Commentary
Pirates have many players who must be replaced with better talent NEW YORK – Here’s the kind of reputation the Pirates have around baseball these days:
The Mets’ TV coverage for Monday’s opener started with an opposition scouting report.
The graphic listed four names: Brian Giles, Jason Kendall, Aramis Ramirez and Pokey Reese.
Then the report said, “The rest of the team is Class AAA level.”
That might be an exaggeration (and it may have been charitable to Reese, whose offensive stats have been in freefall, but it’s not that far wrong. The Pirates have a few players who might be good in a year or few, but they also have a lot of guys who must be replaced by better talent.
It may take a while to get that talent, too. The top two levels of the minor league system don’t have much and the Pirates aren’t stocked with veterans who can bring quantity and quality in return.
One reason the Pirates turned things around in the early 1990s was then-General Manager Syd Thrift’s ability to maximize the value of Rick Rhoden, Tony Pena and Rick Reuschel.
The success of those past deals works against the current Pirates. Most clubs think long and hard about giving up a bundle of hot prospects for a proven major leaguer.
In most cases, it’s better to keep the young players than to sacrifice them for a temporary fix.
About the only player on the current roster who might bring that kind of 3-for-1 return is Brian Giles. The Pirates listened to offers for Giles over the winter but didn’t hear anything that came close to making sense.
The Pirates would need at least three excellent prospects for Giles and two of them would have to be major league ready. No one was offering anything resembling that.
Trade Jason Kendall? Forget about it. There is nobody who will take him at $10 million per year.
Kendall is a solid player but most organizations think the Pirates overpaid for a hitter who doesn’t provide power or a lot of RBIs.
It’s going to take some good drafts and plenty of time.
That’s the only way the Pirates are going to shake the kind of scouting report they got on television for the opener.
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Getting one of a possible four points in two games against Montreal went a long way toward officially sinking the Penguins.
The Penguins lost in overtime in Montreal on Saturday, then were shut out on home ice by the Canadiens on Monday.
By the time the Penguins come back for their final two home games next week, they should be officially playing for nothing.
They’ll probably have been eliminated from playoff contention by then, ending a streak of 11 years in the postseason.
Funny thing about that is the immediate future doesn’t look that bad, provided a couple of things happen.
The Penguins need to get one more healthy season from Mario Lemieux before his retirement from active play becomes permanent.
Then they need to re-sign forward Robert Lang.
If they do that, they can assemble two formidable scoring lines from some combination of Lemieux, Alexei Kovalev, Martin Straka, Lang, Ville Niemenen and Aleksey Morozov.
Finding role players for the other two lines should be easier. There’s a decent group to build from now.
The defense could use an upgrade, too, but it’s mostly a young group that figures to get better from this year’s experience.
Goalie Johan Hedberg is more than adequate. The Penguins need to find an experienced back-up so Hedberg doesn’t have to start more than 60 games. Do that and they’re at least back in the playoffs, if not a certified Stanley Cup contender.
Take away the injury to Straka this season and the Penguins probably would have made the playoffs.
It’s reasonable to think they could have won two or three more games had Straka played at least half of the season and Lemieux had been available for two more weeks.
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Jay Payton hit a home run against the Pirates in the opener on Monday. Later in that game, Pirates reliever Sean Lowe buzzed Payton with a close pitch.
The incident passed without any trouble but don’t think the Mets didn’t file away the information.
It will be an issue.
John Mehno can be reached at: jmehno@timesnet.net.