Back in February, Charlie wrote a piece concerning an column by Jay Cipriano of the Centre Times Daily, in which Cirpiano harped on former Pirates that "could have" been still playing in Pittsburgh.  You know the drill: McLouth, Bay, and Sanchez could've played with McCutchen, Alvarez, and Lincoln.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Charlie commented on this sort of logic:

Well heck, if this is the game we're going to play, then forget McLouth--the Pirates could have started 2010 with an outfield of Bay, McCutchen and Barry Bonds, who had about as good a chance of sticking with the Pirates until now as Bay did. I bet Bonds could still hit some homers!

Well guess what, Charlie? Today's your lucky day! I give you today's column by Cipriano:

Yup, it's a 25-man roster consisting entirely of former Pirates.  You have the usual suspects, like Bay, Freddy, Aramis (McLouth is omitted this time, for some strange reason), and of course the new breed of Former Pirate Superstars like Joey Bats and Matt Capps.  Cipriano alleges:

This team could be better than the current real Pirates, Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers and Houston Astros. With big second halves from Ramirez, Wilson and Sanchez, and a move for a high-end starter, it possess the bullpen, infield and outfield depth to compete with the Reds and Cardinals.

Now, when looking at the roster, the offense would undoubtedly be better, with guys like Bay, Jose Guillen (who would oddly be platooning in Cipriano's world), etc.  And the bullpen would be solid.  But that rotation is pretty putrid, and there is only one catcher on the roster.  Also, the catcher is Jason Kendall.  So while this team would likely be better than the current Pirates, they'd be hard pressed to compete with the Reds or Cards.  This is maybe a .500 team in my eyes.  If someone wants to do an analysis looking at WAR, be my guest.  (I'm looking in the general direction of the Lone Star State.)

So, I was curious as to how much this team would cost, and went to Cot's Contracts to look up the salaries of each player, and see what kind of payroll this club would have.  The total payroll?  $127,416,500.

Spelled out, that's one hundred twenty-seven million, four hundred sixteen thousand, five hundred dollars.

In Spanish, that's cientos veintisiete millones, cuatrocientos dieciséis miles, quinientos dólares.

So for $127M, you have a rotation of Arroyo, Wakefield, Gorzo, Jeremy Guthrie, and Oliver Perez.  And they're pitching to Jason Kendall.  But remember, they could compete with a move for a high-end starter!  Too bad the Mariners already dealt Cliff Lee, otherwise the Bucs could move a couple of players from their non-existent farm system to get him!