0 comments by Pat Lackey on 12/10/2014
Obviously we don’t know much else; I’ll update when a deal is official. I will say that Bastardo is only a year away from free agency, so I’d be pretty shocked to see the Pirates give much up for him. There were some “Travis Snider for Brian Matusz” rumblings earlier today, but Snider feels like […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey
I did not think that Francisco Liriano was going to be a Pirate in 2015. I’ve written this and said this a few times, but I’ll reiterate it one more time in my mea culpa: Liriano is a good pitcher. He’s got his flaws, sure, but in two years with the Pirates he’s given them […]
I’ve been grading for like six hours now and my brain feels like chewed bubblegum, so I’m going to save the analysis for after dinner, but the Pirates re-signed Francisco Liriano to a three-year deal with $39 million this afternoon (first report here, MLB Trade Rumors round-up here).
Such is the eternal state of the Pittsburgh Pirates that I can tell you that a 3-year/$39 million deal is the largest free-agent deal in team history without even having to check (I’m sure I’m not the first or only person to make that observation today), but hey, every bar has to be raised from somewhere.
Anyway, like I said, more later.
0 comments
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 12/9/2014
Here is a full and complete list of things the Pirates did at the Winter Meetings today (THAT WE KNOW ABOUT): Claimed Josh Lindblom and ditched some guy that you and I both forgot they had claimed at some point in the last five months. My Josh Lindblom scouting report: he is a human being. […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 12/8/2014
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 […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 12/3/2014
The Pirates weren’t expected to do much at the just-now-passed deadline to agree to tender their arbitration-eligible players with contract offers, and even though they waited until the last minute to make the announcement, the news is that there isn’t much news.
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 12/1/2014
As I was getting ready for bed last night, it occurred to me that I hadn’t written about the Pirates in over a week and that I needed to put something together since we’re headed into the heart of Hot Stove season now that Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is still more than three weeks […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 11/20/2014
The Pirates have been awfully busy over the last 24 hours whereas I have not been particularly busy on the blogging front, so I’ve got some catching up to do. Let’s start with the moves the club made tonight to shore up their 40-man roster in anticipation of the midnight deadline to protect eligible players […]
Zach Duke signed a three-year/$15 million contract with the White Sox yesterday based on his insane/improbable emergence as a relief ace with the Brewers last year. Neil Weinberg at Beyond the Box Score was apparently fascinated by Duke’s breakout season last year and so he takes a look today at the value of one good year vs. a career of mediocrity.
It’s obviously only one season’s worth of innings from a reliever, but it’s about 60 fantastic innings not heavily distorted by a platoon. He faced a roughly equal number of righties and lefties and had pretty similar results. I’m not going to sit here and argue that the thousand innings that came before should get thrown out or that he’s a true talent relief ace based on one year of data, but he’s demonstrated the ability to perform at a high level with no BABIP luck, HR/FB% magic, or really well targeted appearances against weak lefties. He legitimately pitched well for those 60 innings.
Having watched Zach Duke pitch so much from 2005-2010, I find this all fascinating and a little unbelievable. Good for you, Zach Duke!
0 comments
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 11/18/2014
Now that it’s more or less official that Russell Martin won’t be a Pirate in 2015, I have some mixed feelings. I don’t know how much money the Pirates offered Martin and I suspect that we won’t really know for sure (their negotiations with starting pitchers will be much more difficult if agents know how […]
According Peter Gammons, Russell Martin has signed a five-year deal with the Blue Jays for “McCann money,” which means that he’s probably getting close to the $75 million he reportedly set out to get at the beginning of the off-season.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals and Braves announced that they’ve completed a four-player swap that involves Shelby Miller going to the Braves and Jason Heyward going to the Cardinals.
These are two disparate events, and I have quite a bit to say about them, but I have a lot of lab work to do today. I’ll have more later. My initial analysis is: I hate everything.
0 comments
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 11/14/2014
Completely out of the blue this afternoon,
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 11/13/2014
Baseball’s award season officially culminated in the MVP Awards tonight, and for the second time in three years, Andrew McCutchen finished third in the balloting. Of course, he won the award in the season he didn’t finish third, so he’s on a pretty solid run. Clayton Kershaw won the award, which shouldn’t have come as a […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 11/12/2014
With the free agent market for catchers awfully thin this year, I think that mostly everyone assumed that the Pirates would try to turn to the trade market to replace Russell Martin (who hasn’t left yet, but come on, Victor Martinez got four years today, Martin’s gonna basically fill his own check out at this […]
0 comments by Pat Lackey on 11/11/2014
I suppose that the biggest Pirate-related news on this Tuesday evening is that Clint Hurdle finished second in National League Manager of the Year voting to Matt Williams, and thusly will not be taking home his second consecutive Manger of the Year Award. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again tonight: I think […]
