Matt Walbeck (Photo: mwlguide)

Former Tigers, Twins, Angels and Cubs catcher Matt Walbeck will manage in the Pirates' minor league system, at Lynchburg, Altoona or Indianapolis. He was the Rangers' big-league third base coach in 2008 and was Baseball America's minor league manager of the year in 2007, when he helmed Detroit's Class AA affiliate in Erie. There, he managed Jair Jurrjens, Matt Joyce and Andrew Miller. He spent the 2004-2006 seasons managing for West Michigan, the Tigers' Midwest League affiliate.

Here's a profile of Walbeck as a manager. He seems like a thoughtful and somewhat unconventional guy; he sometimes catches his pitchers' bullpen sessions himself, to get a better feel for their stuff.

Relatedly, former Indianapolis manager Trent Jewett will now manage the Class A+ Potomac Nationals.

John Van Benschoten, a minor league free agent, has told the Pirates he'll be leaving the organization. He could use a fresh start, surely.

The Rangers have traded outfielder and former first-round pick John Mayberry Jr. to the Phillies for another outfielder and former first round-pick, Greg Golson. 

I like Golson a lot better. Mayberry will be 25 next month; he's shown good power in the minors, but little else. I can't believe he'll ever make enough contact to be a major league regular. Golson turned 23 in September and is still more tools than anything else, but he isn't completely hopeless. He showed a fairly broad base of skills as a 22-year-old at AA. hitting for average and a bit of power. His plate discipline, like Mayberry's, was dreadful, but nowhere near as bad as in 2007, when he managed a remarkable two walks against 49 strikeouts in 153 at bats at AAA. Golson's overall 2008 numbers (.282/.333/.434) suffered because of his horrible play in June and (to a lesser extent) July, after an HBP triggered some wrist trouble. Golson is less impressive than Ranger CF prospect Julio Borbon, who I'm not a big fan of, but I still like this trade for Texas because they're giving up very little.

Here's an interesting story on Bob Nutting at KDKA.com.

"In the past we have made mistakes that we needed to find a short-term patch – something to plug in trying to win right now, at the expense of really doing the right moves for the long-term future of the organization," explains Nutting. 

The short-term future doesn't look too good. So what we have apparently is another one of those five-year plans. And while Nutting won't call it that, he realizes it's going to take some time and he's not willing to compromise it. 

"That plan is in place and I really believe the worst thing we could do now would be to allow ourselves to get knocked off target because we're focused on a short-term goal or one year," says Nutting. "We need to be able to stay the course and frankly that would be maybe the hardest decision that we make as we're moving forward." 

My hackles raise whenever I read the words "five-year plan," mostly because it's typically used dismissively, to describe whatever the Pirates have been doing the past sixteen years to result in all that losing. Actually, the only kind of plan Dave Littlefield knew was the one-week plan, doing whatever it took to hold his job for a short time, and forget the future.

Leaving aside the absurdity of using a slogan to market a rebuilding plan to fans, a real "five-year plan" actually is the only real solution to the Pirates problems. The Pirates' management team really does seem to have something like a five-year plan, and we're now entering year two. Given the mess Littlefield left, particularly in the farm system, it really will probably take four more good drafts to fully restock the organization. 

-P- Here's a pretty funny chat with Nyjer Morgan:

jasbird9: If you could compare yourself to any other baseball player playing or retired who would that be?

nyjer_morgan: I think it would be Juan Pierre, but I have just a little more pop. 

I can't blame Morgan for trying, but actually he has less pop than Pierre. And what does it say about Morgan that even he thinks his closest comparable is a guy who finally played his way out of an everyday role this year?

Anyway, to again echo something I think Vlad said a few months ago, I really wish Morgan was a good player, because he comes across as a really cool person here.

-P- The Cardinals are closing in on a two-year deal with lefty specialist Trever Miller. This scares me, not because Miller's particularly good, but because he had 76 appearances and 46.3 innings in 2007, and 68 appearances in 43.3 innings in 2008. Now Tony LaRussa will be his manager. How many one-batter appearances is he going to have? And how long will games against St. Louis be?

Oakland owner Lew Wolff:

"I'd make it one-game-and-you're-out for the first series," the Oakland Athletics owner said Wednesday. "It would be exciting. It would be great."

You can cut the irony with a knife. Michael Lewis famously quoted A's GM Billy Beane as saying, “My s**t doesn’t work in the play-offs... My job is getting us to the play-offs. What happens after that is f**king luck.” Changing the first round of the playoffs to a one-game series would, of course, increase the role of f**king luck in determining who advances to the next round.

Then again, maybe it's not so ironic after all. The A's won the first games of their playoff series in 2000, 2001 and 2003 despite eventually being eliminated in the first round.

-P- Larry Dobrow's lengthy analysis of the Pirates' situation is gratuitous (they "suck"; we get it), but still worth reading. One interesting suggestion:

Embrace the head case: The gonzo maneuverings of Nationals GM Jim Bowden usually appear in this space under the heading of "cautionary tales," but he stumbled onto something last winter when he dealt for a hothead (Elijah Dukes) and a supposed won't-respect-thy-elders loon (Lastings Milledge). These are precisely the types of high-upside plays that the Pirates ought to be making, especially since such players can be pried away for a price far less than their talent would demand.

Listen, every team would love to win with a bunch of happy rainbow huggyhearts who do good deeds within the community and, whenever possible, refrain from urinating in public fountains. But the reality is that in any group of 25 people in most lines of work, you're going to find a loner, a shrew, an eccentric. That's just the law of averages.

Unfortunately, the Nats appear to have a monopoly on that sort of player, with Dukes, Milledge and now Scott Olsen. (And for what it's worth, Milledge isn't really in the same category with the other two, and Dukes is really in a class by himself.) Besides Milton Bradley, who has probably rehabbed his reputation to a degree with a productive and incident-free season, I'm not really sure who's on the market who fits the bill.

I agree that the Pirates should consider acquiring players with attitude problems (although I think someone like Dukes should be avoided), but I can't square that with Dobrow's next suggestion, which is to acquire a starting pitcher who can mentor young pitchers and fit in with Joe Kerrigan's program. Most of our young pitchers are not really that young and shouldn't need a mentor, and anyway it seems like the Pirates acquire someone like this every year, whether it's Matt Morris, or Jose Mesa (who the Bucs said would mentor Mike Gonzalez), or whomever. These players never seem to have any positive impact. If the Pirates want to acquire a veteran starter to eat innings, that's fine with me, but acquiring them for any reason other than their pitching ability is probably a mistake.

Thanks to Primer for the link.

-P- Mike Mussina will retire, Ken Rosenthal reports. He finishes with 270 career wins. Congrats to him for going out strong--I thought he was done after a miserable 2007 season, but he was excellent in 2008.

-P- The Red Sox have traded Coco Crisp to the Royals for reliever Ramon Ramirez. For the Sox, it's pretty simple; they get a useful player in return for one they didn't need much. They can find someone else to be their fourth outfielder for less than the $6 million they would have had to pay Crisp, though they will miss his defense.

As for the Royals, who knows where they're going with this. They want to use David DeJesus as a corner outfielder, and this helps them do that. DeJesus is maybe a shade worse than Nate McLouth and is a similar player in that he does a lot of things decently but nothing brilliantly, and in that his bat suddenly seems a lot less exciting if you have to move him to a corner. This trade makes it likely that either DeJesus or Mark Teahen will be moved this offseason, but swapping out DeJesus for Crisp is a downgrade, and who knows why anyone would give up something nice for Teahen. As with the Mike Jacobs deal a couple weeks ago, you have to wonder what this means for Billy Butler--now, if the Royals don't trade DeJesus or Teahen, it's possible there will be less playing time for Butler to DH.

-P- The Cubs have re-signed Ryan Dempster  for four years and $52 million, which seems like quite a lot to give someone who was having a perfectly mediocre career until this year.

It beats $48 million for Carlos Silva, I suppose. Dempster was thoroughly good in 2008--his excellent ERA wasn't entirely the result of a fluky BABIP, or anything like that (although he did strand a few more runners than you might expect). He may experience a late-career peak much as Kelvim Escobar did after switching back from relieving to starting. But I wouldn't bet on it.

-P- The Yankees have signed Sergio Mitre to a minor league deal with a team option for 2010. That sounds excessive for a pitcher who's rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and was never that dominant to begin with, but Mitre pitched admirably in 2007 in front an atrocious Marlins defense. This signing could look pretty nifty for the Yankees in two years.

-P- Finally, in a story that my brother Sam found weird and emailed to me, Ken Griffey Jr. has been named an American Public Diplomacy Envoy. My initial response was, "Envoy to what? The 1990s?" Apparently, though, it's fairly common for athletes to take this position. Other evnoys include Michelle Kwan and Cal Ripken. Also Fran Drescher, who I can't imagine in a diplomatic role, but that's just me. 

And the first to go is reliever Jeremy Affeldt, to San Francisco for two years and $8 million. Leaving aside the question of whether the Giants have any sort of plan, this is a good deal for them. Affeldt used to be a really frustrating young starter with great stuff and debilitating blisters, but now he's just a good reliever. That might not be as exciting, but it's more useful. He had the best season of his career in 2008 as a Red, racking up 80 strikeouts and tons of grounders against 25 walks. He was dominant outside the Reds' homer-happy ballpark. He's not old, so he's a decent bet to put up two very good seasons for the Giants. The Reds, meanwhile, actually had one of the better bullpens in the majors last year; they'll miss Affeldt, but maybe not as much as you might think. Plus, they'll get a compensation pick for him--Affeldt is a Type B free agent.

MLB.com:

The Boston Globe reported on Sunday that Detroit is contemplating a deal with Boston to send either left-hander Nate Robertson or left-hander Dontrelle Willis to Boston for Lugo, but that some money issues would have to be resolved...

The Red Sox might have the same notions about Robertson or Willis bouncing back in 2009. Boston has been known to take chances on reclamation project pitchers, including Bartolo Colon and Wade Miller.

Dealing Lugo would allow the Red Sox to pursue Rafael Furcal or play Jed Lowrie full-time so, depending on money issues, this trade could make a lot of sense for them. In Robertson or Willis, they get to take a chance on a pitcher who's had some success in the past.

For the Tigers, this makes somewhat less sense. Lugo has been awful since being traded from the Devil Rays to the Dodgers in 2006, and he turns 33 today, so he isn't a great bet to rebound.

This is relevant to the Pirates, of course, in that it would prevent Detroit from trading for Jack Wilson. Wilson is a better player than Lugo at this point, but the cost to the Tigers would be steeper--the Pirates would want prospects.

Thanks to Primer.

John Dewan's post on Nate McLouth's Gold Glove is pretty interesting. Dewan begins with the assumption that McLouth was the worst defensive outfielder in baseball last year based on the numbers, then moves to more moderate ground based on factors that some advanced metrics don't do a good job quantifying. McLouth's arm, for example, was pretty valuable last year. Dewan also helpfully points out that McLouth seems to have a problem judging where the wall is on deep fly balls--he lets balls carom off the wall and past him, back toward the infield.

(Thanks to Carnival Matleuse for e-mailing me the link.)