Mets - Braves Liveblog; Baseballs biggest Joe Buck RETURNS! Part 2

4:36 PM: Kelly Johnson is put away, Buck and McCarver both talk about "sitting on" answers. We get a nice shot of domestic abuse in the stands by Braves fans with those stupid tomahawks.

4:39 PM: Chipper, sick of being ridiculed, gives a ball a ride and the wind knocks it down fast enough for Alou to make a diving catch.

4:40 PM: DirecTV is ruining Major League for me. I have no desire to watch it ever again after this bullshit ad-campaign. I don't care about 1080-I, I just want you to stop ruining good movies. This is exactly like that Duke Phillips invention on The Critic that Jay Sherman saved us from, only worse.

4:42 PM: Edgar Renteria makes a clear error, as Shawn Green reaches. Joe Buck calls it an infield single. Bad eyes on the shortstop side of the infield, with a lot of misplays. Something to look out for. Smoltz is already past 100 pitches. Valentin pops-up.

4:44 PM: Glavine gets his second sacrifice down, and Reyes will be up in another clutch situation. They appear to be pitching around him, and so it falls into LoDuca's hands. LoDuca quickly gets into an 0-2 hole, and Braves fans boo lustily as a pitch 4 feet off the plate is called a ball.

4:49 PM: Ball 2. Long battle with LoDuca fouling off a lot of balls. Joe Buck brings up our record of failure in Atlanta, as if the Braves were not a great team. LoDuca strikes out. Buck rubs it in our face. Then cuts to a Chevrolet commercial that seems to be about how black people are allowed to like Chevy's. If I cut myself, this'd be where I'd be getting out the utensils.

4:54 PM: FOX camera work in the Mets bullpen looks like those webcams they used when we were on the ground in Iraq. Andruw Jones doubles over Wright's head.

4:57 PM: Francoeur singles over Valentin's head, and with McCann up the tie game is very much in doubt. Willie elects to stay with Glavine.

4:58 PM: Valetin makes a diving catch of a line drive, saving the lead, and setting up a double play situation that could end the inning. He's the best defensive second basemen I've seen for the Mets since the Fonz in his prime.

4:59 PM: Glavine goes 3-0 on Craig Wilson, which is not so cool, because there is no right-hander in the pen, and Matt Diaz has crushed both balls he's hit today. Walks him. Glavine will not give in! He is a grinder! Randolph unsurprisingly lets Glavine stay in.

5:02 PM: Glavine throws a ball. Diaz chases a ball way outside. Diaz hits a sacrifice fly, but Shawn Green forgets to catch it, because he's a horrible person and I hate him. 3-2 Braves.

5:06 PM: Official player of FC Pedro Feliciano gets the ball, although I really dislike this situation for him. I think this is more of a Heilman situation. Green catches the fly ball this time, it's 4-2, and it would be 3-2 if Shawn Green wasn't a Jewsy McStagger.

5:10 PM: Tim McCarver gets obsessed with sac flies, talking about some game he worked in the 90's or 80's or Mesozoic era where there was three sac flies. Camera pans to Ma and Paw Braves fan, bundled up, uncaring. Good image. Feliciano walks Kelly Johnson, and his shirt is split open at the back, and Willie goes to the pen again, this time fetching...wait, I can't tell you, because Joe Buck won't give me useful information.

5:14 PM: Joe Smith, rookie reliever, gets the call. He's been used in three straight games, and seems to be an awkward choice. Renteria bounces a ball off the plate, and Shawn Green's error looms even larger. Smith did look pretty solid though, and after being left in to face official Met killer Chipper Jones (TM), get an inning ending fly out to left. Now we get to see Atlanta's new pen: Gonzalez, Soriano, Wickman.

5:22 PM: Gonzalez is up first, he pops up Beltran, but Delgado takes him hard off the middle. Smoltz makes great observations about how the starting staff needs to step up if they want to be a good team, that they can't just rely on the 7-8-9 inning guys.

5:24 PM: "John Smoltz is the Dennis Eckersley of 25 years ago." Do I want to try? Nah. Wright flies out to center.

5:25 PM: "Teams will be lining up to get Smoltz. They'll say, you wanna start, you wanna stop? Thats why I think the Braves will keep him." I don't need to add commentary to this, McCarver speaks for himself.

5:27 PM: Alou walks, and they can't possibly let Shawn Green bat, can they? Oh god they're going to. This won't be pretty. One thing I think Willie could get a lot better at is pinch-hitting. Naturally, Green singles up the middle to make it 5-3. Why is it Shawn Green's quest to prove me wrong?

5:29 PM: Jose Valentin up against a left-hander, this won't end well. What Willie could really get better at is pinch-hitting in these spots against left-handers. Kelly Johnson catches a tough pop-up to end the inning.

5:33 PM: Randolph leaves Smith in, and Smith responds by walking Andruw Jones. Control is a problem right now for him.

5:34 PM: Joe Buck thanks some asshole I don't care about for helping them talk to John Smoltz and ruin the game. Smith gets a double play ball, Reyes-Valentin-Delgado. "Quite an antiquated telestrator," says McCarver. Like we know or care. How about we focus on the game? Would that be hard?

5:37 PM: The DirecTV GAMEBREAK, brought to you by DirecTV, in case you didn't notice. Hey lets have a DirecTV commercial right after the break! OVERKILL IS FUN!

5:39 PM: "One blanket, three people. Maybe five." "MAYBE EIGHT!" David Newhan grounds out to first against Soriano. Soriano is so dark that I can barely see his gruesome beard.

5:43 PM: Jose Reyes apparently strikes out despite hitting the ball and the catcher dropping the ball. I'm confused, he's confused, I think Soriano is confused. Buck too, but he's always confused. LoDuca grounds out to third.

5:47 PM: Scott "The Show" Schoeneweis comes in. They're still talking about the fucking telestrator. I have nominated "The Blow" for Schoeneweis' nickname, but I'm waiting to see where the rest of the Mets Blogs go with it.

5:50 PM: Someone may want to check Carlos Delgado's glove for holes.

5:51 PM: Fans start a "Shawn Green sucks" chant. HEROES. David gets a tough out on a broken bat grounder. He has improved his defense this year, I'll give him that.

5:53 PM: Scott Schoenweis picks off Langerhans, Jon argues that Bobby Kielty is worse than Shawn Green and that Shawn Green is cool. Jon loves him some players with long looping swings who can't play defense.

5:56 PM: An aside, I think the Sobe commercial is cute for now. I won't feel this way after I've seen it a thousand times, but it's pretty okay.

5:59 PM: Wickman is in for the Braves; he thankfully is the worst of the three relievers, so maybe we still have a chance. Beltran works him to a 3-2 count, then whiffs.

6:02 PM: Delgado also works him to a full count, but unlike Beltran, he walks.

6:04 PM: David up, and Wickman throws it to the backstop. 2-0 count, but David has looked horrible today. Another ball by Wickman. David was taking all the way on the 3-0 to get a strike. Singles through the hole! Another ball he didn't hit well, but at least it's a hit.

6:07 PM: Moises Alou up, bloops hit to center, easy out on the first pitch. Leaving the game in the hands of...Shawn Green? OH GOD NO! NOOOOOOO!

6:09 PM: Wright steals second, a single ties the game. But it's Shawn Green.

6:11 PM: Wow. Shawn Green's hardest hit ball of the game, and it's stabbed by Craig Wilson. 5-3, Braves win. The lesson I've learned? Don't liveblog.

Mets - Braves Liveblog; Baseballs biggest Joe Buck RETURNS!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Now THAT's a trade. No really, Dave Littlefield made a trade. Seriously.

There was some pretty fantastic karma going around today, let me tell you.

It all started when I went to Bodega with Jonny Raymond, bought some pretty swell kicks while Jonny purchased the Orioles "Fuck Face" t-shirt (which for some reason is blue). We then stopped at our friendly neighborhood Boloco for some burritos that, according to Jonny, are bland and tasteless and will never live up to the standards that California has set. Jonny himself has a hard time living up to the standards that California weather has set, and he would not stop bitching about the single-digit degree temperature outside.

While enjoying our hot wraps, Jon received a telephone call from a friend back home, who broke him the news about the aforementioned Mike Dunleavy trade. Jonny went into an ecstatic giggling fit, similar to the one he went into on Saturday night upon showing a bunch of inebriated people the Reading Rainbow theme song at five in the morning. I laughed at the concept of the NBA, told him I was happy for him, and glumly said I wished Dave Littlefield would do something.

Well, I got home at about 4:30, sat down at my computer, and opened Internet Explorer. My homepage on I.E. is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website, and lo and behold, the leading story was: PIRATES ON THE VERGE OF LANDING LAROCHE.

Over the next few hours, I anxiously clung to my computer, waiting to hear further details. Who were the other players to be involved, if any? What new and creative way would Dave Littlefield find to screw up this seemingly done deal? It became an event almost worthy of liveblogging.

As it turned out, the full trade ended up with the Pirates receiving Adam LaRoche and minor leaguer Jamie Romak, with Mike Gonzalez and stud Brent Lillibridge heading to Atlanta. I had intended to do some sort of blog outlining the pros and cons of each aspect of the deal for the Pirates, and I signed on to Blogger to see that Jonny had basically done the same thing for his team's trade. We've got the mojo working, or something.

We'll start with the PROS.

Acquiring Adam LaRoche:

• First and foremost, Adam LaRoche gives the Pirates something they have not had in a long time, that being a left-handed hitter who can hit the baseball over the fence on a consistent basis. Since Brian Giles, the team has had absolutely nothing in the way of left-handed bats, which quickly became the team's most painful and glaring need (and there are a lot of those on a team that hasn't had a winning season since I was six years old). LaRoche hits home runs, draws his fair share of walks, and still hits for a decent average. There is nothing not to like about his offensive profile apart from the fact that he whiffs a ton.
• LaRoche is still relatively young, entering his age-27 season, and relatively cheap, entering his first year of arbitration. We'll be getting him just coming into his prime, and it's not hard to envision signing him to a long-term deal if all goes well this season.
• PNC Park is built for Adam LaRoche, whose hit chart shows him to be a pull hitter, though not quite a dead-pull hitter. The Clemente porch will do him some favors. It'll also turn some homers into doubles, but those aren't exactly bad, either.
• The trickle-down effect: just having a hitter of LaRoche's caliber in the lineup automatically strengthens the rest of an offense that has been among the worst in baseball over the past few years. For one thing, it gives the team at least a little bit of lefty-righty alternation so opposing managers will have to burn more relievers. For another thing, it gives Jason Bay some semblance of protection, which he has never had since coming over to the Pirates. It bumps a hitter who's not so good from the lineup. At this point, the leading victim appears to be Jose Castillo. Logically, this strengthens the whole lineup, although Jim Tracy will still attempt to sabotage it by inexplicably batting Jack Wilson second all year long. Finally, it also gives Tracy a lot more options as far as the bench is concerned, if guys like Castillo and Ryan Doumit are available to pinch-hit instead of Pointless and Stepson.
• By all accounts, Adam LaRoche is capable of playing first base like he isn't physically handicapped, something Pirates fans have not been able to witness since the Kevin Young era.

Trading Mike Gonzalez:

• Gonzalez is turning 29 this season, and has yet to prove he can be reliable, health-wise. He still hasn't been able to get very far over the 50-inning hump in the Major Leagues due to various maladies.
• The Pirates have so many relief pitchers it's absurd. Relief pitching is far and away the deepest part of the organization. A closer is worthless without leads to protect, and you won't have leads to protect if you don't score runs. Thus, a closer is the last thing a team like the Pirates should be worrying about, especially when they have four potential closers lined up to replace him, and Adam LaRoche figures to help a lot with the whole run-scoring thing.
• Really, the 9th inning was getting kind of boring. Let's see some Mike Williams-esque life-shortening techniques again.

Trading Brent Lillibridge:

• To be honest there really is nothing good about losing Lillibridge, except for the fact that, like most minor league players, he's far from a sure thing, and middle infield is one of the few positions where the Pirates do have at least a little depth. The Bucs still have Brian Bixler, and although I like Lillibridge a lot better, they have a very similar profile.

Acquiring Jamie Romak:

• Romak is exactly the kind of player the Pirates have shunned during the Dave Littlefield administration, especially with Ed Creech at the helm of the scouting department. He can hit home runs and draw a walk, two aspects at which the Pirates suck at throughout the organization, but he's probably average at best defensively and strikes out a ton, two things that tend to deter the Pirates brain trust.
• He'll be 21 this season, and most likely playing at high-A Lynchburg. That's not a bad timetable to be on, especially when you take into account the fact that Nyjer Morgan is turning 27 this summer and has yet to play above AA yet is still considered a prospect by people within the organization.
• He's Canadian.

Now, the CONS

Acquiring Adam LaRoche:

• He's a little older than some people would like, mostly proponents of the Oakland A's train of thought where established Major Leaguers are traded for high ceiling AAA and AA guys who are just about to make it to the bigs. As I'll explain later, though, this strategy would not work well given the Pirates' current situation.
• We'd like to see him do it again before we proclaim him the savior of baseball in Pittsburgh. His .915 OPS with the Braves last year was his second-highest EVER in professional baseball, his .561 slugging percentage his career best by nearly fifty points. Hitters do mature as they get older and more experienced, but there's a chance (albeit slight) that LaRoche's outstanding 2006 was a fluke, and he'll be merely pretty good. Which would still be a huge improvement, but somewhat of a disappointment considering what the Pirates have had to give up.
• The lefty-righty thing I mentioned earlier does mean games against Tony La Russa will be that much more unbearable to watch.

Trading Mike Gonzalez

• Gonzo is lights out, period. The guy has a 2.37 ERA and 183 strikeouts in 155 2/3 career innings. By definition, he was the best closer in baseball last year, as his save conversion rate was a perfect 100%.
• The Pirates are certainly not lacking in candidates to replace Gonzalez as the 9th-inning guy, but it seems the most likely will be Salomon Torres, which in my opinion would be a horrible underutilization of the guy. Over the last three seasons, Sal has proven to be the most durable, consistent reliever in baseball. He and his rubber arm thrive when asked to pitch nearly every day. To limit him to 60-70 appearances would be a huge waste. One of the kids - Bayliss, Sharpless, Capps - could probably get the job done just as efficiently, and Bayliss and Sharpless have more prototypical closer "stuff" and K rates.

Trading Brent Lillibridge

• Where do I begin? Lillibridge has surpassed even local hero and first-round draft pick Neil Walker to move into the top 3 on some Pirates top 10 prospects lists. He's steadily risen through the ranks of the system, primed to make his AA debut next year after just a season and a half in the pros. He does pretty much everything well: he hits (.289/.391/.467 in 644 minor league at-bats, despite an extremely mediocre short-season debut in 2005) he walks (.400+ OBP in 200+ AB stints with Hickory and Lynchburg in 2006), he steals at a reasonable clip (53/66 between Hickory and Lynchburg), and he plays solid defense. He even started flashing the power a little bit this season. Profiles very similarly to another Braves middle infielder, Rafael Furcal. PECOTA creamed itself over this guy, and I can't blame them.
• On a personal note, I road tripped to State College/Altoona in early September for games 3 and 4 of the Eastern League semifinals between the Altoona Curve and the Akron Aeros. Since Blair County Ballpark was about to shut down for the winter, there was a crazy clearance sale on all Curve murchandise, and I bought a generic Curve t-shirt and had it customised with Lillibridge's name and number. At the time, Lillibridge had technically been added to the Curve roster, but he was there primarily just to get an up close and personal look at the level of competition in AA. As such, he didn't even get into a game, but I purchased the shirt in preparation for the 2007 season. After game 4, my companions and I decided on a whim to check out the players' parking lot. I was wearing the Lillibridge shirt, and who should be one of the few players to bother stopping to chat with us than the kid himself. His eyes lit up when I turned around and showed him his name on the shirt, and he signed my scorebook. I don't exactly feel stupid for buying the shirt now, especially since absolutely no one saw this coming, but it is certainly very disheartening. Every time I really, really get behind a Pirates prospect, something bad always seems to happen.

Acquiring Jamie Romak

• The main downside to Romak is that he's right-handed, and the Pirates could still use a few lefty-hitting prospects sprinkled throughout the system here and there. He also strikes out a ton. It's a little early to be writing him off as the next Brad Eldred, but he's the type of player who could struggle as pitching becomes more advanced in the higher levels of the minors.
• He's not Brent Lillibridge.

OVERALL

As much as I despise the man, I do have to say that in all honestly, Dave Littlefield did a pretty nice job to pull this one out. Going into the season without having acquired Brian O'Neill's mythical "Lefty McThump" would have been an unmitigated disaster. Going into the season having had to settle for another aging stopgap like Geoff Jenkins would have been pretty close, given the sour taste still in the fan base's mouth from the Jeromy Burnitz experience. Getting a hitter like LaRoche was absolutely imperative for just about all aspects of the Pittsburgh Pirates, both on the field and off.

I also have to admit that I'm impressed with DL's ability to compromise in this situation. It seemed like the trade would never get consummated because of the haggling over what extra player the Bucs should throw in, with the names of Paul Maholm, Chris Duffy, and Jose Castillo all being bandied about. Littlefield was hesitant to give up two Major Leaguers for one Major Leaguer, and rightly so, I think (although Castillo would not have been such a great loss).

People have complained about Littlefield's hesitancy to part with players with significant Major League playing time, but I do think that in this situation, he was absolutely right, misguided though his intentions may be. At this point, the Pirates farm system is just about completely barren apart from Andrew McCutchen and Brad Lincoln (who, as a Pirates pitching prospect, is still liable to have his arm fall off any day now) and maybe Neil Walker if he can get his shit together. This is more indicative of the horrendous drafting under Ed Creech than anything, but the fact remains that the Mickey White draftees (White was demoted, then resigned in 2002) are all just reaching the bigs now, namely the starting pitchers, and there is nothing coming down the line behind them.

If the Pirates are going to win again any time soon, what they're going to do it with is, for the most part, already there. The Pirates roster is loaded with 23-29 year olds currently in or just about to enter their prime. With next to nothing in the way of internal help for the forseeable future, the Bucs essentially have about a three year window in which to do something positive. This why I firmly believe that having players who can contribute at the Major League level right now is of the utmost importance, and why it was worth Dave Littlefield playing hardball, even with players as mediocre as Paul Maholm or Chris Duffy.

Taken purely out of context, I would say that Gonzalez and Maholm or Duffy for LaRoche would be pretty fair. But the Pirates don't have immediate adequate replacements for either of those guys, and can't afford to wait until they do come along (although the case could be made that the team could have made do in center field with some wacky combination of Nate McLouth and Jose Bautista or whoever else for a year and a half until McCutchen is ready).

So, as much as I hate giving up Brent Lillibridge, it seems like a noble sacrifice on the part of Dave Littlefield. Granted, the Pirates, being the stupendous talent evaluators that they are, probably value Lillibridge a whole lot less than the rest of everyone else who's ever watched a baseball game. But I think Littlefield really did do an admirable job to draw John Schuerzholtz's attention away from the big league guys and to dangle someone as tantalizing as Lillibridge in order to get it done. Not only that, but he made sure the Pirates came away with something else, and not the typical crappy, short-lived middle reliver that the Pirates almost always get as a "throw-in." The deal as a whole represents the sort of outside-the-box thinking that Littlefield has never, ever shown himself to be able to do throughout his tenure.

My final evaluation of this trade is that the Pirates are now set up better for the long run, since the "long run" in their case is only the next two or three years. This is the first time people have legitimate cause for optimism going into the season in a long time, and you need to look no further than the fact that there will be practically no veteran stopgaps on this team. For the first time in just about forever, almost every major contributor is going to be here for the long haul.

And of course, since I can't make a post involving Dave Littlefield without some sort of negativity, I discovered a pretty amazing blurb about Jamie Romak while doing some research when I first heard his name this afternoon.

From the London (Ontario) Free Press story about Romak getting drafted in 2003:

I was afraid Pittsburgh would step up because they'd shown the most interest. I was so happy to go to Atlanta.

Yeah, yeah, it's funny that he didn't want to go to the Pirates because the Pirates suck, and he was probably just spinning his own situation positively anyway like any player would, blah blah blah. That's all well and good, but I want to point out the part where it says the Pirates had shown the most interest in him prior to the draft.

For those of you unfamiliar with Dave Littlefield's tactics, if he sets his eye on a player, he is not going to rest until he gets him. Littlefield originally wanted Xavier Nady instead of Jason Bay in the Brian Giles deal, but Kevin Towers wouldn't budge (thank God). Three years later, Dave finally ended up with his man. Another example is when Littlefield was saved from himself by the Cubs outbidding the Pirates for Jeromy Burnitz prior to the 2005 season. One offseason later, Littlefield was hellbent on getting Jeromy to play for his team, and did not stop until he had done so. Dave apparently never forgot about Jamie Romak, either.

And now, I bid you farewell and good night.

Baseball around the World, 9/29/06

MLB:
Roger Clemens shits bed, Astros playoff hopes, and all but mathematically eliminates the Reds - Is Clemens the A-Rod of pitchers? The only World Series win he took part in, he threw a bat at Mike Piazza. He also has failed to win games despite his ERA, yet fans make excuses for him. Not that I think wins matter, I'm just interested as to the big difference in vitrol between the two of them. The Reds will need the Cardinals to lose the last three games and they'll need to win their last two to tie them.

Philadelphia rapes Brian Moehler to keep Phillies mathematically alive for wild card - Time to go back to sandpaper. Fun fact: Brian Moehler is the second highest paid player on the Marlins this season.

Poker legend Paul Phillips, Emil Brown, come up with clutch win to keep the race for #1 pick interesting - With two games left, the Royals hold only a one game lead on the Devil Rays, who managed a "shocking" 2-1 loss when Seth McClung "accidentally" walked in Jhonny Peralta with 1 out in the ninth. The Royals still have the clear advantage as they are playing a team with incentive to win, but this could come down to the wire with the Rays starting Jae Seo and Jason Hammel for the last two days of the season.

Japanese League:
Buffaloes linked with Terry Collins - After having respected manager Akira Ogi die before the the season and going in with replacement Katsuhiro Nakamura, the Orix Buffaloes are now looking to bring in former Astros and Angels manager Terry Collins to the club. Collins would join Marines manager Bobby Valentine and Nippon manager Trey Hillman as the lone foreign managers in the twelve team league. Anyone actually wanting to hire Terry Collins should take a look at this September game log from 1996.

Tigers win ninth straight, move within 2 of Dragons - This is a huge series at Koshien for the home-standing Tigers, who have a chance to completely tie up the Central League with about two weeks to play. They took game one behind the efforts of Makoto Imaoka, who had his first hit since June be a pinch-hit three-run double that broke the game open. The CL winner wins an automatic berth to the Japan Series against the winner of the PL's playoffs. On an unrelated note, try to see how much sexual innuendo Jim Allen can fit into one column.

Dutch League:

DOOR Neptunus' Raily Legito, who won the MVP after hitting .366, won't be playing.

Game 4 of the best-of-5 Holland Series will be played this Saturday, with Konica Minolta Pioneers (25-17) playing host to Corendon Kinheim (33-7-2). Pioneers lead the series 2-1. Kinheim sends stopper Patrick Beljaards (12-2, 1.76) up against the Pioneers Richard Orman (6-4, 3.55), a rematch of the game two starters, where Beljaards threw a CG and gave up just one earned to get Kinheim's one win. Pioneers seem to be a team of destiny this year though, especially after knocking off DOOR Neptunus, which had won the last eight Holland Series. In other Dutch league news, Instant Holland Almere 90 (14-26-1) earned the right to stay in the league with a 3-0 sweep in the promotion/relegation series with RCH-Pinguins.

Apparently, this guy will be putting up a live play-by-play. You'll have to suffer through the Dutch, but it's exciting baseball!

Mexican League:
The season is long over, I just wanted to point out that the Mexican league has perhaps the dumbest playoff structure ever. There are 16 teams, 12 make it, and the 2 "best losers" get to play in the second round too. Just in case you thought the NBA was bad.