What If The Pirates Are Done Making Moves This Offseason?

Your fourth paragraph sums up my view of the off-season. Two steps back, two steps forward, for a 90-loss team. Whoopee.

…it’s about as good as I could’ve realistically hoped.

Barajas, even in his declining years, is better than McKenry and Doumit’s options were just too expensive and Snyder was too injured. Sanchez isn’t ready. Good signing.

Barmes at his best is much better than Cedeno and at the least will be consistently decent without the need for periodic benchings to get his mind right. Another good signing.

Bedard has pitched his whole career in the AL and still has managed a career average of over 8 K/9. He has the potential to absolutely mow through the NL. That said, who knows about his health? If Bedard can match his performance last year—2.4 fWAR put up over the course of 129 innings—that’s a huge win the Bucs.

Of course, here’s Bedard’s major league innings pitched for 2008, 2009 and 2010: 81, 83 and 0. Maybe he turns back into the 180 inning pitcher he was for the Orioles for a while, but I wouldn’t bet on it at this point. And that points to the biggest offseason disappointment: alarming lack of starting pitching depth.

Morton has said he intends to be ready for opening day and taking him at his word, it looks like they’re committed to a rotation of Bedard, Morton, Karstens, JMac and letting Correia/Lincoln fight it out for the 5th starter with both seeing time in the rotation if (when) Bedard goes down.

Reading the tea leaves, it seems that rotation spots that need filled due to injury or ineffectiveness will be filled by giving guys like Locke and Rudy Owens big league chances with maybe a Kyle McPherson appearance if he whips shit out of AAA in April and May.

There’s a good argument to be made that with the signings of Barmes & Barajas weighed against the current rotation murkiness that the Bucs are going a “non-punt punt” route for 2012. (upgrades made where they could for reasonable prices, but depending on a potentially injury plagued rotation plugged by rookies.)

If I had the off-season to do over again, I’d exercise Maholm’s option and I’m not sure I’d do much of anything differently. Not because it’s particularly inspiring or hopeful, but because it’s the best that can be hoped for on the whole. Yes, $9MM for Paul looks like it’d be an overpayment given the (lack of) market right now, but it’s not like that they’re putting that money towards anything else; I doubt it would’ve stopped them from signing Barmes, Barajas and Bedard.

Who knows. If Tabata & Pedro break out & combine for 7 WAR, McCutchen becomes a legit superstar and MVP candidate who puts up 7 WAR by himself, if the planets align and Bedard throws 150+ innings, if Morton and JMac keep trending upward……..that’s an 80-84 win team.

On the other hand, Tabata could get hurt & only play 80 games, Pedro could continue his downward spiral and Bedard blows his shoulder into 50 million pieces his first pitch of the season.

I realize I’m talking in circles here, but I think that’s an accurate reflection of the team in many ways, if that makes any sense.

now we have entered into the “internal valuation” period where we won’t add another player unless they meet the criteria of a good deal. That’s my guess at least

Guessing, I would say that NH wanted/wants both Maholm and Derrek Lee back… just not for the prices he was looking at. He guessed correctly that there wouldn’t be much market for either and is waiting for their asking prices to go down. It sounds so much more hardball when put that way, but in the grand scheme of baseball, if he were totally wrong, neither player is a franchise difference maker and both would have signed for more than the Pirates could afford. If by some provenance both sign cheap deals with other teams, NH will take some heat, but this isn’t a job-threatening loss.

Conversely, failing to get an extension done with Cutch may turn out to be a job-threatening kind of loss. I think those are the only three things I could see the Pirates doing the rest of this offseason. Acquiring a small piece (longshot bullpen/rotation reclamation project, former prospect whose star has fallen, bench guys with a shot at contributing… none of these would surprise me, either.

A complete lack of news except for the report from Dejan saying the Pirates have money and are prioritizing finding another starting pitcher. And considering not that many of the lower tier starting pitchers have signed yet, I’m going to believe they’ll sign another starter and hold off on panicking.

As has been said, 1Bs are on lockdown until Fielder signs somewhere; there’s at least a chance that NH makes a move there before February.

Same basic deal with Maholm and SPs in general: there are a lot of unsigned SPs in our price/willingness to sign range (Maholm, Francis, conceivably Oswalt or Jackson), and they have to land somewhere.

I can live with a Jones/whoever platoon at 1B, and while I’d like to see a serious SP added, even another Bedard-like deal to a guy looking to recover value would make me feel a bit better about ‘12. As I’ve said, I don’t expect enough stars to align to make it a contending year, but I’d like to be in a position where, if the stars do align, the outcome is actually good (as in, in the conversation past the trade deadline, and finishing above .500). To me, nothing would be more frustrating than getting 14 WAR from Cutch, Tabata, and Pedro, only to see 0 WAR coming from 1B and the 5th SP, resulting in a blah, 79-win season.

Has anybody else noticed the Coco Crisp thread at MLBTR? It’s a long series of posts about how he’s decided where to sign but we don’t know where yet, maybe we’ll hear the big news tomorrow, etc. His agent apparently broke the momentous news before telling the lucky team. Coco Fucking Crisp? You’d think he was Pujols.

it is possible he will compete for the 5th spot in the rotation

That management doesn’t believe, like most of us, that we won’t really contend until some of our young pitching starts to arrive. Until then, these are the offseasons we will get.

And I’m fine with that.