If you sign 30 kids, you have to find room on the roster for 30 kids, by cutting 30 guys who are already there.

If they weren’t willing to pay the opportunity cost of tossing guys from last year’s draft overboard, or having to wait an extra year to bring kids over from the DSL/VSL, then they made the right call. If not, they didn’t.

The primary difference between this year’s number and last year’s was that they signed fewer organizational players. Last year they were faced with an org. that had almost no pitching, so they signed a slew of college pitchers in the late rounds to fill out the lower level rosters. They didn’t need that this year, so they signed only 4-5 org. guys.

Hey Illini Pirate Fan, my grandfather Benny Benack Sr. championed the beat em bucs fight song in 1960, I wouldn’t doubt you have a picture or article of his in your memorabilia room! Thanks for spreading the Pirate nation into Cub land

I have both the 45 rpm of the song as well a a copy on reel-to-reel made by my father during the 1960 season. Congrats on having such a terrific grandfather who was also such a fine muscian who added a chapter to Pirate history:

Benny Benack
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Benny Benack was at the forefront of the Pittsburgh jazz scene in the 1960s and ‘70s. A talented trumpet player, Benack was made famous by his song "Beat’em Bucs" and was a staple at Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers games. The Benny Benack Orchestra played the styles of traditional jazz, dixieland, and swing. He was known as the “King of Dixieland” in Pittsburgh for many years.

Benack was born to Italian immigrant parents in 1922 and grew up in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. His father, Charlie, was a self-taught photographer who started out walking from one mill town to another in the Monongahela River valley, his equipment on a donkey, making family portraits and class photographs. Uninterested in following in the photography business, young Benny began playing trumpet at age five, and practiced for six or seven hours a day throughout his childhood.

He was educated in the fine arts department of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, where he was friends with jazz composer Sammy Nestico. He also attended the University of Pittsburgh. He played at army bases in Florida and India during WWII, was director of a group of young musicians known as the Dodge Kids, and toured the country with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and the Raymond Scott Orchestra. During the late 50’s and 1960s, he was an innovative bandleader at Clairton High School, introducing jazz, swing, and high-stepping routines to the marching band’s pregame and halftime performances.

Benack died in 1986 of lung cancer. He had three children with his wife Gretchen: Peek, Flip, and Suzie, each of whom had two children of their own. Peek and Flip both live near Pittsburgh with their families, while Suzie moved to upstate New York. Peek continues the family musical tradition as Benny Benack Jr., playing trumpet, clarinet and saxophone. Peek’s son, Benny Benack III, is also involved in the Pittsburgh jazz scene. Flip currently owns and operates Benack Sound Productions, an audio/visual production company in Pleasant Hills, a suburb of Pittsburgh (about ten miles (16 km) south, along U.S. Rte. 51, within three miles (5 km) of Clairton).