Expectations for 2006

From yesterday's Q & A by Dejan Kovacevic of the PG:

Only the Pirates' management can mess up next season.

That is not to say they will. Only that I see it as being the greatest potential variable.

Leave what is there alone. Get a third baseman through a trade, get a right-handed starter as insurance through free agency, and do the usual tinkering with the bullpen.

Otherwise, work with what is already in place. And by that, I mean ?

Continue to make a priority of the young players in every situation everyday, even if it means temporary setbacks.

Teach, teach , teach. Dismiss the boorish concept that major-leaguers already should know this or that. Work with them, if need be, as if it is their first day in the Gulf Coast League.

Take every measure imaginable to make sure these players get the best instruction, physical conditioning and everything else in the wintertime so there are no ugly surprises in the spring.

Get Bay signed through his arbitration years before he breaks you and, simultaneously, get him feeling rewarded for his massive contributions. Consider Perez, too. He never will be cheaper than with his shopping-cart discount.

And yes, even if there is an outcry back home, make sure there are at least two or three veterans on the team to keep things in line. Some fires already were put out this year. Better to be safe in this regard for next year.

Bottom line: It will not be easy to mess it up.

I agree with everything except the first and last sentence. It will be easy to mess up 2006, and it will be easiest for the players, not the management, to screw it up.

It's fairly obvious how to run the team. And it's fairly obvious that the best qualities management could have are varieties of patience. And say what you want about their taste in players, Littlefield and McClendon have shown a lot more patience with the bottom half of our roster than most fans have.

This is why I think it's a bogus argument, to say that replacing the management, or only replacing the management, would turn the team around: the managers just don't do that much. Cuban or McClatchy, Theo Epstein or Dave Littlefield, Ken Macha or Lloyd McClendon: the difference, I think, is almost always overstated. I don't doubt there's some difference, but I do think that, more often than not, it's greatly exaggerated or misunderstood.

It all comes down to the players. It's dangerous to promote the understanding that they have nothing to do but "be themselves," or "relax and have fun." Because that's not true. If you look at the truly great ballplayers, none of them got to be where they are because they were good at relaxing and having fun. Read everything you can find about Roger Clemens, Nolan Ryan, or Greg Maddux, and compare that to what you know about Oliver Perez and Kip Wells. In order for the Pirates to improve in 2006, the players have to improve. And that will take study, sacrifice, perseverance, humility, and a lot of hard work.

Ballplayers work like dogs during the season. It's a hellish job, with all the travel, and one with a unique set of difficulties. Nobody understands what the players go through except the players. But no matter how hard they work in the season, they still have to keep at it in the off-season if they want to get better.

Last year, there was a sense during the off-season that everything might fall into place. Then look at our April. I don't know what the players did in the off-season, but it's obvious that whatever they did, they did wrong. April could not have been a bigger disaster.

If the fans expect better next April, I think they have to make that clear to the players. Framing the situation as one that will inevitably improve - as one in which only the management can fail - does not help. David Littlefield will have little influence on young pitchers who debate, some morning in December, whether or not they should study some film or whether or not they should just go party all week. Lloyd McClendon (or whoever the manager will be) will not be there when a player is tempted to overeat, to not do his maintenance workouts, or to make other bad decisions that will affect his preparation for 2006.

Littlefield could spend six million dollars hiring nannies and personal trainers and additional coaches for the players, so that they have all the help they need to make the off-season something that will prepare them for success in 2006. But if the players don't avail themselves of these resources, I don't see how this can be interpretd as a failure of management.

The responsibility for the team's play at the start of 2006 is on the players, not on the managers. There are some fairly obvious things the owner, the GM, the manager, and the various coaches could do to point these young men in the right direction. But that won't be enough.

These young men have unusually good opportunities to have an unusually lucrative and satisfying career. If they are given the impression that any degree of future success is simply inevitable, they are that much more likely to screw up those opportunities. Management may or may not do all the things on that checklist. What really matters is how much the players contribute to their own improvement.