Langosch: Paul Maholm Probably Gone

Yeah, that’s pretty much my take on it. I have no idea what the front office thinks about it, but Wood just had his best year, and he was little better than replacement-level.

like Luis Rivas? and Ramon Vasquez? and Bobby Crosby? I’d take the bird in hand here for 100K over the minimum.

He would be well worth the modest raise it will take to get him back. Play that card and hope he pitches as well next year as he did this year and flip him at the trade deadline. He could have brought back a pretty decent haul this past season had the team not been playing over their heads at the trade deadline.

Yeah. Not without getting into contracts that have long commitments, which I’m sure the front office would rather not do.

That’s pretty much it, yeah. It’s like they don’t understand that quality free agents don’t want to come here.

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.You can thank me later.

last I heard (late august/early sept) he wasn’t a type B nor close to it.

but I imagine that it is in everyone’s best interest to keep most thing the same for this off-season. Teams have already had to make decisions on what they assume will be the playing field. I would think if there are any major changes, they would start next off season, to give teams a chance to know the field they are playing on.
Unless, of course, the changes will greatly benefit the Yanks and Sox, then they may be immediate, or even retro -active.

Even though I like Jones, I also don’t want to see the Pirates looking to him as their Plan A.

But, I think he could come back at a reasonable price and be a very solid back-up at 1B and RF and, obviously could fill-in for extended periods of time, when the obligatory injury to someone else occurs.

Again, if the Pirates have already had secret negotiations with some other player and it’s pretty much just needing the official signatures, then I don’t have a problem letting him go.

I know the amazing John Perrotto has already proclaimed that only the 4 pitchers are going to get tendered and the others will not. I’d agree (as I mentioned above), that offering arb to the middle relievers (like Resop or Veras) is just silly because you can sign a bunch of similar vets for 500K, so why go into arbitration with these guys and have to pay more.

But Jones is another case. And my concern with non-tendering him and then trying to sign him to a lower contract (he’s already making the league minimum, so I’m not sure how you go any lower than that!!!) is that suddenly you are competing with other teams, instead of just with yourself. There’s always that possibility that some crazy team will swoop in with a relatively large contract and then the Pirates are left with nothing.

And I’m not quite sure on B Wood. The numbers he could use in an arbitration hearing are pretty horrific. So he doesn’t have much to stand on. But, I wouldn’t mind seeing him come back for a little over the league minimum (500-550k). He’s a decent back-up at multiple positions. You give him another year to see if the bat starts clicking. If not, then you non-tender him next year.

Kosstic, I don’t think people are getting awfully worked up. (Though I’m trying to figure out who this 2 WAR is that you’re talking about!!! Doumit maybe??)

And I don’t think that re-signing or not re-signing Maholm will have the slightest impact on draft or international signings.

Really, it comes down to whether or not re-signing a guy like Maholm or (Doumit) is worth it for the money. I’d imagine that if these guys aren’t re-signed, they will spend most of that money on other free agents (or arbitration raises). So the money is going to be spent, one way or another, whether it’s a “dead” season or not.

Personally, the one thing that I took from the Pirates’ mid-season success this year is that ANY TEAM, given the right circumstances/injury situation/good pitching or hitting or defense or some combination of those, can compete for a period of time. The hurdle (pun intended) the Pirates face is finding out what does it take to take to go from competing for 6 weeks to competing for most of a season. I don’t believe the Pirates will ever just punt on a season, so it’s important to try to utilize the resources the best you can. There is always a possibility Every season, every team has a chance. Even if it’s a slight chance.

And I don’t want people to say that I’m saying that just because they competed in 2011, that they will improve upon that in 2012. My point is that any team can make a run in any season. The Pirates have to find a way to make a much longer run than they did this year.

Personally, I think the way they should do that is to invest almost all of their resources into their pitching staff. Try to make the pitching staff into a solid strength. One that can overcome a lack of offense. And the reason I say that is that the offense (especially if Pedro continues to struggle) is more than one or two pieces away from being a strength. And it would cost too much to try and swing the offense from a negative to a strength. But, the pitching is a different story. It was a strength and then ran out of gas. It would be much easier to throw a few more good arms in there and build off of the staff, then to leave the rotation alone and try to go out and buy offense (at this point in the Pirates’ development.)

Especially the point about knock-on effects. Last week I wrote about how the cascade effect from the stupid, stupid failure to protect Joe Randa in the ’97 expansion draft cost us over 20 wins between ’98 and ’06, including almost certainly breaking the Streak in ’99 (when we were already a Pythag .500 team with sub-Randa production at 3B).

MLB doesn’t actually let you skip years. You have to play 162 every season, even if you know going in that you can’t win 90.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Very well said superope.

If we were limited to discussing 5+ WAR players, this would be Death Valley.

Assuming Maholm’s shoulder is fine, then any such replacement acquisition comes with many questions. It would be an absolute gamble, and that hasn’t worked out all that well for the bucs.

Looking at Maholm as an individual player is fine, but you have to look at the list of possible replacements to gauge if the 9mil+ is proper money to spend for the production. You could make a point that it is not, but they’re shaky… at least you know what you’ll get out of Maholm.

Hoping they can decline the 9+ and offer something like a 2 year $15 mil contract… optimal imo.

It’s not a very promising list.

“Depends on your point of view.”

— Dr. James Andrews

Francis isn’t a bad pitcher, but as a BIP-heavy guy with groundball tendencies, he isn’t a great fit for our current infield defense.

It couldn’t, but it won’t do us much good when he gets $12-13M per from someone else.