Talking Baseball: Vol. 18
The Pittsburgh Pirates made a trade, the A's signed a guy and Juan Soto gets a lot of money.
In a vacuum I have nothing against the Pittsburgh Pirates trade for first baseman Spencer Horwitz.
It is fine.
He is fine.
The value in the trade is probably fine.
This is fine.
Trading Luis Ortiz for a hitter is the exact type of move I would have encouraged this offseason, so I can not even be mad at that aspect of it. I know Ortiz had a strong year and is a versatile arm that can start and come out of the bullpen, but they have pitching depth and Ortiz’s value might have been at an all-time high. No problem cashing in on that.
But here is my problem — the trade itself just does not actually excite me for reasons beyond the trade itself. It is just more of the same from this current front office and ownership.
He is another platoon bat at a position that has been filled by a revolving door of platoon bats (and bad bats) since they traded Josh Bell. It is a position that should not be this difficult to fill. Based on his (brief) Major League career, Horwitz should hit righties well, he will get on base, he will hit the occasional home run and he should be a better, younger version of what they tried to do in recent years with Rowdy Tellez and Carlos Santana. He is also under team control for several years.
That is, again, all perfectly fine.
But the goal here should not be to simply be better than Rowdy Tellez or Carlos Santana.
The goal should be to get better than the Milwaukee Brewers and try to compete for a division that is absolutely winnable.
You, as an organization, have been blessed with an incredible gift in the form of Paul Skenes and you have roughly five years to win with him before he goes the way of Gerrit Cole and gets traded to the team that will eventually pay him his market value. The clock is ticking, and you do not have time to wait around and half ass the next few seasons.
An optimist might look at the Pirates offseason and say there are still two months before spring training opens and four months before the season begins. A lot can change in that amount of time. Maybe there are more moves to be made.
Maybe.
But let’s be serious here. This is the Pittsburgh Pirates. We know the Pittsburgh Pirates because the Pittsburgh Pirates have given us years of examples as to who and what the Pittsburgh Pirates are and what the Pittsburgh Pirates do.
You always want to wait for the other shoe to drop and get the next big move.
Then it never happens.
If the Pirates make Spencer Horwitz their big offseason move, hang a mission accomplished banner for adding a bat, and then go into the season with mostly the same roster as the 2024 season and a similar payroll then you are just setting yourself up to waste another year of Skenes’ career.
There should be added incentive here because your young pitchers are not only good, they are also probably (knock on wood) as healthy as they will ever be right now. Everybody important in the rotation is lined up ready to go for next season, and you even have the arrival of Bubba Chandler and the return of Johan Oviedo to help.
If the Pirates were serious about trying to win, nobody in the infield would have a guaranteed roster spot in 2025, and if a reasonable upgrade could be acquired, there should be zero hesitation. There is no secret with what Isiah Kiner-Falefa is at this point in his career. Nick Gonzales had some moments a year ago, but remains a huge question mark as to how good he really is. Ke’Bryan Hayes is either perpetually injured, not very good, or both. Can you count on Joey Bart for a full season?
You still need a right fielder.
If Bryan Reynolds is the right-handed bat in a first base platoon you will need somebody to play left field 30 percent of the time.
Everybody loves Andrew McCutchen. But he should not be cemented in as the full-time designated hitter.
You are also still easily in the bottom-five of payroll.
Even if you want to roll with the infield you have, the corner outfield spots and perhaps even the designated hitter spot all command and demand a legit bat. There are options available.
You could easily spend $20-$30 million at somebody and still not break out of the bottom-10 in payroll.
Deep down, however, I know this is all a waste of time to talk about because it is never going to happen. Which makes it even more depressing.
Especially when you look across baseball and see something like the A’s — the A’S! — dropping $22 million per year on Luis Severino and reportedly making a serious push at Max Fried before he signed with the New York Yankees.
Look, if the one team in baseball with a worse owner than you, and a team that is slated to play the next three years in a minor league ballpark in Sacramento, can spend $22 million per year on a free agent then you have zero excuse not to do the same.
The fact a player like Severino (a good player, even if not a star) is willing to sign on in that environment, on a team that is not likely to win anytime soon, is a testament to money being the only thing that really matters.
If you offer the cash at a market rate, the players will join your team.
Even with that being said, the Pirates should be a more attractive destination than the A’s right now. Any team should be. Just put out the money.
Speaking of putting out the money, the New York Mets did exactly that for Juan Soto and in the process completely shifted the balance of power in both the National and American Leagues.
I do not think that is overstating it, either.
It is almost unheard of for a player that good and that young (26) to be hitting the open market, and Soto took advantage of that by landing the largest contract in professional sports history. It could eclipse the $800 million mark if he does not take advantage of the opt-out in five years and sees his yearly salary increase.
I figured he would get a lot money. I figured the Mets would probably be the team to give it to him.
I did not expect him to get potentially $100 million more than Shohei Ohtani did.
Ohtani always seemed like a different beast because he is literally two All-Star level players in one. He is a top-three left-handed hitter and, when healthy, probably a top-10 starting pitcher. Individually either one alone could shift a franchise. Together in one body it is the best baseball player any of us have ever seen.
It is no discredit or disrespect to Soto to say he is not that. Because nobody is.
But Soto is still a franchise-changer in his own way. Every team he has played for has immediately become a legitimate World Series contender. He helped lead the Washington Nationals to a championship. He went to San Diego and helped them get to the National League Championship Series. He went to the Yankees and helped them get to the World Series.
Joining a Mets team that already has Francisco Lindor, Francisco Alvarez, Matt Vientos and whoever else Steve Cohen authorizes this offseason could help take a Mets team that already reached the NLCS to the next level.
Especially given what Soto did for the Yankees.
Prior to Soto’s arrival in the Bronx the Yankees’ lineup essentially came down to Aaron Judge carrying it and everybody else just coming along for the ride. That 2023 roster after Judge was …. not great.
The 2024 lineup after Judge and Soto was not much better. But Soto was what brought the whole thing together and gave them another MVP-caliber bat.
On one hand, I want to be critical of the Yankees for allowing Soto to leave because they have not operated the way the Yankees should operate for a while. There is no salary cap. They should, in theory, have bottomless resources. They used to be the team that would go above and beyond to try and win by signing whoever they could for whatever it would cost. Even though their payroll is still among the highest in baseball, and even though they have made a few big splash signings, they have missed out on a lot of elite players by either not going high enough (Juan Soto), or by simply not having serious interest (Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Trea Turner).
On the other hand, I think in this instance whatever dollar amount they would have put in front of Soto would have been immediately greeted with Cohen going above and beyond that. I truly think with this player he was determined to get him no matter what it was going to cost. There is nothing you can do about that.
I do think there is a path for the Yankees to potentially come out of this okay and still have a contending team.
Fried is a big addition.
Maybe they go after Roki Sasaki coming over from Japan.
Maybe they can trade for Kyle Tucker from Houston.
Maybe they do all of that and also add Christian Walker to play first base.
There are a lot of options. But they have to actually do them. They have to start acting like the Yankees again.
Even if they do, trying to replace Soto is a brutally difficult task. Trying to go the quantity over quality route is usually a losing proposition because one megastar is always worth more than two or three really good players. Soto was exactly what the Yankees needed.