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I'm Available, Sign MeBill Mueller will decide shortly whether he wants to take more money to be with the Pirates or less money to be "near his family" on the west coast. I put "near his family" in quotes because in the history of baseball no one has ever taken less money to follow his heart. It's goodspeak for "I don't want to play for your shitty team." Anyway, both options are bad here's why.Many stories have been written about why Bill Mueller would be a bad Pirate, some have gone as far as suggesting that he would be a good one. Paying 4 mil for a guy to hit .290 with a OPS of ~790 in 450+ at-bats sounds about right, not a bargain, but its what you get. Doing the same a year later at about 90% of the numbers, now your pushing it. Knocking off another 10% for a third year... well my nephew plays third that well and he's only twelve. I was unclear on the technical aspect so I did some research. According to this free agents are rated based on their stats. Mueller is a Type A, the best. I think the fact that he's an A says a lot about the quality of free-agent third basemen this year, or the adequacy of the Elias Sports Bureau's rating system. This means if he declines arbitration from his former team, which he did, they are compensated with a sandwhich draft pick between the first and second rounds, and the first round pick of the team that signed him. But not in the Pirates case, being in the top fifteen in draft order lets us keep that while we dish the second round pick. That isn't enough for me to get upset about. Quick, name the Pirates last three second round draft picks, go! What does upset me, is that the Pirates can't afford to make mistakes. And when I say "afford" I mean actually pay for it. Yes the Pirates are making a profit, but when your management cares more about PR then putting a good product on the field, this is how we end up spending our money. Even if Mueller keeps the exact same numbers and ends up getting traded next year, the Pirates will still pick up some of his salary. A sure fire sign that we over-paid. The worst thing is say, and really stretch your imagination here, the Pirates tank it and 2007 attendance drops 500,000 because there's no more all-star game in town, and we can't afford the 50 million we raised payroll to. You see, MLB requires that every team keeps a debt/value ratio below 40%, so our payroll has a limit to it despite how rich our owner is. The last time this was an issue was 2002: valued somewhere over $200 million and with a d/v of 43%. I'm not sure exactly how the math works, but 3% of 200 is $6 million, which also just happened to be Aramis Ramirez's salary, wierd. The next year he was traded for what has effectively become Clayton Hamilton. If the Pirates suck, the team isn't pulling in money, and our high-priced talent is just high priced. Then to meet this requirement we have to get rid of someone getting paid what they are actually worth. Most likely is another shitty deal the gets nothing in return. Do you want to loose Jason Bay because Bill Mueller is our 2008 utility infielder? I don't, option 1 sucks. Here's a new way to appease fans, win. I'm one of the few who has the patience to root for talentless chumps as long as they're good people. As for the rest of us, you can sign Jamal Lewis and Ron Artest to play first and third, and as long as you're winning, no one will care - reason more why I think we should have offered more then expendable left-handed relief for Milton Bradley. So this brings us to option 2. If even half decent players won't take more money to play for Pittsburgh, because we are so surrounded by the aura of loosing, then accomplishing that new way of appeasing fans becomes exponentially more difficult. posted by Rory at 10:41 AM | |
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This is a blog about the Pittsburgh Pirates. My vision: to write about the games at the games. Want to email me? Make it out to rory at bleache... you know the rest. |
