Pirates "laughingstock"

[gunnarthor]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/pirates---hells-angels-----navy-seals--minor-league-training-methods-become-mlb-joke--.html

 

GM Huntington is making top prospects go through a Navy Seal type training program. Still doing it even after star pitching prospect got injured in hand to hand combat training. Wow.

[TheLeviathan]

Read this and was both amused and baffled. If you're a pirates fan you have to be embarrassed.

[nicksaviking]

Makes me want to impose a moratorium on my negative comments regarding the Twins front office.

 

Something deeper is going on in that organization if the minor leaguers who are forced to ride busses and double up in motel rooms together for five months a year need to be forced into further bonding time.

[Brock Beauchamp]

That'll toughen 'em up. Rub some dirt and walk it off, you nancies!

 

(this message has been approved by R. Lee Ermey)

[jokin]

Another point of view that is a little more fair.

 

[h=1]Pirates' Kyle Stark Uses Unusual Training Methods, But Are We Sure They're Wrong? http://pittsburgh.sbnation.com/2012/9/21/3369486/pirates-kyle-stark-navy-seals[/h]

"The baseball world is having a laugh at some of the Pirates' training methods, but that doesn't make those methods wrong....My point is that, in the wake of yet another late-season collapse, a lot of the criticism the Pirates are currently receiving for this amounts to piling on, which is the easiest thing in the world to do. We simply don't know how effective three days of NAVY Seals training are at developing ballplayers....

Beyond that, though, it's possible to let your imagination run wild with this. Bucs prospects do many, or perhaps most, of their offseason workouts at Pirate City in Bradenton, in full public view. I've been there, albeit briefly, and everything I saw there (or read about in reports from there) seemed to be normal baseball stuff.

 

Kovacevic is reporting about something that happened (as Kovacevic himself notes) for three days. Just three days. The Bucs' minor-leaguers had to wake up early in the morning, do push-ups and sit-ups, crab walk, and run along the beach while carrying large poles, among other activities.

 

Should it strike us as significant that the players don't like waking up at five in the morning to flip over truck tires? No. Almost no one likes doing that.

Does it mean anything that other teams think these routines are stupid? Not necessarily. The line between madness and genius can be thin, and I'd rather have the Pirates considering unusual routines than just going through the motions.....The point, though, is that we don't really know what effect these drills have had, and much of the laughter that's coming from those outside the situation really sounds like the guffawing certain kinds of people love to do just because someone dared to do something different. I'm not defending Stark. I don't know enough about whether I ought to. (And I'm not criticizing Kovacevic, who reported on a story that was clearly newsworthy.) But I do think that the Pirates' Navy SEAL training isn't the obvious joke it's been made to be."

 

 

Hey, when your club has been in the toilet for 20 years, what's wrong with trying some outside-the-box thinking? We deride the local scribes, and the national writers for that matter, when their article solely relies on anonymous sources. That's all Passan does here, a Souhan-style pile-on to yet another promising Pirates season that ended in disaster.

[jokin]

That'll toughen 'em up. Rub some dirt and walk it off, you nancies!

 

(this message has been approved by R. Lee Ermey)

 

 

Hey, besides giving the greatest entirely improvisational performance by a non-actor in the history of cinema in Full Metal Jacket, the guy is also a certified Vietnam-era war hero. Here's Ermey's list of military honors:

 

 

[TABLE]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Navy_Meritorious_Unit_Commendation_ribbon.svg/106px-Navy_Meritorious_Unit_Commendation_ribbon.svg.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Award-star-gold-3d.svg/22px-Award-star-gold-3d.svg.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Award-star-gold-3d.svg/22px-Award-star-gold-3d.svg.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Marine_Corps_Good_Conduct_ribbon.svg/106px-Marine_Corps_Good_Conduct_ribbon.svg.png

 

[/TD]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Award-star-gold-3d.svg/22px-Award-star-gold-3d.svg.png

 

 

 

[/TABLE]

[TABLE=class: wikitable]

[TD=colspan: 2]Meritorious Unit Commendation

[TD=colspan: 2]Good Conduct Medal[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 2]National Defense Service Medal[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 2]Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 2]Vietnam Service Medal[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 2]Drill Instructor Ribbon[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 2]Vietnam Gallantry Cross[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 2]Vietnam Presidential Unit Citation[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 2]Vietnam Campaign Medal[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 3]Rifle Expert Badge[/TD]

[TD=colspan: 3]Pistol Sharpshooter Badge[/TD]

[/TABLE]

[Seth Stohs]

It's certainly different, and I certainly wouldn't like it. But I'm certainly in the camp that we can't know that it is a reason for anything.

[IdahoPilgrim]

And Appel didn't want to be a part of this? Shocking.

[John Bonnes]

Personally, I would've loved to do Navy Seal training at that age. I have no problem with the Pirates doing that.

[kab21]

Personally, I would've loved to do Navy Seal training at that age. I have no problem with the Pirates doing that.

 

I would love to say that I did it but after the fact. 2 a day HS football practices were enough for me.

 

I think this is nothing more than one of those team building ropes courses that many do in college or at work on steroids (figuratively).

[biggentleben]

I still am humored that less than a week of intense workouts is too tough for professional athletes to endure. I think if I were one of the Pirates who complained about this, I would be ashamed that it has been a national news story as it sure knocks off my ability to claim superiority for my athletic abilities when 40+ states feature Navy-certified trainers who provide SEALS-type training to the average person and typically have to turn people away from each session for excess demand.

[gunnarthor]

I still am humored that less than a week of intense workouts is too tough for professional athletes to endure. I think if I were one of the Pirates who complained about this, I would be ashamed that it has been a national news story as it sure knocks off my ability to claim superiority for my athletic abilities when 40+ states feature Navy-certified trainers who provide SEALS-type training to the average person and typically have to turn people away from each session for excess demand.

 

I always think these team building things are just big fiascoes. Remember way back when Mike Lynn sent Hershall Walker and several prominent Vikings to some stupid team building thing in the wild? They sent a newscrew with them and saw them go down zip lines and roll logs. And the team was more screwed up the following year.

 

I think the criticism of the Pirates is valid. How would anyone here react if we learned that Miguel Sano hurt his knee in a hand to hand combat drill? The Pirates main problem is, while constantly drafting high, they haven't been able to develop much of that talent into ball players and now it looks like the FO seems to think the problem is that the players aren't tough enough or man enough.

[gunnarthor]

Well, it got worse. http://www.bucsdugout.com/2012/10/24/3546374/kovacevic-gregory-polanco-injured-ankle-during-navy-seals-training

 

Pirates best OF prospect Gregory Polanco missed the last month of the season with a ankle injury but the Bucs sent him to navy seals training anyways. And, shocking, he re-injured that ankle. Then the Pirates lied about it.