Dejan says no one else signed.

that not signing Scheppers is how they were able to sign Grossman and Miller. That makes me believe they may not have even talked to Scheppers this evening, unless they undercut the previous offer.

They signed Pedro and Q with Neal and the gang not fallin to Tanner’s demand!

More draft pix the better!

And hopefully a sign of even better things to come.

maybe the best thing. And no good thing ever dies.

—Andy Dufresne

Nice Shawshank reference bucdaddy. The more I think about it, being a Pirates fan the last 15 years can feel like being in prison. But like Andy Dufesne, maybe we will go through the mud and a sh*t (which will be the next season or two likely) and come out on the other side smelling like a rose … just maybe.

Hope is a good thing. Pedro and friends give me hope.

Boras called to accept at 1158 pm. Pirates never moved off their original bid of 6 mil. Wanna bet Boras doesn’t end up representing Pedro? His family could have had this deal 2 months ago.

http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/pbc/default.aspx

I speculated as much a few hours ago:

“The thing that sucks about this whole system concerning Alvarez is that he probably got pretty much what the Pirates offered all along. Two wasted months in which he could have played a few dozen more games in the minors and maybe been on the fast-track to the bigs next year. Until I hear otherwise, I think Boras gave him bum advice for the start of his career.”

Nice work, Scott Boras. You make quite the super agent.

After an exhausting week I did my level best to stay up last night, but ultimately fell asleep at 11:30 listening to Rocco beg for callers so he could keep his show going late enough to report the inevitable big news (be it signing or no signing). I repeatedly dreamed about both scenarios and ultimately saw the good news a few minutes ago.

I have several thoughts in no particular order:

1. I was at least half asleep, so I may have heard wrong, but I think Rocco was reporting that sources told him that things were looking very positive on both the Pedro and Scheppers fronts in the two hours before the deadline. I can’t decide what I think about Rocco, but based upon DK’s reporting today, it sounds as if Rocco’s sources were way off.

2. It didn’t occur to me until about a half hour ago (after the deadline and before I heard the news), but did we all miss an obvious sign that Pedro was gonna take the deal? Reports yesterday were that he and his family had disappeared from sight. If they are as financially destitute as reported and given this economy, Boras probably funded the “vacation” or a loan was taken out – either of which meaning that he gave up his amatuer status and planned to sign no matter what. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this, but I wish I would’ve connected those dots yesterday.

3. I am almost more excited about the strategy employed with the Scheppers non-signing than anything else.

4. The fact that Pedro didn’t receive the highest bonus in the draft isn’t a big deal to me, but it is interesting. Did we ever figure out if Posey is a Boras guy?

5. Sometimes I think Boras gets a bad rap, then there is the other 95% of the time. He views this as a business and his strategy of holding out until the last possible second (or two minutes as was reported in this case) only needs to work once for him to achieve his goal. At some point, a team will blink and pay the massive Boras demand. That will not only likely result in a huge pay day that likely compensates him for all of the similar prior gambles that did not pay off, but it will serve the main purpose of exponentially increasing the bar for such signing in the future. At the end of the day, Boras is a horse’s ass because he has no concern for the game. I’m pretty sure that this is the same line of thought that lead to the demise of the Eastern Elk (pick your species).

6. Hopefully, before the above scenario unfolds, Boras will be playing last minute roulette but the perfect storm will hit (say a power outage and lighting strike that kills all cell phone transmission for 30 minutes) causing him to miss the deadline.

All in all, the Pedro signing is exciting as hell – on many levels.

Good day.

$6M is what Littlefield spent on Burnitz. It’s like night and day.

Even if a lot of these guys don’t pan out, I’m still extremely optimistic. It is clear from the trading deadline and especially this draft that we now have a management team that understands the process (which, of course, is the answer!). They get it. They are doing things the right way, and as long as they continue to do so, we will finally get out of this enormous hole we’ve dug ourselves.

I think it’s also clear that we can put the “Bob Nutting as villain” meme to rest. The firestorm last season appears to have really had an effect on him and he is just as committed to turning the Pirates into winners as he ought to be.

The Drive for 75 is dead. The Drive for 95 is on.