COLUMN: The Pittsburgh Pirates Moved At Their Usual Pace, & It Worked

The Pittsburgh Pirates moved at their usual, methodical – some would say slow – pace in regards to signing Ivan Nova. And it worked.

The Pittsburgh Pirates began to address their biggest deficiency by reportedly coming to terms with Ivan Nova to a three-year deal earlier today.

If Pirates fans are being honest with themselves, the signing probably came at a surprise to some degree. They saw what occurred with J.A. Happ in 2015 and braced themselves for it to happen again.

The Pirates failed to sign Happ in part due to their slow, plodding approach towards negotiations. By Huntington’s own admission, Toronto “came and grabbed him.”

Many outlets – including this one – wondered out loud if the Pirates would be better served to become more aggressive. While no one would reasonably expect the club’s front office staff to wildly go about their work, it would be entirely fair to expect them to act decisively and quickly when they have a target in mind. However, with Nova the sometimes glacial pace served them well.

Let the Market Speak First

It is now rather obvious that the Pittsburgh Pirates had designs on bringing back Ivan Nova. The shorthand that the two parties share as a result of Nova’s 11 starts with the Pirates in 2016 would put the club ahead of the game in bringing a pitcher in. Nova had already been through the Ray Searage Rejuvenation Engine, and as such could hit the ground running more than, say, Derek Holland might have been able to.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The Pirates failed to sign Happ in part due to their slow, plodding approach towards negotiations[/perfectpullquote]

One could have hardly blamed the Pirates if they were to learn from their mistake with Happ and come out of the gates soon after the season ended with an offer right in Nova’s desired $13 million a year range. Fans would have greeted the news in the same manner that was seen earlier today.

But, Neal Huntington was unfazed. His comments after the winter meetings did little to show that the team would change its approach to free agency any time soon. Dismissing the winter meetings as not fitting in to the team’s timetable, Huntington trusted his usual approach.

A funny thing happened between the end of the season and now. Nova’s market, thought to be one of the most lucrative in this historically weak free agent pitching class, fought back. Those four and five year offers never materialized. That $13 million-plus salary did not come to be.

Though he was pursuing other avenues, we can assume that Huntington also kept his ear to the ground on Nova. Here we had a case where the Pittsburgh Pirates brass flashed their trademark patience and waited for the right moment to come in with a very team-friendly offer.

The market spoke, and the GM used that to his advantage.

Nothing is cookie-cutter in baseball. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ methodical method to free agent signings may not work the next time Huntington finds himself in this situation.

But this time it did.