Pittsburgh Pirates sign 2 new prospects

They've signed two young guys from India who won the "million dollar arm" contest:
http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/news/art...sp&c_id=pit

I hadn't heard of this contest previously.

The story of Patel and Singh is one that is made for the movies. Both were discovered while participating in India's Million Dollar Arm challenge that began last December. The event was designed to find the country's most powerful and accurate arm and had more than 30,000 participants.

What the hell. Don't cost much to try. Maybe the Pirates will sell some merchandise over there, and maybe baseball will gain some fans. Maybe we've got our foot in the door of the next Latin America (in terms of baseball prospects). Probably not, but at least the prospects' blog is fun to read. 😀

We went with JB sir to breakfast at a great American breakfast eatery called Dennys. Rinku ordered a breakfast aclled the Lumberjack. We now know that a Lumberjack is a person who works as a tree cutter in the forrest so they must eat a lot of food. this breakfast was quite huge. It had eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, potatos, breads, and pancakes. I had French Toast and both meals were very fulfilling.

We then went to a movie that was very bad called Rock and Rolla. it was supposed to be big action, but it was no action at all. At least the seats were very comfortable and the theater was very clean.

http://www.themilliondollararm.com/blog/

That's pretty cool. India certainly has a big enough pool to pull talent from and they play cricket there which is slightly similar to baseball.

Or you could look at it this way. No one else wants to play for the Pirates, so they have to go to a country that doesn't know them yet.... 😈

Atomm wrote:Or you could look at it this way. No one else wants to play for the Pirates, so they have to go to a country that doesn't know them yet.... 😈

Oh, Pirate fans have known that for about a dozen years. Hopefully, as bad as management has been, they've at least been aware of that reality as well.

If we want a GOOD player, we'd have to overpay. Having 2 GM's in a row that ran the team into the ground doesn't make a team appealing. The team's been dumpster-diving, picking up players that finished their last contract on a downward trend, and hoping they improve. A 1 or 2 year contract with the Pirates has been a common way for those type of players to work their way back to a good contract with a another team.

Current management is making the most sound moves I've seen in the Pirate organization in those dozen years, 'Hail-Mary' moves like this one notwithstanding. Hopefully, when the team makes a step forward in quality (won't be this year, at the major league level anyway), we'll get a boost in respectability that will allow us to compete for the same players at the same pay rate.