Morning Dump 5/19

That flipping of the bird was one of those random priceless moments that happen during the telecast of a live sporting event. Even last night as we were all here watching it, we had to rewind and watch that part a few times, and laugh just as hard each time. Thanks to the Pensblog for the screen cap.

A good night in Pittsburgh sports...

- P-G recap of the game here. Satan and Boucher, one back from the dead and one first put in for emergency duty, both scored goals last night. The P-G had the same take here.

- Fleury easily was the reason the Canes didn't score in the first, and he was easily the reason that our lead held up at the end. ESPN says the same here. Ron Cook details more here.

On one hand, we gotta be happy that we played well, got secondary scoring, and won without Crosby even registering a shot. Just wait til he gets the motor running. On the other hand, we could easily have lost this game had Fleury not kept us in it and preserved the lead. We need to play a little better on defense.

- The Pirates won their first game against the Nats last night. The bats woke up again giving the Pirates two straight games of scoring over 10 runs.

- In general MLB news though, as an East Coast fan, you gotta love this.




- My talk with Smizik...

The other day, Smizik had a blog post on the P-G about the Pirates and the 16 year old from the DR and why we shouldn't do it.


My reply to him:

"I disagree.

Who cares if he's 16, 17, or 18 for that matter?

Many great Latin players are signed like this.

Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Vlad Guererro, and Johan Santana were all first signed as free agents at this age and they seemed to turn out pretty well.

I'm sure I could dig and find more, but the point remains.

As an aside, it's odd to see a bulk fanbase that usually complains about our 'stingy' owner now blast him for attempting to spend this money here and call it wasteful.

I'd rather spend this here than a crud free agent."

Another thing that I said:

"Oh, and also, to attempt to make a point that we can't do this right because of prior talent evaluation mishaps (which overall were atrocious) by the Pirates is way off base since there's a new regime (including GM and scouting director Greg Smith)."

Smizik then replied to my first comment, Smizik here:

"(I am sure you could find plenty more Dominicans [Aramis Ramirez] who have had good to outstanding MLB careers. And for every one of those, there are about 10 who have signed professional contracts and gone on to do nothing. --- Bob Smizik)"

To which I said:

"Bob,

Thanks for the reply.

But that expands on the larger issue that, since they don't spend on payroll, that they should spend in the draft and development.

We can't criticize the judgment of the new regime the way we did the old one since the jury's still out on their decisions.

Let them scout, draft, and develop. We'll see what happens then, but this is exactly the type of thing they should be looking into."