Friday, July 31, 2009

Continuing the fight

One of the best things about writing your own blog is that after you publish you can continue to rant about. When you have an argument with someone, if you don't get out one of your points then you usually don't get to say them. Here I can just keep on bitching about this stuff, luckily this is my last post on the matter.

In my post yesterday, "I hate the Pirates!", I mentioned that The Nutting Family owns the Pirates and most of the Newspapers in the Tristate area. It just bothers me that they run the two business' the same way. Salary should be kept as close to the minimum as possible. Do not bring in talented established people at a good wage. Hire inexperienced people at a low wage, if they have real talent for the job do not reward them, make them look elsewhere for more lucrative wages, and publicly chastise them for it. After all we are the only game in town, people will purchase our product because we have the market cornered. Sling the product out there no matter what shape it is in, as long we get our advertising dollar.

I also get tired of hearing that Pittsburgh is a small sports market. It is hard to pay people in this market. I realize we do not have a George Steinbrener, but if you have a winning team you will sell a lot more seats, shirts, and other merch. Take a look around the Tristate area, how many Penguin shirts and hats do you see, seems like they are everywhere. That is because the Pens, and the Steelers were able to win a championship even though we are in such a small market that it makes it hard to compete.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

I hate the Pirates!

It would be better to say I hate The Nutting Family that owns the Pirates. These people also own just about every newspaper in the Tristate area.

The reason I am so mad is that they keep GIVING away players. They have been making trades sending our best players packing, and receiving prospects in return. If they were building a team out of these prospects it would be different but this has been going on for several years now. A tidbit I found out just the other day that I find even more troubling is the business aspect of this, I am not 100% clear on how this works but if a team trades away a big name player, for unknown "prospects" the team receiving the big name player pays the team they acquired the player from his salary back for the year. Basically they are getting paid, and paid well to get rid of their better players.


Nate Mclouth

Batting Average .259
RBI's 52
Home Runs 15
Stolen Bases 15




Nate is now an Atlanta Brave


Adam LaRoche
AVG .251
Home Runs 13
RBI's 43
Stolen Bases 2





Adam is now playing for the Boston Red Sox.


Jason Bay

Batting Avg. .254
Home Runs 20
RBI's 74
Stolen Bases 11




Jason Bay is now Playing for the Boston Red Sox, and signed a very nice multi-year deal.






Jack Wilson
Avg .267
Home Runs 4
RBI's 30
Stolen Bases 2


Not the most impressive numbers, but he is a top notch Shortstop, also a big in the community.











Jack Wilson is now a Seattle Mariner






Nyjer Morgan
AVG .304
Home Runs 3
RBI's 34
Stolen Bases 31










Nyjer is now a Washington National.




In a deal that was done today, With Seattle. The Pirates shipped out Jack Wilson and an unproductive pitcher Ian Snell. In return we received;





Ronny Cedeno
AVG .167
Home Runs 5
RBI 17
Stolen Bases 3

And 3 more Minor League Prospect pitchers.





When Nate Mclouth was given away, we received,


Andrew McCutchen, a very strong outfielder with poor offensive numbers


AVG .281
Home Runs 3
RBI's 25
Stolen Bases 9


I missed the 11PM news, and while I was researching for this piece, I found out the Freddy Sanchez has been Traded as well. Lets see what we got for Freddy, who was the National League Batting Champ 2 years ago. Holy Crap, I am so surprised Tim Alderson does not have any Major League Stats, because he is another stinking prospect.





Now one last thing to bring to your attention. All the offensive stat leaders for Pittsburgh for the year have all been traded. Now that right there is how you provide the hometown with over a decade and a half of sub 500 baseball.





Who needs a winning season, We have Prospects!

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Marbles on the move









Recently the Marbles went to see Grandma,
(a piece of her artwork is in the window behind her)




















and Grandpa in New York.















Z was excited,




















especially because Grandma has such cool stuff.











A liked making new friends,





































There was a playground,








































There was even Tricycles that A could borrow,





















Z loved the playground,





















Z warmed up to the playground after a bit.































And then there was ice cream,





















Who said ice cream is not finger food,





















I scream, you scream, even Z screams for ice cream

















After Z put on a crawling display, we had to head home.
















A wonderful time was had by all The Wife and I escaped with Grandpa as D.D. went wine tasting and purchasing. The few days we had flew by so fast, and we are hoping to return soon, I am sure grandma, and Grandpa wouldn't mind.