Monday, June 11th, 2007 by Adam Wagner
This Is Not That Hard…
The Pittsburgh Pirates are delaying the inevitable and making a bad situation worse. I am, oddly enough, not referring to their organizational philosophy but to the Zach Duke situation in particular. Duke (2-6, 5.75 ERA) is one of the worst pitchers in baseball this season and has become the equivalent of a white flag on the pitching mound, but the Pirates and Jim Colborn seem to think that he will somehow figure out his stuff and regain his confidence by throwing to major leaguers and getting shelled.
Sorry Jim, Dave, and, well, Jim, but that is not how you do it. The path to regaining a young pitcher’s confidence is not throwing him to the sharks every 5th day. You send the young man down, allowing him to be successful at Indianapolis for about a month before bringing him back up and allowing him to be a component of your team. If the pitcher can not get batters out at AAA his problems are greater than being messed around with by Jim Colborn and he should just be left there until the new regime is brought in (and if the team continues to play as bad as it has or ends up with a 3rd 67-95 season in a row that would mean next season).
Duke’s issues seem to be confidence at this point as he is seemingly pushing the ball over the plate and 
hoping that it doesn’t get blasted out of the yard. When Zach Duke is pitching like he did in the second half of last year, he is throwing the ball and thinking about forcing hitters to put it on the ground or swing and miss, not being worried about it soaring over the fence or being shot through the infield. The only place for Duke to regain this confidence is away from the Jims, in Indianapolis. Duke would either be ruined or recast by being sent down, but if he continues to get two swings and misses over 5 and six innings in the major leagues he will certainly be ruined.
Another issue is that Dukes’ potential replacement are dropping like Jim Tracy’s chances of being a manager next year. Sean Burnett came up with a lame arm and is looking like he could be following the Bobby Bradley path of getting hurt, showing some flashes of potential at AAA, and then ending up out of baseball all together. Bryan Bullington was pulled after 24 pitches yesterday due to shoulder soreness in the same shoulder he had operated on a few months ago. The only healthy one of the three (unforgettably) first-round picks is John Van Benschoten, who is 6-4 with a 2.73 ERA. If they don’t call him up soon he is liable to receive some freak injury (and for all of you who have been following for the Pirates for an extended period of time, you know that this is actually a legitimate fear. We had Paul Maholm get hit in the face by a line drive for goodness sake.). If people like JVB and Bullington are only given chances to dominate competition in Indy while people like Duke and Tony Armas remain on the roster the spirit of the competition that should be intact on a small-market team is not there.
In other words:
Reason #54 to fire Jim Tracy: He has not even mentioned the possibility of sending Zach Duke t
o the minors . . . AND
Reason #730 to fire Dave Littlefield: He is allowing Tony Armas to take up dead weight on his roster and is allowing one of the organization’s quality young assets be slowly shelled into oblivion.
Quick note: both pictures are of Zach Duke.
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