Welcome, Francisco Cervelli

Almost two years ago to the day, November 30, 2012 to be exact, I wrote a blog post entitled "Welcome, Russell Martin", and now, we have a strangely similar circumstance, as the Pirates bring a new catcher to the team from the New York Yankees.  In this case, Francisco Cervelli arrives via a trade as Russell Martin prepares to hit the Free Agent Jackpot, probably with the Chicago Cubs.

All Pirate fans feel bad that Martin will be departing the team, and I am not going to go down that well travelled road again.  It should be noted that back in November of 2012, most fans greeted the signing of Martin with an attitude of, at best, "let's wait and see what happens".  Well, we know now that the Martin signing could hardly have worked out better for the Pirates and, it will turn out, for Martin.  So, let's be grateful to Martin for what he did here, wish him well with whomever he signs, and look to the future.

In Cervelli, the Pirates get a young, age 28, player who has shown flashes of great promise, but has been injury plagued throughout his career, playing in only 250 games over seven seasons.  Projected to a 162 game season, Cervelli's career shows a .278 BA, 6 HR, 60 RBI, and .729 OPS.  Over a very small sample size of 2013-14 (56 games, 198 AB), his OPS is over .800, so that is something to grasp on to, is it not?

The Pirates gave up left handed reliever Justin Wilson to get Cervelli, and it would be a rare occasion where I would NOT be happy to get an everyday player in exchange for bridge-the-gap-to-the-closer relief pitcher.  Wilson has a fast ball in the high 90's, and he had a great season in 2013, but he regressed a bit in 2014, so viewing this trade in a vacuum, I say this is a good deal for the Pirates.  Not to sound too much like Neal Huntington, I think that Cervelli brings a lot of upside to the team, but he will need to stay healthy.  That is the Big Question that Cervelli brings with him to PNC Park.  It also tells us that the Pirates have no faith in former Number One pick Tony Sanchez as an everyday catcher, and they also feel that Elias Diaz is not yet ready for Prime Time.

Notice that I didn't mention money.  Such transactions are always about the money where the Pirates are concerned, but you know what? I don't care.  Yeah, I wish that they would spend more money, I wish that they could have kept Martin, and I think that the Pirates may, MAY, be overly concerned with the almighty bottom line, but there is nothing that I can do about that, so I try very hard not to expend too much personal angst over such matters.

That said, MY bottom line is that I think GM Neal made a fairly good deal here.  It may not work out, but, as my friend Dan Bonk, channelling his inner Johnny Rivers, said on Facebook this morning, that's life on the poor side of town.

One final comment. Included on Cervell's resume is a fifty game suspension in 2012 for PED use.  It brings up a conundrum for us Bucco fans.  You know, us fans who vociferously boo each Ryan Braun at bat at PNC Park, and who curse Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, and others of their ilk, as we cheer on Francisco Cervelli as he wears the black and gold tools of ignorance.  What do we make of that?  

Sometimes being a fan can be complicated.

Some Pirates Thoughts

Before settling in to watch the Pirates-Nats game tonight (currently 3-0 Nats in the third inning), some thoughts and observations.

Observation #1

I do not usually go crazy over criticizing and savaging the Pirates front office over every little move they make, but I have to say that I got a little P.O.'d when listening to the game on, I believe, Wednesday night, and hearing Greg Brown and John Wehner  launch into a dialog about how it is going to be pretty much impossible for the team to re-sign Russell Martin for 2015 any beyond, because, gosh, you know Russell has indicated that he might want to test the market to see what his value might be, and, you just know that one of those crazy big market, cash-rich teams is going to make some crazy offer that the Pirates just will never be able to match, and it would be good business for them to do so anyway.   

I almost couldn't believe what I was hearing.  The whole thing just smacked of being orders from on high (Nutting and/or Coonelly and/or Huntington) telling the broadcasters to start spreading the word that "we ain't going to sign Martin and it's not our fault - it's Martin's fault and the fault of the Angels/Yankees/Red Sox/take-your-pick".  Hey, the announcers are paid by the Pirates, and who among us hasn't done things at our employers' behest that we didn't necessarily like, but that was really insulting to the audience's intelligence, and I can't believe that Brown and Wehner kept a straight face while doing it.  As one Pirate Chatter put it on Facebook, it was a line of b.s. akin to parents preparing their six year old for the fact that the family dog was about to be put to sleep.

Observation #2

Michael Martinez has been playing second base in place of an injured Neil Walker.  Martinez is hitting .135.  You read that right One-Three-Five.  He also made an error in the Tigers game that may  - and I emphasize may - have cost the Pirates a chance to go into extra innings in that game.  A Pirate Chatter made a statistical case that Martinez may be among the dozen or so worst players in all of baseball history!! All. Of. Baseball. History.

Now I realize that when you lose an all-star caliber player, which Walker has been this season, to injury, you are not going to replace him with a player of equal talent.  But really, in all of organized baseball, couldn't the Pirates have found somebody, anybody, better than Michael Martinez?  I mean...

Observation #3

The Pirates make a waiver deal and acquire relief pitcher John Axford.  Axford was once an All-Star (at least, I think he was), but like many older relief pitchers, he's not what he used to be.  At best, he is an improvement over guys like Pimental and Gomez, and he may take some of the strain off of Hughes and Watson and Wilson.  It's a deal that could be of marginal help to the team.  It's not worth celebrating with champagne and dancing in the streets, but it's not one that is cause for boiling up tar and feathers for the Front Office, either.

Welcome, Russell Martin

The Pittsburgh Pirates and GM Neal "Smartest Guy in the Room" Huntington have struck quickly in the free agent market and signed catcher Russell Martin to a reported two year, $17 million deal.

What do I think about that?  Well, right off the bat, let's stipulate that Martin is not Johnny Bench.  We can also agree that it stinks that the Pirates do not have anyone in their developmental pipeline who can step in and be a solid, everyday, reasonably productive catcher.  That 2009 Number One draft pick Tony Sanchez is not, and may never be ready, to fulfill that role is symptomatic of one of the big problems of the NHR (Neal Huntington Regime), but ranting about THAT problem does not resolve the problem it has created, namely, who's going to don the tools if ignorance for the Bucs in 2013?

The free agent catcher market was very shallow this year, and in Martin the Pirates may have gotten the best of the lot.  He can hit for power (21 HR last year), but his batting average is not great (,211 last year) and his OPS (.713) is mediocre.   On the plus side, he threw out 24% of base runners attempting to steal last year.  (Come to think of it, compared to what Pirates catchers did in this department last year, this DOES make him Johnny Bench!)   Also, he will be only 30 years old when the season opens next year (by comparison, Rod Barajas was 36 when signed by the team last winter).

So, at this point in time, at least, Martin does represent an improvement over what the Pirates had last year, and yeah, I know that that is a very low bar to clear, but it is an improvement, nonetheless.  As I said, you can argue that the Pirates should have someone in the pipeline who is both a cheaper and better alternative, but they don't, so they have to do something about it, and they did.  We shall see how it turns out.

After reading lots of comments in the last several hours about this deal, I am struck by two things.  One thread wondered if the team consulted A.J. Burnett on this.  I would hope not.  Personally, I thought the whole "A.J. likes pitching to Barajas" thing was overblown last year.  If you are a good pitcher, which Burnett certainly proved to be last year, you can pitch to any catcher.  The other thread criticized the Pirates for "spending too much money" to sign Martin.  You can't have it both ways, folks - you can't lambaste the Pirates for being cheap and not spending money on payroll, and then criticize them when they do.

Anyway, we will all know soon enough if this is a good or bad signing for the Pirates.

Finally, I must confess to having a certain liking for Russell Martin.  In 2007, he was a member of my fantasy team, The Big Train, and in that magical season, the Big Train stormed to the Championship of the prestigious North Park League.  So - Welcome Home, Russell Martin!!!