OnlyBucs

Dude has been lights out since joining Houston. We got jobbed.



Musgrove - #4 Starter...I like him, but he needs to stay healthy.



Moran - Average defender at best, supposed to provide 20+ home runs, has not happened yet. This is his make or break year, because Kebryan Hayes is breathing down his neck.



Martin - I like him, nice OF depth for the organization, but I am not sure if he is a future starter or not.



Feliz - What can I say, he has been awful. AAAA type at this point. For his sake, I hope he figures it out.



I give the Astros an A.

We get a C minus, maybe D+.



We better do better with Taillon, as far as what we get back for him. Screw quantity. I wanted quality.



Sorry for the rant, no baseball tonight has me board.

Cole so far tonight has pitched three innings, given up four hits and three runs to the Rays. What start are you talking about?



I predict Musgrove will have a better year than Cole this year.



And we'll have him next year, when Cole would have been gone anyway.

Defense metrics show Moran was the 2nd worst 3Bman in MLB last year. I think the Pirates would be delighted if Moran could be an average defender.

If you look at his stat line tonight...6 innings...1 earned run...0 walks and 10 k's. How is that not a good if not dominate outing?

it doesn't even the trade but I really like musgrove. All of our (well four) starters are really easy to root for.

7A7471786E6778781D0 wrote: If you look at his stat line tonight...6 innings...1 earned run...0 walks and 10 k's.  How is that not a good if not dominate outing?




If he had pitched this game for us we would have bitched about him not being dominant. He wasn’t in the third. He got knocked around and his team lost the game. He couldn’t get past the error and it cost the Astros the game. Watch the games, he gave up three hits after the error. He did the same thing here.

He is crazy talented and has great stuff. Did we get worked in this trade? Probably. But his real value is less than his perceived value.

6C51564C5156380 wrote: If you look at his stat line tonight...6 innings...1 earned run...0 walks and 10 k's.  How is that not a good if not dominate outing?




If he had pitched this game for us we would have bitched about him not being dominant.   He wasn’t in the third.  He got knocked around and his team lost the game.  He couldn’t get past the error and it cost the Astros the game.  Watch the games, he gave up three hits after the error.  He did the same thing here.

He is crazy talented and has great stuff.  Did we get worked in this trade?  Probably.  But his real value is less than his perceived value.


if salaries were the same would you take Cole or Taillon?

4947424B5D544B4B2E0 wrote: If you look at his stat line tonight...6 innings...1 earned run...0 walks and 10 k's.  How is that not a good if not dominate outing?


I missed that they were unearned runs. My bad.



But I still think he loses his shit at the first sign of trouble, which is what happened last night, again.

We didn't trade a Cy Young candidate in Cole at the time. He was a hot mess. He was coming off 2 years of average performance and injuries. He also looked (as he did last night, apparently) as a guy with great stuff but not the mentality to keep it together. There is a reason we only got those four guys in the trade at the time. And it wasn't all on NH.

001D393B35500 wrote: We didn't trade a Cy Young candidate in Cole at the time.  He was a hot mess.  He was coming off 2 years of average performance and injuries.  He also looked (as he did last night, apparently) as a guy with great stuff but not the mentality to keep it together.  There is a reason we only got those four guys in the trade at the time.  And it wasn't all on NH.


That's so true. After 5 years with the Pirates, people were frustrated that Cole was not living up to expectations and was regressing since his 19 win season of 2015. When traded, he had 1 more year of arbitration (2019) and becomes a FA in 2020. So the Pirates were faced with paying a lot (which always terrifies them) in arb for a disappointing pitcher who would leave as a FA a year later anyway or seeing what they could get for him. Astros GM Jeff Luhnow said at the time, “We expect him to bounce back and be a Cy Young contender.” He was saying that about a guy who seemed to have regressed to average and getting worse. It sounded like wishful thinking. Luhnow would have been blasted by the Houston fans and media if he had traded star player(s) for the Cole whose career seemed to be sinking further and further away from the high expectations he brought when drafted. But Cole said he learned things in Houston he hadn't known in Pittsburgh. He said the coaches worked with him on different things and that he received advice from experienced star pitchers in Verlander and Keuchel. In his 1st season with Houston, he pitched 3 fewer innings than his last year with the Pirates but struck out 80 more batters. He became a different pitcher in Houston with different sets of eyes watching and advising him. I doubt he would have been much different with the Pirates in 2018 than he was in 2017. As Pirate fans, we are disappointed that Cole failed to live up to expectations but we have to realize that they didn't trade the dominating pitcher we saw in Houston last year. They traded a pitcher who should have been dominant but wasn't.