I’ve been very busy this week with work and missed this story on training the Pirates minor leaguers:

It’s not just the Pirates’ second consecutive collapse that has made them an industry joke. The methods by which they rear their minor leaguers are perhaps even worse, a combination of hubris and recklessness that has led to injuries and widespread resentment, according to four sources who outlined the problems to Yahoo! Sports.

“I knew this stuff was going on,” said one source familiar with the Pirates’ program, who, like the others, requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “I didn’t like it. Nobody did. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

They are general manager Neal Huntington and assistant GM Kyle Stark, who have implemented a training program unlike any other in the industry. From getting blasted with water after 5 a.m. wakeup calls to hand-to-hand combat in which, according to two sources, top prospect Jameson Taillon once suffered a knee injury, the Pirates’ insistence on using militaristic exercise has spooked enough players that a number openly complained to minor league staff members this year about the instructional league plans.

Hat tip, The Book Blog.

This practice really seems to be getting panned. From what I can tell, it’s not every day in the minors, just a bit of fall team building. A prospect suffered a minor injury? Okay, that happens every day throughout baseball. Is it a silly team building exercise? Sure, but so are most team building exercises. It strikes me the Pirates are trying to bring a football mentality to baseball, and it just doesn’t belong there. I really doubt the Pirates collapses the last two seasons have anything to do with those exercises.

If the Pirates want that type of player, draft that type of player. Get Reggie Jackson and Barry Bonds and Bryce Harper, players who want to win more than anything. I suspect that kind of personality is innate, rather than developed.

(By the way, this strikes me as a good reason the players should want to be free agents throughout their professional careers. If Pirates minor leaguers were free to go when their contracts were up, they would leave in droves, and other players would not want to sign there. That would get the front office to change this practice quickly. Since they are indentured, for all intents and purposes, the Pirates can do whatever they want, and people who want to change this have to resort to leaking stories to the press.)