You're flipping channels and go from, say, "The King of Queens" to "Becker." You stick with "Becker" because you haven't seen that one before, not because you expect much.
Welcome back to another season of Pirates baseball.
General manager David Littlefield spent a lot more money flipping channels this offseason, and one result is a new answer to his perennial question: Can we find a new reason not to play Craig Wilson?
This year's reason is Jeromy Burnitz. He will be 37 this season, eight years older than Wilson, and in the past three seasons, the two have been similar batters in every aspect but getting on base, where Wilson is clearly superior. The cumulative batting average, on-base average, slugging average and on-base plus slugging for 2003 to 2005:
Name ... AVG ... OBA ... SLG ... OPS
Burnitz ... 261 ... .327 ... 492 ... 819
Wilson ... 263 ... 362 ... .488 ... 850
Wilson has managed this while playing home games in a park that squelches right-handed power, and Burnitz's time includes a season in that sluggers' spa, Colorado's Coors Field.
Injuries took more than half of 2005 from Wilson, but he still topped Burnitz in every batting rate but slugging. Pirates right fielders (with Matt Lawton playing 98 of the 162 games) also were better than Burnitz last season. Their '05 numbers:
Wilson --.264/.387/.421/.808
Pirates RF--.264/.355/.420/.775
Burnitz -- .258/.322/.435/.757
As for the argument that Burnitz strikes out less often than Wilson, that's true. Wilson has struck out every 3.8 plate appearances in the past three seasons and Burnitz every 5.2, but it's a bad strategy to base your lineup on the relative beauty of a man's outs rather than the rate at which he makes them. The Pirates were second in the National League in sacrifice flies last season with 49, just one behind league-leader Florida, and where did that get them? The 12th-place finish in OBA last season at .322 is a far bigger reason the team finished 14th in runs scored.
PNC Park's inviting right field should help left-handed hitting Burnitz, but if the team wants to maximize his value and Wilson's, they should share time in right field. Burnitz sucked wind in 182 at-bats against left-handed pitchers last season (.236/.268/.445/.713) while Wilson did pretty well in his 53 at-bats (.283/.449/.415/.864). Over the past three years combined, Wilson's advantage against left-handers is more profound:
Wilson -- .284/.413/.575/.988
Burnitz -- .253/.301/.485/.786
The sum of the two could be better than either alone. Burnitz has handled right-handed pitching slightly better than Wilson the past three seasons (.831 OPS to Wilson's .803). But with Burnitz eligible for up to $250,000 in bonuses if he can play 155 games, sitting down will cost him. It will be interesting to see how manager Jim Tracy handles this.
At third base, the return of Joe Randa, 37, is also more about depth than real improvement. Randa had a year much like the collective Pirates third basemen in 2005:
Randa -- .276/.335/.452/.787
Pirates 3B -- .277/.335/.411/.746
Randa showed more power, but that vanished when he left the Great American Home Run Park in Cincinnati. After being traded to San Diego, Randa's slugging dipped from .491 to .395, and no one expects an aging right-handed singles hitter to get a boost from PNC Park. Don't expect much more than the .291/.336/.400/736 that Freddy Sanchez hit last year.
The biggest improvement should come at first base with the return of the prodigal son Sean Casey, 32 this year. Casey should have no problem improving on the Pirates' anemic 2005 production. Comparisons:
Casey -- .312/.371/.423/.794
Pirates 1B -- .250/.315/.422/.737
Casey hit only nine home runs to the Pirates first basemen's 25, but Casey's road numbers the past three seasons have been .341/.397/.504/.901. In that time, he has hit .378/.459/.581/1.040 in 44 at-bats in PNC Park. Casey should do well in Pittsburgh.
All three additions have been rented for a year in hopes of releasing Pittsburgh from its 13-year sentence of losing baseball. The Pirates might have done better spending less and platooning Wilson and Jody Gerut in right field and Freddy Sanchez and Russ Branyan, the prodigious slugger, walker and whiffer, at third. (Branyan signed a minor-league deal with Tampa Bay after being waived by Milwaukee.) But there's no sense crying over inked contracts. These additions give the Pirates depth to withstand injury, and they should improve the outfield and first-base defense.
Bottom line: If the Pirates score many more runs this season, it will be more likely because of younger players getting better than a big bump from the thirty-something trio.
First Published: February 14, 2006, 5:00 a.m.