Welcome to DK Sports Radio and a new Daily Shot of Pirates, my every-weekday, half-hour program on the local baseball franchise. Today's episode: Why Ben Cherington's approach to team-building is literally unprecedented in franchise history.
Also, hey, just below, you'll find a full transcript of the opening segment:
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THE TRANSCRIPT
The Pirates are doing the same old thing again. It's the same tired script. Every three or four years, they blow everything up. And ... and wow, no, just no ... that's not what's happening right now.
What Ben Cherington's doing, actually has no precedent in Pittsburgh Baseball Club history.
If there's anything that's being expressed anywhere about what's happened to the Pirates of late -- the blow-up, the sell-off, the rebuild, the build, whatever you want to call it -- that's being more misconstrued, it's this idea that there they go again. I had a conversation a few days ago with a way-higher-up in management. Not for public edification or anything like that, but I do feel comfortable expressing to you what I expressed to this individual, and that is that I have not seen this before. I've not covered this before. I have not experienced this as a Pittsburgh lifer.
And I can hear you. Listen, I can hear you. It's just another payroll whack. It's just another cycle where they players get good and we get rid of them and everything else. That's fine. If you're Joe Blow tuning in to standard radio listening to the usual claptrap about the Pirates, fine, go with that. But if you're actually paying attention, and you're into facts, if you're into things that are real, I'm here to tell you that what Cherington is trying to do -- doesn't mean he'll succeed -- what he's trying to do, the approach that he's taking, has not been taken. And by that, I mean this: Cherington is trying to accumulate as much elite high-ceiling type talent as he can. He's not worried about their ages. He's not worried about when they get to Pittsburgh. He's going after an Australian outfielder -- for crying out loud, a teenager -- as if it's a really big deal. Why? Because to him, it is. He puts that Australian outfielder into a pool with X number of other players who have elite athleticism and potential. They do things that you can't teach or coach up.
As opposed to Cherington's predecessor, Neal Huntington, and his acquisitions, whether in the draft or through trades, he would always go for players who were safe. He was going for guys who he knew would at least make it to Pittsburgh and not embarrass him. I mean, the Gerrit Cole trade is the one that leaps to mind. In that setting, as a GM, you have a chance with coal to procure someone else's best ... who knows how many top prospects that you could get for Cole? Real, live big-time talents who might flame out ... but if they don't, they could be something truly special. No, no. He went for Joe Musgrove and Colin Moran, Michael Feliz, Jason Martin. I mean, everyone knew what those guys were. If you're taking the right approach toward winning a championship -- I'll wait for you to stop laughing -- within an economic system that's unfair, you have one way to do that, one route. That's the Tampa Bay route. That's how the Rays got that close this past season, despite having a payroll right in the Pirates range. Because they just kept loading up on young high-ceiling guys. And if that meant that they took a step backward for a year or two and lost 105 games or whatever, they didn't care. They never took their eye off the ball. They kept doing the same thing. And eventually, those players got to the majors and, 'Whoa, look at that!' From there, you as an organization, hold their major-league rights for six full years from the time they arrive in the majors.
That's beating the system. Does that player going to stay in your town for 18 years and have a statue carved of them? No, because that baseball no longer exists. We're living in a baseball era where Trevor Bauer might make more than the Pirates' entire roster after that contract he agreed to over the weekend with -- guess who? -- the Dodgers. If you want to try to fight the Dodgers at their own game, you're dead in the water. You don't even get started. Who thinks the Pirates can go and outbid a team like the Dodgers for Bauer?
This is the system that you have to beat. Not to join, but to beat. The Rays came oh-so-close to doing that. And you're going to see teams around baseball, not just the ones that have the lower payrolls, moving toward that model a) because coronavirus hit a lot of teams' finances hard and you're already seeing payrolls getting whacked all across baseball and b) it works. It requires patience. It requires some focus. It requires real dedication. When you're getting ripped by your own fans, and you're getting ripped everywhere you go.
They've never done this.
Huntington didn't do it when he traded Jason Bay or Xavier Nady. What did he get back? A lot of guys who were ready to just come right into Pittsburgh so that he wouldn't look red faced over having traded Bay for 'nothing.' Remember the main hot prospect in the Bay trade, the one Huntington singled out as having top prospect potential? That was Bryan Morris, who ended up being nothing other than a short-career middle reliever.
Dave Littlefield didn't do it. Cam Bonifay didn't do it. Syd Thrift didn't do it. Joe L. Brown didn't do it. How much farther back do you want me to go?
This hasn't been done. This hasn't been tried by the Pittsburgh Pirates. No one, no one, no one here has taken this approach before.
One more time: It might not work. If the Pirates aren't good at acquisition, if the Pirates aren't good at development, this won't work. But it's unquestionably the right approach. And it's just as unquestionably without precedent.
