The Buccos recently released their all-decade team of the 2000s. Now one might tend to think that an all-decade team would be star studded right... eh, not so much. I mean there are some no brainers of course but there are also some guys I forgot we even had and some guys that just plain stunk, at least in my opinion. So here is what they came up with. Jason Kendall at catcher. Well I guess you have to go with that one, mainly because its tough to name another Pirate catcher from the 2000's. He did hit over .300 from '00 to '04 when he was traded. Then I'm pretty sure we continued to pay him for three or four more years. In fact he might have been the highest paid player on the Bucs payroll and he didn't even play for is. But this isn't the all-decade management team, is it? Plus the guy gave us a memorable ankle break on the 4th of July trying to break up a no-hitter with a bunt. You got to love that. First base was Adam LaRoche. Are you serious? He couldn't hit his ass with both hands. What about Kevin Young or Craig Wilson. Or maybe Randall Simon, at least he hit that big sausage when it ran by in Milwaukee. I think that's more than I ever saw LaRoche hit. Second base went to Freddy Sanchez. Ok that one was an easy one. Shortstop, of course, went to Jumpin' Jack Flash because he was the only one we had for the entire decade. 1,128 games to be exact and I always said that he had exactly what it took to be a Pirate. He was never good enough to get traded and never bad enough to be sent down. Good glove, average around .260 and 50 RBI or so, that's a Pirate for life. The third-baseman was Aramis Ramirez which at first glance I wanted to disagree with until I realized I didn't really remember any others. I checked it out only to find that the guy with the second most games at the hot corner behind Ramirez was Freddy Sanchez. Guess I have to go with A-Ram. Across the outfield they selected Bay, McLouth, and Brian Giles. What about Jeromy Burnitz and Kenny Lofton? Oh you mean they had to be good when they were a member of the Pirates, not five years earlier? Oh and remember when guys like Chad Hermanson and JJ Davis were the future? We believed this stuff. As I look at the starting pitchers, it's hard to find any with an ERA under 4.00, bad start. The experts pick Fogg, Duke, Maholm, Kris Benson, and Todd Ritchie. The problem is that in the last decade the Pirates have had a plethora of decent starters and no good ones. Every one of those guys has a losing record. Yes that's not a typo. Fogg was closest to .500 at 39-42 with a 4.79 ERA, and he was the best of the bunch, wow. Duke is 37-55, Maholm is 38-44, Benson was 32-35, and Ritchie was 20-23. A guy who only pitched 43 games is on our all-decade team. I liked Kip Wells myself. He pitched way more games in a Pirate uniform and had the best ERA by far, plus I have his bobblehead so an all-decade nod might up the value right? If you are a Pirate fan this has to make you sad. To finish up, the best set-up man of the decade went to Salomon Torres, whom I think so highly of that I once turned a "Let's go Bucs" chant into "Torres Sucks." Garrett, you were there. At closer they picked Mike Williams. I liked Matt Capps. But in reality, who cares? We aren't good enough for a closer to matter. And what better man to head up the futility than the manager of the decade, Lloyd McClendon. I couldn't agree more. He got tossed and took first base to the locker room with him, need I say more? Anybody who can go through that amount of misery for such a long time while only rarely blowing a gasket is a better man than I. If I were the skipper I would have probably went into a weekly tirade and beat everything I could find in the dugout into submission with Adam LaRoche's bat, we know he wasn't using it. Let's just hope the 2010s all decade team looks a little better.
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