Da Fyoo-Chah OR How Jason Bay Is Secretly Kobe Bryant

DK's inquiry - about whether keeping the core intact or capitalizing on the weak division is more important - appears to have ignited the Plogosphere into a rash of posts. Allow me to join the fray, but I'd like to pull together a few slightly different ideas before I throw my own onto the bonfire.

Dejan put it quite well, I think, when he stated quite some time back that "if you continually plan for the future, the future never actually arrives."

I.e., if you're always looking to win later, you're less likely to win now, and if you aren't winning now, you aren't very likely to be winning later.

The best statement, however, came from Mr. Pat Lackey at WHYGAVS:

"Unless every single move is geared towards making the team better as soon as possible, none of the moves being made are anything but lateral." (emphasis mine)

This is plain, real life, provable fact. Even in the most basic sense; if you choose a goal, say a tree on the other end of the football field, and draw a straight line path to that tree, your goal is now following that line to that tree. Absolutely anything you do that is anything but taking a step along that line does nothing other than erode the progress you have made to that point. Same goes for the Pirates.

This is supported by Wilbur T. Miller on Honest Wagner, "[Littlefield]'s failures are perfect examples of what happens when you don't commit to a particular course of action. Instead, they've tried to have it both ways, pretending to build through the farm system without committing the resources needed to do so, and wasting money and playing time on mostly crappy veteran fill-ins without looking for longer term, higher upside solutions."

So what in the world does this have to do with Jason Bay comparing to Kobe Bryant? Well...

It has been discussed often over the past year or two that the Los Angeles Lakers - and head man Mitch Kupchak - are a directionless bunch running themselves into the ground. The proof is in their dealings: hanging onto Kobe until the monster trade comes along is the mindset of a team that wants to win now and will only relinquish that opportunity if they get a great chance to win in the near future in return...drafting a player like Andrew Bynum - a straight out of prep school pick who has bonafide All-Star potential, but who everyone (correctly, it seems) said was at least three years of development away from reaching it, strikes of a team who is resigned to starting the rebuilding process and therefore willing to put in the time to develop a player who needs it...a team that doesn't sign or draft anyone else onto the team who would be more than a back-of-the-bench type for any true contender stinks of a team that refuses to invest the money to truly be a winner in the present. All of this adds up to a team that has one of the best players at his position not just now, but in recent history, and still can't manage anything better than .500 ball.

You see where I'm going, right? Follow me on a bit of a Mad Lib word swap....

It has been discussed often over the past year or two that the Pittsburgh Pirates - and head man Dave Littlefield- are a directionless bunch running themselves into the ground. The proof is in their dealings: hanging onto Jason Bay until the monster trade comes along is the mindset of a team that wants to win now and will only relinquish that opportunity if they get a great chance to win in the near future in return...drafting a player like Andrew McCutchen- a straight out of prep school pick who has bonafide All-Star potential, but who everyone (correctly, it seems) said was at least three years of development away from reaching it, strikes of a team who is resigned to starting the rebuilding process and therefore willing to put in the time to develop a player who needs it...a team that doesn't sign or draft anyone else onto the team who would be more than a back-of-the-bench type for any true contender stinks of a team that refuses to invest the money to truly be a winner in the present. All of this adds up to a team that has one of the best players at his position not just now, but in recent history, and still can't manage anything better than .500 ball.

So we then throw in a few more tweaks - Jason Bay isn't quite as All-World as Kobe Bryant is, nor have the Pirates even entertained any sort of offer for Jason Bay (as far as I know).

I think I'll have to start watching Laker games from now on to see if certain Pirates' brass appear in the stands.

Next up..."Da Fyoo-Chah Part Two OR Why the Pirates Need to Make Nice With the Devil Rays"