2013-14 MLB Hot Stove thread

Oh Christ, here we go. Here comes some serious goalpost moving with an economics of baseball lecture. Sprinkle in a few reading comprehensions and I'm sorry you are to dumb to understand and we are going to get an OOPapalozza here.

 

... and about 12 "because you're too stupid to realize my point" references.

 

With all due respect guys, the landscape has changed -- it now starts with the trolling theme.

 

Wrong again, LTL

What I said was the Pirates used waiting on Burnett as an excuse to do virtually nothing in free agency. I did not say they should have paid him. Please admit your mistake this time. Thank you.

 

And I admitted long ago that I was wrong about the Burnett acquisition being a mistake.

What I continued to argue was that $6.5 million per year was a significant amount of money to the Pirates. Given that it was as much any player on the team was making at the time, I was absolutely correct about that as well.

There is no goalpost moving at all in my post. Some posters here were just too ready to jump on me to read it properly.

 

I give it a 4 out of 10; just didn't have enough of the usual lines to rise above that.

Edit: for back-to-back posting, I'll up it to a 6.5.

 

Depends who is doing the spending. This is far from the only deal for a starting pitcher this offseason that had me thinking the guy got too much money.

 

Which means they made a commitment to win just like they're making a commitment 2 years later by not throwing out another $10 mil just for the sake of keeping a 37-year-old pitcher. Did they go free-agent shopping while deciding what to do with Burnett? Guess not. Maybe they like the basic chemistry right now and feel they can still contend and then make adjustments as they're warranted. Maybe they want to make a move during the season.

At least they have $16 million bucks to play with.

 

The Phillies have tons of money and considering their lineup, a need for starting pitching. So this isn't a bad deal for them, considering it's one year. Burnett will probably do OK for at least half the season.

 

One trade proves a commitment to winning? Damn, y'all really are desperate this time.

The Pirates finally built a contender.You can absolutely argue that allowing Byrd, Jones, Morneau and Burnett to leave made sense from a baseball standpoint, but all they have done to counter those losses was to sign Edinson Volquez and hide behind this idea that they were going to re-sign Burnett, which did not happen.

 

"There are no bad one-year contracts" is No. 2 on Steak's Baseball Contract Maxims, right after "don't give multi-year deals to middle relievers."

 

If they go back to being 71-91 this season, I'll come back and say you're right.