Small Market Map To Success
Emphasis On Pitching May Be Only Route
By John E. Sacco

It is no great secret that good pitching is they key to playing winning baseball at just about any level.

Good pitching certainly is a necessary ingredient of the best teams in the major leagues. And it is perhaps the only way teams from smaller markets can compete for division titles and post-season berths.

Perhaps that is why Pirates' General Manager Dave Littlefield has worked so hard in his nearly two years in Pittsburgh to upgrade the organization's pitching.

Last season alone, a handful of so-called small market franchises rode their pitching to division championships or contending status.

The Oakland Athletics have been in the American League playoffs the past three years, the past two largely on the strength of their starting pitching led by Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson and bolstered by Ted Lilly and John Halama, signed during the off-season as a free agent.

Oakland led the AL in earned run average in 2002, posting a 3.68 mark in tying the New York Yankees with a league-high 103 victories. The Minnesota Twins won the AL Central in a runaway while posting a team ERA of 4.12, sixth-best in the AL.

The Twins' rotation is well-respected and is expected to carry the team to a second consecutive Central Division title. The Twins feature Brad Radke, Joe Mays, Rick Reed and Eric Milton, who will miss the first part of the season because of an injury. The Twins moved quickly to replace him with free agent veteran lefty Kenny Rogers.

That move clearly shows the value teams place on starting pitching.

In the National League, Montreal surprised many in winning 83 games, four games above .500, and did it with quality pitching. The Expos, who were to be contracted with the Twins prior to the 2002 season, posted a 3.97 ERA, which was seventh best in the NL behind the four playoff teams (Atlanta, San Francisco, St. Louis and Arizona) and Los Angeles and New York, the two biggest market teams.

By contrast, other so-called small-market teams who didn't pitch well, didn't win much. Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, and Tampa Bay finished in the bottom five of the AL in team ERA. The Indians finished third in the AL Central, six games under .500 and 20.5 out of first; the Royals lost 100 games and finished fourth and 32.5 games out of first place and the Tigers lost 106 games and were 39 games behind Minnesota. The Devil Rays were last in the East Division, lost 106 games and finished 48 games behind New York. That said, those four teams also finished in the bottom five of hitting in the AL as well.

In the NL in 2002, the Pirates, Cincinnati, Florida, San Diego and Milwaukee finished in the bottom seven of team ERA. All finished under .500 and only the Reds finished in the upper half of their division (third in the Central). The Brewers, who lost 106 games, and Padres finished last in their respective divisions while the Marlins and Pirates were fourth-place finishers.

Despite finishing closer to the bottom in ERA than the top, the Pirates pitching staff recorded the best improvement from 2001, going from 5.05 to 4.23. The team's ERA last season was the lowest since 1998 (3.91).

Littlefield has moved to bolster the staff and did so in a big way in the off-season between the 2001 and 2002 seasons' acquiring Kip Wells and Josh Fogg from the Chicago White Sox for Todd Ritchie and a minor leaguer. Wells and Fogg are two-thirds of the Pirates' five-man rotation that also includes Kris Benson and Jeff Suppan. Suppan was signed as a free agent from Kansas City this past off-season.

Littlefield also has traded for Ryan Vogelsong, who is continuing to recover from Tommy John surgery, and signed a bevy of free agent during the off-season to compete for the fifth spot in the rotation. Jeff D'Amico won that competition, beating out Solomon Torres and Julian Tavarez and others for the spot.

While Suppan's career record is just 48-57 entering 2003, and D'Amico has been dogged by injuries, their veteran presence is expected to stabilize the rotation.

Littlefield addressed the team's offensive shortcomings by trading for first baseman Randall Simon and signing free agent outfielders Matt Stairs, Reggie Sanders and Kenny Lofton to contracts right around $1 million per year.

He may continue to use that strategy each season while some of the team's young pitchers, including first-round picks Sean Burnett, John VanBenschoten and last year's overall No. 1 pick Bryan Bullington develop. It would be a huge boost if Bobby Bradley, a former top pick who has suffered from a myriad of arm injuries, could reach his potential.

"Part of what you have to do in this environment is offer invites to spring training," Littlefield said. "You float opportunity to free agents and their agents.

"When you look at the numbers, pitching in the industry. . . we don't have enough. It's everywhere. It's the 73 home runs. It's the number of guys with more than 50 home runs. It's the number of runs scored. It's so many of those things. We've gotten a lot of teams with 11 or 12 pitchers per staff. There's a lot of interchangeable parts every year with the best teams. Pitching is a concern in the industry. A lot of this relates to value."

A lot of it also relates to shrewd management and luck.

Oakland's staff has been relatively healthy through the years and General Manager Billy Beane has been quite effective in replenishing his roster through free agent signings, trades and the Rule 5 draft.

Just this past off-season, the A's plucked minor-league pitchers Buddy Hernandez and Mike Neu in the Rule 5 draft. The Pirates' obtained lefty set up man Scott Sauerbeck in the same draft several years ago.

In a recent interview with ESPN.com, Paul DePodesta, Beane's right-hand man in Oakland, credited Rick Peterson, A's pitching coach for keeping the staff in relatively good health and chided others for not being willing to duplicate effective practices of other organizations.

As for Peterson's pitching program, DePodesta said the program is conservative and utilizes a lot of preventative measures. He said it wasn't just the throwing program, but also an exercise program designed by the team's trainers.

DePodesta added that as an industry, baseball is very poor copycats.

"Even when we do copy, we don't copy well," he told ESPN.com, "and we don't understand the circumstances around that particular situation."

He uses the so-called "Cleveland model" as an example.

"(It's) like when Cleveland established the blueprint of signing young players to multi-year deals and building a stadium, everybody else thought—'Well, that's a panacea.' Everybody forgot that the young players the Indians were signing were Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez and Albert Belle and Kenny Lofton, which is an unbelievable package of players, and then they got good as soon as the stadium opened. So everything worked perfectly, but it's not going to work like that everywhere else."

John E. Sacco has covered the Pirates and major league baseball for PSR since October 1998. Previously, he covered the Pirates from 1986 to 1992. He is a former member of the Baseball Writers of America Association, Pittsburgh chapter.