2014 Pirates

[thehobocop]

I'm not saying that Volquez is the next Liriano, but if anyone can make him that, it's Searage. And I'm not talking about what Cole did last year. I'm saying that this year Cole will provide more value than Burnett could ever provide us.

And I wouldn't expect Wandy to start 30 games, but saying that more than 12 would be optimistic is crazy in my opinion.

 

[sychmd]

burnett, in all his years, has only had 2 good years. not really ace years, maybe a good #2 in those 2 years.

he throws his inconsistent curve too much, so throws lots of pitches and doesn't go deep into games.
he is 37 yo.

odds are not in his favor even if he was 32. i think last year was his typical year and a 500 pitcher on a team that was 26 games above 500 doesn't seem to be a 19M pitcher that i would want.
since no one has to give up a draft choice to sign him, why hasn't anyone signed him for the bargain value of 19M, esp for only one yr of risk.
there are many reasons, the same as why NH didn't make the mistake.

 

[element1286]

when teams are selective, they won't chase his junk curveball. his control isn't good enough to make up for it. teams get more selective in the stretch run.

saber metrics measure K/9 and he does that well. win games, except for 2 years, he does not do well. making a 500 pitcher a top 20 guy seems a bit of a stretch for me.

if the pirates or retire was BS, why isn't he signed with anyone. there is nothing stopping anyone from signing him for the 19.9M one year contract that you say he is very worth and everyone is willing to do.
heck, any team could have him for the qualifying offer.
something isn't adding up if this great top 20 pitcher who could be had by any of the top 8 high spending teams for a below value price.
why, because he isn't worth it and even the crazy big spending teams know it. certainly NH knows it as he has had to deal with him for 2 years.
also, burnetts statement was made during the regular season, not in the playoffs.

Right, point being the Pirates fucked up by not offering him the QO, and thus weakening his bargaining position by having a draft pick attached to anyone who wants to sign him.

Look at the guys who are left as free agents, most have a draft pick attached to them.

Offseason isn't over yet, and AJ puts artificial restraints by not wanting to sign anywhere except the east coast. I can't imagine he signs for anything less than 12 million.

 

[element1286]

An outsider would think that because an outsider didn't watch us get zero production from RF until we got Byrd, or the zero production we got from Jones and Morneau, he would only see Morneau's name and assume we got worse. In reality, no matter emwho plays first base for us next season it will be hard to give us worse production than we got out of those two.

As for Polanco, you insinuate that he doesn't have enough time at AAA to be a viable everyday major league baseball player, but he tore up the Dominican winter league, which is pretty much on par with AAA. If you don't feel that way then that is fine. The write also talks about Volquez like he is replacing Burnett, that is not true, he is essentially replacing Jonathan Sanchez. There is not an ounce of my being that doesn't feel he will outproduce him.

Is the rotation worse, than the end of the season yes, but it is not worse than whet we entered last season with, no one can make a case saying it is. No one. Offensively we are again worse then at the end of last season, but we are better than we were at the beginning of last season as well. With Mercer at short being an upgrade over Barnes and everything being an equal.

So to your point, I am not an apologist, I see things for what they are. You can not equally compare the end of one season the the beginning of the next, it is never a fair assessment.

Well said, the team is unquestionably better Opening Day this year than Opening Day last year even without Burnett. They still royally screwed up the Burnett situation, but other than that, 'none' on major free agents was the right play.

 

[element1286]

burnett, in all his years, has only had 2 good years. not really ace years, maybe a good #2 in those 2 years.

he throws his inconsistent curve too much, so throws lots of pitches and doesn't go deep into games.
he is 37 yo.

odds are not in his favor even if he was 32. i think last year was his typical year and a 500 pitcher on a team that was 26 games above 500 doesn't seem to be a 19M pitcher that i would want.
since no one has to give up a draft choice to sign him, why hasn't anyone signed him for the bargain value of 19M, esp for only one yr of risk.
there are many reasons, the same as why NH didn't make the mistake.

Seems like you have a conclusion and are working backwards on justifications. Wins, really? If you don't like the guy's personality no one cares if you say it.

 

[Illinest]

Edinson Volquez has only had ONE good season out of the five complete seasons that he has pitched - but Searage is going to "fix" him.

Burnett has had only 2 bad seasons out of 12 complete. He's a bum, let's get rid of him.


If Burnett was a free agent that the Pirates were known to be pursuing you'd be using his stats to tell me what a great pickup he'd be, but since he's a free agent that the Pirates refuse to pay you're trying to use the exact same set of stats to make the opposite case. You'd rather defend the front office than make a sensible argument.

 

[sychmd]

i don't like bringing anyone over age 34, especially pitchers, with the occasional exception for a reliever.

now, add to that his 'value' is 19M, not for me.

i am not trying to swing anything, just look at the market.
even the high spenders who go after almost anything haven't signed him.
must be a reason why they are staying away. they have no risk as no QO to lose a pick on.

instead of calling me non-sensible, or implying i am misguided, provide a reason why he isn't signed by anyone else if he is a great bargain. i am willing to listen to reason and discussion.
where has he even had a year where he was a league ace. he had 18 W once and ERA 3.30 x2.
why was this healthy ace bypassed in the most important game of our year for a pitcher who had a 0.5 yr experience.
i am not a volquez fan either, but cinch is a hitters park and even tho they have pitching talent, they don't seem to get as much out of it as they should (altho latos was great). so maybe volquez, in the right hands ....maybe, but he wasn't my choice.
i thought we should have offered more money and risked for johnson. have always liked him.

 

[Illinest]

i don't like bringing anyone over age 34, especially pitchers, with the occasional exception for a reliever.

now, add to that his 'value' is 19M, not for me.

i am not trying to swing anything, just look at the market.
even the high spenders who go after almost anything haven't signed him.
must be a reason why they are staying away. they have no risk as no QO to lose a pick on.

instead of calling me non-sensible, or implying i am misguided, provide a reason why he isn't signed by anyone else if he is a great bargain. i am willing to listen to reason and discussion.
where has he even had a year where he was a league ace. he had 18 W once and ERA 3.30 x2.
why was this healthy ace bypassed in the most important game of our year for a pitcher who had a 0.5 yr experience.
i am not a volquez fan either, but cinch is a hitters park and even tho they have pitching talent, they don't seem to get as much out of it as they should (altho latos was great). so maybe volquez, in the right hands ....maybe, but he wasn't my choice.
i thought we should have offered more money and risked for johnson. have always liked him.

And again with the false arguments. He was our best pitcher last year, but you keep trying to stick this "ace" argument on the issue. And of course you're the one who defines "ace" quality. Win totals are possibly the least meaningful counting stat in baseball, but you want to talk Burnett down and that's one of the only stats that you can twist to support your argument.

As for "why hasn't he signed"... there is no burden of proof on me to answer that.
If I had to guess I would guess that he isn't ready to retire and that he did want to play for Pittsburgh, but he thought that he'd get an offer somewhat close to market rate - or in other words something north of 14 million. Then he got a low-ball offer from Neil and co. and his pride became an issue.

And we've seen this sort of bullshit before. They lost out on Miguel Sano in a similar situation. Sano said he "only wants to play for Pittsburgh" and then his agent signed a deal with the Twins for a few hundred thousand more than our last offer.

For all the excitement about our farm system we damn well ought to have Sano in the system too. Neil's "internal value" system didn't want to pay him more than 3 million and we lost out on a huge prospect because Neil was trying to shave a few hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile he's got no problem throwing 5 million dollars at the worst pitcher in baseball. Does that even make sense?

 

[Darkstone42]

And again with the false arguments. He was our best pitcher last year, but you keep trying to stick this "ace" argument on the issue. And of course you're the one who defines "ace" quality. Win totals are possibly the least meaningful counting stat in baseball, but you want to talk Burnett down and that's one of the only stats that you can twist to support your argument.

As for "why hasn't he signed"... there is no burden of proof on me to answer that.
If I had to guess I would guess that he isn't ready to retire and that he did want to play for Pittsburgh, but he thought that he'd get an offer somewhat close to market rate - or in other words something north of 14 million. Then he got a low-ball offer from Neil and co. and his pride became an issue.

And we've seen this sort of bullshit before. They lost out on Miguel Sano in a similar situation. Sano said he "only wants to play for Pittsburgh" and then his agent signed a deal with the Twins for a few hundred thousand more than our last offer.

For all the excitement about our farm system we damn well ought to have Sano in the system too. Neil's "internal value" system didn't want to pay him more than 3 million and we lost out on a huge prospect because Neil was trying to shave a few hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile he's got no problem throwing 5 million dollars at the worst pitcher in baseball. Does that even make sense?

I got the impression the Sano situation was more that he got on the agent's bad side by trying to talk to Sano too early. The Pirates weren't given a chance to match the Twins' offer. There's no way to say whether or not they would, but I think Huntington's mistake was not in his offer, but in something he said or did to make the agent not want to sign with Pittsburgh if anyone else matched their offer.

Still a mistake on the front office's part, but I don't think it was the sort of mistake you think it was.

As far as this offseason is concerned, I'm pretty ambivalent about it. Byrd was lost from the get-go, and I didn't see a whole lot of value in either Jones or Morneau. Lambo's an unknown, but he doesn't have to do all that much to match their production. And while Tabata's not Byrd, when he was healthy last year, he was at least a positive contributor, so as long as he's healthy, I don't think right field will be a void even before Polanco comes up.

We probably should have made the qualifying offer to Burnett. There's still a chance we sign him, and if he's still willing to listen to us, we should still make a respectable offer. But I'm not sure there isn't something else going on, perhaps regarding Burnett's sounding off against the shifts, or his displeasure at Cole starting over him, or some other clubhouse issue which may have arisen. I personally think those are overrated, but who knows where the front office and Hurdle and his staff stand on things like that?

 

[thehobocop]

Burnett was in no way our best pitcher last year.

 

[Illinest]

Burnett had the best whip among starters. He had the most difficult opponents faced throughout the year according to Baseball Reference's RA9avg metric. He was second best in team neutralized pitching (after Liriano) in "neutralized ERA" according to Baseball Reference. He had the best FIP and xFIP (fielding independent and expected fielding independent pitching) at fangraphs.

So he actually was our best pitcher last year according to almost all of the best metrics. If you think he wasn't our best then you're not paying attention to the circumstances of his starts - the frequency at which he faced tougher lineups, how often he faced better opposing starters and how many times he pitched in less favorable ballparks. He also pitched the most innings.

In other words Burnett was our best pitcher last year.

 

[sychmd]

the reason we lost the LDS is because we couldn't pitch our ace - liriano - 2 games as we had to burn him in the wildcard game.
so liriano pitches 1, burnett pitches 1 and burnett couldn't come back and pitch game 5 because how bad he looked in his playoff outing.
if he was our ace, he would have pitched the WC game. if he was our #2, he would have pitched 2 games in the LDS.

His first year here, he was an ace, but has never been an ace at any time in his career. not sure why we would want to pay him as one, esp at age 37.

lets save the money for re-upping the ones who will be here in the 16-19 window of opportunity we have.
let our prospects have a chance to audition and play or be trade chips. let pimental, cumpton, and locke have a chance at the 4th/5th spot along with wandy and volquez. i hope wandy does well and somebody beats him out as i never really liked him either.

 

[element1286]

Why are we talking about an aces, no one on the Pirates is a true ace, so the word is meaningless in this context. Although I do find your faith in Liriano curious sychmd, how do you square your opinions on AJ and his inconsistency with Liriano's career which is the model of inconsistency?

Answer two questions.

Does Burnett make the Pirates a better team next year? Yes
Do the Pirates have the money to pay Burnett? Yes

That about ends the debate to me.

 

[sychmd]

i am excited about liriano, but wouldn't guarantee a repeat performance.
he does seem to have a better mental attitude in a game than burnett does.
the big thing for me is age. 30 vs 37.

does burnett make the team better, not sure. assuming a 37 yo will be at least 5 wins above 500, when last year, by all saber metric gurus who said he was great and he wasn't over 500. 10-11.

i am a big believer in wins, and win percentage compared to teams win percentage.
the peripherals are just that. they wouldn't call them peripherals if they were core barometers.
wins is the bottom line when you determine who gets in the world series, wins. not whip, and all the other alphabet.
as an ex college pitcher, i saw many players who had great talent, put up great numbers but pitched good enough to lose. that was their psychological ceiling for a number of reasons.
the most famous example is nolan ryan. no matter what his team scored, he was good at giving up just one more an amazing amount of times. more than just random probability would generate.
to me, burnett is in that category in my mind and that influence on our team, i would rather not have.
2010, 11, 13, he was on really good teams, and was a 500 or less pitcher. that is who he is, in his career and now. take away his 2 good years and he is 113-112 and the winning % of those teams was 169 games above 500 in those 10 not good years. we don't need that. we can get that from our young guys.

so to your 2 points:
1. Does burnett make the pirates better. If he had one of his 2 good years in his career, yes. if he has one of the other 12 years in he is career, no.
if we didn't have all the young guys to audition, i would say we need to take a chance on him and put up with his attitude.
having the other arms, i would say he might be a benefit at the right price.

2. your second point, do we have the 19.9M to throw at him. NO.
we have many young guys, potential above average to all-star capable guys. we would like to lock them up instead of fishing for a 32 yo FA and bidding against all the sharks.
lets lock up Marte with that 19.9 as part of that package.
keep it to offer a 1B FA when we can upgrade if our current plan/bell don't work out.
if he was 30 like liriano, i might be interested.

we are still 1 or 2 years away and we need to see what gold we can find in the pimentals, cumptons, locked, taillons, king ham, etc.
wandy is gone and liriano is 50/50. 1. is he a good pitcher now, 2. is he willing to sign with the pirates. i would rather hold the 19.9 and give it in a package to liriano if he comes in at #2 level production this year as he will be 31 with 2 really good years back to back instead of burnett being 37 with the 2 really good years in his career(and he was on good teams).

 

[Darkstone42]

There is no viable argument against Burnett making the team better. He does. We don't explicitly need him, but he definitely makes the team better, and we'll win more games with him than without him.

 

[element1286]

Well they don't have 19 million to 'throw away' but they have 19 million to upgrade the team by signing Burnett. I wouldn't sign him for 19 million anyway, closer to 15 yea.

If the Pirates sign Burnett for 19 million or 15 million next year, it will have no bearing on their ability to pay their younger guys. They aren't tied together.

 

[sychmd]

Well they don't have 19 million to 'throw away' but they have 19 million to upgrade the team by signing Burnett. I wouldn't sign him for 19 million anyway, closer to 15 yea.

If the Pirates sign Burnett for 19 million or 15 million next year, it will have no bearing on their ability to pay their younger guys. They aren't tied together.

the money comes from the same pot. they are tied together. $ spent now are less to spend later. just like any budget. as long as you aren't below the floor.

 

[sychmd]

There is no viable argument against Burnett making the team better. He does. We don't explicitly need him, but he definitely makes the team better, and we'll win more games with him than without him.

the argument is that he is a 500 pitcher and you already have a number of those for 450k, not 19.9M.

the gamble is whether a 37 yo, who is a 500 pitcher can be someone who will be 7 games above 500 when the young guy will be only 500.

the other aspect, we aren't good enough to win it this year. not enough horses. will be similar to lsat year.
when polanco is playing all year, and taillon is here all year, and we have a real 1B option, then in 2015 we will be competing for WS. since burnett is really a 1 yr person, why spend all that money on a guy who isn't going to get you over the top and in the WS.
save the money for 2015 or 2016 when we should be legitimate contenders for the WS, not just wildcard hopefuls.

 

[Darkstone42]

the argument is that he is a 500 pitcher and you already have a number of those for 450k, not 19.9M.

the gamble is whether a 37 yo, who is a 500 pitcher can be someone who will be 7 games above 500 when the young guy will be only 500.

the other aspect, we aren't good enough to win it this year. not enough horses. will be similar to lsat year.
when polanco is playing all year, and taillon is here all year, and we have a real 1B option, then in 2015 we will be competing for WS. since burnett is really a 1 yr person, why spend all that money on a guy who isn't going to get you over the top and in the WS.
save the money for 2015 or 2016 when we should be legitimate contenders for the WS, not just wildcard hopefuls.

Being a .500 pitcher means nothing. Pitcher wins mean nothing. The important thing is baserunner prevention, which leads to run prevention, and Burnett is good at that. He was the best at that on our staff last year.

Also, winning more this year makes it easier to convince our guys to stay and new guys to come in. It gets more butts in the seats, too. Signing Burnett to, as element pointed out, somewhere around $15 million would be a good investment for the Pirates this year in a number of ways.

 

[element1286]

the money comes from the same pot. they are tied together. $ spent now are less to spend later. just like any budget. as long as you aren't below the floor.

They probably are below the floor, and a one time expense is not a budget killer. If they are looking for a 3 year 40 million investment on a questionable asset then yea. But AJ is neither.