(not intended at you, Vlad)

I’ll go ahead and reply anyway, though.

The problem isn’t that the prospects from 2008 and 2009 aren’t ready right now. The problem is that relatively few of the prospects from 2008 and 2009 look like they’ll be ready in 2013 or 2014, given the considerable resources we invested in the draft at that time.

but I also think theres a stigma to willingly sign with the Bucs. If Bedard were healthy-ish, would he have signed here???

the dodgers werent worth enough for Mr Cuban to invest more into, and they are easily worth twice the pirates simply because of location.

but you say it like its an easy thing to accomplish. plus we all differ on here on whom we would consider to be “upgrades”.

Come on now.

cough “winning record with overbay” cough…

And the Giants had a winning record with Victory Faust on the roster, but that doesn’t mean he won any of those games for them. Correlation does not equal causation.

Should read, better (but essentially the same). They’re both right around 4.20.

Maholm has a better FIP (though xFIP is a better predictor, I am told), a slightly better walk rate, and is a few years younger. But has a shoulder injury.

I’d rather have Maholm, but the difference isn’t as great as I thought before looking into it a bit.

Between keeping Maholm and making an offer to Jackson or Oswalt? I see no reason to believe that they couldn’t have done both.

The Pirates were comfortable in letting Maholm walk because they thought they’d be able to replace him with an equivalent player on a cheaper contract or a better player on a similar one. They were wrong.

This management group has continually overestimated their ability to attract quality talent through free agency. I wish they’d learn their lesson, rather than making the same damn mistakes every offseason.

Maholm also, though if you look closely, there’s not even that much difference between him and Correia…

Are you on drugs? Maholm has managed 160+ innings in a season six times in six tries, and Correia has only done it once. He simply doesn’t have the stamina to spend a full season as a productive part of a ML rotation. Performance doesn’t scale linearly with increasing workload – if you forced Correia to throw Maholm’s typical 180+ innings, you’d have a horror show on your hands.

No, the difference is not great

Only about two wins a year.

I have never seen the “Oh woe is me” act coming from the club. It is always the fans. “Why didn’t we sign X,” “The FO is cheap,” “BN is just pocketing the money,” etc. They offered Lee arbitration, gave a competetive offer to EJax, and by some accounts (IIRC) had a better offer for JDLR last year.

I will certainly praise the FO for trying to sign these guys. It’s nice to see, and have it leaked, that they are not sitting on their hands. Overpaying to get a guy like EJax at this point doesn’t make sense to me, especially if he is intent on a 1 year deal.

because there was no crowing by the FO. To call it such is a little over the top IMO.

That’s why, when I saw the Edwin Jackson “mystery team” thread go up, I had to chuckle. There’s a “mystery team” interested in Edwin Jackson! Let’s put aside how silly and empty the reports of “mystery teams” are in the first place. (Could it be my team?! I don’t know, there’s a 1-in-30 chance!) Given all the evidence — particularly the absence of any serious reporting connecting the Pirates to Jackson, and the fact that the Pirates never, ever sign free agents as good as Jackson — is there any reason whatsoever to think the Pirates are this “mystery team”? The whole thing is like a dysfunctional game of Clue, where there may not have been any crime committed in the first place, and if there was, you know it wasn’t Colonel Mustard who did it, because the dog ate that card years ago.That’s why, when I saw the Edwin Jackson “mystery team” thread go up, I had to chuckle. There’s a “mystery team” interested in Edwin Jackson! Let’s put aside how silly and empty the reports of “mystery teams” are in the first place. (Could it be my team?! I don’t know, there’s a 1-in-30 chance!) Given all the evidence — particularly the absence of any serious reporting connecting the Pirates to Jackson, and the fact that the Pirates never, ever sign free agents as good as Jackson — is there any reason whatsoever to think the Pirates are this “mystery team”? The whole thing is like a dysfunctional game of Clue, where there may not have been any crime committed in the first place, and if there was, you know it wasn’t Colonel Mustard who did it, because the dog ate that card years ago.

There’s an argument to be made in favor of overpaying for Jackson and Oswalt, since they’re good players who would improve the team. No similar argument could have been made about Overbay at the time, because he wasn’t and he didn’t.

We all have opinions and the majority may lean one way, but — much like the draft, as Charlie stated recently — you can’t provide a more definitive judgment on a signing until after the player’s tenure.

Sure I can. I said at the time that it was a dumb signing and that Overbay was old and in decline and no better than the players we already had on hand. Then they played the season, and it turned out to be a dumb signing because Overbay was old and in decline and no better than the players we already had on hand. I made a considered judgment, based on the evidence available at the time.

Saying that one (Overbay) has nothing to do with the others (Jackson and Oswalt) is factually incorrect.

No, it’s not. Overbay wasn’t an overpay because he got more than he was worth. Overbay was an overpay because he was a below-replacement-level talent. He would’ve been a dumb signing if he’d agreed to play for free. Overpaying to get things that you need is sometimes OK. Overpaying to get things that you don’t is doubly stupid.

Regardless, you didn’t address the point, which was that fans will react in a number of ways to each result, and some fans — including many here on Bucs Dugout, as evidenced by past comments — will cite past overpayments (perceived or real) when offering up an opinion.

Who gives a shit what the fans think? Most fans are dumb, and in any event, public opinion as a whole is tied like a dog on a leash to whatever the team did in its last ~30 games. In the end, fans will cheer for a winner, no matter how you get there.

I said that it wasn’t a valid comparison. People make invalid comparisons all the time – that doesn’t make those comparisons any more valid.

People are not impatient over the pace of advancement of our prospects. People are frustrated over the lack of appropriate development by our prospects, which is an entirely different thing.

“Not going to praise them like a puppy that’s finally been housebroken…”

“I’ve not seen my willie in two years, which is long enough to declare it legally dead.”

because considering how few have come here and been successful, his numbers aren’t that impressive to me. Is it comparable to AA? AAA? Or is he mostly still projection? That would make him a pretty old prospect.