Worth considering Huntington was over his infatuation with broke-ass-former-top-prospects after the Lastings Milledge Experience in his third season at the helm. Hard to see how this rebuild isn't pretty well behind the last.
Yeah, I wouldn't give much for Blackburn though. He has durability issues and inconsistent results but a better bet to eat some innings than what we have.
I’m actually sitting here laughing at the fact that we are once again happy to settle for anything. Every year we enter the offseason hoping for a change and by Xmas we start to realize that is the same shit show that it’s always been.
Getting a top prospect reputation will sure give you a ton of chances. Doesn't seem like we even had recently scouted these guys, we just had a database of "broke ass prospects" and just worked our way on down. Those were good times. I absolutely got my hopes up with each one, haha.
Not trying to be a smartass but what is McKinney best at besides adding names that end in Y to the team? Is he fast at least? Good at bunting? Not afraid to get HBP? Randomly thought about Swaggerty yesterday. Hope all is well with him and wife.
I don't really get trading for him at all. Pretty much the entire free agent class of outfielders is still sitting out there, why give up anything for a guy that will just clog up another 40 man spot. If it's for AAA depth, they could just waiver claim someone that gets cut loose as spring approaches.
Agree and I hope the Pirates are not just waiting for the prices to drop between now and mid-January. This is not going to be a year where the Pirates are going to be a serious contender for the Playoffs, so give our own guys like Andre Jackson, Jared Jones, Luis Ortiz, Quinn Priester, and Bailey Falter the opportunities. If just two of them can be solid 5 inning guys, this team could have a chance.
Not saying the trade by Huntington was good, but Glasnow has averaged just 53 IP for the 5 years since the trade, not sure if Meadows is still an active player, and Baz is entering his age 25 season - another guy who cannot seem to stay healthy enough to make it through a full year.
And, a team is willing to give up two solid prospects and go 5/$135 mil to sign Glasnow? WOW!!!!! Patience Bucco fans - Skenes, Chandler, Jones, Solometo, Harrington, Barco, and about 6 other very young SP's.
When the Flaherty to the Pirates rumors started a few weeks, all of my Cardinal fans had bad things to say about him. The most common themes were soft and selfish. However, one of them suggested he might excel on a one year contract.
Baseball Media literally crafted an entire bullshit narrative around the plight of the poor "middle class veteran" or whatever the fuck they called it while guys like Jack Flaherty are out here getting $14m deals.
He's a good lottery ticket that's worth that deal. It's only 1 yr so you have nothing to lose. Most of the pitchers available have really no upside. Is he a lock to better than what we have...no, but i don't have any confidence that anyone in the rotation right now can sniff a sub 4 era. Pirates need to be aggressive and yet here we stand with Marco Gonzalez, tellez and McKinney. This organization continues to fill holes with cheap options instead of getting legit mlb talent. I was hoping this off season would signal a change in behavior, so far it has not.
I don't think I can stomach watching Glasnow pitch for the Dodgers. I always thought the Dodgers were a cool team, and I respected their ability to find the Justin Turners and Max Muncy's. But not only are they flaunting their wealth and advantage, they're rubbing our noses in it. And the primary reason they can sign Glasnow is because of this ridiculous contract deferral that's biggest competitive advantage maybe ever. Its not even a cherry on top their already massive sundae, its practically another sundae on top.
Then the fact that they had to sign Glasnow of all people, the guy we discovered in 5th round and developed into arguable the top prospect in the game, only to watch him give us zero value and instantly look like a star when he left. I'm still talking to my therapist about it.
I hope we bring in our $70M payroll and our team of AAAA players into Dodger stadium and kick their asses.
Not stated, but I assume McKinney was signed to a minor league contract? Wonder if their are any opt-outs provided if he does not make the 40 out of ST?
Happy for Tyler Glasnow getting to go home to Cali, and probably with a long term extension from the Dodgers. Not a bad return for two lower level college draft picks by the Dodgers in 2019 - Pepiot in the 3rd Round and DeLuca in the 25th Round. A testimonial to the Developmental Group within the Dodgers org.
Definitely happy for Tyler. As for Dodgers they are definitely playing chess while others are playing checkers, or in the case of the Pirates, playing tiddlywinks. Dodgers going for high, high ceiling type players and not giving a damn about the relatively high possibility Ohtani and Glasnow are HUGE injury risks.
Yeah. I mean everyone is obsessed with LA loading up, but they are loading up with guys who are coming back from serious injuries or surgeries: in Ohtani's case 2 surgeries and serious injuries. They may not be "breaking baseball" in quite the way people think.
The entire "breaking baseball" narrative is funny to me since just about everyone openly acknowledged in the last CBA negotiation that the "competitive balance tax" has absolutely nothing to do with competitive balance and everything to do with big market owners hoarding more profits.
No all the sudden the Dodgers are ruining the sport? Come on. People just love getting pissed off about things.
Yeah. It's dumb. If Ohtani wants to take the risk of deferring half a billion dollars for a decade just to win, that's his decision, and he should be free to make that decision. I salute him for it, though I probably would have taken the money in my hand in his situation, especially with inflation and knowing how things have gone in my new country (Argentina).
People who get upset about baseball economics really should follow futbol for a while. I mean the best player from this country (Messi) made more money in 1 year playing for a team in Paris than every single professional player, playing for teams in this nation have made over the entire history of futbol. And the best team from South America has to play the best team from Europe every year in the final cup. The payroll disparity this year between Manchester and the South American team will be something like 25-1. Sometimes, the South American teams win, too. So money isn't everything.
He signed a MiL deal a few days ago. The opt out is automatic for some players. I can’t remember whether it’s guys who have the service time for arb, which McKinney does, or just for FA, which he doesn’t.
EDIT: I found one reference that says he’d need six years for the automatic opt out. Of course, I guess individual contracts could have their own.
They really need two guys to take a leap into star status to have any chance at all. I’m guessing the best two candidates are Hayes and Cruz. But I don’t care who it is.
Cruz in CF? This group is too chicken-shit to put their foot down on that though. It’s the same issue with Hank. They think/believe/convince themselves these guys can play these positions until the last minute when it’s finally evident to them that the player will struggle there. And by that point they’ve told the player they can play the position and on the doorstep of the majors, they re-think it.
Not only does the Flaherty contract seem a bit high, but so has just about every contract since the Cardinals' early moves. That makes sense as supply dwindles. Ben could have struck early but didn't and now I worry that he's looking to sign guys at last year's prices. I know it's not his call as to how much we can spend, but it's becoming more apparent that the claim they'd spend when the time was right was either a lie or that they don't believe in this group of players yet.
I think it’s becoming blatantly obvious that they misinterpreted the FA market this off-season. A 2/$20m contract a year ago has become 1/$14m; they need to start making multi year bets and stacking them YoY. Now they’re just sitting there with their schwance in their hand, looking like fools. I know this is an economic issue at its core, but there are ways to play with a disadvantage. They aren’t even trying.
The Pirates will be Mckinney's 7th MLB team since 2018 and his career BA is .209 with an OPS of .674. This is just another nothing move by BC, while real teams are actually spending and trying to improve. If his goal is to keep expectations low, he's certainly succeeding.
This is not a bad move. Not only is he an upgrade on Mitchell, he's probably an upgrade on Palacios, though we need to see if Palacios' flair for the dramatic has staying power.
The way I look at this use of international bonus pool money is why not? The reality of it is that McKinney is much more likely to contribute to the Pirates than would be any international FA that we could sign for the remaining money. And he could be a later bloomer--he's had stretches of success since '21 mixed in with struggles. Maybe things will click with us, though it's a longshot.
Competition-for-Palacios wasn’t real high on my list of offseason needs. I’m still waiting for one single move that makes this team better than it was when game #162 ended. With Endy and Oviedo, BC has a long way to go to draw even. Maybe he should get started.
Palacios was an 83 wRC+ for the Pirates and McKinney was a 101 wRC+ for the Yankees. This is a solid move by the Pirates and we could see him in the starting lineup very early. He is definitely playing in 2024 for a trade to a contender on or before the trade deadline. A Scott Boras client?
Just read that the international money expires today, so it was what was left from this signing year. Appears that the Yanks did us a solid??? Unless they announce an international signing today...
He is not on the 40 man so even if they have now found somebody else to sign they still could have kept him, injuries happen. I think this was a 100% solid to McKinney. Having said that, I hope this is just adding to the pile of competitors for the 5th or 4th OF spot. His track record doesn't do much for any significant improvement. Yes.. probably better than Palacios, but he and Smith-Njigba have to be bubble 40 man roster players already. This is both a possible slight upgrade and / or insurance if one of them is dropped and lost.
I'm just upset they couldn't find an international prospect to use the pool money on. I'm pretty sure that the amounts are only tradeable in $250,000 dollar increments. I don't have a problem with McKinney in general but like you mentioned we already have Palacios and CSN on the 40 man, (One of them is probably the next man off) if the amount was $500,000 we should have received more.
I briefly (admittedly very lame attempt) to search on the $250K increment and didn't find anything. I agree if the amount was 'significant' (we can debate what that means), then Pirates should have found a player to sign. My initial assumption was the remaining amount was small and they did not have a player who would sign who they wanted or would take the small amount so it was basically McKinney for free. Even if Yankees sign someone we may not know how much of the $ were added to their pool from this trade.
It is less than three months from a World Series that featured a club hardly pushing past a $100m payroll.
In any other context fans would be considering loading huge sums of money into the later year's of a player's decline to be bad strategy, and yet we're now pretending for some reason that the Dodgers have uniquely broken the game.
December 15........only Marco fell in their lap somehow. Otherwise, have not added any SP despite the Oviedo injury. It's a foregone conclusion they'll now wait til mid-January......I mean Chad Kuhl might still be on the board. (I like the person, but not the pitcher)
Worth considering Huntington was over his infatuation with broke-ass-former-top-prospects after the Lastings Milledge Experience in his third season at the helm. Hard to see how this rebuild isn't pretty well behind the last.
This isn't a rebuild. It's profiteering.
I'm waiting for another trade on a bad contract. Maybe bringing back Tyler Anderson if the Angles will eat about half of the remaining contract.
Paul blackburn? Not a bad contract but could take him from the As
Yeah, I wouldn't give much for Blackburn though. He has durability issues and inconsistent results but a better bet to eat some innings than what we have.
I’m actually sitting here laughing at the fact that we are once again happy to settle for anything. Every year we enter the offseason hoping for a change and by Xmas we start to realize that is the same shit show that it’s always been.
Getting a top prospect reputation will sure give you a ton of chances. Doesn't seem like we even had recently scouted these guys, we just had a database of "broke ass prospects" and just worked our way on down. Those were good times. I absolutely got my hopes up with each one, haha.
Right there with you brother!
Jordan montgomery bomb incoming per bmac’s source’s cousin’s husband’s dog sitter
Not trying to be a smartass but what is McKinney best at besides adding names that end in Y to the team? Is he fast at least? Good at bunting? Not afraid to get HBP? Randomly thought about Swaggerty yesterday. Hope all is well with him and wife.
I don't really get trading for him at all. Pretty much the entire free agent class of outfielders is still sitting out there, why give up anything for a guy that will just clog up another 40 man spot. If it's for AAA depth, they could just waiver claim someone that gets cut loose as spring approaches.
Flaherty would have been a nice addition, but I would pass at 1/$14m for a “bounce-back” guy. This FA pitching market is bonkers!
Agree and I hope the Pirates are not just waiting for the prices to drop between now and mid-January. This is not going to be a year where the Pirates are going to be a serious contender for the Playoffs, so give our own guys like Andre Jackson, Jared Jones, Luis Ortiz, Quinn Priester, and Bailey Falter the opportunities. If just two of them can be solid 5 inning guys, this team could have a chance.
Makes more sense why BC has cited trades a lot more than FA as making improvements, he said, pulling on his Marco Gonzalez jersey.
its just dumb
Ortiz, Contreras, Priester have as good of a chance at a better 2024 than Flaherty than Flaherty does
And, all 3 of them added together will be about 15% of the $14 mil used to sign Flaherty.
Not saying the trade by Huntington was good, but Glasnow has averaged just 53 IP for the 5 years since the trade, not sure if Meadows is still an active player, and Baz is entering his age 25 season - another guy who cannot seem to stay healthy enough to make it through a full year.
And, a team is willing to give up two solid prospects and go 5/$135 mil to sign Glasnow? WOW!!!!! Patience Bucco fans - Skenes, Chandler, Jones, Solometo, Harrington, Barco, and about 6 other very young SP's.
When the Flaherty to the Pirates rumors started a few weeks, all of my Cardinal fans had bad things to say about him. The most common themes were soft and selfish. However, one of them suggested he might excel on a one year contract.
Baseball Media literally crafted an entire bullshit narrative around the plight of the poor "middle class veteran" or whatever the fuck they called it while guys like Jack Flaherty are out here getting $14m deals.
Purely fiction writers at this point, lol.
He's a good lottery ticket that's worth that deal. It's only 1 yr so you have nothing to lose. Most of the pitchers available have really no upside. Is he a lock to better than what we have...no, but i don't have any confidence that anyone in the rotation right now can sniff a sub 4 era. Pirates need to be aggressive and yet here we stand with Marco Gonzalez, tellez and McKinney. This organization continues to fill holes with cheap options instead of getting legit mlb talent. I was hoping this off season would signal a change in behavior, so far it has not.
I don't think I can stomach watching Glasnow pitch for the Dodgers. I always thought the Dodgers were a cool team, and I respected their ability to find the Justin Turners and Max Muncy's. But not only are they flaunting their wealth and advantage, they're rubbing our noses in it. And the primary reason they can sign Glasnow is because of this ridiculous contract deferral that's biggest competitive advantage maybe ever. Its not even a cherry on top their already massive sundae, its practically another sundae on top.
Then the fact that they had to sign Glasnow of all people, the guy we discovered in 5th round and developed into arguable the top prospect in the game, only to watch him give us zero value and instantly look like a star when he left. I'm still talking to my therapist about it.
I hope we bring in our $70M payroll and our team of AAAA players into Dodger stadium and kick their asses.
Not stated, but I assume McKinney was signed to a minor league contract? Wonder if their are any opt-outs provided if he does not make the 40 out of ST?
Happy for Tyler Glasnow getting to go home to Cali, and probably with a long term extension from the Dodgers. Not a bad return for two lower level college draft picks by the Dodgers in 2019 - Pepiot in the 3rd Round and DeLuca in the 25th Round. A testimonial to the Developmental Group within the Dodgers org.
Definitely happy for Tyler. As for Dodgers they are definitely playing chess while others are playing checkers, or in the case of the Pirates, playing tiddlywinks. Dodgers going for high, high ceiling type players and not giving a damn about the relatively high possibility Ohtani and Glasnow are HUGE injury risks.
Yeah. I mean everyone is obsessed with LA loading up, but they are loading up with guys who are coming back from serious injuries or surgeries: in Ohtani's case 2 surgeries and serious injuries. They may not be "breaking baseball" in quite the way people think.
The entire "breaking baseball" narrative is funny to me since just about everyone openly acknowledged in the last CBA negotiation that the "competitive balance tax" has absolutely nothing to do with competitive balance and everything to do with big market owners hoarding more profits.
No all the sudden the Dodgers are ruining the sport? Come on. People just love getting pissed off about things.
Yeah. It's dumb. If Ohtani wants to take the risk of deferring half a billion dollars for a decade just to win, that's his decision, and he should be free to make that decision. I salute him for it, though I probably would have taken the money in my hand in his situation, especially with inflation and knowing how things have gone in my new country (Argentina).
People who get upset about baseball economics really should follow futbol for a while. I mean the best player from this country (Messi) made more money in 1 year playing for a team in Paris than every single professional player, playing for teams in this nation have made over the entire history of futbol. And the best team from South America has to play the best team from Europe every year in the final cup. The payroll disparity this year between Manchester and the South American team will be something like 25-1. Sometimes, the South American teams win, too. So money isn't everything.
He signed a MiL deal a few days ago. The opt out is automatic for some players. I can’t remember whether it’s guys who have the service time for arb, which McKinney does, or just for FA, which he doesn’t.
EDIT: I found one reference that says he’d need six years for the automatic opt out. Of course, I guess individual contracts could have their own.
If the Rays traded for Pepiot, I have no doubt he will do well.................. then he will need Tommy John.
Archer is going to coach Glasnow?
ZiPS are up and it's just about what I expected. Shame they can't get creative with a trade or a stealth signing and give themselves a chance.
They really need two guys to take a leap into star status to have any chance at all. I’m guessing the best two candidates are Hayes and Cruz. But I don’t care who it is.
They need a CFer so Jack can slide over to RF. Add a couple of starters and they have a chance. I don't even know who is left...
Cruz in CF? This group is too chicken-shit to put their foot down on that though. It’s the same issue with Hank. They think/believe/convince themselves these guys can play these positions until the last minute when it’s finally evident to them that the player will struggle there. And by that point they’ve told the player they can play the position and on the doorstep of the majors, they re-think it.
That Reynolds contract....
Glasnow just got 5 yrs $135 million from the Dodgers.
Not only does the Flaherty contract seem a bit high, but so has just about every contract since the Cardinals' early moves. That makes sense as supply dwindles. Ben could have struck early but didn't and now I worry that he's looking to sign guys at last year's prices. I know it's not his call as to how much we can spend, but it's becoming more apparent that the claim they'd spend when the time was right was either a lie or that they don't believe in this group of players yet.
I think it’s becoming blatantly obvious that they misinterpreted the FA market this off-season. A 2/$20m contract a year ago has become 1/$14m; they need to start making multi year bets and stacking them YoY. Now they’re just sitting there with their schwance in their hand, looking like fools. I know this is an economic issue at its core, but there are ways to play with a disadvantage. They aren’t even trying.
My brother, listen to them when they say it. They were never planning to spend a dime, and the TV deal is their excuse.
Really, why aren't we long past seeing any other point in the offseason beyond this?
There’s more on the table than just money. Guaranteed rotation spot, no Qualifying offer etc.
Flaherty hasn’t been good enough last two years to promise him much. Ortiz, Jackson, Priester and Roansy could have better seasons than him.
On base guy with average ish pop, plays all 3 outfield positions, ok, sounds like an improvement over Mitchell in the depth charts.
The Pirates will be Mckinney's 7th MLB team since 2018 and his career BA is .209 with an OPS of .674. This is just another nothing move by BC, while real teams are actually spending and trying to improve. If his goal is to keep expectations low, he's certainly succeeding.
This is his fifth offseason and he’s yet to make any effort to improve the team in any of them. The waste of time and opportunity is staggering.
Is gonna be a Cutch reunion and a Keller extension to pacify most fans and then the hard sell on letting the kids develop bs.
Apparently Cutch is expected to sign next week.
Sad that what the Royals have done would have been enough to satisfy me. Can’t even compete with the Royals!!!!!!!!
Was thinking all along it'll be a Christmas Eve deal.......warm and fuzzy.
This is not a bad move. Not only is he an upgrade on Mitchell, he's probably an upgrade on Palacios, though we need to see if Palacios' flair for the dramatic has staying power.
The way I look at this use of international bonus pool money is why not? The reality of it is that McKinney is much more likely to contribute to the Pirates than would be any international FA that we could sign for the remaining money. And he could be a later bloomer--he's had stretches of success since '21 mixed in with struggles. Maybe things will click with us, though it's a longshot.
Competition-for-Palacios wasn’t real high on my list of offseason needs. I’m still waiting for one single move that makes this team better than it was when game #162 ended. With Endy and Oviedo, BC has a long way to go to draw even. Maybe he should get started.
Palacios was an 83 wRC+ for the Pirates and McKinney was a 101 wRC+ for the Yankees. This is a solid move by the Pirates and we could see him in the starting lineup very early. He is definitely playing in 2024 for a trade to a contender on or before the trade deadline. A Scott Boras client?
I’m not sure anyone cares too much about Billy Mac’s representation
It’s probably some intern.
Just read that the international money expires today, so it was what was left from this signing year. Appears that the Yanks did us a solid??? Unless they announce an international signing today...
Sounds like they did McKinney a better solid, lol.
I'm sure the Yanks are going to sign someone. We did them a solid for McKinney.
He is not on the 40 man so even if they have now found somebody else to sign they still could have kept him, injuries happen. I think this was a 100% solid to McKinney. Having said that, I hope this is just adding to the pile of competitors for the 5th or 4th OF spot. His track record doesn't do much for any significant improvement. Yes.. probably better than Palacios, but he and Smith-Njigba have to be bubble 40 man roster players already. This is both a possible slight upgrade and / or insurance if one of them is dropped and lost.
I'm just upset they couldn't find an international prospect to use the pool money on. I'm pretty sure that the amounts are only tradeable in $250,000 dollar increments. I don't have a problem with McKinney in general but like you mentioned we already have Palacios and CSN on the 40 man, (One of them is probably the next man off) if the amount was $500,000 we should have received more.
Remember, the Pirates are not actually sending money, just the rights to spend that amount.
I briefly (admittedly very lame attempt) to search on the $250K increment and didn't find anything. I agree if the amount was 'significant' (we can debate what that means), then Pirates should have found a player to sign. My initial assumption was the remaining amount was small and they did not have a player who would sign who they wanted or would take the small amount so it was basically McKinney for free. Even if Yankees sign someone we may not know how much of the $ were added to their pool from this trade.
If you do not like a 29 yr old OF, then how about a 28 year old OF from KC....
BTW how them Royals, rather it works or not at least they are trying...
It is less than three months from a World Series that featured a club hardly pushing past a $100m payroll.
In any other context fans would be considering loading huge sums of money into the later year's of a player's decline to be bad strategy, and yet we're now pretending for some reason that the Dodgers have uniquely broken the game.
Your brains are what's broken.
Wacha to Royals... the hits keep coming.
I would’ve rather had him at $16/yr vs Flaherty at $14/yr. Anyways, Cueto for $2.5 plus incentives incoming
December 15........only Marco fell in their lap somehow. Otherwise, have not added any SP despite the Oviedo injury. It's a foregone conclusion they'll now wait til mid-January......I mean Chad Kuhl might still be on the board. (I like the person, but not the pitcher)