Pirates 7, Padres 4: Pirates Get Sense Of What It's Like To Play Against Pirates

I’m not sure I see a love connection regardless, unless the receiving team loves sandwich picks.

Yes. A team needs to be a legitimate contender, for whom a few regular-season wins (and a slightly improved lineup for the postseason) are worth a significant overpay in order for a deal to make sense. Flags fly forever, and all that.

Trade deadline is where you get McDonald and Lambo for Dotel.

I just don’t see how, if you have an ambulatory SS, you can justify giving all that talent away for so little gain – even a superstar (which Reyes is not quite IMO, given his 3.6 WAR in the last 2 years°) gets you so little in wins in just 2-3 months.

° I know he was hurt; he’s hurt a lot

I have trouble seeing a scenario under which we’re actual contenders, with or without Reyes. As of today, we’re seventeen runs underwater in run differential, and that’s in spite of fairly good luck.

Trading for Reyes, adding a few wins, and missing the playoffs, and having Reyes walk wouldn’t do much for 2011 attendance, and without Reyes we probably wouldn’t see the typical lagging bounce in 2012, either.

Even if we made the playoffs, the extra playoff games’ worth of revenue wouldn’t allow us to keep Reyes. Early indications are that he wants Carl Crawford-type money, and even if we were willing to pay that, I’m not confident of our ability to outbid a team like the Yankees or Phillies in a straight-up fight.

We can treat that as (almost) pure profit, since the ballpark is already open, etc. At some point you need to start calling in additional workers, but there’s enough slop in that $25 to cover it comfortably I think.

To some extent, it would depend on how “real” the contention is. Reyes alone is only worth a few hundred fans a night (average) over, to be generous, half a season – you’d get an immediate buzz, maybe some weekend sellouts, and then a drift downwards if they’re not really contending.

OTOH, if they are really contending – above .500, within 1-2 games of 1st place, and only one team ahead of them – I think you’d start seeing extra attendance even before a Reyes trade, and a real bump afterwards, as the news jolts casual fans into awareness°. I could see an extra 1-2,000 fans on weeknights, and 5,000+ on weekends (again, as long as they’re in a race). Really optimistically, 20,000 fans per weeklong homestand, for a max of 140,000 fans. That comes out to $3.5M, almost covering his salary, some of which of course would happen if they were contending regardless of Reyes. But I do think it’s fair to assume that a high profile trade in which the Pirates were buyers would genuinely electrify the fanbase.

Which then has knockon effects for 2012. I don’t think there’s any possibility at all that Reyes signs with us, but the excitement around a contending 2011 team that went out and got a Reyes would be worth a huge bump in season ticket sales, and would allow the team (finally) to raise ticket prices. Let’s say, 2.5 million fans at $28 apiece instead of 2 million at $25 apiece – an extra $20M, if you can believe it.

But that’s only accessible if they’re really contending when they trade for Reyes – if they were to get him and then immediately fade, they get, as I said, maybe a $250k boost in revenues in ‘11, and a modest bump in season ticket sales for ’12. Maybe they can raise prices for some of the better seats. I might add that this is why I have tended to argue that it’s been a mistake to treat the past few seasons as nothing but extended tryouts for Mosses and Bowkers – if the team never even sniffs contention until ’12 or ’13, you delay increasing revenue until your first young players are entering arbitration, and you never get ahead of your payroll.

° Note that the 1997 team saw big increases relative to the 1996 team in attendance – the latent fanbase is significant, and the lag is pretty small

BA listed Wheeler as their #55 overall prospect coming into the season. Sanchez was #46, and Marte and Owens didn’t make the list at all.

It’s not like Wheeler’s stock has slipped since then, either. So far this year, he’s got a 4.00 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, and 34 Ks in 27 innings as a 21-year-old in the Cal League.

his numbers sure look good in the incredibly hard to hit California league… snicker… and only 28 guys hitter better than 300 in the midwest league…. twix

if Paulie is boughtout, that means hes a free agent. If Paulie qualifies as a type A or B free agent, do the Pirates get a pick, or is he just flat out gone for nothing?

agree with that. I’d be surprised if he makes 15 starts this year.

but 100% want the money more. maholm is going to want that 9.75MM. why would he take a buyout then resign for less???
he could get the 10MM from another team easily as long as hes healthy

aieeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

In almost every category that the arbiters would be looking at, I see Maholm as a slightly below average starter. So, I would say $10M, which would be correct for a solid average starter, is probably too high for Maholm.

Maholm’s graphs…

Also, you have to remember that people don’t pay for past performance. They pretty much pay for what they can count on, which is based on a regression from past performance.

yeah, but hes not going to sign for less than the option with the Bucs maybe with another team he would. but not Pittsburgh.

What makes you say that?

I could see the Pirates signing him for $8M in July. I don’t think anyone is going to give him $10M, and signing early for around the same amount he would be given otherwise would mitigate his own risk of a late season collapse that would erode his value.

cant go wrong with a bucket o fries

I really don’t like that either, but its a different issue with Paulie then with Chuck. Use whatever you like. I would not have made an issue of it had I read the original post correctly.