In the last week, we’ve learned that the Pirates showed some interest in both Edwin Jackson (who they apparently offered a three-year deal worth in the neighborhood of $30 million and a one-year deal worth around $10 million) and Roy Oswalt (no word on the terms of an offer because they were rebuffed out of hand, but presumably it would’ve been in the $8 million neighborhood). They didn’t land either player because Jackson wanted a one-year deal and the Nationals out-bid the Pirates by $1 million, while Oswalt has no interest in pitching for the Pirates.
It’s hard to know exactly what to make of either of these stories. On one hand, the Pirates won’t ever sign a useful free agent without making an offer. It’d be extremely cynical to say that the Pirates made these offers for PR purposes. Remember that when the Pirates drafted Pedro Alvarez, a huge portion of the fan base expected the team to not pony up the money and let him walk. The Pirates not only signed Alvarez, but they went on to spend even more money in future years. The Pirates want Jackson and Oswalt because they’re good players available at below market value. Putting one of them into the rotation would make the Pirates better and not be hugely costly.
The problem is that the Pirates had to know they were unlikely to sign either pitcher entering the bidding. Oswalt has only seemed interested in pitching for contenders this winter and Jackson had been clearly trending towards taking a one-year deal for about two weeks before he signed. The Pirates weren’t going to get into a bidding war over one year of Jackson (Long parenthetical aside: I get that the club has a strict internal value system that it always tries to adheres to as closely as it can, but it’s strange to me that they wouldn’t want to pay $12 million for Edwin Jackson after they offered $10 million while they were more than happy to grossly overpay Rod Barajas and, to a lesser extent, Clint Barmes. The need in the rotation is arguably greater than the need behind the plate or at shortstop and Jackson inarguably offers a greater upgrade over what the Pirates have than Barmes or Barajas, simply because he’s a good player and the potential for him to flame out is much lower than it is for either of the Bs the Pirates signed this winter. It’s possible, of course, that Mike Rizzo’s comfy relationship with Scott Boras helped him land Jackson on his one year deal and the Pirates didn’t even have the opportunity to offer Jackson $12 million, but shouldn’t Huntington have a similar relationship with Boras after making the Alvarez negotation work and signing two of Boras’s clients to huge contracts last summer?) and so it’s likely that they were interested because they knew the price was down, but not all that hopeful that they could get a deal done.
That bugs me, though. The deficiencies in the Pirates’ rotation are obvious. When Brad Lincoln is your fifth most talented starter, Kevin Correia is sixth, Jo-Jo Reyes is seventh, and half of your top four are either dealing with injuries or are Erik Bedard, you’ve got depth problems. It’s fine to try and address those problems by diving into the free agent market when someone valuable ends up being more affordable than expected, but the Pirates seem to have done it without a contingency plan. How much more expensive would it have been to bring in Jeff Francis or keep Paul Maholm? Not much at all, really. The Reds have already done this; they signed Francis to a minor league deal and now they’re after Oswalt. If they don’t get Oswalt, at least they’ve added some depth to their rotation for the coming year, just in case.
That opportunity is mostly past for the Pirates now. There are two conclusions that you can draw from the way this has all played out.
1.) The Pirates really thought they had a chance to sign Oswalt or Jackson.
2.) The Pirates are OK with their rotation and only tried to sign Oswalt and Jackson because the price came down to a point that they were too much of a value not to pursue.
Neither line of thinking is really all that great.
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