(Edited on March 8, 2009, to show how ridiculously high the Maholm contract really is.)
I’m starting to seriously wonder if the Pirates new regime has a long-term plan in place. The short-term one is easy to see - sign any first-year arbitration eligible player of value to a three year contract. Beyond that, everything else is fuzzy. Let me show you what I mean.
The chart below is a crude attempt to extract data from my project software to show you where the Pirates are in their long-term cycle. This is based on my own player value assumptions as of the end of the 2008 season so that’s why you don’t see Karstens, Ohlendorf, and several other players I personally don’t believe hold long-term value. Plus, I used my assumptions to fill in some slots to give you some sense of where and when players come and go. You can make the same chart at home and plug in the players and time frames you like, just be sure to carry forward the known contracts.
No matter which names you plug in, or where you plug them in, when you throw in the Pirates current short-term model you get a jumbled long-term mess (four years plus out).
Consider this.. what is the probability Sanchez and Wilson will still be here in 2011? Right, pretty close to zero. So plug in two middle infield rookies starting at least by 2011. And at some point McCutchen, Alvarez, and Tabata are going to come up so plug those rookies in too.
Starting to get a feel for it? That sure is one heck of a lot of rookies running around behind our “veteran” pitchers the next couple of years, and at critical positions too. So if the Pirates are going to start getting more competitive along the way, they either have to do it before the entire defense becomes rookie’ville, or before all the starters we have with any experience leave.
Take a minute and chart it out using your own players, then come back and read the rest of this.
Right, the long-term plan is becoming more fragmented with every three-year contract signed. The Pirates emphasis doesn’t appear to be in building a long-term plan, the emphasis is in signing arbitration eligible players at their lowest cost value in their first year of arb. In other words, all we are seeing in the short-term plan is the Pirates leveraging their position to keep payroll as low as possible every year.
Not in building a long-term competitive club.
The Pirates often mention the Brewers as a model they like but they rarely offer multiple year deals until the second year of arb and almost always lock up key youth for numerous years to include two free agent years plus like Ryan Braun (8 years, $45M) and Bill Hall (4 years, $24M plus one club option year), whereas other youth wait for a deal at least through their first arb year like Hardy, Bush, Coffey, and McClung. Fielder is the obvious exception to the rule.
Look around the game.. it’s not just the Brewers, almost all of the teams lock up key players long-term buying multiple free agent years. With position players it’s a bit easier than pitchers who break down more often, but clubs do offer multiple club option years to pitchers to keep them in-house, and rarely do they offer a multiple year deal until their second year of arb.
That’s just smart long-term business sense.
Not the Pirates. And the only one we did offer it to (or if we offered, the only one to accept) was Ryan Doumit who agreeed to the two club option years as long as the Pirates exercised them both in one year. How bizarre was that?
Our long-term model is taking a hit with these three-year, first arb year deals. I understand we can ask the player for additional years later down the road but that’s a risk we shouldn’t be assuming. Throw in Alvarez’s bizarre six-years-and-I-plan-to-run-so-fast-it-makes-your-head-spin MLB deal, and we’re not getting anywhere.
Until this organization starts thinking long-term, agents and players are going to continue to refuse to buy in resulting in first year draft picks gone in six years, key players signing away no more than one free agent year (which is when we deal them making it useless anyway), and player production tanking the year after they get their big money deals. It’s a dysfunctional cycle that has gone on too long and has to be broke.
That was what I expected as a fan from Frank Coonelly being hired. So far it’s not working for anyone but the Nutting family.
