Homegrown
Pirates Arms Product of Minor League System
By Joe Giardina

As the saying goes, you dance with who you brought to the prom. In baseball terms, that means winning with your own drafted and developed players.

And while the Pirates haven't won in 14 years, they are building their own talent-specifically among the starting pitchers-from within.

In fact, the Pittsburgh pitching staff has something that none of the other 29 major league teams have-four starting pitchers drafted and brought up through their own minor league system.

Zack Duke, Ian Snell, Tom Gorzelanny and Paul Maholm make up four-fifths of the Pirates' rotation. Add another pitcher waiting in the minors, Sean Burnett, and there is the potential to make it a perfect five for five.

In an era and a sport were free agency rules the land, having 80 percent of your starters come from your own organization sticks out like seeing Dick Cheney at a gun safety seminar.

"That is extremely impressive," Brian Graham, the Pirates' director of player development said of his home grown talent. "But you don't usually hear stuff like that."

Instead, what you usually do hear is the Pirates' recent woes with their top pitching prospects. From rehabbing minor leaguers (Brian Bullington and John Van Benschoten) to flamed out prospects (Clint Johnston and Bobby Bradley) - the Pirates' injury woes among their No. 1 picks have been well documented. But is it really different from any other club's farm system?

"If you look at other organizations, there are a lot that have the same situation that we do," Graham said. "It has nothing to do with the way our pitchers are developed. When a player gets hurt in the big leagues, you don't blame it on the big leagues, you don't blame it on the minor leagues, you understand that injuries happen and injuries occur."

You don't even have to leave the Pirates' division to bear witness to injuries that young pitchers can go through and the effect it can have on their teams.

In the past decade, the Chicago Cubs have seen two of the most highly touted pitching prospects in baseball, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, go down with serious injuries. Neither has been the same and it's no coincidence that the Cubs haven't made the post-season since their injuries.

The Milwaukee Brewers have had 13 losing seasons in the last 14 years. During that stretch, three of their top pitching prospects, J.M. Gold, Nick Neugebauer and Mike Jones, suffered career threatening injuries. Gold is out of baseball after never making it above single A, Neugebauer had a brief stint with the Brewers in 2002 before shoulder problems forced him to leave the game, and Jones has had severe arm problems and his future is up in the air. All three pitchers were drafted in the first two rounds.

Teams in the upper echelon of the major leagues - such as the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox - don't have to put as much emphasis on player development because they have the money to rely on free agency to fill holes.

But small market baseball has to play by different rules.

In 1998 the Oakland Athletics were 74-88. Since then they have not had a losing season, making five trips to the playoffs. During that span - and including this season - their average payroll was $48.5 million a year. During that same timeframe the Pirates payroll was a similar $40.1 million a year. The major difference, however, is eight losing seasons and zero trips to the playoffs for Pittsburgh.

But what the Athletics had is what the Pirates are working on - young, talented pitching that they drafted and brought up through their own system. Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson and Barry Zito were the strength of those A's teams, even winning a combined 57 games in 2002.

So while the general assumption is that the Pirates' minor leagues are kryptonite to young pitchers' arms, they actually are ahead of the pack. Consider the rarity of having four of their own pitchers dominate their rotation. Of the 30 big league clubs, only 13 DID NOT have to use free agency or trades to acquire the ace of their staff, instead drafting them and developing them on their own.

"It's an honor for them to put their trust in us and want us to lead this team," Gorzelanny told Jim Lachimia in On Deck Magazine last month. "We're going to go out there and learn from each other and help each other every day."

Besides saving money in free agency, there are other benefits to using home grown talent, such as the prospects building relationships together.

"We feed off of each other," Duke said in On Deck. "We see one guy do a good job and we say, 'Hey, I can do better than him.' The competition within our little group is something that hopefully we can feed off of."

Trent Jewett, the manager of the Pirates' triple A affiliate Indianapolis Indians, had the chance to manage all four of the young arms on the Pirates' rotation. He also thinks that continuity is important.

"These are guys that once you're in the trenches with them and you see what they go through and you see the hard work that they put in, you pull for them," he said. "They are guys that make you feel good when they are on the mound and that's what is important."

Even though all four starters worked hard to get to the majors, not all started out with the same expectations. While Maholm and Gorzelanny were first and second round picks respectively, Duke and Snell were not drafted until much later - Duke in the 20th round of the 2001 draft and Snell in the 26th round in 2000. Who knows if the Bucs' young arms can reach the level of success that Mulder, Hudson and Zito did in Oakland? Who knows when the Pirates will turn around the stretch of 14 consecutive losing seasons? But if it does happen, it will be the product of building from within and trusting in the players they drafted.

Joe Giardina wrote about Louisville wide receiver Lattarius Thomas in the April issue of PSR.