I wasn’t entirely happy with how I closed out my post about Derrek Lee and Garrett Jones last week. I said that the Pirates should be more creative than just going out and re-signing Derrek Lee, but the best alternative I really offered in the post itself was to play Garrett Jones with Matt Hague on the small end of a platoon. That’s not a terribly creative solution, either, and it’s not one that’s likely to make the Pirates a very good team. I hate leaving things open-ended like that, so after some time thinking about more creative solutions, I have some suggestions. We can lump them into two basic categories, one where Pedro Alvarez is left at third base (or in the minors, I suppose) and one where Pedro Alvarez becomes the team’s regular first baseman in 2012. Let’s start with the non-Pedro solutions at first.
The first thing we’re going to do here is rule out the Pirates’ signing a free agent at first base. That’s not because they’re too cheap, it’s because it’s not worth it. The market is thin behind Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols and guys like Lee or Carlos Pena just won’t be worth the Pirates’ time or money. Free agency isn’t the only way to do something like this, though, and Beyond the Box Score has a really good post today about first basemen that could be available this winter.
The Pirates would obviously love to put someone like Logan Morrison or Yonder Alonso in their everyday lineup, but both would be pretty expensive (I’d guess Starling Marte and one of the Pirates’ better non-Cole/Taillon pitching prospects would have to go). They would solve the problem at first base for the forseeable future, though. The question the Pirates would have to ask themselves here is if they’re going to make a big trade like this, is first base the position they want to upgrade? Certainly, there are tougher positions to find good players at (shortstop, for example), so they’d have to be awfully sure this was the right move to make.
If you dig down a little deeper, though, the Pirates could probably make a trade that would upgrade the position without having to dig so deep into the system, even if it wouldn’t bring in quite the same level of talent that Morrison or Alonso would bring. What would it take to get Kendry Morales (assuming he’s healthy) from the Angels with Mark Trumbo at first base? Could the Pirates bring Adam Lind to the NL and hope that the NL Central rejuvenates his bat? What would that cost? Would getting Daric Barton out of Oakland’s right-handed hitting death trap help him at all? Any trade like this would probably be an upgrade on Jones/Hague … so is that good enough to pull a trigger on a deal?
The danger with making any trade to shore up first base long-term is that the Bucs will end up with a log-jam at the position if Pedro Alvarez gets his career back on track. That’s obviously not a given at this point, but the Pirates shouldn’t be mailing things in with Pedro yet, either. Which probably means that the club will either be looking for a short-term solution at first in 2011, or they’ll simply move Pedro there himself if he can prove over the winter and next spring that he’s ready to play every day. If the Pirates move Alvarez to first base, they’ll be creating a hole at third base.
The best internal option at third if Alvarez moves to first (or, I guess, if Alvarez starts the season in Triple-A and never comes around) is Josh Harrison. Harrison is interesting, but has to improve his on-base skills to be an acceptable every day player. Tlate patience was never his thing in the minors, so that’s not a sure thing. It’s also true that the third base class this winter is probably even less interesting than the first baseman (with the exception of Wilson Betemit who … is Wilson Betemit). The thought that occured to me while trying to sort through this yesterday was this: why not move Neil Walker back to third? His defense is improving at second, but I’m still not sure that it’s good and he’s generally past the age that players improve defensively. He has a strong reputation at third, though, and anecdotally, he still kind of looks like a third baseman playing second base. The Pirates could put a strong defensive player at second and Walker at third and the infield defense would be quite a bit stronger, I’d bet. Or they could acquire a bat (a more dicey proposition, since most of the second baseman free agents to be that can hit are likely to be Type A free agents) and improve the infield offense. They could even put Ronny Cedeno at second if they ever find their White Whale of a starting shortstop.
It’s hard to say from here exactly what the Pirates should do when trying to find more infield power for 2012. It’s hard to predict what players will be avaiable on the trade market, what other teams will be interested, what asking prices will be, whether Pedro Alvarez will go to winter ball and improve his stock, etc. They should be open to considering just about anything, though, whether it’s something I’m suggesting above or something even further off of the radar.
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