Be Like Tike

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Sorry for taking so long (seven and a half months go by quickly…), but I’ve finally recovered from the first post of this series, and I’m ready to move on to the position players. The batting and fielding this year wasn’t particularly bad. As a team, the Pirates hit .267 and had three players with more than 20 home runs. Yet, just running down the lineup, you come across a few names that cause fits of laughter. If not for the awful pitching, it seems the Pirates would have been decent this year. They even had two all-star representatives! Make the jump to find out who they were.

Record: 63-93

Position Players

Jason Kendall – By a catcher’s standards, he was an iron man. He started 152 games only one season after he shattered his ankle in an extremely gruesome injury on Independence Day, bouncing back with a .320 batting average and managing to steal 22 bases as the the team’s leadoff hitter. Not too shabby for someone who provided the wrong kind of fireworks at everyone’s 4th of July picnics a year earlier.

Kevin Young – Young was the team’s first baseman since 1992 (with a short stint with the Kansas City Royals in ‘96), a.k.a. the last time that the Pirates made the playoffs. He even got a vote for MVP in 1997, when he had a career high B.A. of .300. However, in 2000, he is most notable for milking his career .267 average (which would continue to drop) into $24 million over the next 4 years.

Warren Morris – This journeyman second baseman showed some talent in ‘99 (third place in rookie of the year voting, beating out teammate Kris Benson), but all traces of it disappeared by 2000. In more at-bats, he dropped 30 RBIs and 12 homeruns. However, he was kind enough to hit one of his three homeruns this season into the section of Three Rivers Stadium that my friend was having his birthday party in.

Aramis Ramirez – He only started third base in half the games this season, and he didn’t even show the potential that would make him an all-star and MVP candidate for the Chicago Cubs. He batted a measly .256 and hit only 6 homeruns, lacking the power that makes him so menacing today. At least one of Ramirez’s good years was spent with the Pirates…

Pat Meares – Similar to Kevin Young, this bum signed a massive contract after hitting .308 in 1999. Now, thats a respectable average that would earn most people large contracts, however, Cam Bonifay failed to realize that the average was through only 21 games! He followed up on his end of the deal by hitting .240 and getting hurt the next year, which I don’t even want to talk about right now.

Wil Cordero - Cordero played LF for 85 games in the 2000 season until he was traded to Cleveland for Enrique Wilson and Alex Ramirez. Cordero’s career can best be summed up by this little tidbit: He is one of the few players whose Baseball Reference page is not sponsored by anyone. His career was so mediocre to bad that no one wants to be known as the idiot who paid $15 for his page. Despite this, however, Cordero was a solid hitter while he was with Pittsburgh, hitting 16 home runs and stacking up 51 RBIs over 348 ABs. His numbers aren’t nearly as bad as I remember him being.

Brian Giles - Before Jason Bay, Giles was this team’s stud, in more ways than one. Giles, then and now, had a habit of loitering in the clubhouse in his birthday suit. He even took batting practice naked while at Three Rivers Stadium. He is definitely one of the goofier all-stars to play the game.

John Vander Wal – For one reason or another, Vander Wal appears in my memory as a very streaky hitter who I greatly disliked. However, history will show that he came over to the Pirates from San Diego in exchange for Al Martin (my favorite player in World Series Baseball for the Sega Saturn) and went on to have the best season of his career. He hit .299 in 2000 and, according to Wikipedia, “is considered to be one of the best pinch hitters in major-league history.” That didn’t stop him from being sent to San Francisco with Jason Schmidt, en route to playing for eight different teams in his career.

Adrian Brown - Brown hit the major leagues for his second extended stint in the early stages of this season and hung around for 104 games, hitting .315 in the process and looking like someone who could be a part of the Pirates’ future. He was, however, 26 during the 2000 season and would stick around as little more than a midseason call-up/defensive replacement kind of guy for the next six years until finally retiring after the 2006 season.

Luis Sojo - Sojo, who is better known for being a utility infielder with the Yankees, was traded to the Bronx Bombers in the middle of the season for RHP Chris Spurling, but not before he played in 61 games for the Pirates, 50 of which were at 3B. Sojo has a website named after him, the Futility Infielder, and now coaches for the Tampa Yankees, the Yankees’ A-ball team. It is nice to know that he found a place where he could put his excellent pornstache to good use.

Mike Benjamin – One little known fact about Mike Benjamin is that, while with the San Francisco Giants in 1995, he had 14 hits in a three-game streak, a major league record. By the time he was known mainly for having some of the most phenomenal facial hair this side of the fu manchu (you can sort of see it in that picture to the right). Oh, he had 233 ABs for the Pirates, hitting .270 with an OBP of .313 and a SLG of .391. He played games at every infield position, but fortunately was not called on to pitch (as he was in Boston during the 1997 season, when he pitched one scoreless inning) even though he may have been significantly better than the Pirates’ pitching staff.

Bruce Aven - Aven was a semi-capable outfielder who had a really sweet blond goatee. He was picked up from the Florida Marlins for Brant Brown in a trade of one bad outfielder for another, and ended up leaving Pittsburgh on August 6 as the “player to be named later” in a trade with Los Angeles (the Dodgers, not that team with six names). Aven was decent during his brief stint in Pittsburgh, hitting .250 in 136 ABs with five home runs.

Enrique Wilson – This journeyman infielder came over in the Wil Cordero trade and went on to play in parts of two seasons for the Pirates, hitting .262 over 122 ABs. Wilson filled in all over the infield, but is perhaps best known for going on to play for the Yankees from 2001-2004 as a vital cog on their bench. Just by sticking around as long as he did (until 2005), Wilson’s career was a success.

Emil Brown - Brown appeared as if he was a totally worthless player when the Pirates dumped him for two minor leaguers in the midst of the 2001 season, as Brown was coming off of a season where he had hit .218 for the Pirates while showing no sign of power whatsoever. Brown, however, went on to become a decent major league player, leading the Kansas City Royals in RBIs three years in a row and now signing with Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics. Out of all of the players whose careers seemed totally over upon leaving Pittsburgh, Brown is far and away the most successful and pleasant surprise.

Alex Ramirez - Along with Enrique Wilson, Ramirez was picked up from the Cleveland Indians in the Wil Cordero trade. Ramirez seemed like a decent prospect at the time of the trade and I remember that he was one of my favorite Pirates when it went down. Apparently both I and Pirates’ management were delusional or confused by Ramirez’s past numbers (actually, I’m pretty sure I had already confused him for Aramis Ramirez, who had already had two brief stints with the Pirates and was excelling at AAA in 2000). Before the trade, Ramirez had seemed like a potentially decent major league player, hitting for average but not power over parts of two seasons with Cleveland. He hit Pittsburgh, however, and the bottom dropped out. Ramirez hit .209 over 115 ABs, but was sold by the Pirates to the Yakult Swallows of the Japanese Central League. Ramirez developed into one the premier players in Japanese Baseball, on par with Kaisuke Fukudome, the outfielder the Cubs recently signed for $48 million over four years. It is nice to know that at least one of the Pirates from 2000 had a legitimate career in baseball after Pittsburgh.

Chad Hermansen – Hermansen was still a hot prospect in 2000, but began to show the signs of deterioration that would lead to his name being burned into the minds of every Pirate fan along with that of such notaries as J.J. Davis. Hermansen’s path to patheticness began here, where he hit .185 over 108 at-bats, demonstrating the suckitude that Pirate fans would come to expect out of their least favorite prospect (who most recently signed with the Los Angeles Angles of Anaheim).

Alex Hernandez - Apparently once a legitimate prospect, Hernandez was selected by the Pirates in the fourth round of the 1995 draft. He showed signs of developing into a sort of off-the bench guy who could hit for average in some situations, but would find it difficult to develop power. As a result, Hernandez struggled mightily over 60 at-bats, only eking out 12 hits. He was out of North American baseball two years later.

John Wehner - There is no way I can beat the analysis from Mondesi’s House regarding the Pirate’s current announcer. So I won’t even bother.

Adam Hyzdu - This guy came incredibly close to killing my brother with a homerun ball, and I’m not even joking. On August 18th, 2002 (it was pretty easy to find the date…he didn’t hit many homers), my brother decided to take some friends to a ballgame for an impromptu birthday party. In the fourth inning, Hyzdu crushed a ball right into our section. Fortunately, my brother was up getting nachos and not in his seat, which shattered upon impact with the ball. Hyzdu entered the bigs in 2000 with a bang, hitting .389 with a pair of doubles and home run in 12 games. However, he would go on to never hit more than 6 doubles or 11 home runs in a season. After being cut by the Pirates a few seasons later, he clung on with an assortment of other teams, including the Boston Red Sex and the San Diego Padres. He was most recently spotted on the Texas Rangers in 2006, where he appeared twice and amassed four at-bats.

Tike Redman - The namesake of this fair site recieved his first big league call-up this year. In 9 games, he hit .333 with a home run, giving fans a taste of this guy’s potential. Too bad it was the highest average of his career up until his time with the Baltimore Orioles last season.

Ivan Cruz - Similar to Redman, Cruz was given a shot in September. Unfortunately for him, he hit only .091 and was not invited back for 2001. He eventually made it back to the majors with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2002, managing .357 in 14 at bats, allowing him to leave baseball with a career .273 average.

Related Posts

• Snapshots of Futility – A Series
• Where We’re At
• John Vander Wal = Pirate Legend