Pirates' 2003 FA Class: Is it possible to repeat today, even in part?
by magnumo on Oct 30, 2011 1:24 PM EDT
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PrintThe Pirates have made a long list of (mostly unsuccessful) free agent signings during the losing streak.
Most Pirate fans recognize and accept that, in most cases, the Pirates cannot and will not be players for prime free agents..... guys who might be called top tier FA's (e.g. Pujols, Fielder, Jose Reyes, Sabathia, Cliff Lee). All published reports indicate pretty emphatically a continuation of that policy. But the Pirates HAVE signed quite a few 2nd and 3rd tier guys over the years. I'm reminded of the FA signing period prior to the 2003 season, when DL had been the Pirates' GM for less than 2 years.
(Before anyone accuses me of pimping Littlefield, I have posted elsewhere that I believe DL was the Pirates' worst GM during the 61 years I've been following the Pirates. But even the worst GM's get something right once in a while.)
At any rate, IIRC, Littlefield signed Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, Matt Stairs, Jeff Suppan, and Jeff D'Amico as free agents prior to the 2003 season. (I don't remember whether he signed anyone else.) Again, IIRC, he signed those five players for one year each at an average of about $1 mill each. I may be off a little bit on those salaries, but not much, and that's not the point, anyway.
According to Fangraphs, that 2003 Pirate FA class produced 2003 WAR as follows:
Sanders 3.2
Lofton 4.4 (2.2 for the Pirates before the infamous Aram trade to the Cubs)
Stairs 2.1
Suppan 3.0 (2.8 for the Pirates before being traded to Boston)
D'Amico 2.0
Littlefield never had that kind of success again. Nevertheless, it was quite an accomplishment..... and for small money. I recognize that player salaries have inflated substantially since 2003, but ALLOWING for inflation.....
Is it reasonable (or even possible) for Huntington to find 2 or 3 such players for 2012???
For reference, 2011 Pirate free agents (including two early waiver claims as additional data points) produced the following WAR:
Kevin Correia 0.0
Lyle Overbay -0.6 (-0.8 for the Pirates before being released)
Matt Diaz -0.2 (-0.1 for the Pirates before being traded to the Braves)
Jose Veras 0.5
---------------
Brandon Wood 0.1 (0.3 for the Pirates after being claimed)
Xavier Paul -0.2 (-0.1 for the Pirates after being claimed)
Disclaimer: Please note that I did NOT include these numbers to imply that Littlefield was a better GM than Huntington. He was not. DL never repeated his 2003 success in the FA market. DL was a dreadful GM, perhaps the worst of all time. But his 2003 success proves that such success was POSSIBLE, at least in 2003. I presented the numbers ONLY for reference in answering the question above in bold, i.e., Is it even possible today, even for only 2 or 3 such players, let alone 5?
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the managing editor (Charlie) or SB Nation. FanPosts are written by Bucs Dugout readers.
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Yes But.....
I agree that DL’s 2003 signing had alot of WAR. but we only won 75 hames (3 more than last year) with those guys. we should have won more.
Also, I am not sure the era is the same. Today, players of the Sanders, Lofton category no longer seem to be availible so cheaply or want to play for a team w/o a shot at the postseason.
If we sign 3 players (1 pitcher and 2 position players) and get 1 to be 3 WAR, it would be good.
A few things about that year:
IIRC, Brian Giles was hurt for a stretch early in the season and wound up playing only 134 games that year (105 Pirates, 28 Padres) while putting up his worst OPS+ in five years. Granted, it was 145, but … Anyway, you have to give DL credit for getting Jason Bay and Ollie Perez for him, and replacing a very good offensive player with a good offensive player and picking up a potential rotation ace in the bargain.
So this still might have been the year to end The Streak, except …
DL made one of his worst moves (actually two terrible moves) the previous winter, dealing Chris Young the Pitcher for Matt Herges, and then cutting Herges at the end of camp. This turned out to be awful, because Mike Williams, never a good closer to begin with, completely imploded and the bullpen never recovered. Julian Tavares ended up with 11 saves (read that again) and was decent, but really, it looked like a lot of other guys got bumped up a notch to roles they couldn’t handle. Matt Herges might have helped stabilize that mess — he put up a 2.62 ERA and a 156 ERA+ with the Padres and Giants — but he wasn’t around.
Yeah, in some alternate universe, that bullpen was decent, and the Pirates broke the streak that year.
by Charlie Wilmoth on Oct 31, 2011 9:55 AM EDT up reply actions
Oh,
and DL subsequently failed to flip any of the five for much of anything useful (beyond Mike Gonzalez).
I know, I know, he also got Freddy Sanchez with Gonzalez for Suppan, but Sanchez wasn’t in the original deal and it was only because Brandon Lyon, who WAS in the original deal, turned out to have an elbow problem. So they sent him back to the Red Sox and THEN got Freddy in return.
Agreed
DL was awful. He made a preponderance of bad moves during his 6+ year stint as GM. Dealing Young for Herges and then cutting Herges was much more prototypical of his transactions than the 2003 FA class. I think essentially everyone agrees with that.
How do you feel about the central question? Is it possible for the Pirates to add useful talent via the FA market today? I’m not suggesting a haul like the five in 2003….. even 2 or 3 such players would be helpful. Do you think that’s possible?
If they do,
it’ll be by accident. I don’t much believe in luck IN-GAME, but as some others here have noted, you CAN get lucky rolling the dice in the mid-tier FA market. I figure DL used about 10 years worth of good FA luck in 2003, and that 10-year span is coming to an end fairly soon.
It totally blows my mind that two of DL’s best moves both happened for reasons outside of his control. He only got Freddy because Lyon’s elbow failed the Pepsi challenge, and he only got Bay in the Giles deal because the Padres wouldn’t include Nady or Sean Burroughs.
Which of the players that NH has acquired by draft or trade in his four years as GM are comparable to Bay, Sanchez, and McCutchen? Maybe NH could use some of DL’s luck.
by RafaelBelliup on Oct 31, 2011 6:28 PM EDT up reply actions
Which of the players that NH has acquired by draft or trade in his four years as GM are comparable to Bay, Sanchez, and McCutchen?
Check again in four years, once guys like Cole, Taillon, Bell, and Heredia have established themselves.
Remember, we also got Bay because the Padres wouldn't give up Nady
Wow, two of DLs best trade acquisitions, Bay and Sanchez, we only got cause the guy DL really wanted was injured/too highly thought of by the other team.
Yes,
he could have cut Williams and made Herges the closer, trading a subsequent >6 ERA for a <3 ERA, and the team would have been, I’m thinking, considerably better. Six games better? That’s hard to say. Until July, Williams had an awful ERA but that was due largely to four games in which he’d been hammered. His July was bad, but he did wind up with 25 saves for us. Herges probably would have had to be perfect to do much better W-L wise.
FWIW, 2003 was Williams’ last year in MLB. He didn’t end it with us, he ended it with the Phillies, but it seems like he should go on that list of last-stop Pirates anyway.
I gotta wonder.....
…..how many games the 2003 Pirates would have won WITHOUT Sanders, Lofton, Stairs, Suppan, and D’Amico?
For example, how many games would they have won, had they signed players like Correia, Overbay, Diaz, Veras….. and even Wood and Paul instead?
BUT NEITHER OF THOSE QUESTIONS IS THE POINT……
When I asked myself the question (in the OP), I couldn’t come up with a positive answer, especially for pitchers.
- It seems as though today’s going rate in the FA market for a starter like Suppan or D’Amico might be as much as a 3-year contract at about $10 mill per year.
- Many posters have been advocating that the Pirates pick up Maholm’s option for almost $10 mill, using the argument that his option IS the going rate….. when Maholm has produced WAR of 2.0 and 2.1 over the past 2 seasons, and those numbers are close to his career average..
- Heck….. D’Amico put up WAR in 2003 essentially equivalent to Maholm’s numbers, and Suppan was significantly better in 2003 than Maholm.
- If the Pirates have to pay $10 mill per season for a 2 WAR starter….. that seems to indicate that it’s not possible for the Pirates to compete….. UNLESS they can produce an entire rotation of decent starters from their farm system.
It's absolutely possible
To sign productive FA’s on a budget but you need to get lucky. The 2011 Pirates (and every other year since ’03 for that matter) did not get lucky at all. The Pirates signed, as you outlined above, a 1B, OF, SP and RP. If instead of Overbay, Damon, Correia and Veras, they had signed Casey Kotchman, Johnny Damon, Jeff Francis and Kyle Farnsworth (the Rays signed 3/4 FWIW) who put up a total of 8.7 WAR and did so for a very reasonable $10.6M total. So, yeah, it can be done but it takes a couple of shrewd moves and plenty of luck.
its definately luck
because theres no guarantee that if we had signed those Rays’ guys that they would have put up those same numbers as a Pirate.
Not without collusion
This is why the Pirates 2003 free agent class was possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_collusion#Collusion:_2002.E2.80.932003
http://www.whygavs.com
http://twitter.com/whygavs
Looking at the 2007 collusion accusation.
Really. They colluded to keep A-Rod’s contract down. $275 million for 10 years. Yeah, the Yankees screwed him…
You gotta aim high to fail so big. - Trace Beaulieu
by IAPiratesFan on Oct 31, 2011 2:50 AM EDT up reply actions
Considering how small the contracts were.....
…..collusion doesn’t seem very reassonable as the cause. Surely, these guys were available to other teams for similar money.
Or are you asserting that collusion went so far as to allocate specific players to specific teams?
The word at the time is that teams coordinated their offers, so that players got a bunch of identical one-year offers, which gradually went away as time passed and the other players on the market signed.
I remember hearing similar "word at the time" from the players.
If we accept that as totally accurate…..
Why would those five players all sign with the Pirates, who already had a 10+ season losing streak? If they got identical offers from more competitive teams, why wouldn’t they sign elsewhere?
IIRC, Lofton didn’t sign until after Spring Training had started (after he had produced 2.6 WAR in 2002). That timing seems to support your point. I know he had dropped off from those 5 to 7 WAR seasons which were typical of his earlier career. But he continued to play (mostly as a starter) for 4 more years after 2003, and put up a couple of decent seasons during that time.
So, my questions (in this post) apply to all five, but especially to Lofton. The only answer I can think of is that the players in question THOUGHT they would get better offers, and as a result held out too long, until only the Pirates’ offers remained.
The only answer I can think of is that the players in question THOUGHT they would get better offers, and as a result held out too long, until only the Pirates’ offers remained.
That’s pretty much it. They waited for better offers to come in from other teams, and by the time they gave up on waiting, nobody else had a ML roster spot open for them anymore.
I’m not sure you are going to be able to find 5 “affordable” free agents in this market that will produce that well (+12 to +15 WAR), let alone have the Pirates sign them.
This is a poor free agent market past the big ticket items (Pujols, Fielder, Reyes, etc.). Most of the profitable (good WAR at reasonable cost) players are in multiyear contracts already. I’m sure there will be 2 or 3 guys in the Pirates price range that could produce ~3 WAR…but I have my doubts about 5 guys producing that much, let alone the Pirates signing all of them. Could the Pirates sign 2 or 3…sure. Will they select the right ones? Neal’s track record to this point argues against it.
Thanks for responding
Your answers make sense to me.
Many posters have argued that NH has done as well as can be expected in both the free agent market and the trade market. If they’re correct, it seems to make the Pirates’ search for competitiveness almost TOTALLY dependent upon the draft and international free agents.
My view is that the draft and international free agents should be the PRIMARY source of talent for a small market team….. but it surely makes the process (building a competitive team) much slower if the Pirates can no longer find decent 2nd and 3rd tier free agents.
I said this above
so maybe it’s not worth repeating, but I think it’s possible to sign guys who all overperform, but not without plenty of luck on your side. Out of the 4 guys I listed above (Damon, Farnsworth, Kotchman and Francis) the Rays signed 3 of them. While you could obviously argue that the Rays are better run than the Pirates and I wouldn’t really debate that despite their signing of Manny Ramirez this offseason as well, I’m not sure that much of their success with these guys isn’t also a little “lucky” to some extent. Kotchman was signed as a bench player (on a minor league deal no less) and a mediocre one at that…whoops, he had the best season of his career.
Now Damon and Farnsworth were bigger names than Diaz or Veras (their Pirate counterparts) and quite possibly were unwilling to come to Pittsburgh when they had an offer from a competitive Tampa team. However, with Damon 37 years old and coming off a substantial dip in power, and Farnsworth 35 years old and coming off one of the worst K/9 ratios of his career, would it have surprised anybody to see those two guys struggle? Maybe I’m being overly dismissive about a front office’s ability to recognize guys likely to rebound and guys likely to bust. However, when you consider how many surprise resurgences and implosions (look no farther than this same Tampa team with the aformentioned Kotchman and Ramirez) it seems like more often than not, getting a productive free agent on the cheap is kinda like trying to land on the $1 spot on Price is Right
by KentuckyPirate on Oct 31, 2011 10:40 AM EDT up reply actions
My two cents . . .
Every year there are going to be a number of guys who outperform what’s expected of them. They might be guys who’ve had a lot of success in the past, but recent performance or injury concerns have driven their price down. That’s basically what happened with Kenny Lofton, and, for a more recent example, Berkman this year.
You’ve also got the guys who have never really succeeded before and come out of nowhere (see Vogelsong, Ryan.)
So sure, it can be done. I guarantee that some of these names we’re kicking around, plus a few names we’re not even considering, are going to put up big numbers. The problem is just that it’s so damned difficult to figure out who’s going to do well and who isn’t. For example, last season, would any of us have been all that enthused about bringing in Casey Kotchman? (More so than Overbay, sure, but he wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list.) But he ended up having a really solid year for TB.
It just seems like such a roulette-wheel type of thing that I’m not sure you can ever really plan on that happening, at least with the amount of cash we have available.
this exactly
when your dabbling around signing guys who generally aren’t good to begin with, it takes a lot more for those players to be profitable for your team. There are always going to be steals and signings that made a GM look great, but there are only a select few and figuring out which ones those are (like Kotchman) is difficult
Thats what she said! - Michael Gary Scott
and kotchman may have tanked in a pirate uniform
its a crapshoot when it comes to reclamation projects. overbay was brought in to bring stability and he underperformed to the point where he only lasted 106 games. it happens.
his replacement came on and out hit him easily, yet not one player can truly turn a baseball team around.
if his name was really SARS, i would say go for it...
how cool would it have been if Mark Frydrich was nicknamed Bird Flu?
by white angus on Oct 31, 2011 5:26 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Looks like we gotta HOPE that it's possible
It’s official: Pirates have declined options on Cedeno, Maholm, Doumit, and Snyder.
Here’s what NH needs to replace, just to stay even:
1.4 WAR from Cedeno at SS
2.1 WAR from Maholm at SP
2.5 WAR from Doumit and Snyder together at C
a nitpicky pair of cents on the C position
I don’t know what the replacements were worth, but the total is essentially what he has to replace.
Too often, we ignore the effect of injuries on a team. (Although I believe WAR does factor in PT, so this may render my point moot)
Anyway, my point was that if a player plays for 1 month, and generates 1 WAR and is then hurt for the rest of the year, and is replaced by a below replacement guy who contributes -1 WAR for the rest of the year, then he is “responsible” (not directly, of course, for his team having bad backups) for the bad performance there the rest of the year. If the C position generated 0 WAR, that was the net result in which the injury played a big hand (and needs to be considered, esp for injury-prone guys like Doumit, Snyder, although I have no idea how).
I believe you're right..... playing time counts.
For what it’s worth, in 2011 Pirate catchers contributed WAR as follows. I used Fangraphs’ PA (plate appearances) for playing time:
Doumit = 1.8 WAR in 236 PA
Snyder = 0.7 WAR in 119 PA
McKenry = 0.1 WAR in 210 PA
Jaramillo = 0.1 WAR in 45 PA
I didn’t bother to look up Fryer, Brown, or Toregas.
Doumit and Snyder produced their 2.5 WAR in limited playing time (355 PA between them). It seems reasonable to assume that they would have produced more WAR with more playing time, given the numbers from their replacements. At any rate, internal options (McKenry and Jaramillo) look like a pretty significant downgrade, with only 0.2 WAR combined from 255 PA….. although I guess they could improve.
What might the Pirates do at catcher for 2012?
1. Re-sign Snyder for less money (I’m hearing Doumit is gone for sure) and hope his back holds up. Pair him with McKenry. That would be OK, I guess, but seems likely to produce less WAR than 2011 from the catcher position.
2. Go with McKenry and Jaramillo, and hope they improve. Seems likely to produce less than 2011, as well.
3. Sign or trade for a catcher, and pair with McKenry. Jaramillo will likely be lost, since he’s out of options. WAR depends on the new catcher. We’ll have to wait and see.
And the transaction page at Pirates.MLB.com.....
….. says that the following players have been outrighted to AAA Indy:
- Steve Pearce (no surprise there)
- Brandon Wood (bit of a surprise; will we see D’Arnaud and Ciriaco fight it out)
- Bryan Burres (no surpise there, either)
- Kevin Hart (maybe the medical reports continue to look bleak)
At any rate, it sounds like we have a ton of roster moves coming up during the off-season. I can’t wait.
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