Baseball’s annual Winter Meetings officially kick off in San Diego today, so if you feel like this has been a boring winter for the Pirates (they’ve actually made quite a few moves, but they’ve more or less been all boring moves), it’s likely that that’s going to change. I’ve been busy with the end of the semester looming, which is why I haven’t had a chance to post much, but I wanted to get at least a quick preview of the meetings up before whatever is going to happen starts happening this week.
The Pirates’ biggest need this week is the same as their biggest need on the last day of the 2014 season and on the first day of the 2014 season and at last year’s winter meetings: it’s starting pitching. To this point we really haven’t heard much from the Pirates on the starting pitching front, other than that they’ve been kept contact with Francisco Liriano and Edinson Volquez and would be open to re-signing one or both of their starters from last year.
I’m honestly a little skeptical that either pitcher will end up back on the Pirates. Liriano won’t sign until Jon Lester does, and there’s been so much interest in Lester that I’ve got to imagine that one of the teams that doesn’t get him is going to suddenly swing hard in Liriano’s direction. The numbers that have been tossed around regarding Liriano (threeish years/$12 million per year) have been imminently reasonable, but I think he’s going to end up signing for at least four years and at least $50 million, and I think that that starts to stretch what the Pirates would be willing to pay for him, given that for all of his talent he’s not the most reliable starter in the world and that he’s past his 30th birthday now. As for Volquez, well, I’m just not really all that sold on what he did in 2013 and I’m guessing that some stupid front office (hi, Minnesota!) is going to pay him for his ERA and not his peripherals, and that means that they’ll outbid the Pirates for him.
Now, I could be wrong here, particularly about Liriano. The Pirates obviously like Liriano, they’re obviously trying to bring him back, and it’s hard to imagine finding a pitcher that fits into PNC Park as snugly as Liriano has the last two years. In that Bietempfel article I linked above, he uses Frank Coonelly’s ~$90 million payroll estimate as a guide, which leaves ~$15 million left to be spent, which should be enough to bring Liriano back into the fold. I would guess that the Pirates probably could go even a little higher than that, should the right circumstances present themselves. Really, though, I think the term of the deal is what’s likely to end up being the sticking point between the Pirates and Liriano. No one should be excited about the prospect of giving a pitcher like Liriano more than three years, but as I said, I suspect that a team with more flexibility is going to end up doing it.
So where does that leave us? If the Pirates can’t re-sign Liriano or Volquez, there are some free agent options on the table that would seem to make sense. If you assume the Pirates want two pitchers, one in the Liriano mold (an upper-rotation guy) and one in the Volquez mold (a lower-rotation guy that might be a project but with some upside — AJ Burnett has already been signed to fill the role Volquez did last year, as a mid-rotation innings eater), then Brandon McCarthy is the free agent that probably fits the Liriano slot the best, though pretty much every concern that you might have about Liriano (health, age, length of contract that he’ll eventually sign) all fit McCarthy, too. There are plenty of “project” guys the Pirates could go after: there’s the Brave Tommy John duo of Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy, there’s Justin Masterson, there’s Brandon Morrow, there are probably guys on the Pirates’ radar that I haven’t even thought of yet (they signed Clayton Richard to a minor league deal last week, for example).
Of course, the Pirates could also make a trade. By all indications they were heavily involved in talks for David Price and probably Jon Lester at the trade deadline, and Josh Bell still makes an awfully nice headlining prospect for a deal, especially given that his value might be higher to other teams with the Pirates’ outfield situation figuring to be locked down for quite some time. It’s hard to predict this sort of thing ahead of time; there really haven’t been any strong trade rumors tied to the Pirates, but then, Huntington has made a few deals that have come out of the blue without much warning. All I really feel comfortable saying at this point is that yeah, it’s a possibility that the Pirates will swing some kind of trade for a starter.
Beyond the pitching, I suppose there are a few places the Pirates could make moves. I think Pedro Alvarez at first base is probably at least worth a shot, but I’m not really 100% sold that it’s going to work out. If the opportunity presented itself, I’d guess the Pirates would be willing to consider making changes there, especially if they had someone willing to make a trade for Alvarez (this is not a sure thing, given Alvarez’s struggles). Same things goes for the Francisco Cervelli/Chris Stewart/Tony Sanchez catching situation; it’ll probably be OK for the Pirates and they could leave it as it is, but it’s not perfect and they would probably be willing to consider something else, even if I can’t really tell you what “something else” is.
Anyway, I think I said this last year and was completely wrong, but I don’t expect the Pirates to just sit on their hands this week. This team is currently a work in progress and there’s obviously still work that needs to be done. I’ll do my best to get timely posts about rumors and/or actual transactions onto the site as quickly as possible this week, though I do have to spend some time grading a final tomorrow and probably on Wednesday. I’m curious to see where all this goes, though: I’ve said a few times that I think this is the biggest off-season the Pirates have had in a while, and that means that this week should be a really interesting one.
