was logging games there for Baseball Info Solutions in 2005), and he has all the physical tools you look for in a speed guy and a decent idea of the strike zone. Davis is old for a prospect, but he got a late start in baseball and is really just rounding into form.

I'm not saying he'll definitely be a quality major league regular, but he's already a quality fourth outfielder and could still improve. This was an absolutely abysmal trade, even worse than Wheeler-for-Wigginton. Always count on Littlefield to blow the circuits out of our hardwired little minds when it comes to astonishing stupidity.

Further proof that Pirates ownership wants to lose 95+ every year. No, I'm not kidding.

I've been saying this for the last 2+ years. If you look at every Pirate move since David Littlefield took over, you couldn't pick a better sequence that would ensure that they could

a) Cover their true intentions
b) Never field a winning ballclub

I think the the Pirates not only know that they can make money as losers, they must stay losers in order to avoid public pressure to pour money into the team. If you never contend, you are never faced with the decision of whether you have to pay to contend. The general public doesn't know anything about scouting or player development, so it's easy to pull all of the funding out of those areas and no one says "boo" in the media.

I just hope that guys like Kovacevic and Perotto keep the team's feet to the fire and someday, hopefully, they'll even make the same accusation that I'm making. That the McNuttlefields lose. They lose *on purpose*, ensuring a perpetual cycle of mediocrity that would never put the team in a position where they would have to invest to have actually talented players.

The money for Morris is a red herring... a way to keep the payroll high without actually adding quality talent to the roster. It's genius, if you really think about it.

Russ, you are absolutely, positively, 100% correct. This is something I've struggled to make people understand for a couple years now. Many people, including high-profile writers like Rob Neyer and Joe Sheehan, have stated on the record that they couldn't possibly believe a baseball team would have anything to gain by intentionally losing, and that the worst thing they could say about Pirates ownership, and a few others like them, is they don't care about winning. That leaves the door open for the possibility that they could accidentally hire a smart executive and field a winning team, but they're really not trying to.

Which is wrong. The Pirates, there is plenty of reason to believe, studied the economics in detail ten years ago and concluded that the best way to reap consistent income from the team is to make sure it continues to lose big, year after year. Why? Because more important than team quality is team quality relative to fan expectations. Because if the team accidentally won 85 games one year, it would result in the fans--Pittsburgh has a very solid core of knowledgeable baseball fans--would expect more winning, and if it didn't happen the following year, disenfranchisement would ensue, revenues would plummet and media pressure to improve would become intense.

So the Pirates have developed a very cunning system to ensure the team is always terrible, year after year, yet always provides just enough hope for near-term improvement to keep ESPN from noticing how wretched they are. There are a couple things the Pirates do to ensure this, primarily:

1. They systematically stock their farm system with advanced, low-ceiling types (this is why they draft college pitchers in the first round year after year after year, among other things.) The Pirates' farm system is very interesting. Nearly all of their minor league teams, most notably in Indianapolis, Altoona and Hickory, finish near the top of their leagues almost every year. Why? Because they're usually the oldest teams in their leagues, stocked with guys who are a little too good for their level but have no MLB upside at all. This creates the illusion that help in Pittsburgh is on the way, while ensuring the major league team never improves.

2. They make sure there is one (exactly one) legit star player on the team. It was Jason Kendall for a few years, and when he faded they got Brian Giles, and right when he started to decline they flipped him for Jason Bay. When Bay declines (which he already may be beginning to), they'll make sure to find someone else. This, once again, helps keep pressure off management by giving media/fans a glimmer of hope. "If we can just build a team around Kendall/Giles/Bay!" When they run into the risk of coming up with another star, they get rid of him (see: Ramirez, Aramis).

3. The Pirates are notoriously the cheapest team in baseball, maybe in sports, when it comes to refusing to pay any more than absolutely necessary for medical staff and equipment. This helps keep players, particularly pitchers, hurt. I suspect this is why the Pirates have stocked up so heavily on pitchers: Because they know pitchers get hurt more often, and will get hurt even more often when there's inadequate medical staff supporting them.

4. As you pointed out, Russ, the Pirates usually make sure to have one bad contract around (first Kendall, then Jack Wilson, now Matt Morris), and if that isn't quite enough, they sign some old ex-famous person or another for a few million bucks to keep payroll just high enough to not look too overtly cheap, but not high enough to siphon off profits. They did it with Kenny Lofton and Reggie Sanders, then Jeromy Burnitz, Roberto Hernandez. etc. Again, this serves the dual purpose of throwing the media/fans someone they've heard of and keeping payroll high enough to avoid taking heat.

The Pirates have figured out that, with the current revenue-sharing structure in baseball and their gorgeous, taxpayer-financed new stadium, there's a certain amount of money they're guaranteed to make every year, as long as they keep payroll at a certain fixed level, and make sure the team continues to lose. Lose every year without exception, and everyone expects you to lose; but win just once--see the 2003 Royals--and you lightning-rod negative publicity to yourself when you go back to losing. The Pirates, in the interest of protecting their regular profits, systematically prevent that from happening.

Wow, that was a whole article, wasn't it? Guess I should post it on my site.

I expect that eventually, it's going to come out, somehow, that Pirates ownership really has been trying to lose all along. When that happens, I wonder... wouldn't the fans, perhaps represented by the city of Pittsburgh, have some grounds for a gigantic lawsuit against the owners, seeing that they paid for the stadium AND pay to go there to watch games, all directly into the owners' pockets, and there's an implied agreement that the owners will at least try to field a winning team? Just a thought...

This is an interesting theory, I've never actually seen it in words before although it's the only thing that makes sense.

We do have to accept at this point that the "cheapness" idea is not the true situation. If so, what the hell were Burnitz, Randa, Raul Mondesi, Matt Lawton et al. doing being acquired, not to mention the unnecessary handing out of big contracts to mediocre products of the Pirates' own farm system.

My question is...was intentionally losing profitable even before the revenue-sharing system was created? If so...well, even back then they were making sure that big free-agent deals went to people like Pat Meares and Derek Bell and Kevin Young, instead of sticking to a low budget like they claimed was necessary.

Finally, I want to point out that the new salary cap in the NHL, plus the Penguins' immediate success, is a GODSEND for the Nuttings' plausible deniability. It gives them another 5 years, easy, of "Oh, we can't compete against the big boys, too bad there's no salary cap to level the playing field", even though no other owners say that stuff anymore (except the Marlins who really are being bled dry by their stadium contract).

When Bay declines (which he already may be beginning to), they'll make sure to find someone else.

Ahem, ahem, Adam LaRoche.

I believe LaRoche's mediocrity this year caught the team by surprise (he was heralded with sweets and flowers for days after that trade); they really thought they wouldn't be in last this year. Oh well, better luck next time, ownership. Maybe you can trade Jack Wilson for Wily Mo Peña. Maybe Peña will put up All-Star numbers if you make it clear to him that there's no pressure at all and no chance that the outcome of any game will matter.

Yeah, the revenue sharing was just icing on the cake for them; it was profitable before the present system came along, and now it's doubly so. They were always able to turn a substantial profit losing 95 a year just from the TV revenue and revenue from the new park (which they were always banking on getting, even while setting up the always-lose system.) It was a very smart setup from the beginning, from the standpoint of maximizing profits. It probably IS the best way to make the most money owning the Pirates.

Re: LaRoche: I agree, they were hoping he'd step up and be their star post-Bay. But I also think that's why they drafted Andrew McCutchen: Because they did their homework and really believed he had a strong chance to become the superstar they would be needing 5-6 years after they drafted him.

Baron the thing with your argument is that you say, if they get better for one year then the fans will expect more winning and will come out even less when they lose. But nothing is worse than continuous losing. That's the way fans will never come to the ballpark. If they lose contiguous to an 85 win season, the small amount of success would always bode well for the public either way.

Interesting post and theory, Baron.

I don't believe in relegation in MLB - it causes me enough upset in Soccer - but the antics of Pirates ownership are one of the biggest arguments in favour of introducing such a system.

Yes, I fail to see why a single winning season would be undesirable. All they would have to do is "try to build on that success" by signing superficially useful but not-too-expensive free agents. If they keep having 80 wins, that's all right. If they get bad again, they can just blame the GM and fire him and claim that NOW there's hope.

MSI: The thing is, the Pirates are already at rock bottom as far as fan interest goes; it can't really get any lower. There are a certain number of people that will always pay to come to the park, not so much for the baseball but just to get mildly-to-moderately drunk and enjoy the summer night weather and hang out with thousands of other people; and there are a certain number of people that, no matter what they say in their complaints, are going to continue following the team, buying merchandise, and watching on TV.

There's a certain fairly fixed amount of revenue the Pirates are guaranteed from various local and national TV deals, and that was the case before the new revenue sharing. That, plus the fact that there is always a minimum amount of income they're guaranteed to get just by being Pittsburgh's baseball team, guarantees their profits as long as they keep losing.

Why is it bad to randomly win 85 games one year? Because that will draw a lot of local and some national attention. Stories will be written about the emerging young Pirates. Then pressure will build for ownership to spend real money to improve the team, and if they decline to do so, negative PR seriously hurts the bottom line.

The one thing that can take their income below the minimums they're already operating at is a large amount of negative publicity. And by winning a few games, being relevant in a playoff chase, and then being cheap and going right back to losing, the negative publicity, nationwide, would be very intense. This is bad for ownership for two reasons: First, it threatens profits; and secondly, less importantly but nevertheless importantly, nobody wants to read scathing articles about himself in the newspaper every morning. These guys are 100% in it for the money, but they do want to stay out of public sight as much as possible while they loot and pillage the city of Pittsburgh (and also, indirectly, the cities of New York and Boston).

In 625 minor league games, Rajai Davis has 251 stolen bases in 322 attempts. That feels like a lot.

65 per 162 games.

When I told my friend about this trade on the phone today, he was completely flabbergasted. He just kept saying "Why? Why would they do that?" over and over again, like I had told him Littlefield and Nutting had executed a puppy in front of a big crowd at Kids Day. It was priceless.

Put your friend in touch with Baron Von Awesome, Walewander.

I really think this is what's going on. When you have to ask the two questions "Is this an insanely cynical and evil strategy?" and "If this was really the company's strategy, would it be a reliable moneymaker?" and the answers are Yes and Yes...it's likely to be the real strategy. Capitalists see all the angles and of course it's their duty to take advantage of opportunities.

My friend doesn't even cheer for the Pirates. I think he was horrified as a baseball fan.

BVA, I did send your post to my brother, who pointed this out:


Well, both the current and former majority owners of the team are newspaper publishers -- an industry whose financial model is about solid revenue from mediocre product.

"...like I had told him Littlefield and Nutting had executed a puppy in front of a big crowd at Kids Day."

Kind of like this?

Okay, that link doesn't work. And the combination of "executed a puppy" and the Parking Lot Is Full domain makes me glad it didn't work.

I like the theory a lot and I definitely think that it's foolish to dismiss the idea as something that businessman wouldn't do (I mean, the bottom line is the bottom line... many people understand this, but few take it to the logical conclusion), but I want to know how this comment:

The thing is, the Pirates are already at rock bottom as far as fan interest goes; it can't really get any lower.

...jives with this comment:

The one thing that can take their income below the minimums they're already operating at is a large amount of negative publicity. And by winning a few games, being relevant in a playoff chase, and then being cheap and going right back to losing, the negative publicity, nationwide, would be very intense. This is bad for ownership for two reasons: First, it threatens profits

Are you saying that winning 85 games and then sinking back would alienate the diehards? The casual fan? If the fan interest is already so low, what group of people exactly will walk away?

Actually, now that I think a little bit further, I guess you're saying that fan interest is as low as it can could given the present climate, but if the team was to have a relatively successful season, then the baseline for low interest would hit another lowmark? Is that accurate?

Jayson's Stark take from ESPN - More and more, I love this deal. Thank you, Dave Littlefield!

The Giants' brass was sitting around its suite Tuesday morning, bemoaning the fact that it had no decent deals cooking whatsoever. And then, out of the blue, it happened. The Pirates called. And wanted Matt Morris. His 7.94 ERA since mid-June? Not a problem. That $9.5 million he's owed next year (counting his 2009 buyout)? Not a problem. And so they swooped in and finished off a deal for Morris minutes before the deadline -- for a legit prospect (Rajai Davis), a second prospect to be chosen from an agreed-upon list and absolutely zero money changing hands. Well, it didn't take long. For the next two hours, after people around baseball learned of this deal, they couldn't stop calling, e-mailing and texting reactions that could probably be summed up with three succinct words: WHAT THE BX!GRZFDQ!!!!! Don't get us wrong here. We love Matt Morris. Terrific guy. Has had a wonderful career. Should be a fine mentor to those young Pirates starters. But the Giants were just about begging teams to take Morris and offering to chomp big chunks of his money if they had to. Then this team going nowhere dropped out of the sky and took the man and the money. What a country. "That move," said one incredulous front-office man, "is so far out of left field, it's in the Monongahela."

This is an interesting theory, I've never actually seen it in words before although it's the only thing that makes sense.

Really? I have.

Really? I have.

Swing and a miss.

Rajai Davis still has a chance to be a major league center fielder. Not a star, but he's not far from being a .280/.340/.410 guy with blazing speed and plus defense, and that plays. I watched Davis play every day for a year when he was in Altoona (I was logging games there for Baseball Info Solutions in 2005), and he has all the physical tools you look for in a speed guy and a decent idea of the strike zone. Davis is old for a prospect, but he got a late start in baseball and is really just rounding into form.

I'm not saying he'll definitely be a quality major league regular, but he's already a quality fourth outfielder and could still improve. This was an absolutely abysmal trade, even worse than Wheeler-for-Wigginton. Always count on Littlefield to blow the circuits out of our hardwired little minds when it comes to astonishing stupidity.

You must not have been paying attention while you were watching him if you think he'll ever be a plus defender in center. He takes some of the worst routes to the ball of all CF'er I've ever seen. He's right up there with Nate McLouth. It's not inconceivable that Davis could put up that line, although he's only topped a .750 OPS in the minors 4 times (02 in the GCL, 03 in the SAL, 04 in the Carolina League and 07 in the IL where he was 27 and repeating AAA). He looked reasonably promising until he got to AA where his developement completely stalled and has only picked up again recently, but he's too old to be much of a prospect let alone "already" a quality fourth outfielder. You're grossly overestimating him.

I guess you're saying that fan interest is as low as it can could given the present climate, but if the team was to have a relatively successful season, then the baseline for low interest would hit another lowmark? Is that accurate?

OK, I'm going to reply to myself because I thought about this some more. It seems reasonable to assume that a winning season in a string of losing seasons would change the fans expectation level enough that it would make the entire strategy not as profitable as it had been. But as MSI notes "But nothing is worse than continuous losing." The key is figuring out when the losing has reached the level to where the fans would stop contributing money to the team in the same amount as if they had that winning season and then started losing again. At the point where you believe that you've reached that level (and 15 years is a lot and its impact will be certainly felt in the near future), the most profitable thing you could do then is sell the team. Basically, if the theory is correct, what Pirate ownership is trying to do now is suck as much out of the fanbase as they can until they reach the point where random winning is more profitable or as profitable as losing.

The only problem with this is wouldn't the decreased revenue drag down the value of the team, overall? Or is it simply that Pirate ownership deems the short term profits more important than the potential longterm profits? Then again, I don't know a lot of what goes into appraising the value of a ballclub, either. To add another question, is there someway that they can continue this method without having to eventually sell the team?

I don't know if I'm being completely clear, I'm just sort of thinking outloud, but this is all very interesting to me. I think it's a brilliant idea if its what they're actually doing, if morally bankrupt. But this is capitalism, dammit, who cares about that?!

Even if this isn't the Pirates intentions, I think it's a pretty interesting topic to discuss, as I think there's definitely a solid business model in all of this.

Well, that's really the biggest problem in the world today: the capitalists have learned how to ply their craft too well. And as predators so often do, they'll eat up all their prey and become extinct. Evolution, alas, has its drawbacks.

ok lets back up here a second, in regards to this "Pirates lose theory.'

they opened the season with a heart of the batting order .. LaRoche, Bay, Nady. Each with 30 HR pop, and they had the reigning batting champ in front of them. That is a decent heart of the order. Nobody could have predicted Bay would have this bad a year. Yeah, its a bad un. LaRoche? He has 30 HR pop. I've seen it!

They had a decent pen in Capps, Marte and Torres.

Snell has been lights out.
Duke. Hell I don't know what to think of Dukes fall.
Maholm has shown flashes.
Gorzelanny and Armas too.

In a weak NL Central?

That doesn't seem to me to be a team, built to lose.
Does it have holes, sure.
More importantly, does it have heart. That I am not so sure.

Bay and LaRoche sucking this year is what killed ya.
Not some scheme to filter money from American Shipbuilding.

Sorry to be so late to the party, but I like this one:

Ryan Braun for Ryan Braun

I mentioned to one friend that even if Morris is average for a while longer, it would only mean dropping in the draft...


Then he reminded me that the team will pick the 15th best player, whether they pick 1st or 15th.

About Rajai Davis: You can disagree with me about the man's defense if you want, but saying he's worse than Nate McLouth... that's just mean-spirited, man. Mean-spirited.

Banta knows etc... you're pretty close to what I was talking about with your own rationalization of my two comments. Yes, the Pirates have sunk so low by continuously losing that it's no longer possible to sink any lower. However, if they suddenly won, then immediately went right back to being unbelievably cheap and losing, they would end up dealing with a firestorm of negative PR. Somehow the Pirates manage to have the reputation inside the sport of mind-blowing cheapness, which they need to do to make their profit model work, yet for the most part they manage to keep it out of the media. If it gets into the media, which it would if they had a winning season, then their cheapness gets exposed and pressure becomes nigh-unbearable to spend money.

I hope that explains my position a little better.

Gambling Rent: I hate to sound contrived here, but I'm being honest when I say that what you posted is exactly what Pirates ownership wants you to believe: That the team is this close to being competitive, when really it has no chance of winning anything. It is interesting, though, that this year's NL Central could have blown the lid off the whole thing. The division has been SO bad that if Bay and LaRoche had simply played up to their career norms, the Pirates would likely be only 5 games or so out of first right now, despite the fact the rest of their team horrendously sucks.

One other aspect of the Pirates strategy that I forgot to mention, though it's really just a consequence of the "draft mature, zero-upside players" strategy: Someone once wrote that "the best way to avoid being boring is to be positively wretched." The Pirates want very much to be boring; that's why they try to keep their win totals in the high 60s year after year. They DON'T want to pull a 2003 Tigers, because that would have the same effect as winning 85: To draw media scrutiny.

Well, for some reason it's not letting me edit my post again...

ADDENDUM: I took all the various stuff I've written in this space and compiled it together into one article. I may yet tweak it more, but you can find it here: http://sportinggurus.com/why-i-am-not-a-pirates-fan/

Anyone that wants to can feel free to post the whole thing on their own sites, as long as they acknowledge it's my work and etc.

That doesn't seem to me to be a team, built to lose.
Does it have holes, sure.
More importantly, does it have heart. That I am not so sure.

Bay and LaRoche sucking this year is what killed ya.
Not some scheme to filter money from American Shipbuilding.

Actually, it is a team that is built to lose without looking like it is built purposefully to lose. I would very much like to find a team that was able to succeed with the Pirates formula, which is "If everything goes absolutely right for the team, they will contend for a possible wild card or a division title." Most teams that consistently succeed are like the Yankees, the Red Sox, the A's... teams that say, "OK, in the *worst* reasonable scenario, let's make sure we can *still* compete for the wild card".

The Oakland A's have had no less than twice (probably more) as many major injuries, misfortunes and disappointments this year as the Pirates. The difference in their records is that the A's are built with the WORST case scenario in mind, instead of the best. Multiple plans for the players who are most vulnerable to injury or fall-off, relatively cheap replacement-level talent on hand, etc. A look at the two team's benches and their total payrolls tells basically the whole story.

Things inevitably go wrong in baseball... you can't build a team to succeed if you assume that everything is going to go right and you can't kid yourself about how right things can possibly go. For example, Nady had never hit 20(!) HR before this year. To say that he has 30 HR power is exactly the kind of blatant untruth that people like Littlefield have been spouting for a long time. The top 4 members of the starting rotation had about 100 major league starts amongst them when they started the season. Guess what? The performances of young players are inherently volatile... OF COURSE a couple of them will not perform up to their ceilings. OF COURSE a couple of them will be disappointing. Especially if you overestimate the ceiling of a decent, but not particularly compelling guy like Paul Maholm.

However, this continues to play into the same theory that has been put forth here. As long as DL can point to 10-15 players and say "So-and-so has a chance to do so-and-so", then the fans don't look at the team and see the big steaming turd that it is. It's not even a question of a total not being equal to the sum of its parts.... it's the MORE obvious conclusion that the expected total contribution is not even remotely close to the sum of the *best-possible* contributions. Not even remotely close.

As to the other points made by people who think that it's not profitable to purposefully lose, I disagree. I just don't think the fan base will continue to erode any further. There was a boost from the ASG which will make it *look* as if it is eroding, but basically, I think the attendance this year will continue in perpetuity. The ballpark is amazing, the people in the town who are going obviously like baseball for baseball's sake because they haven't had a winning season in 15 years. The expectations are essentially set and, therefore, so are the revenues. The only thing that the McNuttlefields need to do then is:

a) Make sure they don't change the current set of expectations
b) Make it look as though they aren't just depositing the revenue sharing checks directly in their bank accounts

The way that the Pirates draft and develop players, the way they've ruined their international development programs, the way they've chased good baseball people like Mickey White out of the organization has taken very good care of part a). Making absolutely asinine trades like the one they made yesterday, signing "loyal" guys like Jack Wilson to horrible contracts, and the parade of Armas's, Burnitz's, Randa's, Casey's, etc. take care of part b).

Like I said, these guys are not idiots. They know exactly what they're doing...

Finally, I want to point out that the new salary cap in the NHL, plus the Penguins' immediate success, is a GODSEND for the Nuttings' plausible deniability.

Actually, the Penguins should be the shaming example for the Pirates. The Penguins won a Stanley Cup in 1992, the last time the Pirates had a winning season. They were the toast of the NHL for another 8-10 years. Then the bottom fell out, the team went bankrupt and they were the worst team in the NHL for four years. Then, magically, by drafting the best players that they could get, they now are selling out again and will likely contend for their conference championship. I think that somewhere close to half of the Pens roster will be made up of their own 1st, 2nd or 3rd round draft picks from the last 5-6 years.

The Penguins will have gone from best to worst to best in the same amount of time that the Pirates will not have had a winning season. The way they did it was to NOT really on mediocrity, instead to blow the franchise up to the point of almost losing it, but then building a strong core of players through the draft and by giving experience to young players that can then pay off benefits by having good players later on.

Bay and LaRoche sucking this year is what killed ya.
Not some scheme to filter money from American Shipbuilding.

Some things have gone right (Snell, Gorzelanny) some things have gone wrong too, boo hoo,
let's say Bay and LaRoche replicated their 2006 numbers

286/.396/.532 instead of .258/.333/.436
and .285/.354/.561 instead of .244/.325/.427

That's about 42 extra runs (taking each's RC per PA from 2006 and applying to their 207 PAs)
They've scored 420 runs and allowed 520 runs
Instead they'd be at 462/520- a pythag of .441 or a 71-91 pace (in reality they are right at pythag and on pace for 65 wins).

Want to say that Freddy Sanchez replicates 2006 too? Paulino? Zach Duke?
Want to say that everyone with a better 2006 than 2007 replicates 2006- while everyone better in 2007 than 2006 keeps 2007?
You might get a .500 team

Flukes like that do happen- witness the 2003 KC Royals-
don't count on it- this is a bad team
and if they lucked into an 83-79 season like the 2003 royals all that would do would be to prolong the current inept regime

"And the combination of "executed a puppy" and the Parking Lot Is Full domain makes me glad it didn't work."

Why no love for the PLIF?

Link works if you access it from their site, BTW.

Aw, this thread has gone from hilarious to depressing!

I do really feel for Pirates fans. Especially since their losing seems to breed some of the most inspired writing on this forum from Bucs fans.

The problem is that the team is too boring for professional writers to write fascinating blogs about them, unlike the Royals.

I don't think the Pirates are intentionally trying to lose in order to make more money. Why would they pick up Morris' salary if they were trying to do that? I think that's a figment of people's imagination.

The obvious reason they lose is because their front office is not good at their jobs. It may be simple, but that's the real reason.

The obvious reason they lose is because their front office is not good at their jobs. It may be simple, but that's the real reason.

I'm inclined to think so too ... intriguing as the built-to-lose scenario is, I think it fails the Occam's Razor test.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, I guess.

I don't think the Pirates are intentionally trying to lose in order to make more money. Why would they pick up Morris' salary if they were trying to do that?

So their failure gets blamed on front-office incompetence instead of on financial cheapness. I don't think they're intentionally trying to lose, but I think they don't care whether they win or lose as long as there isn't a full-blown revolt against their mismanagement.

A lot of us are already boycotting the team, but most people won't boycott a team for any reason other than "The owners refuse to put enough money in to have a chance at winning". They maintain plausible deniability by giving money to random players every now and then so they can't be blamed for this sin.

The obvious reason they lose is because their front office is not good at their jobs. It may be simple, but that's the real reason.

No...there is absolutely no reason why Littlefield still has a job, if they were as unhappy with his work as they logically should be.

I'm inclined to think so too ... intriguing as the built-to-lose scenario is, I think it fails the Occam's Razor test.

I believe strongly that Occam's Razor doesn't apply in capitalistic enterprises. The question is not "Is this the simplest scenario?" but "Is this the scenario leading to the highest (or least risky) profits?".

If Occam's Razor always applied, then nobody would have wondered "Hey, did Enron really create hundreds of paper holding companies just to transfer assets back and forth in order to get more and more leveraged? Do they really have NO PROFITS AT ALL, even though on paper their profits are huge? What a bunch of byzantine trickery, that can't possibly be right." But if a meaningless accounting trick that produces nothing and makes everything 50 times more confusing leads to profit, then every single company will do it.

They maintain plausible deniability by giving money to random players every now and then so they can't be blamed for this sin.

Not only that, but they also keep the wolves from MLB at bay. I doubt highly that the other owners would let the Pirates continue to cash obscenely huge revenue sharing checks ad infinitum. At a certain point, the Pirates have to make a little less money in order to keep their primary revenue stream flowing. If they kept salary costs at ridiculously low levels (along with their embarrassingly small development yield), eventually even the mid-market owners would start to get annoyed.

Basically, the Morris salary is just a debit to keep the organization's money grab from becoming completely indefensible to the other owners.

I wonder why they didn't trade Jack Wilson though. That would follow from this theory.

I believe strongly that Occam's Razor doesn't apply in capitalistic enterprises. The question is not "Is this the simplest scenario?" but "Is this the scenario leading to the highest (or least risky) profits?".

I don't see any reason to think that capitalistic enterprises are automatically different from any other pheonomenon in this regard. So, yes, the question is, "Is this the scenario leading to the highest (or least risky) profits?," and the argument here fails to convince me that it is. Profitable as the Pirates are, I think they would be more profitable, reliably so, if they were a consistent contender.

If Occam's Razor always applied, then nobody would have wondered "Hey, did Enron really create hundreds of paper holding companies just to transfer assets back and forth in order to get more and more leveraged? Do they really have NO PROFITS AT ALL, even though on paper their profits are huge? What a bunch of byzantine trickery, that can't possibly be right." But if a meaningless accounting trick that produces nothing and makes everything 50 times more confusing leads to profit, then every single company will do it.

And every single company doesn't do it. Enron was a bizarre outlier, not an example of a common practice, or a smart one. They succeeded at their shell game in the short run, but for a gazillion reasons it was impossible to succeed in the long run; it was only a question of how horribly it would all come crashing down.

Enron had a corporate culture that recruited incredibly selfish and disloyal people and gave them an incredible amount of freedom, with bonuses for coming up with ideas for things that had never been tried before. They were also working frantically to benefit from the various unnecessary deregulations and privatizations of utilities that were going on at that time but might not go on forever. Most companies use their complicated accounting tricks to establish long-term stability rather than short-term profits (although it's hard when the stock market demands short-term profits). Things still get more and more complicated for no discernible reason except profits.

"I wonder why they didn't trade Jack Wilson though. That would follow from this theory."

They tried, but the Tigers wouldn't eat the salary AND give a real prospect without getting Torres as well.

I bet they revisit a week or two down the road.

Just to clarify, Pirates ownership isn't vindictive against Pittsburgh baseball fans and wanting to hurt them, or anything. They bought the team with the 100% pure motive of maximizing the profits they could make from the team, and being intelligent businessmen, they did the homework and determined the best method of making steady, guaranteed year-by-year profits. And it happens to be to lose big every year. The fans get shafted, but as far as ownership's concerned, they're just collateral damage in the quest for profits.

I suggested yesterday that there *could* be a credible lawsuit to be had if it could be proven that ownership was intentionally losing, because a city spending $400 million of taxpayer money to buy ownership a stadium implies the good-faith gesture on ownership's part of trying their best to give the city a winning baseball team. I'm not saying such a lawsuit would definitely win, but it would have its merits. Personally, I'm still undecided on the subject of just how wrong, if at all wrong, it is that Pirates ownership is losing intentionally because that's the best way to maximize profits. On one hand, it's their franchise and they can do whatever they want with it; but on the other hand, the stadium they play in belongs to the city of Pittsburgh, and they're abusing the privilege.

They succeeded at their shell game in the short run, but for a gazillion reasons it was impossible to succeed in the long run; it was only a question of how horribly it would all come crashing down.eded at their shell game in the short run

I don't think anyone is arguing that the Pirates think this is a strategy that will work for the next 50 years. However, it has worked for the past 10 years and it doesn't look like it's in danger of not working in the near future, so why not continue doing it?

So, yes, the question is, "Is this the scenario leading to the highest (or least risky) profits?," and the argument here fails to convince me that it is. Profitable as the Pirates are, I think they would be more profitable, reliably so, if they were a consistent contender.

I appreciate where you're going Steve, but you're being a bit inconsistent here. Yes, the Pirate profits would be more reliable if they were a consistent contender. But becoming a consistent contender is NOT guaranteed by any means (especially on any sort of an easily predictable timeline) and still requires an initial outlay of cash to get there (either through player acquisition via FA or through investment in player development). The Pirates can STILL make considerable revenues from revenue sharing and minimal attendance levels with NO RISK and only modest investment in salaries and player development infrastructure. Basically, the Nuttings treat their MLB franchise like the equivalent of getting a Treasury Bond ever year from Grandma on their birthday. Sure, they could ask grandma for money to invest in stocks in order to make a lot more money, but there is no guarantee of a profit. Their current strategy guarantees enough revenue to cover limited costs and make a guaranteed profit with no risk.

I don't see how Enron is a problem for Occams razor. You have a company whose accounts doesn't make sense, it turns out to be fraud, a simple enough explanation.
One could have postulated that UFO beings from Aldebaran visited Texas and taught a select group of business executives the new discipline of quantum accounting and that that explained all the oddities about Enrons books. In the absence of evidence for the second explanation the Occamists would prefer the fraud hypothesis, and quite rightly so.

I don't agree with Baron Von Awesome's claim that the Pirates ownership would rather lose than win every single year. If they had hired Dombrowski or Beinfest six years ago they might have a winning record right now. One of those guys probably would not have gotten fired for making wise trades. Giving the fan base some hope would lead to more profits in the short run, even if disappointment occurs later - and that disappointment can be blamed on the GM and he can be fired, producing new hope.

But they don't care if the team wins or loses. So since other teams DO care, and therefore outcompete the Pirates when it comes to acquiring and exploiting assets, the team always loses.

They bought the team with the 100% pure motive of maximizing the profits they could make from the team, and being intelligent businessmen, they did the homework and determined the best method of making steady, guaranteed year-by-year profits. And it happens to be to lose big every year.

Well, consider me unconvinced that the last sentence there is true.

And, thus, equally unconvinced that Pirates ownership is all that intelligent. Lots of businesses, big as well as small, are run by people who aren't all that bright, innovative, creative, or insightful. Most businesspeople, like most people everywhere, are cautious plodders, and/or earnest semi-competents.

I think the more accurate scenario is something like this: Pirates' ownership would like to put a contender on the field, but they simply aren't baseball-savvy enough to know how to hire the right people and make the right decisions to make it happen. They think Littlefield is a smart guy who's just been unlucky, which is how Littlefield views himself.

They get out-competed on the field by smarter organizations year after year. It's only because of the nature of MLB that they're able to be consistently profitable, despite not presenting a competitive team, not because of it. In a different setting, they'd lose money and be forced to sell, but this of course is the cash cow cartel that is MLB, where the question isn't whether you'll make money, only how much you'll make.

Frankly I think the ownership of the Twins and Marlins don't care if the teams win or lose either. But they have competent GMs. The question then arises, why don't the Pirates owners try to find a competent GM and give him the autonomy to reorganize things, if only for the sake of good publicity?

This is where I start getting sympathetic to Baron Von Awesome again. The Pirates are a unique case. I think it's different from the Royals under Allard Baird, although I don't have the expertise to put the difference into words. At least the Royals periodically announced that some sort of plan was going on.

They think Littlefield is a smart guy who's just been unlucky

I don't know if there's any evidence of this. If it's true, they must have not looked at what other GMs have done in similar situations to Littlefield.

He's been the GM for what, seven seasons now? Lord almighty.

If Occam's Razor always applied, then nobody would have wondered "Hey, did Enron really create hundreds of paper holding companies just to transfer assets back and forth in order to get more and more leveraged?

Occam's Razor did work with Enron, although it took a while. Somebody finally asked how the heck a trading company was able to do what Enron was doing.

The question then arises, why don't the Pirates owners try to find a competent GM and give him the autonomy to reorganize things, if only for the sake of good publicity?

I don't see why the simple answer, "Because they aren't as competent as other ownerships in this regard" is hard to accept.

The question then arises, why don't the Pirates owners try to find a competent GM and give him the autonomy to reorganize things, if only for the sake of good publicity?

And, of course, that's where Baron and I come in to the picture. Trust me: I've been thinking about this for over 2 years now and there is only one reasonable answer to that question.

That's because it is not that easy to find a GM who will be complicit in running a franchise poorly... at some point, most people have a shred of conscience. Unless the Nuttings can pull Dick Cheney out of retirement next winter, they're going to have a heck of time finding someone more suited for their franchise management than David Littlefield.

Enron had a corporate culture that recruited incredibly selfish and disloyal people and gave them an incredible amount of freedom, with bonuses for coming up with ideas for things that had never been tried before.

Another thing as Enron kept telling everyone how BRILLIANT they and their people were, and if you keep saying that it's amazing how many people will start to believe it. A political analogy is the raft of third rate (but young) mediocrities that Lyndon Johnson surrounded himself with, Johnson and the DC press corps kept talking about how brilliant they were, so it became conventional wisdom that they were brilliant.

I don't see why the simple answer, "Because they aren't as competent as other ownerships in this regard" is hard to accept.

Because the chances of someone being this incompetent while somehow managing to feed themselves on a daily basis are virtually nil. So either the Nuttings hire people to lift their forks for them or you need another answer to the question.

Steve - OK then, replace "a competent GM" with "a new GM". ANY GM. It's obvious that Littlefield's moves have been almost entirely laughable and devoid of any plan. Yet there's no move at all to even shake things up a bit.

This isn't the 1930s, the owners aren't socialites who see the franchise as a toy and give jobs to their cronies and family members. This is business.

Because the chances of someone being this incompetent while somehow managing to feed themselves on a daily basis are virtually nil.

I find this uncompelling.

This isn't the 1930s, the owners aren't socialites who see the franchise as a toy and give jobs to their cronies and family members. This is business.

Lots of businesses, in every industry, are suboptimally managed, sometimes even incompetently managed. And again, the profits-are-virtually-guaranteed nature of MLB lessens the degree of urgency to make difficult decisions.

I agree that the gravy train aspect of MLB is the key here. I just disagree that the Pirates are brilliantly gaming the system; instead I think it's far more plausible that they're bumbling beneficiaries of it.

You know a lot more about baseball than I do. But still, something just isn't right about the Pirates ownership. They aren't trying to win, and they have not shown any openness to perhaps trying to win some time in the future. Contrast with David Glass who in 2004, 2005 and 2006 was showing signs of shame, embarrassment, annoyance with the team's performance, such that we knew Baird was a dead man walking throughout 2006. Nothing like that here, just vague bromides.

I seem to remember at some point one of the Pirates owners saying "We expect to have a winning team this year", I think it was shortly after they hired Tracy. But it was laughably insincere and vague, showing no awareness of how this might be accomplished or what the consequences of failure might be.

I'm not sure that Occam's razor necessarily works against the Baron's theory here. The question to be asked is "Why do the Pittsburgh Pirates lose all the time?"

The alternate answers are, "Because they're run by incompetent people" or "Because they're trying to lose". If anything, I think the second of those actually sounds a little simpler than the first to me.

The most damning evidence in support of this theory really is Littlefield's continued employment. I think zonk summed it up perfectly in #86 on the previous page, which I think pre-dates the full-blown discussion of whether the Pirates lose on purpose:

"I suppose most fans have some problem with their GM -- but most will also admit that there are things he does well. I have issues with Hendry's roster management and FA tastes - but he generally does pretty well for himself on the trade front. Others do well in the draft. Others in the FA market. Others excel in plucking reclamation projects off teh scrap heap.

I just don't see one single aspect of the GM role that Littlefield is COMPETENT at -- much less excels. It boggles my mind that he still has a job. I do honestly believe that one could pluck a random BTF poster from this thread to GM the Bucs and get a performance no worse than Littlefield."

The Nuttings must see at least "one single aspect of the GM role that Littlefield ... excels." Otherwise they would have replaced him. This management team isn't shy about firing managers or other baseball people. It seems most likely to me that the Nuttings think that Littlefield is doing well at his job, as evidenced by his continued employment. The question then becomes, what exactly is Littlefield's job? And the simple answer there is that the only thing that Littlefield is GOOD at is building losing baseball teams.

Lots of businesses, in every industry, are suboptimally managed, sometimes even incompetently managed. And again, the profits-are-virtually-guaranteed nature of MLB lessens the degree of urgency to make difficult decisions.

Look at the Cable Industry- if you got in at the right time it's an endless cash cow, a government sanctioned monopoly, in any normal industry the Dolan family would have been driven out by competition long ago- they annoy their customers, they get into pissing matches with program suppliers (and usually lose), scare the daylights out of their industry co-horts who've been afraid for years that the Dolan's greed and overreaching would provoke congress into either regulating them or completely deregulating them (no more local monopolies), and lose stunning amounts of money on side ventures- but the sheer quantity of cash that pours in from cable subscribers makes them bulletproof.

The Nuttings own an MLB team, they get a share of national TV revenue, they get revenue sharing, aside from a Montreal style revenue implosion (no local TV and sub-AA attendance) all they have to do to stay in the black is keep payroll under $50-60 mil (which they have had no difficulty doing). They are profitable despite being 27th out of 30 in attendance- they are working on their 4th straight year of being 27th (they were 26th in 2003- almost identical to Milwaukee's attendance- Milwaukee is 12th this year- funny what winning a few more games can do).

It could very well be that they are in a safe spot- seriously blow up the team and rebuild risks a 110 loss season and a Montreal Style revenue implosion (or so they fear)- spending may eat into their bottomline but more doesn't guaranty more wins and revenue- so the Nuttings are quite happy to stay the course.

15 solid years of being the worst franchise in baseball makes it difficult to argue that they're simply incompetent. I'm really going to try hard not to be too lengthy here, but a few points:

* The Pirates' run of futility in unparalleled in any sport. The nature of modern sports is that, in a 15 year span, even bad teams are going to have random good years and finish around .500 a few times. The Pirates have never been close.

* Kiko's post is spot-on. Littlefield's continued employment suggests strongly that his job is to ensure the Pirates don't win. Because IF his job is to try to build a winning team--I've said this once and now I'll say it again--he is the worst GM in the history of professional sports, and we're a good three years past when it was dead-obvious he needed to be fired.

* Go back to my first post, where I listed 5 particular points of the Pirates Way. Consider that this has been going on for 10+ years. Try to argue that this is all simply ongoing incompetence and not a concerted effort to continue losing.

* Mark Cuban, who has a lot of money to spend and was quite probably willing to overpay a bit for his hometown baseball team, openly tried to buy the Pirates. The Nutting/McClatchy group flatly shot him down, stating the team isn't for sale and isn't going to be. This is proof positive that the team, as it is currently running, is satisfactorily profitable for them.

* The Pirates, since the day Nutting/Littlefield took over, have been renowned as a laughingstock inside the sport for being cheap to the point of ludicrousness.

There's more, and I'm sure further comments here will remind me what more there is. With every passing seemingly-brain-dead move by the franchise, it's getting harder and harder to argue that they're not trying to lose. Again: It's not that they aren't trying to win. There are numerous franchises in sports that aren't trying to win. The Pirates are trying to lose.

And lest we forget, do we remember what the context of this entire discussion is? The Matt Morris trade. Everyone inside and outside the sport is absolutely bewildered by this. Read Jayson Stark's column about it. Literally, Sabean was beginning to despair because he couldn't unload Morris on anybody without eating 75% of his salary and taking back next-to-nothing, and then, out of the blue with about an hour left to go, Littlefield calls, gives him a useful bench player and takes the entire contract. It defies explanation. It is very difficult to believe (a) that Littlefield, that anybody, is that stupid, AND (b) that Pirates ownership is even more stupid, to the point of continuing to pay him to do things like add $13 million to payroll for a pitcher who was shot two years ago. It reeks of something a team does when it's trying to lose. (We can't invest any more in our medical staff or player development! We owe too much to Matt Morris!)

The nature of modern sports is that, in a 15 year span, even bad teams are going to have random good years and finish around .500 a few times. The Pirates have never been close.

OK, now this is actually not true. In 1997 they finished 79-83.

That was before I noticed any team other than the Phillies, so I'd like to hear about how they responded to this unexpected event.

You're right. They did get to 79 wins in a division that was even worse than the current rendition of the NL Central. Even the Cincinnati Bengals and Golden State Warriors have done better than that over 15 year spans, though.

Danny, whether you believe he is making about as much as he should, Matt Morris should not be on the short-short list of players who consititute the greatest percentage of their team's payrolls.

This is proof positive that the team, as it is currently running, is satisfactorily profitable for them.

Satisfactorily profitable is not the same thing as optimally profitable.

I know it's a really cool scenario you've painted here, but I just don't buy it.

OK. That's fine with me.

I am glad that the only acceptable range of opinion here goes from "The Pirates are the most incompetently run franchise since the Padres/Mariners of the 1970s, and unlike them the commissioner has no desire to force them to sell to competent ownership" to "The Pirates are consciously perpetrating a fraud that could lead to a lawsuit worth hundreds of millions of dollars".

It would be really, really interesting if someone in Pirates management actually noticed this and started commenting.

Nobody has addressed the point about how they stock their minor leagues with low ceiling type guys that give the appearence of a good future.

Nobody has addressed the point about how they stock their minor leagues with low ceiling type guys that give the appearence of a good future.

Check out comment 104.

No, i meant to refute the point in #104. #104 has really convinced me, and for the people saying it's probably not true, i'd like to see some rebutal to that point.

Well, the refutation for that is the same as it is for everything else: Littlefield simply thought that stocking up on that kind of talent was the best way to try to win, but he was wrong and he's incompetent to continue doing it. But I don't think it holds water. Taken together with everything else in #104, it looks an awful lot like the Pirates know exactly what they're doing.

for the people saying it's probably not true, i'd like to see some rebutal to that point.

I find it more plausible that the organization isn't as good at drafting/signing high-ceiling prospects as other organizations, and that their philosophy is based on developing sound-fundamentals types rather than toolsy types, and they think other organizations tend to play their prospects a year or two too young for the level. I don't find such a scenario hard to believe.

I do find the nefarious conspiracy scenario hard to believe. This we-try-to-lose plan has been in consistent operation for years and years, and no one in the organization has blown the whistle? Not one scout, manager, coach, secretary, or assistant GM has quit in disgust and/or fear that they're ruining their career in the industry by being associated with such a scheme?

That I find hard to swallow.

I do really feel for Pirates fans. Especially since their losing seems to breed some of the most inspired writing on this forum from Bucs fans.

I'll echo this. I'm a die-hard Giants fan, but I went to school at CMU, and grew to tolerate the Pirates - even when they were playing in the dump known as Three Rivers. There are still some genuine baseball fans there, but in Pittsburgh, the rankings are (1) Steelers (2) Steelers (3) Penguins (4) Everything else and about (150) Pirates. I'm convinced very few people go to Pirates games to see them win - you go because your team is playing the Pirates, or because the Park is an experience.

i'd like to see some rebutal to that point.

To speak for Steve Treder on this, I'm sure he'd say that the scouting staff and the people in charge of the draft are just simply incompetent. Which is an alternative answer to the reason for choosing such bad players, but it's mind-boggling from the standpoint of negative correlation.

Even if the Pirates were choosing guys in order just from the Baseball America lists (what would it cost, like $30 for a yearly subscription?) every June, they couldn't do this badly. Seriously... why even have a scouting department when for about $100 every year, you can just pick according to the experts on amateur baseball and do significantly better? WTM pointed out in another venue that the Pirates overdrafted at their first FIVE rounds this year. The most important pipeline of talent in any organization and at the first five spots, the Pirates took a player far ahead of where he was predicted to be drafted. How much more obvious does it need to get?

Not a single soul has any reason to need to be told about the we-need-to-lose plan besides Dave Littlefield. Everything else working to that goal is accomplished simply by putting incompetent people in jobs, everything from minor league director to fourth outfielder. I don't buy "no one's blown the whistle" as a good reason why I'm wrong.

Satisfactorily profitable might also be a function of effort. Why bother complicating your life with things like minor-league instructions, player comforts, and extra staff for increasing season ticket sales? If I could coast on $20 mil a year or work hard for $50m, I don't think that decision is terribly hard to make.

Because if the team accidentally won 85 games one year, it would result in the fans--Pittsburgh has a very solid core of knowledgeable baseball fans--would expect more winning, and if it didn't happen the following year, disenfranchisement would ensue, revenues would plummet and media pressure to improve would become intense.

actually the 2003 Royals may be evidence for this- they accidently won 83 games (their pythag was only 78-84 and even that overstated their talent level- they had several guys have unusually good years- Angel Berroa, May, no dead weights except for Mayne. they were basically a 70 win caliber team that got exceptionally lucky one year)
Their attendance leaped by 400,000, and only declined by 100,000 when they collapsed the next year, they lost 300,000 fans when they stayed bad the next year, and then FINALLY the owner did something.

I don't buy "no one's blown the whistle" as a good reason why I'm wrong.

Well, obviously we differ on this question.

If this secret plan is so obvious to you, it would seem to be even more obvious to someone employed in the organization, even if they aren't good at their job.

Right. Because media pressure forced the owner to do something.

That just set off another lightbulb for me, actually. IF the Pirates are intentionally losing and Littlefield is the man running the whole thing, then they obviously want to keep him around as long as they can (it may be hard to find someone who does it as well as Littlefield does, and there's always the risk he blows the whistle after leaving the organization). That means they definitely don't want to pull a 2003 Royals, because it will eventually lead to negative PR that will force ownership to fire the GM.

Littlefield WILL have to be fired within another year or two--breaking an all-time record for consecutive losing seasons during an era of parody is going to being about enough negative PR to force it--but watch and see whether, instead of simply being fired, they reassign him within the organization. THAT'S conspiracy theory, I know, but it bears watching...

Not one scout, manager, coach, secretary, or assistant GM has quit in disgust and/or fear that they're ruining their career in the industry by being associated with such a scheme?

Probably more damaging to someone's future would be to openly disclose such a thing about a former employer. Loyalty > competence in MLB, Steve, and it has been that way for a long time.

Along those lines, I would love to hear what Mickey White has to say about the Pirate organization. He singlehandedly provided the Pirates with every bright spot in the minors for a three or four year stretch. He pushed for hard to sign guys like Chris Young (yes, that Chris Young, the one traded for Matt Herges) and JR House. White got into a battle with Littlefield at some point early on (Littlefield took over in July and White left in February). There was no reason for White to leave, as he had been extremely successful (turning the Pirate organization into one of the top minor league operations in baseball, according to BA).

If this secret plan is so obvious to you, it would seem to be even more obvious to someone employed in the organization, even if they aren't good at their job.

what benefit would an employee get for whistleblowing? and who would listen?

Steve: I don't mind disagreeing with you. I think the feeling's mutual. ;)

Yes, perhaps some few people employed by the Pirates have suspected something's up. But they really can't do anything more than I'm doing about it--talk to someone about it or write about it--and few of them are going to even take that step, and then obviously they could only do so after they've left the team.

Gambling in baseball in the early 20th century was obvious for a long time before someone finally did something about it; steroids in baseball in the late 20th century was obvious for a long time before someone finally did something about it. I know the Pirates' situation is different, but just because something's obvious to the outside observer doesn't necessarily make it obvious to the inside observer--when you work for a company, it gets easy to miss the forest for the trees in terms of the company's overall plans--and it can often be awhile before anyone blows the whistle, or before anyone listens to the whistle.

We agree on one thing: IF I'm right about this, sooner or later, somehow, it's going to come out.

(yes, that Chris Young, the one traded for Matt Herges)

The other Chris Young would have been an OK signing too.

Not only to speak for Treder, but to defend his position, I find post #104 paranoid and delusional. Check this out:

3. The Pirates are notoriously the cheapest team in baseball, maybe in sports, when it comes to refusing to pay any more than absolutely necessary for medical staff and equipment. This helps keep players, particularly pitchers, hurt. I suspect this is why the Pirates have stocked up so heavily on pitchers: Because they know pitchers get hurt more often, and will get hurt even more often when there's inadequate medical staff supporting them.

Assertion after assertion coupled with assertive analysis and utterly absent of, what's that called again? Evidence! They're notorious for employing a cheap medical staff? What does that even mean?

a. Everyone knows they hire cheap doctors and get their equipment from Central America? Who knows this? What does this mean? Where's the press on this?

b. Don't they employ, you know, accredited physicians, presumably those with contractual arrangements with Pittsburgh hospitals and who, presumably, have careers on the line?

c. This helps keep players, particularly pitchers, hurt. What? What could you possibly mean? In medicine there are "standards of practice" physicians must adhere to or they're guilty of malpractice. How could the Pirates' physicians actively be "keeping players hurt?" Are they retarding the body's normal healing processes?

As with nearly all conspiracy claims, the claim is killed by the details. Sure, maybe the Pirates spend less than other teams on their doctors and their equipment, but maybe that's b/c the Pirates have less money? And despite their relatively lower expenditure on medicine, the quality of care will be only marginally, if at all, lower than what other teams pay for.

The simplest, sanest explanation is the one Steve offered. They're just not that good at running a ball team. (I'd disagree about his views on competence in business generally, btw.)

Some physicians are better than others. The ones that are really, really good get employed by really wealthy companies--like sports franchises, who have more money staked on the health of their employees than just about any other enterprise on the planet.

The Pirates do not pay enough money to employ the really top-flight physicians.

Some teams pay money and hire lots of surgeons, doctors, trainers, therapists, etc. Some teams, like the Pirates, run the show with as few as possible.

Having more and better trainers, therapists, etc., leads to players being hurt less often and coming back more quickly and more effectively when they are hurt. I'm just agreeing with Will Carroll about this stuff; of course you're free to disagree with him, as some knowledgeable people do.

I don't *think* any of the above is paranoid nonsense or difficult to understand.

It's the details, and the way you can see how they fit together without too much imagination, that make the theory interesting, isn't it? You're free to disagree, but the persistence of the Pirates' incompetence has caused more people than just myself to start thinking about, and studying, whether there might be more to it than meets the eye. And if you look it at from a pure-profit perspective, losing every year might make sense.

I'm off to work for a few hours now. I'm sure there will be plenty to catch up on when I get back this evening. Long live BTF!

Loyalty > competence in MLB, Steve, and it has been that way for a long time.

Well, okay. If you say so, I guess.

The nature of conspiracy theories is that they're non-disprovable. But the nature of actual conspiracies is that they're fragile, and virtually always unravel at some point. Somebody at some point finds themselves with more to gain by leaking the ugly truth than by keeping the secret, often simply because they feel they've been wronged by a co-conspirator.

If this Pirates-are-actively-trying-to-lose scenario is true, it would be a massive scandal if it broke. Enormous. It would be the Black Sox all over again; it would shake the foundations of MLB, and of pro sports in general.

I think that keeping such a wicked thing a secret for a long time is extraordinarily unlikely to have happened. I find it far more likely the case that the Pirates are simply owned and managed by an executive team that isn't skilled at building a competitive ball club.

The nature of conspiracy theories is also that some of them prove to be correct.

This isn't Watergate, though. I reiterate that nobody besides the General Manager needs to have any idea the goal is to lose, as long as the GM has a good poker face.

Yeah, I know I'm being the conspiracy theorist here. But something just ain't right about the Pirates, and I for one don't discount the possibility that the various things I've discussed are in fact part of a plan. Profit is always priority one for business moguls, which is what the Nutting/McClatchy group is. You don't think it's possible they know exactly what they're doing, to the end of turning profit? I think it's hard to believe cunning businessmen could be operating their company as randomly/haphazardly as the Pirates *seem* to have been run.

I think the Pirates want their prospects to stay healthy just as much as any other team does. But if they are incompetent at scouting, they could also be incompetent at hiring and organizing medical personnel.

I think it's hard to believe cunning businessmen could be operating their company as randomly/haphazardly as the Pirates *seem* to have been run.

I think you have an unrealistic assumption about just how "cunning" businesspeople tend to be.

I'm gone for six hours or so now (seriously) but Steve or anyone, while I'm gone, please provide your best explanation for the Matt Morris deal. Because the next logical explanation that doesn't involve "the Pirates want to lose" will be the first. Everyone's at a loss about this. Yeah, some teams, owners, and executives aren't the brightest crayons in the box. But do you really believe the Pirates are that spectacularly stupid?

Some physicians are better than others. The ones that are really, really good get employed by really wealthy companies--like sports franchises, who have more money staked on the health of their employees than just about any other enterprise on the planet.

The Pirates do not pay enough money to employ the really top-flight physicians.

Some teams pay money and hire lots of surgeons, doctors, trainers, therapists, etc. Some teams, like the Pirates, run the show with as few as possible.

Really? have you studied this? What's the Pirates medical budget compared to the Indians, Brewers, and Reds (for instance)? Who does the Pirates Tommy John surgeries? Who does the Indians, Brewers, and Reds? How many people are on each club's medical staff?

Your operating assumption that the Pirates have been bad for a historically long time: is that true? Longer than the Nets, Clippers, Saints, Bucaneers?

Again: there are no evidentiary details in your conspiracy theory; only assertion and assumption.

MLB isn't very Darwinian, if there were relegation sustained incompetence would automatically be punished. As it is now incompetence might even make good business sense.

please provide your best explanation for the Matt Morris deal. Because the next logical explanation that doesn't involve "the Pirates want to lose" will be the first. Everyone's at a loss about this. Yeah, some teams, owners, and executives aren't the brightest crayons in the box. But do you really believe the Pirates are that spectacularly stupid?

I find the Pirates being stupid easier to believe than the Littlefield-Nutting conspiracy-to-defraud-customers theory, yes.

Look, the Giants signed Morris to this contract a year and a half ago. Doing that was just about as stupid as trading a grade-B prospect for him is now. Hell, the Giants have done plenty of other things that are spectacularly stupid; how about trading Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano, and Boof Bonser for A.J. Pierzynski, and then releasing Pierzynski?

The Pirates traded for Morris because they see him as a solid, league-average innings eater who will help stabilize their rotation, and who will also be a mentor and role model for their young pitchers -- something Morris was praised for in San Francisco. They gave up very little to get him.

You and I wouldn't have made this deal. But you and I wouldn't have made dozens of deals that get made every year. The most logical explanation for such deals isn't that the GMs making them are crooks.

Your operating assumption that the Pirates have been bad for a historically long time: is that true? Longer than the Nets, Clippers, Saints, Bucaneers?

Actually, in baseball terms they may be getting close- the record is 16

Here are the only teams in major- league history with at least 13 losing seasons in a row.

TEAM STREAK YEARS

Philadelphia Phillies 16 1933-48

Boston Red Sox 15 1919-33

Phila./K.C Athletics 15 1953-67

Pittsburgh Pirates 14 1993-2006 (and # 15 seems to be a lock)

Seattle Mariners 14 1977-90

Philadelphia Phillies 14 1918-31

Philadelphia Athletics 13 1934-46

Pittsburgh Pirates 15 1993-present

OKay does anyone have an explanation for the 1918-1948 Phillies???

Godawful incompetence, and at point during the later end, an owner who actually was crooked.

OKay does anyone have an explanation for the 1918-1948 Phillies???

They were being run by a Jewish cabal that was simultaneously manipulating the world economy and hiding evidence of alien visits to the southwest while also plotting the assassinations of MLK and JFK.

That's a lot of foresight on JFK and MLK in 1948.