They're probably just waiting to announce Andre Jackson going to Chiba Lotte Mariners, with some young starting pitcher coming back that they can't announce till the 15th.
If Nutting was a real businessman, which is something people claim he is but if so it certainly doesn't show in his ownership of the Pirates, he would invest in the team and increase it's standing and value.
If, and that word is enormous in this instance, the Pirates were to sign Bellinger to a $70-75 million dollar three year contract (and don't believe the very old and weary claim that they can't afford it because they certainly can) and Lorenzen for three years at $9-10 million a year that would amount to somewhere around $30-35 million a year, which not much more than they spent last year for the five mediocre players they signed then.
Those two players or ones like them would excite the entire fan base and get a lot of on-the-fence fans interested. Season ticket sales would go up immediately and the national media types would take notice leading to more people watching on TV and buying "Pirate stuff." The Pirates would make most of that money back, maybe more, by honestly fielding a better team instead of waiting for MLB to pay them their share of revenue sharing. A decent businessman might consider doing something like that, but the Pirates ownership doesn't fit that category. It's a shame, and I mean that term in both senses of the word (it's too bad and shame on them).
I take some exception to the thought that signing Bellinger (side note - numbers are way to low) and Lorenzen (how many are buying season tkts based off this signing or similar?) will create some type of stampede to the ticket booths. Would people take notice - sure. Attendance won't go up enough to significantly increase revenue until they start winning over the course of a season not just a hot start or free agent signing.
I agree they need to pony up and sign someone. However, signing Bellinger is about as risky of a signing a small market team can make. If Bellinger crashes and burns, Pirates are under water for years and in much worse shape than they are right now.
Personally, Bellinger isn't going to make me want to go to park...Winning will.
Tons of blue on Bellinger’s Statcast percentile rankings over the last three years with the exception of his defense. I don’t really see him as a true centerfielder either. Boras will hold out for a $100+ million deal given his age. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole; he’s probably your best bet to underperform his expected contract moving forward.
Anthony: 💯. Longer term contracts are always risky for small markets, and particularly in Bellinger’s case. There appeared to be some smoke and mirrors in what he did last year. My hope? He goes to the Cubs for the MLBTR projection of $264 MM.
How much of his improvement in 2023 is just due to not striking out nearly as much as he did in 21-22. Just the fact that many more balls are in play (he cut his Ks from 150 to 87) are going to result in more hits. No idea if that’s sustainable, but that has to be part of it, no?
Bellinger, especially, is an interesting test case for how universal the new analytics of hitting are. Basically Bellinger broke all the rules of what analytics say players should do after years of trying to follow all the rules in LA: patience, only swinging at pitches in his hot zone early in the count, not protecting the plate with 2 strikes, etc. This year, he just said the hell with it, starting following his inclinations, and protecting the plate. It is quite possible that Bellinger will "regress to the mean" that the new hitting analytics say he should achieve, but it is also quite possible that these analytics are not universally applicable and that all hitters do not perform the same when using the strategies that seem statistically optimal. There are exceptions to rules, especially rules devised using statistics.
Well his exit velocity and his barrel rate declined as his BABIP increased. Thats a red flag. Steamer has his OPS dropping 100 points and his WAR almost cut in half. It doesn’t appears ZIPS has done the Cubs yet, so I’ll be interested to see if they are similarly sour on him.
His barrel rate and exit velocity declined because he swung more freely early in the count, not just trying to pull everything for a HR, and he started protecting the plate by swinging at borderline pitches with 2 strikes. I know that modern analytics doesn't like the idea that some players just have a knack for punching the ball into gaps and dropping in hits, but I think some players just do: meaning they do not need as high an average exit velocity to generate higher BABIP. Bellinger may well fall into this category.
Well and that’s the problem. Most people accept the link between EV and BABIP and the idea that hitters aren’t just skilled finding gaps. So maybe Bellinger is tapping into something that will change the way we look at hitting, or maybe he’s a unicorn like the early 2010’s Jeremy Hellickson who found ways to outpitch his defense independent pitching metrics multiple years. Either way, idk if I want the Pirates taking that risk. Good comments though.
Auroras Borealus has an interesting take below on this.
Sure he had some unlucky years, but we may have went the other direction with luck due some way to his change in approach. It’s generally accepted that there is a link between exit velocity and BABIP. So when we see his exit velocity declining and the BABIP increasing that raises some eyebrows that he may have been lucky on balls in play.
As AB stated below, what Bellinger did goes against conventional wisdom for hitting, hence people raising their eyebrows at what he did. So, do you REALLY want to be the team that bets this approach works and he wasn’t merely lucky? IMO, if you’re going to spend that kind of money you better be comfortable with the low floor, which is the 2 WAR player Steamer projects.
I do think that Bellinger is likely to get an 5+ yr/$150m contract (and I’ve been wrong on the low-end of every contract this year). So maybe that’s not an ideal commitment for us. Based on the deals Flaherty and Montas signed, I’d bet on 3/$46m for Lorenzen, 2/$28m for Manaea. But at some point we need to pay somebody. Otherwise we’re just treading water in a whirlpool.
Check Cot's. Adding $30-35M annually would STILL leave the Pirates below where the Reds, Brewers and Royals typically sit with their payrolls. The people who wave off every FA signing by another team as "too expensive" don't seem to understand just how far below MLB standards the Pirates are. The Brewers in 2023 were roughly at the midpoint between the Pirates, and Boston and the Angels. The Pirates are an extreme outlier and it gets even more extreme when you see that they don't have the spending peaks that similar markets have. They're ALWAYS trailing way behind.
I don’t have an issue with them spending lightly in rebuild years because..... I think they should be banking money and spending heavily coming out of it. And that’s the problem, the payroll never seems to catch up. Other than Skenes we got little benefit from this rebuild, pretty much no premium prospects that we couldn’t have gotten drafting later, and no discernible spending bump. No reason for them not to sign Kenta Maeda and Belt/Hoskins this offseason. But I’ll dissent on Bellinger because as a matter of principle I think it’s mistake for large markets to sign longer term high AAV deals.
I don't much care about Bellinger one way or the other. It's more about the broader point to me. But I do get tired of every single FA signing getting dismissed as "too much" or whatever. All the teams most similar to the Pirates are willing to try this market. What are the odds that the team that's had a losing record in 27 of the last 31 seasons knows more than anybody else?
Well, I think there’s two extremes in that argument. There’s the extreme that they can’t afford a $15-$20 MM AAV deal when in fact, teams in similar markets are doing so. Then there’s the other extreme that they can afford to spend hundreds of millions in free agency if they so wished. IMO both views ignore the reality of our market and also risk. Some free agents are far less risky when you look at the 20th and 80th percentile outcomes, and that’s doubly true when it’s a short term deal. You just need a baseball operations team that can accurately assess the risk and an owner willing to accept any modicum of risk.
I understand why we are 26, especially with our lackluster offseason, but I would actually take our squad over the 5ish teams in front of us. Also the reds, because fuck david bell.
I feel like the middle to back end of baseball rankings feature a lot of interchangeable teams and rough parity because of the extra wildcard slots. There’s way more incentive for mediocre teams to try stay competitive. You have a team like the Royals that loses 103 games and decides to spend some money because of Bobby Witt and a weak division. Meanwhile, you have a flawed team like the Cardinals or Guardians with good players, that you could arguably rank 15th, or 23rd. And you wouldn’t be wrong!
Defensively and offensively Reynolds slide from the day he signed his big deal. I think the pressure got to him big time. That’s why I argue the Pirates didn’t overachieve in 23 but underachieved. He and Cruz were supposed to be the heart of our lineup and that heart was flatlined by April.
I don’t think that’s really the case with Reynolds, meaning pressure of the contract. He had a little bit of bad batted ball luck in 23. He’s a good player, but he’s not as good as he showed in 2021. And that’s ok.
I’m not sure how a team can “underachieve” after seeing a jump in 14 wins.
Marcus Stroman? Isn't he a free agent?
It’s funny, I don’t see him linked anywhere or as a possibility for any team. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything at the moment, but why not?
I'd bet a dollar the Pirates do something of significance (for them) this week.
I'm guessing a trade and the Perez signing and something like Bader or Manaea.
PirateFest is this weekend, they're going to do something.
They're probably just waiting to announce Andre Jackson going to Chiba Lotte Mariners, with some young starting pitcher coming back that they can't announce till the 15th.
They might even have the move queued up waiting for Friday.
Ill take your bet! Undecided myself for attending piratefest or not but they certainly could persuade me
I think you're right, I wouldn't be surprised if it's an extension for Keller.
Hope they add a solid mid rotation arm with at least 2 years of control.
They'll probably sign Adam Frasier...
There has to be a reason why they're waiting on the Perez signing.
Probably trying to make a trade before DFAing someone. Perez might be in Venezuela for the holidays.
If Nutting was a real businessman, which is something people claim he is but if so it certainly doesn't show in his ownership of the Pirates, he would invest in the team and increase it's standing and value.
If, and that word is enormous in this instance, the Pirates were to sign Bellinger to a $70-75 million dollar three year contract (and don't believe the very old and weary claim that they can't afford it because they certainly can) and Lorenzen for three years at $9-10 million a year that would amount to somewhere around $30-35 million a year, which not much more than they spent last year for the five mediocre players they signed then.
Those two players or ones like them would excite the entire fan base and get a lot of on-the-fence fans interested. Season ticket sales would go up immediately and the national media types would take notice leading to more people watching on TV and buying "Pirate stuff." The Pirates would make most of that money back, maybe more, by honestly fielding a better team instead of waiting for MLB to pay them their share of revenue sharing. A decent businessman might consider doing something like that, but the Pirates ownership doesn't fit that category. It's a shame, and I mean that term in both senses of the word (it's too bad and shame on them).
I take some exception to the thought that signing Bellinger (side note - numbers are way to low) and Lorenzen (how many are buying season tkts based off this signing or similar?) will create some type of stampede to the ticket booths. Would people take notice - sure. Attendance won't go up enough to significantly increase revenue until they start winning over the course of a season not just a hot start or free agent signing.
I agree they need to pony up and sign someone. However, signing Bellinger is about as risky of a signing a small market team can make. If Bellinger crashes and burns, Pirates are under water for years and in much worse shape than they are right now.
Personally, Bellinger isn't going to make me want to go to park...Winning will.
Tons of blue on Bellinger’s Statcast percentile rankings over the last three years with the exception of his defense. I don’t really see him as a true centerfielder either. Boras will hold out for a $100+ million deal given his age. I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole; he’s probably your best bet to underperform his expected contract moving forward.
Anthony: 💯. Longer term contracts are always risky for small markets, and particularly in Bellinger’s case. There appeared to be some smoke and mirrors in what he did last year. My hope? He goes to the Cubs for the MLBTR projection of $264 MM.
How much of his improvement in 2023 is just due to not striking out nearly as much as he did in 21-22. Just the fact that many more balls are in play (he cut his Ks from 150 to 87) are going to result in more hits. No idea if that’s sustainable, but that has to be part of it, no?
Bellinger, especially, is an interesting test case for how universal the new analytics of hitting are. Basically Bellinger broke all the rules of what analytics say players should do after years of trying to follow all the rules in LA: patience, only swinging at pitches in his hot zone early in the count, not protecting the plate with 2 strikes, etc. This year, he just said the hell with it, starting following his inclinations, and protecting the plate. It is quite possible that Bellinger will "regress to the mean" that the new hitting analytics say he should achieve, but it is also quite possible that these analytics are not universally applicable and that all hitters do not perform the same when using the strategies that seem statistically optimal. There are exceptions to rules, especially rules devised using statistics.
The situation you're describing has nothing to do with what the metrics you're referencing actually measure.
Well his exit velocity and his barrel rate declined as his BABIP increased. Thats a red flag. Steamer has his OPS dropping 100 points and his WAR almost cut in half. It doesn’t appears ZIPS has done the Cubs yet, so I’ll be interested to see if they are similarly sour on him.
His barrel rate and exit velocity declined because he swung more freely early in the count, not just trying to pull everything for a HR, and he started protecting the plate by swinging at borderline pitches with 2 strikes. I know that modern analytics doesn't like the idea that some players just have a knack for punching the ball into gaps and dropping in hits, but I think some players just do: meaning they do not need as high an average exit velocity to generate higher BABIP. Bellinger may well fall into this category.
Name a single one.
One single player.
Well and that’s the problem. Most people accept the link between EV and BABIP and the idea that hitters aren’t just skilled finding gaps. So maybe Bellinger is tapping into something that will change the way we look at hitting, or maybe he’s a unicorn like the early 2010’s Jeremy Hellickson who found ways to outpitch his defense independent pitching metrics multiple years. Either way, idk if I want the Pirates taking that risk. Good comments though.
His BABIP had nowhere to go but up, though. Under .200 in 2021, and then under .260 in 2022. Those are astronomically low.
His profile has so many question marks and that’s even before his health history. It’ll be fascinating to see what he gets and how it plays out.
Auroras Borealus has an interesting take below on this.
Sure he had some unlucky years, but we may have went the other direction with luck due some way to his change in approach. It’s generally accepted that there is a link between exit velocity and BABIP. So when we see his exit velocity declining and the BABIP increasing that raises some eyebrows that he may have been lucky on balls in play.
As AB stated below, what Bellinger did goes against conventional wisdom for hitting, hence people raising their eyebrows at what he did. So, do you REALLY want to be the team that bets this approach works and he wasn’t merely lucky? IMO, if you’re going to spend that kind of money you better be comfortable with the low floor, which is the 2 WAR player Steamer projects.
I agree 100% with the concept.
I do think that Bellinger is likely to get an 5+ yr/$150m contract (and I’ve been wrong on the low-end of every contract this year). So maybe that’s not an ideal commitment for us. Based on the deals Flaherty and Montas signed, I’d bet on 3/$46m for Lorenzen, 2/$28m for Manaea. But at some point we need to pay somebody. Otherwise we’re just treading water in a whirlpool.
He’s guaranteed profit by avoiding such risky signings. So why shell out that money, the teams awful, attendance tanks, and he ends up losing money?
Check Cot's. Adding $30-35M annually would STILL leave the Pirates below where the Reds, Brewers and Royals typically sit with their payrolls. The people who wave off every FA signing by another team as "too expensive" don't seem to understand just how far below MLB standards the Pirates are. The Brewers in 2023 were roughly at the midpoint between the Pirates, and Boston and the Angels. The Pirates are an extreme outlier and it gets even more extreme when you see that they don't have the spending peaks that similar markets have. They're ALWAYS trailing way behind.
I don’t have an issue with them spending lightly in rebuild years because..... I think they should be banking money and spending heavily coming out of it. And that’s the problem, the payroll never seems to catch up. Other than Skenes we got little benefit from this rebuild, pretty much no premium prospects that we couldn’t have gotten drafting later, and no discernible spending bump. No reason for them not to sign Kenta Maeda and Belt/Hoskins this offseason. But I’ll dissent on Bellinger because as a matter of principle I think it’s mistake for large markets to sign longer term high AAV deals.
I don't much care about Bellinger one way or the other. It's more about the broader point to me. But I do get tired of every single FA signing getting dismissed as "too much" or whatever. All the teams most similar to the Pirates are willing to try this market. What are the odds that the team that's had a losing record in 27 of the last 31 seasons knows more than anybody else?
Well, I think there’s two extremes in that argument. There’s the extreme that they can’t afford a $15-$20 MM AAV deal when in fact, teams in similar markets are doing so. Then there’s the other extreme that they can afford to spend hundreds of millions in free agency if they so wished. IMO both views ignore the reality of our market and also risk. Some free agents are far less risky when you look at the 20th and 80th percentile outcomes, and that’s doubly true when it’s a short term deal. You just need a baseball operations team that can accurately assess the risk and an owner willing to accept any modicum of risk.
BR xwOBA was 27th in the league, roughly top 15 percent, that’s very good. Not a fan of OPS.
huge fan of xwOBA.
Bigggg xwOBA guys here
I understand why we are 26, especially with our lackluster offseason, but I would actually take our squad over the 5ish teams in front of us. Also the reds, because fuck david bell.
I feel like the middle to back end of baseball rankings feature a lot of interchangeable teams and rough parity because of the extra wildcard slots. There’s way more incentive for mediocre teams to try stay competitive. You have a team like the Royals that loses 103 games and decides to spend some money because of Bobby Witt and a weak division. Meanwhile, you have a flawed team like the Cardinals or Guardians with good players, that you could arguably rank 15th, or 23rd. And you wouldn’t be wrong!
love this take.
Defensively and offensively Reynolds slide from the day he signed his big deal. I think the pressure got to him big time. That’s why I argue the Pirates didn’t overachieve in 23 but underachieved. He and Cruz were supposed to be the heart of our lineup and that heart was flatlined by April.
I don’t think that’s really the case with Reynolds, meaning pressure of the contract. He had a little bit of bad batted ball luck in 23. He’s a good player, but he’s not as good as he showed in 2021. And that’s ok.
I’m not sure how a team can “underachieve” after seeing a jump in 14 wins.