Pitcher Kevin Correia has reached agreement with Pittsburgh Pirates on a 2-year, $8 million deal, pending a physical, source says
Meh. I'm very surprised Correia would get a multi-year deal coming off a replacement-level season, and getting booted from the rotation, in San Diego. He was better in 2009, at least by ERA, but he's had a very mediocre career overall, with most of his career value coming from 2009 and from a couple of decent seasons in the Giants pen in 2006 and 2007. Some of his poor 5.40 2010 ERA came as the result of an extreme number of flyballs turning into homers, so there's some hope for improvement in his ERA next year, or there would be if he weren't moving from PETCO to PNC Park. And again, the Pirates have a poor defense, especially in the infield, and Correia allows a lot of ground balls (although he strikes out more batters than Zach Duke did, and thus will be a little less vulnerable to the defense's struggles). He also doesn't have huge splits throughout his career, either lefty vs. righty or starting vs. relieving, so it's hard to see how the Pirates can use him more effectively.
In other words, I'm not especially excited here. The upside here is that he can pitch in the rotation or out of the bullpen and potentially eat a lot of innings. Also, he's not old. That's really all I've got. Maybe that's worth $8 million, but he's more of a patch than a real solution. There are a lot of similarities here between Correia and Zach Duke, but I think I like Correia less, especially because the Bucs had to sign him for two years. I think if you put the 2010 version of Duke in PETCO with the Padres' 2010 defense behind him, he would have done better than Correia did.
UPDATE: As Adam Reynolds point out in the comments, ZiPS projects that Correia will have an 83 ERA+ this year, which is horrible. Bringing in someone like this on a $1 million deal is fine, but I think two years and $8 million is excessive.