Murray Chass Doesn't Know What Outsourcing Is...

Just as the title says. Judging by this little gem, he can't (scroll all the way to the bottom of the page).

Much of the outsourcing that United States companies do these days is located in India. The companies that outsource elements of their operations do so because the cost is cheaper. Now the practice has come to baseball.

It has? So this logically means that to reduce costs, we're relocating the league offices or the hired help therein or maybe giving the jobs to the people who answer the phones for mlb.com's tech support to people in India.

The Pirates are outsourcing their future.

Huh? No, seriously...HUH????? There's this little thing about the future being impossible to outsource unless the Pirates actually announce a future MOVE to India (which I kinda doubt, considering how jetlagged the players would get).

They signed two Indians last week to professional contracts. Those are natives of India, who have never played an inning of baseball.

By this logic, every single team signing a player born outside of the United States of America is outsourcing its future. I can't put into words how stupid that is. And I tried for a solid twenty minutes, too, so don't tell me I can. Does this mean that because the Cardinals have Albert Pujols, a Dominican, they're outsourcing their success? Or the Mets' Johan Santana, from Venezuela? How about the Toronto Blue Jays, who don't even play in the United States for half the season (and yes, you can technically outsource to Canada, though doing so would not be cost-effective)?

Incidentally, I'm almost positive Murray's wrong about left-hander Rinku Singh and right-hander Dinesh Patel not having played an inning of baseball. I'm pretty sure both of these guys played Little League, which, last time I checked, was indeed baseball.

With a major league record-tying 16 successive losing seasons, the Pirates haven’t been able to get it right so how bad can it be trying to develop inexperienced Indians?

I get Murray's message here (I think), that it can't hurt the Pirates to try out new ideas, but he finishes the sentence as if the Pirates had just signed a pair of Neanderthals simply because neither of these guys come from a place considered to be a baseball country. It also has a slight smell of xenophobia with the whole the-Indians-are-just-a-bunch-of-people-who-take-American-jobs-and-don't-know-baseball thing. Well, the Mets signed a catcher out of Germany last season named Kai Gronauer, who is doing pretty well. I can already imagine Murray calling the guy a Nazi once he finds out he exists and asking him where he keeps his copy of Mein Kampf.

Signing some dude out of a foreign country not usually associated with baseball does not automatically mean that said dude will automatically not distinguish a baseball from a rotting log, which is precisely what Murray seems to think about Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel. It also does not mean that the the players are stereotypical primitives. Uh, Murray, you do realize that they have cricket in India, right? Try figuring that EXTREMELY complex sport out and come back to me when you do. Because while both of these "inexperienced Indian" guys were javelin-throwers, they're also big cricket fans, according to their own blogs on themilliondollararm.com.

The unfortunate aspect of the foray into India is that it is the Pirates who are doing it. Even if there’s a glimmer of hope that decent players could be developed in India, you have to remember it’s the Pirates who are trying it. The Pirates haven’t been able to develop outstanding college and high school players into major leaguers. What makes anyone think they can turn baseball neophytes into baseball prospects?

Because we all know that Pedro Alvarez (**gasp** a foreigner!), Robbie Grossman, Paul Maholm, Matt Capps, Nate McLouth, Ryan Doumit, Steve Pearce, and Yoslan Herrera (**gasp** another foreigner!) are absolutely useless and have no talent or future. Seriously, did Murray Chass miss the Pirates changing General Managers from the awful Dave Littlefield to the very good Neal Huntington? Was he sick the day the Pirates said they were planning to spend a lot more money on the draft? Did he forget about Pirates beginning to rely on Sabermetrics? Did he have a traumatic experience that blocked out the trades that netted the Buccos Jose Tabata (**gasp** yet another foreigner!), Jeff Karstens, Andy LaRoche, Brandon Moss, and Bryan Morris? These are not the Pittsburgh Pirates of 2005 or 2006.

This is like someone looking at the early 2000's Tampa Bay Devil Rays and concluding that because they sucked then, they must still suck now. Screw the AL Pennant. Screw the new hirings that seem to be Neal Huntington's model. They must suck. They're the Rays, or Devil Rays, or whatever.

All right, maybe it’s only a gimmick; that’s always possible.

You want to know who else were basically signed as a gimmick? The A's designated runners, Allan Lewis (Ahh!!! A non-US born person!!!) and Herb Washington*. Where's the contempt directed at them? I realize Washington took hell after he was caught stealing in the 1973 World Series and in hindsight, both of Charles O. Finley's designated runners look pretty useless, but at the time, they weren't treated with the disdain with which Chass is treating Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel (did you notice that he doesn't even mention their names?).

Yet, Patel topped off at 90 mph after never having seriously pitched before or conditioning himself to pitch. If someone did this in the United States, you can bet there would be scouts looking at him. And Singh supposedly throws a very good split-fingered changeup (a Vulcan Change for people who followed baseball in the eighties) in addition to a high 80's fastball. Again, that's something an American scout would look at. These guys have the chance to become much better than Lewis and Washington.

*Before someone emails me about Larry Lintz and other A's "designated runners," those guys had legit baseball careers before Finley signed them just to pinch run.

But it’s the Pirates who are doing it, and no one has ever accused the Pirates of being capable of doing anything clever.

Because Murray and I agree that Dave Littlefield was a brain dead moron when it came to baseball. It's just that Murray doesn't seem to grasp the concept that he was fired late in the 2007 season and replaced with this other, better guy named Neal Huntington.

So there you have it folks. Ol' Murray thinks the Pirates are outsourcing baseball to India because they signed two guys from India who genuinely look promising. I'd love to hear his take if we sign some guy from the Middle East...