Two very good, thoughtful opposing viewpoints have been written on the issue, one by Pat at WHYGAVS, one by dtoddwin at Bucs Dugout.

As for me? I think Russell should go.

Look, I understand that Russell is just the manager, and that no matter who was managing this ball club they were going to be terrible. I don’t think any manager is the solution for the problems of the 2010 Pirates. Until more talent trickles into the Major League level, they’re going to be bad. It’s as simple as that.

I think if you’re not in the clubhouse every day, you don’t have any idea what the atmosphere is like in there and how the players feel about their manager, and thus you shouldn’t comment on it.

I know that the players on this team outside the McCutchen/Walker/Tabata/Alvarez core have either been disappointing or just were never very good to begin with.

However, I agree that Russell doesn’t hold his players accountable.

In all the examples Pat listed of Russell and his accountability, the only examples I count that have to do with him directly are firing his coaches and benching Ronny Cedeno. The rest is mostly player promotion/demotion, and while I’m sure the manager gets some kind of say in that sort of thing, it’s ultimately up to the GM.

Everyone knew that Pedro Alvarez was coming up this year and that if Andy LaRoche didn’t perform well above expectations he was going to hit the bench. Everyone knew when Walker came up as a second baseman that Aki Iwamura’s days were limited, and it still took a demotion to get him out of the lineup.

How long did it take Russell to realize Ryan Church wasn’t very good? And when he finally gave Lastings Milledge reps, how many times did Milledge make some kind of horrible fundamental mistake, then go out and do it again later in the week? How many times has Ryan Doumit failed at the most basic levels of being a catcher this season, and how many reps does he get behind the plate even now that we have a competent catcher in Chris Snyder?

I understand what Pat means when he says that this is a lose-lose situation in some ways. Milledge, Doumit and Delwyn Young are all bad outfielders, and none of them are going to make John Russell look good when he plugs them in right.

My problem is that day after day, series after series, you’ll see somebody make a fundamental mistake – whether it’s one of Milledge’s boneheaded baserunning outs or Ryan Doumit failing to block the plate again – and they’ll be out there again the next day, making more mistakes. Those players need to hit the bench the next game, even when the bench player is somehow worse than they are. If they’re not going to be benched, they’d better at least straighten up their fundamentals. We’ve seen no progress in that regard at all this season, and I have to believe at least some of that comes down to coaching.

I understand John Russell is only human. I understand he’s probably working as hard as he can, and I understand that I shouldn’t expect him to turn straw into gold. I don’t say this lightly, but: when the team makes this many mistakes on a day to day basis and you don’t so much as read a blurb in the paper to the effect of “Lastings Milledge spent time working with his coaches today on his baserunning” or “Ryan Doumit took extra practice to work on pretty much every aspect of being a catcher,” that’s a manager not holding players accountable for their mistakes. That’s dangerous on a team full of veterans, let alone on a team with an incredibly young core. John Russell has to go.

To make a long story short: some fans see that the team made a profit and are angry about it. Presumably, they would rather see the business operate at a loss. Presumably, they don’t own businesses themselves. Presumably, they’d like the see their place of employment operate at a loss as well.

The more compelling story, however, is a question of whether or not the Pirates will EVER be able to raise payroll without thrusting themselves into debt. Tim at Pirates Prospects has a post up about that question, and I think he’s hit the nail on the head: assuming the Pirates are able to bring up a competitive group from the minor leagues like the Rays, Brewers and now the Reds have done, attendance will rise, leading to more profits and naturally more payroll flexibility.

At any rate, I’m not all that interested in the Pirates’ finances, but I know some fans are. The fact that ownership pulled in around $34.8 million over the past three years is of little concern to me, but there’s always that conspiracy theory subset of the fanbase that thinks that the Pirates took “The Producers” a little too seriously and are trying to make more money with a flop than with a hit. I doubt many minds will be changed on that front here, as it comes down to whether or not you believe the team when they say that $20 million of that profit was used to pay down debt and taxes, and that no monetary distributions were made to the ownership group.

On draft pick signing day, the Pirates signed Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie, as expected. Not many players were signed after the $9.45 million given out in bonuses between those two. They did manage to sign some nice players like Drew Maggi, who will add some nice depth to the middle infield that the team is sorely lacking, but anyone of big time impact not named Stetson Allie or Jameson Taillon already signed before deadline day.

As for the pitchers, their signings are a boon for the Pirates. Taillon immediately becomes the team’s best prospect, with Allie slotted somewhere in their top five.

The team also signed top international pitching prospect Luis Heredia from Mexico. Heredia’s deal was for $2.6 million, with the team the Pirates purchased his contract from getting an amazing 75% of that money.

Heredia also adds a nice arm to the system, as he’s 16 years old and can throw up to 94 MPH already. Jim Callis of Baseball America ranks him as a top five prospect in the Pirates system already.

All of these players are obviously big signings for the Bucs, as they lack front-line starters in their system despite a depth of mid-rotation type pitchers. As young arms, all three of them are obviously risky, and there have been doubts about Allie’s ability to stay in games late leading to speculation about him becoming a closer, but even having the possibility of turning out a legitimate ace or two is a big leap forward for this team right now.

For what it’s worth, multiple sources have stated that the Pirates will most likely sign both Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie, their number one and number two picks, respectively.

For further analysis, I’d suggest you check out Pirates Prospects.

Also, it appears the spam bots have found my blog, as overnight I now have 523 pending comments and I’m pretty sure all of them are spam.

One such deal was relatively minor – the Bucs sent left-handed specialist Javier Lopez to the Giants in exchange for outfielder John Bowker and right-handed pitcher Joe Martinez. Both players are 27 years old and have histories of success in the minors that they’ve never duplicated in the Majors. They’re both depth players, though somewhat interesting depth players.

The other deal brought two players of interest to the Pirates, as they sent closer Octavio Dotel to the Dodgers for pitcher James McDonald and outfielder Andrew Lambo.

Lambo was rated as the Dodgers’ seventh best prospect by Baseball America in the preseason, but fell out of favor in LA due to a failed drug test (of the non performance enhancing variety – most are speculating marijuana.) He made it to AA as a 19 year old in the second half of 2008, but has yet to make it out as he’s repeating the level this year with underwhelming results. He has managed to hit for decent power at every level and has the potential to be a productive starting outfielder in the Majors.

McDonald had pitched too many innings in the Majors to be rated as a prospect in the preseason, but he’d usually landed in the Dodgers’ top five when he was in the minors, even being ranked as high as their number one prospect by some publications.

McDonald has pitched only 76.2 innings (five starts) in the Majors, with mediocre results. However, he’s always been a high strikeout guy in the minors and has been able to duplicate that part of his game in the Major Leagues. His problem has been maintaining his control at the Major League level, as his 3.4 career BB/9 rate in the minors ballooned to 4.7 in the Majors, leading to much more underwhelming results. Dejan Kovacevic says he’s headed to the bullpen, with a quote from Neal Huntington pegging him as a starter long-term, but I feel he’s probably worth an immediate look in Pittsburgh’s rotation, as their other options there are underwhelming.

In total, the Pirates made three trades at the deadline, and none of them involved players of much consequence. Two of the players traded came from the bench, while three came from the bullpen. The most consequential player given up was Dotel, who was the Pirates’ closer, but Evan Meek or Joel Hanrahan could probably perform those duties better than Dotel did.

I wouldn’t expect much from the minor leaguer, as none of the players we’re giving up are of much consequence. We’re probably looking at a C level prospect.

At any rate, I think this trade is a win just for the sake of not having to watch Ryan Church play baseball anymore. Beyond that, Crosby is a mediocre backup SS and while DJ Carrasco has been a good reliever, he was available on the scrapheap this year and I’m sure there will be similar relievers on the scrapheap next year.

In Snyder, the Pirates get a catcher that can hit like Ryan Doumit, but plays better defense.

This move works for both sides (though I like it better for the Pirates), as the Diamondbacks clear Snyder’s salary from their books and upgrade a horrible bullpen, while the Pirates upgrade a situation at catcher that would otherwise have been pretty bad until Tony Sanchez is ready for the big leagues.

To fill the space left on the roster by this move, the Pirates have recalled Jeff Clement and Argenis Diaz from AAA. According to Dejan Kovacevic, when Doumit returns from the DL he will split time behind the plate and play some 1B and RF. It’ll be interesting to see if Erik Kratz stays in the Majors in this scenario.

UPDATE: Dejan says the minor leaguer in the deal is AAA SS Pedro Ciriaco, who differs from Argenis Diaz only in that he steals more bases. Like I predicted, not much of a prospect.

I’m not here to argue against that. Walker has had a low walk rate for most of his pro career, and it’s largely what has held him back to this point. Him taking more walks in AAA this year led to him hitting better overall and earning the call to the Majors.

That trend has not continued in the Major Leagues, though, as Walker has drawn only 11 walks since coming up, good for a 5.4% rate. If that rate is maintained, he’s likely to regress just like Matt said.

Something I’m interested in looking at, though, is whether there’s any hope that Walker will start drawing walks again.

Looking at his plate discipline data at FanGraphs, I think there’s reason to believe that the walks will come.

According to FanGraphs, Walker swings at pitches out of the strike zone 29.1% of the time. That sounds like a lot, but the league average is 28.9%, so there’s only a 0.2% difference there. As far as making contact with those outside pitches, he does it 73.5% of the time, presumably fouling off most of those to keep the AB going. The league average is 66.5%. And finally, his swinging strike percentage is 8% as compared to the league average of 8.4%.

So in all discipline categories that involve pitches out of the strike zone (and thus balls, assuming the ump doesn’t blow the call) Walker is around or better than the league average at handling those pitches.

The strikes against him are the following: He swings at pitches in the zone a bit more often than the league average (66.7% to 64.3%). It’s possible that some of those are borderline pitches which would have been called balls had he held off. He also swings in general at more pitches than the average batter (46.7% to 45.5%).

If there’s one thing that stands out with Walker, it’s his percentage of first-pitch strikes. The first pitch against Walker has been a strike 63.4% of the time as compared to a 58.9% league average. I’ve not paid close enough attention to see if that’s because Walker swings through a lot of first pitches or if it’s just a statistical anomaly and Walker has taken more first pitch strikes than average hitters. If it’s the former, we have a problem. If it’s the latter, a regression is due.

Regardless of all this, taking walks is not about taking balls. It’s about taking ball four. Based on this data, I’d say Walker is due to start walking more. However, we’ll have to wait and see.

UPDATE: Matt has since taken this post and played with some more numbers that I wasn’t aware were available, and has come up with a triple-slash line based on what we should expect from Walker going forward. The results confirm my thoughts on Walker: he’s not going to keep hitting like a star, but if he plays good defense at second, he can hit well enough to stick around as an average player.

Optioning Lincoln, however, is a bit surprising. I argued when he was called up that he wasn’t ready yet (amidst shouts from other Pirates fans that he clearly was), and he’s done nothing impressive so far in the Majors.

However, the Pirates clearly felt he was ready when he got the call. He’s been pretty underwhelming with a 6.29 ERA and a 1.53 WHIP, his stuff is flat, and he’s not striking ANYONE out (only a 3.7 K/9), but I’m not sure that 44 innings is really enough time to declare him not ready.

While Milledge has mostly been a disappointment in terms of him being the player scouts thought he would be when he was a top prospect, he’s also 25 years old and had been hitting better than Church.

To boot: Milledge’s line on the season has been .276/.347/.392. While the slugging is underwhelming, he’s finally been hitting for power in limited duty, hitting three homers, seven doubles and a triple over his last 100 plate appearances. His slugging percentage in those plate appearances has been a respectable .470. Combine this with a decreased strikeout rate and an increased walk rate, and two of the biggest knocks on Milledge in his career thus far seem to have righted themselves: he’s hitting for power and showing a disciplined approach at the plate.

Church, meanwhile, has a .186/.240/.321 line on the season and unlike Milledge has yet to put up a solid month, much less a solid month and a half.

It’s quite possible that Milledge could regress when given the starting role and be the same disappointing player he’s been since coming to the Majors. He was only facing left-handed pitchers while Church was stealing his playing time, and while he’s never mashed left handed pitchers like he has since the end of May, he’s always hit better against them.

However, a team in the Pirates’ position owes it to themselves to find out if Milledge is just a platoon player or not. And, if it turns out Milledge is a platoon player after all, the Pirates need to find a better hitter against righties to take over the majority of the platoon than Ryan Church.

Now, if I could just get one more wish regarding Milledge, I’d want him to hit at the top of the order so the team can move Jose Tabata to the bottom of the order and take some pressure of the 21 year old.

Today, the team told Tony Sanchez – last year’s first round pick who is out with a broken jaw – that he’s done for the season. That’s a real bummer, both because Sanchez looked poised to go to AA before the injury and because the Pirates’ catcher at the Major League level is Ryan Doumit.

Not content to just leave it at that, some good news was mixed with some bad news. The good news is that Jeff Locke – a part of the Nate McLouth trade – has been moved up to AA Altoona after pitching very well in Bradenton. The bad news is that he’s taking the spot of Tim Alderson – the sole return of the Freddy Sanchez trade.

Finally, the team has re-acquired former farmhand Brian Bixler from Cleveland in exchange for a player to be named later. While a player to be named later is rarely anything to get excited about, neither is Brian Bixler, who is 27 years old and still can’t hit AAA pitching despite it being his fourth year at the level.