Pirates let everything slip away

Well Pittsburgh Pirates fans, it’s that time of year again.

The weather is breaking, and it… Well Pittsburgh Pirates fans, it’s that time of year again.

The weather is breaking, and it looks like spring might finally be here. It also means that our beloved Buccos are in Bradenton, Fla., for spring training.

This season, they’re about halfway through the preseason and are hovering around .500. In the last three years, the Pirates have had very successful springs, going a combined 45-47-2.

It’s also the time of year when Pirates’ fans will become incredibly excited, because the Buccos seem to have a way of starting the regular season well, until running out of gas well before the all-star game.

In their current streak of 12 losing seasons, the Pirates have started the month of April better than they have finished any season. In 255 April games over the last 12 years, the Pirates have won 115 of them to boast a .452 winning percentage. Meanwhile, their average winning percentage after a full season has been .444 throughout the streak.

While that may not seem like a lot, those numbers have been good enough to put the Buccos in first place in their division to start some seasons, only to then slowly skid down the stretch and become a disappointment.

This can lead Pirates’ fans to do one thing and one thing only: dream of what might have been and weep over the “ones that got away.” It sounds like the high school prom from hell, but let me explain.

The Pirates are one of two small-market Pittsburgh franchises that seem to have a knack for letting extremely talented players get away.

Of course, my beloved Penguins are the other. But I don’t even want to get into all that.

Anyway, because of their financial situation and a front office that they have claimed to be rebuilding for the last 11 years (I know the Roman Empire wasn’t built in a day, but I’m sure that after 11 years they had something), the Pirates have seen some great players walk out of the clubhouse, never to be seen again.

It’s pretty bad when you can set the field with a pretty nice lineup of current successful big leaguers that once played in your organization, but your current roster seems to be ready to win the division, in AAA.

So here it is, my Pittsburgh Pirates lineup that could have been (I won’t go by batting order, but rather through the field):

For any team, it always starts with pitching. For my “could’ve-been” Pirates, the pitching staff is loaded. This was most obvious to Pirates’ fans during the 2003 mid-summer classic. San Francisco’s Jason Schmidt started for the National League, while Chicago’s Esteban Loaiza started for the American League. Since leaving Pittsburgh, Schmidt has gone on to have seasons of 13, 17 and 18 wins while being a top contender for the NL Cy Young last year. When Loaiza was in the ‘Burgh, he only posted double-digit wins once in four seasons. In 2003, he won 21 games with the White Sox.

Rounding out the pitching staff would be former No. 1 draft pick Kris Benson. Benson was one of the franchise’s greatest disappointments, but if he is anything like other Pirate pitchers, he will go on to have a great career with the Mets.

After five seasons with the Bucs, Jon Lieber won 48 games in four seasons as a Cub, and last year he won 14 for the Yankees. Jeff Suppan pitched one season for the Pirates and then helped St. Louis get to the World Series this year with 16 wins in 2004. Former Bucco Brosnon Arroyo, who won a career-high 10 games for the Red Sox last year, joined Suppan in the World Series. And who can forget knuckle-baller Tim Wakefield. Before Wakefield helped break the curse of the Bambino, he was a Pirate.

Now that we have a pretty solid pitching staff, the former Pirates are going to need an infield. Behind the plate would have to be Oakland A’s Jason Kendall. The 2005 season will be Kendall’s first not wearing black and gold. Last year, he led the Bucs with a .319 batting average and hit over .300 in six of his nine seasons as a Pirate.

At the hot corner will be the Cubs’ Aramis Ramirez, one of the Pirates’ best young players during the “rebuilding” era. In the season and a half he’s been in the Windy City, he’s hit 51 homers, and last season he batted .318.

In the middle of the infield will be two slick fielders that the Pirates miss. Tony Womack and Pokey Reese didn’t put up exceptional numbers when they were Pirates, but they have both had great careers. Womack is one of the league’s best base stealers and won a world championship with the 2001 Diamondbacks. As a member of the Cardinals, he faced Reese and the Red Sox in the 2004 fall classic. Reese was a Gold Glover before he came to the Pirates, and in his first year after leaving the ‘Burgh, he won a World Series.

It’s hard to find an active first basemen that left the Pirates, because Kevin Young was there so long. However, Matt Stairs played a little first base in his lone season as a Buc, and in his 12-year career, he has hit nearly 200 homers, while batting .266.

The outfield is where Pirate fans should really cringe. The poor Buccos couldn’t hold on to veterans that helped them in their short stay as Pirates. Reggie Sanders and Kenny Lofton left as quickly as they came, and Jon Vander Wal’s stay wasn’t much longer.

The real killer is the losses of Brian Giles and Jose Guillen. Guillen has one of the strongest arms in the majors, and Giles has put up all-star type numbers for most of his career.

If you want to talk about all-star outfielders, Moises Alou, a likely Hall of Famer, played two games as a Pirate in 1990 before being traded to the Expos.

Oh, and how could I forget another Hall of Famer? Some guy named Bonds.

It’s hard to imagine how many homers the left-handed legend could hit playing 86 games in PNC Park. PNC is a mere 320 feet down the line in right — Barry would probably be past the Babe and Hammerin’ Hank by now.

It’s hard to imagine what the outlook would be for the 2005 Pirates season if all these players could have stayed.

But it sure is fun to dream.

Dave Thomas is a staff writer for The Pitt News, and he just wants the Pirates to finish over .500, something that hasn’t happened since he was eight. If you feel the same way, e-mail him at dthomas7224@yahoo.com.