12-9-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X
Folks, unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard Ben Cherington’s quotes about payroll this year, but just in case, let’s go ahead and make sure they’re fresh in your mind.
“I would anticipate us ending up above where we landed last year,”
Let’s start there. nothing wrong there right? I mean I guess you’d prefer he just blurt out of course we’ll be above last year! Way above! But all in all, he’s not limiting it there, but he also isn’t really instilling expectations too high is he?
“Generally speaking, we expect that as we get better, the payroll will continue to climb with us.
OK, so this isn’t to parse this, but regardless of what he means here, he’s right. Without doing anything but playing kids, and finding some who stick, arbitration, extensions, and yes, signings on top of them, payroll will continue to climb with them. The 100 Million dollar mark is coming, because it can’t be avoided at this point, maybe not this year but for sure next. And it’s the exact reason the payroll peaked in 2015 too. I think people look back on that time and somehow come to the belief that a GM just wakes up one day and says, we’re ready Bob, and he grudgingly says ok. It’s really more like how your household bills go up as your lot in life does. Get a bigger house, pay more for energy. Well, get a kid developed to that 1st arb year and who knows, you could go from 800K to 10 million for a Cruz.
To some extent, motivation for us is if we can actually push that as we get better. Chicken or the egg, but competitiveness can help speed that up. That’s the way we’re operating.”
I’m not claiming to know his intension here, instead, I’ll just tell you what I heard if I had an imaginary GMBC translator app for my phone. What I took was something like this, we’re gonna add and if the kids we’re trusting to improve perform, we can push to spend more at the deadline to support it, but if not, cautiously add.
That’s what I got on the comments, now, lets just talk about payroll a bit, because I’ll be blunt, I just don’t think the amount of payroll they add will equal the amount of talent they bring in. Marco Gonzales had a down year and is coming off an injury. He’s also been a good pitcher in this league. He was going to make 12.5 million this year, he still will, but almost all of it save 2.75 million appears to be paid by the Braves and Mariners. If Marco were to be on the free agent market, solid chance he gets 8.5-10 million. Yes, injury concerns included. Yes, down season all above board here. That’s value. I don’t know if Gonzales is gonna work out, but let’s say he does, now they have a pitcher for next to nothing, with a mid tier free agent level option year (15 Million) that makes him more valuable. Listen, Aldi shoppers probably get this right away. Ain’t nothing wrong with a bargain but sometimes you’re gonna have a vein in your Chicken.
Frankly, if he’s smart and trades to acquire a lot of what he needs while somehow keeping payroll low, who am I to bitch ya know? Hey, if it happens, good for you smarty. I think it’d be easier to stretch the wallet a bit and hopefully stretch their competitive window by a year in the process, but I digress.
Now, those of you who read my stuff regularly or listen to the Pirates Fan Forum have probably heard me toss out a projection of 85-90 million this year.
A modest increase over 2023, and based on the end of year payroll figures we expect to have confirmed sometime later this month. For the Pirates it looks like that figure for 2023 will be very close to 75 million. For perspective, they’re estimated to be around 58 million as we speak. That acknowledges they’ll still make more moves of course, but it also accounts for moves they’ve already made as well as estimates for arbitration awards that have yet to be determined. All of this comes from the great work of Ethan Hullihen who has very closely matched the Forbes report (It’s like the Bible to payroll watchers, as it’s the only number sanctioned by the MLBPA and the Owners every year). So what Ethan does is provide you that number as the season plays out.
It’s important to understand that the payroll is a fluid thing. It changes all year long as players are demoted, promoted, moved, injured, transferred, accrue bonuses, trigger incentives, you know, whatever happens to a player or team throughout the season.
I say all that to point out, when Ben Cherington talks about payroll going up it may not be as simple as taking that 58 million dollar number and seeing how much room you have ’til you hit 75 for a starting point, 17 million for those of you who use fingers and toes to count.
In order for payroll to increase only moderately, the Pirates probably would need to keep their remaining free agent and trade acquisitions around 12 million. If they did that, I’d assume by the end of the year all that life stuff will have hit them and the payroll would finish in the 85-90 range, unless as Ben says up there and they perform, then perhaps you could see them take on more payroll to support whatever constitutes a run.
That’s moderation 100%.
That also won’t likely get the job done, at least not a playoff appearance type transformation, unless, they do it somehow with more Gonzales type deals. Or, and I hate to pile on here, the kids ball out. If 4 or 5 kids go ham all bets are off about everything really, but it’s almost too unlikely to broach right now for me.
Again, I’m not shocked that the Pirates would want to be careful this year. The TV deal is going to wind up costing them likely in the neighborhood of 10 mil one way or another, and bluntly, the majority of the team are first or second year players who the team has to be committed to playing.
In fact, that young group of players is probably the biggest reason payroll won’t go up a whole bunch, they can’t block them all either, because in order for this thing to work, they must have some of the rotation filled by young, controlled pitchers. They need to fortify, and brace this rotation with sturdy enough blocks they could pass for a finished product, and all the while be actively hoping for and working toward having a Quinn Priester or Luis Ortiz push away the facade of one of them. The other way to go is to get a real front line starter to add to Gonzales and Keller and allow the back of the rotation to be a sandbox, where you try and let several starting options try to win it or gravitate to bullpen mix and match to compensate while they grow.
It’s a lot of things, and there are a lot of ways you could go. Looks, and sounds to me, like this is what they plan. Feels to me like they still aren’t in a place where they want anyone for next year, unless it’s their choice and theirs alone. Part of that comes from the very real need to make sure this is primarily achieved with young and affordable players, and it might just be what makes it so hard to rebuild.
If you get the pitching developed first like the Marlins, you wind up having to sell some of it to balance the scales with offense you didn’t develop yet.
The Pirates look like they’re closer on offense, and you certainly can’t enter a season with all kids in a rotation, not even the Pirates of 2021 wanted to do that, but ideally sometime in September, you’d love if your best 5 were Keller, Contreras, Ortiz, Priester, Skenes/Jones/Burrows/Brubaker. And all those options are why we won’t see them (aside from fear of spending in the first place of course) sign a pitcher for multiple years unless it’s a team option.
Yup. A cheap owner caused this. Yup, a team that spends wouldn’t consider half of the crap I just spoke too. All that said, a team that spends would never be in this situation to begin with. They wouldn’t have torn down, like this in the first place, and if they did, they’d be THE player on the Free agent market next year.
I certainly don’t wanna tell you to just shut up and “let him cook”, cause man we don’t know how it’ll taste. To a degree though, I’m willing to accept he can get some stuff done that doesn’t cost much, yet adds value in all the right places. That’s the fun outcome anyway.
Happy offseason,
Here’s hoping the media doesn’t miss a single Ohtani Door Dash order.
Steel City Pirates 