12-1-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
Today being December 1st, this subject probably makes a ton of sense to some non Pirates fans too.
I mean, imagine if your kids came to you with a list of Chirstmas presents they want and they were also armed with the lists of all their friends too. The kid doesn’t care how you get them obviously. They don’t care if you trade your car you use every day to get to work, every item on those lists is a one off. When another parent gets something on that list, well, it goes away for everyone.
Your kid probably doesn’t understand that his buddy who lives in the mansion down the road and has a different pair of Nike’s for every day of the week has a family that sees a new PS5 as a stocking stuffer.
This is Baseball in the offseason. Every Winter, every Winter Meeting time, every single year.
What you as a Pirates fan hope is that your “dad” or bringing this back to the real world, your GM isn’t passing up on a good deal when they find it. In other words, you gave him the list of what you want/need in October, so if he saw it at Costco and decided to wait just in case a better price cropped up before Christmas, well, you aren’t going to happily accept it’s too expensive now.
There are players being signed, nothing too crazy. Lots have been in the NL Central. The NL Central is seen by just about everyone as a wide open division as we prepare to enter 2024, so winning the offseason race, or at least making sure you’ve addressed all your needs will determine how the season goes in many ways. It’s frustrating to sit by and not participate while all those “friends” are already out there making plans for their new toys, or even making plans to sell off some of their old toys to make room.
ALL of that said, we’re losing our minds over nothing as a symptom of the overall frustration.
Yesterday, news broke that Thomas Hatch was going to play overseas instead of remaining on the Pirates 40-man roster. Regardless of what you think of Hatch, here’s the truth, Hatch wasn’t going to start for a team that is going to win more in 2024. Hatch was also likely aware his 40-man spot was increasingly unsafe as the offseason progressed.
Pirates fans were incensed. Not all. Not most. Just some. And those some, well, they saw this guy throw 3-4 really nice games for the Pirates last year, and for them, the Hatch you know is better than the starter they’ll sign to replace him who only won 7 games last year. They’ll look no farther than that, and when they inevitably see Hatch’s stats from over there where he’ll dominate by the way, the Pirates will have absolutely screwed up again.
Hatch is probably an MLB player. But Hatch isn’t a starter on an MLB team. At least he shouldn’t be. He certainly shouldn’t be on purpose, meaning, if you show up in February with Hatch written in as your 5th starter, you better have an Oakland A’s jersey on your back. You know, Osvaldo Bido’s new teammate.
The Cardinals pitching situation believe it or not was worse than the Pirates heading into this offseason. They had Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz as their locks to be in the rotation, and honestly Matz had an incredible for him year in 2023, one he likely won’t repeat in 2024. So adding Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn is an immediate upgrade at least from the innings standpoint. Both will eat innings. Both have been good in their history. Both are better bets than what they had.
Did they spend too much? Maybe. Are they good pitchers? Not really, but they are upgrades for them, they’d be upgrades for the Pirates too, that doesn’t make them the right answers though. Now, what might make them the right answer is the fact they backed both these moves by bringing in Sonny Gray too. He and Mikolas will ensure the other two and Matz should they choose to keep him, don’t have to be special, they just have to be professional, tested, veteran.
If the Pirates had done the exact same thing, I’d tell you the same thing. They’ve bettered the team. Keller and Gray will lead the staff, everyone else will provide a mile marker for prospects to overtake before displacing them.
Problem is, a guy like Gray to this team is still reaching higher than they’re willing. With this owner, it probably always will be.
I’d be more comfortable if the Pirates were out there grabbing at least some of what they need so they don’t have to do all their shopping on Christmas Eve. That’s how you end up with a GoBot instead of a Transformer people! Here’s why they aren’t though.
The Market got stupid real quick and the remaining free agency pool needs to realize it’s not the low water mark.
You see, the Pirates are shopping, and they’re shopping for at least one item slightly above the Lynn/Gibson level. Problem is, both Lynn and Gibson got pretty much what the Bucs would want to spend here, and to those players, being clearly better than Lynn isn’t even much of a guess. So, how can you approach one of those offering what Lance Lynn got just a week ago? And even if you already did, why would you as a player take it at this point? Wouldn’t you want to see what someone like Jordan Lyles gets?
Say you’re Alex Wood. Lots of projections out there that he gets less than 10 mil per and likely signs a prove it deal in 2024. Industry predicted 7.5 for him not even a week ago. Today, the estimate is 10.3 on the site I use (which is nothing more than a guess, but it shows you where players tend to sit in relation to each other less than predict the exact dollar amount).
If I’m the Pirates, I’m not sure I can swallow 10 million for Wood. 7.5, yeah, he’s easily capable of giving you what Rich Hill did, for around the same price and he has better than that in there too potentially. This shouldn’t be their top target, but it is a target and I think helps explain why the market in general has slowly started.
The likelihood is the Cardinals offered less, and padded the offers to eliminate negotiations. In other words, they saw two Cabbage Patch Dolls that weren’t exactly the dolls they had on their list, they cost a bit more than they wanted too, and when a customer near them looked like they might try to outbid them, the Cardinals decided that one eyed doll might be worth an extra mil, just to not have to fight about a few bucks with 2 or 3 other teams involved.
Now, I don’t write all that to have you believe the Pirates are doing the right thing and you should just sit there on your hands happily waiting for them to finally do something. It’s frustrating, and I totally get that. I will say, I told you a couple weeks ago to look more toward trades than free agent signings, and I’ve come to believe that based on the market, the Pirates needs and bluntly, that’s where the internal chatter lives. I can say trade targets outnumber free agent targets as it comes to chatter 4 to 1.
This stuff takes time too. As with Free agency, you can overspend and shut down the market on a deal too.
Look at what the Braves did for Aaron Bummer with the South Side of Chicago. Bummer of the 6.79 ERA in 58 innings with a 1.526 WHIP. Bummer who has a 5.5 million dollar contract for 2024 and two club options for 7.25 and 7.5 respectively in the next two seasons. The Braves sent 5 players to Chicago. FIVE!
And these weren’t just crap folks. They sent pitchers Mike Soroka, Jared Shuster and Riley Gowens, along with infielders Nicky Lopez and Braden Shewmake. Soroka and Shuster probably walk right in and start in the rotation for both the Sox and theoretically the Pirates. Lopez is a ready made utility upgrade. Shewmake and Gowens are interesting and that’s about it.
This is insane.
Like, if the Pirates were to have gotten in on this and traded even a good reliever like Mlodzinski for this package, I’d be telling you Cherington took advantage of a stacked team desperately trying to clear 40-man space and he ate their soul. Don’t get me wrong, the Sox easily had the 40-man space and the Pirates would have had to work to create it, but man if this went under Ben’s nose and he didn’t react, bluntly, he deserves to be fired. This is a swing a team in Pittsburgh’s situation has to take a shot at and I simply can’t believe Bummer was that much of a target.
A trade like that, well, damn, it kills the market, at least until people realize how special Atlanta’s situation was.
All trades will at least be compared to this one. For a while, not forever. Think about it, say Ben is shopping Bednar (calm down, I’m just talking), what does he do if someone offers like one starter and one pen arm you could work with? Can he take it after Bummer got what he got? Probably not right? Not without going out of his way to explain.
Next, toss in the TV money and the unpredictable financial situation it’s caused around the league. It’s slowing things down for sure, and while I’d argue it’s not the situation in Pittsburgh it is elsewhere because their deal was never great, it’s still a factor. This team might only wind up losing 10-15 million, but, you’ve been here a while, if they signed a guy for 10-15 million that’s a pretty big swing for them historically right?
Add in opportunities to be tentative and a careful team is going to get a tight butt. The Pirates with their historic lack of room for error, self inflicted as it may be, is likely only going to get more careful.
Bottom line, I don’t think you’re hearing things because quite frankly, there have been multiple reasons to slow down. Second, they’re typically more patient to begin with and finally, they shouldn’t be shopping for the tiny tub of wall patch at Lowes, they need to be looking for a big, expensive full sheet of fresh dry wall, probably a few of them.
Be as patient as you like, or don’t, that’s your choice, I’m just saying, the market itself isn’t moving much, and personally, I’ll wait until I see less than 30 options out there that could help. If Gibson or Lynn were your make or brake, chances are you didn’t have your sights set high enough anyway, and if you ever thought they would be in on Gray, put the bottle down, you’ve had enough.
The intention for this season changed, not the circumstances that made this rebuild a long shot to pull off in the first place. Even that isn’t true, cause it’s actually gotten harder.
Steel City Pirates 