SB Nation User Blog: wickethewok

Pirates Interested in Bobby Crosby

wickethewok — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:39:31 -0000

Pirates Interested in Bobby Crosby

Two terrible shortstops doesn't equal one slightly less terrible shortstop. Just more terrible shortstops.

I guess Crosby has a better track record than Ronny Cedeño and has been playing in a superior league and a difficult ballpark and... well... now I've talked myself into the Bobby Crosby era. Damn.

John Grabow and Free Agency

wickethewok — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:20:15 -0000

For certain players, such as John Grabow (who is a type A middle reliever), they will not be able to find another team willing to give up a 1st round draft pick in order to sign them. In Buster Olney's blog (subscription required), he has a quote from an AL GM who says, "If they offered [Grabow] arbitration, there's no chance another team would sign him. You're not going to give up a No. 1 pick for a middle reliever." This is a fairly recent phenomenon, as teams have just started figuring out the value of Rule 4 picks.

We saw this happen last year when players like Orlando Hudson, Juan Cruz, and Orlando Cabrera were offered arbitration which drove their prices and bargaining position way down in the free agency market. For players like Grabow, clubs won't be willing to give up a first round draft pick to sign them. This essentially forces the player to either go to arbitration (which typically won't give the player the raise they would get on the FA market) or try to negotiate a new contract with the same club from a weak bargaining position. Players can get a clause on their next contract that forbids teams from offering them arbitration (as Cabrera did), but, again, this drives down their value.

So for players in a certain strata (lower-end type A and lower-end type B) to stay in MLB, they are essentially forced to re-sign with their current team. In effect, compensation picks allow teams to perpetually renew contracts for certain players.

For those of you who say that compensation picks help lower-end teams like the Pirates, I would say that their supposed goal to compensate lower-end teams for losing players to free agency has failed. Good players going to free agency typically come from good teams, so better clubs get more compensation picks. Additionally, as the Yankees showed last year, if you have more spending power, you can get more type A free agents while giving up less. They signed CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, and Mark Teixeira, but only had one first round pick to forfeit.

Hopefully, the MLBPA will manage to eliminate compensation picks during their next negotiations with ownership.

Scouting report on Pirates' first Lithuanian prospect

wickethewok — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:15:13 -0000

Scouting report on Pirates' first Lithuanian prospect

From Keith Law on the Pirates signing of baseball's first Lithuanian prospect (ESPN Insider only, I think):

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The Pirates... signed RHP Dovydas Neverauskas, the first baseball prospect signed out of Lithuania, for $60,000. Neverauskas is all projection at this point, with a fastball up to 88 mph and a tall, lanky build. His delivery is awkward and unclean, and he has no viable second pitch, but he does have some run on his fastball. He turned 16 in January...

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Extremely young with at least some intrigue for relatively little, so it sounds good to me. Are the Pirates positioning themselves as one of the more expansive international scouting programs?

Angels trade for Scott Kazmir

wickethewok — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:47:49 -0000

Angels trade for Scott Kazmir

Convince me the Pirates shouldn't have traded for Scott Kazmir if it only cost the Angels a AA reliever with spotty control and an A+ hitter who was out all of last year and a good chunk of this year with injuries. Wouldn't Kazmir have crushed the NL Central?