Comments on: Only One Friday Starter Attended Clay Pigeon Gate

By: BarryJT

BarryJT — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 04:43:00 +0000

I was being generous…

By: piratemike

piratemike — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 15:45:00 +0000

Gayo is helping to make NH look better than he is.

By: Lee Young

Lee Young — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 13:30:00 +0000

Amen, brother!

By: Lee Young

Lee Young — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 13:30:00 +0000

LOL…I liked that comment!

By: Lee Young

Lee Young — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 13:29:00 +0000

Also, thank goodness our Latin ‘drafts’ have been so promising. Essentially, our top prospects are the high end pitchers and Latin players.

By: John Lease

John Lease — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 09:48:00 +0000

If you are trying to win, why schedule that? I’d rather the Pirates be focused on the field, than on shooting clay pigeons.

By: JohnDreker

JohnDreker — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 04:04:00 +0000

It is definitely disappointing, and even with Black, you’re getting a reliever with a high pick so that doesn’t do much for me. 11 of the 23 players they signed that year are gone. A couple are just barely hanging on. I had hopes for Zack Dodson after having a long talk with him and seeing him pitch back in June, but that 50 game suspension really put a damper on that.

The worst part about the recent failures in the draft is that they seemed to have a ton of potential, while this year turned out to be a disaster between Appel/Thomas not signing, safe picks in the top ten rounds and not enough late round overslot spending to make it look better. The front office was lucky that most people missed the overall failure of the draft, because the team was winning.

By: JohnDreker

JohnDreker — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:52:00 +0000

I think the age as you mentioned is the real reason you don’t hear that with Heredia. Not sure if it still holds true with their velocities, but Luis was throwing harder at a younger age too, so he still has more of the potential tag. Heredia has also progressed a ton since this time last year, so that is a combo of reasons that keeps him ahead of Holmes in the rankings. There wasn’t a big difference in rankings between the two for most people when we did a poll a month ago. Clay’s recent control and lack of K’s have only widened it slightly for me, nothing major.

The strikeouts are likely due to the Pirates method of wanting quick outs, pitch the contact. At some point you have to know how to put away guys, because(stating the obvious) the higher you go, the better the hitters will get. I’m sort of a fan of their methods and I know they have made some adjustments to how they let pitchers pitch recently. I don’t totally agree with it though, and that is mostly based on lack of results

By: Matt Beam

Matt Beam — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:03:00 +0000

fair point in regards to control, but in all honesty the same (low K’s) could be said for Heredia (although there is 2 years in age difference) and nobody has really brought that up

By: JohnDreker

JohnDreker — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 02:39:00 +0000

The thing that scares me with Holmes is the BB/K ratio is getting a lot closer now and the K rate is going down. It is a pitcher’s league too, so while it is hard to argue with the overall results(BAA,ERA,GO/AO), those 29 walks on the year and only 24 K’s in his last 44.1 IP are starting to scare me. It’s hard to find a success story brought around by this new pitch to contact/fastball academy method they have. The guys doing the best are the ones getting strikeouts. I still have Holmes ranked high, just some question marks with him now. Will be interesting to see him next year at WV for a full year