DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The free-agent thing

DK’s Daily Shot of Pirates: The free-agent thing

[Music] [Applause] You might have heard a little semihistorical nugget that’s bounced around the baseball world over the past few months about how there hasn’t been a free agent signed in Pittsburgh to a multi-year contract in forever. I’m going to talk about that today, but maybe not in the way you’d expect. Good morning to you. Good Monday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates presented to you by the Northshore Tavern. Comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into football andor hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this. Ivon Nova is the name. If you were guessing that that was the one that was going to come up, and it has come up in many, many places beyond these past 10 seconds of this program. Nova was signed to a three-year, $26 million contract by the Pirates in the winter of 2016. Now, I put an asterisk next to that even though it’s not really fair because Nova had been with the Pirates. He elected free agency in early November and he was signed right around Christmas. So, he was a free agent for like a month and change. And when we think of free agents in general, any sport, you’re thinking of players that you signed who weren’t with you. You know, you’re going out to the open market. Well, this was just your guy, but whatever. Technically, it was accurate. And Yvon was coming off of a really good season, which is also not the best time to Yeah, you you you know, okay, this isn’t about him either, but it’s come up. It’s come up on some video programming, podcasts, social media, and it even was mentioned by the Yankees broadcast crew. God knows why, but it was. And it made some kind of splash in New York. Whoa. Can you believe that Pittsburgh hasn’t Uh, let me tell you what I think about not signing a free agent to a multi-year contract in that long. And please separate this from what I’m going to say afterward. It is thoroughly repulsive on countless levels that the Pirates haven’t signed a multi-year free agent in that time. It is doubly and triply repulsive that they haven’t done so in off seasons like let’s say before 2023 and 2024 when there was a clear need at a clear position with clear targets to have been had. I’m talking of course about corner outfield and first base. And whenever I bring this up, I don’t just state it blanketly. I’ll point to a Reese Hoskins with the Brewers. Brewers needed a first baseman. They needed a reliable bat. And they went and committed 39 million over three years to Hoskins, who’d been previously with Philadelphia. Now, has he been great in Milwaukee? No. He’s been kind of banged up. He’s been occasionally productive, but that’s also part of what you get with free agents because they tend to be older. And when you’re older, you’re going to break down more easily. But when you look at the nature of the move, the spirit of the move, and again, some of the value of the move, the Brewers did what they felt was right. The Brewers end up becoming the best team in Major League Baseball over the regular season, and they certainly gave it their best shot. Well, the pirates don’t ever get accused of giving anything their best shot. So, what they do is they have the same need. They bring in Spencer Horwitz, who had a fairly decent, fairly Horwitz kind of summer just now. He is a low power platoon hitting first baseman with a chronic wrist issue. And all of those boxes were checked in 2025. You get what you pay for, as they say. Now, here’s where I’m drawing the dividing line. I do not believe that the franchise right this second has anything to gain from signing a multi-year free agent. Hear me out on this. We’re about to be or about to embark in a different world when it comes to this sport and its economics. Now, I can’t sit here and paint what the exact collective bargaining agreement is going to look like. It might take a couple years for this to even come close to getting settled. But what we do have to go on is the existence of a salary cap system in the NFL, in the NHL, in the NBA, in Major League Soccer, and every other sport on this side of the ocean. So, we can at least begin there. And I am quite comfortable having covered firsthand the NHL’s work stoppages from earlier in this century in saying that you don’t want to be overcommitting to players that you don’t need right before that stoppage. That’s a big big mistake. What if that player comes with real value or even future value? Okay, you can discuss it. you can figure out what it would look like. But in that scenario, and only because of that scenario, see, here’s the thing. Once this all ends and there’s a new more rigid system in place, one that imposes everything that comes with a salary cap system, that means the ceiling, that means the floor, that means the expanded revenue sharing to make sure everyone can spend into that range, which happens to be a tight one between 20 million and $30 million. I can tell you that based on what happened to the NHL back then, the teams that have the lowest commitments moving forward are the ones that can really, really knock it out of the park when it comes to free agency. Why? Because teams like the Dodgers and the Yankees and the Mets and so forth, and yeah, by the way, the Blue Jays, too. They have existing contracts, some of which they’re going to have to try to work within the new agreement to grandfather out. In parenthesis here, every player gets paid. Of course, they’re guaranteed that money, but how it impacts the cap along the way has to be worked into the new pact. So, they’re in a position where in the greatest of all ironies, they can’t get a free agent if their lives depend on it. Whereas, and I realize this all sounds like science fiction except that it’s happened in every other sport, teams like the Pirates and the Marlins and the Rays and the A’s, they’re not only going to go and spend the most and get some of the biggest names, they will be made to do it. They will have no choice. So, now would not be the time to go chasing Arese Hoskins. When we come back, J1Q. [Music] If you’re looking for a great dining experience, look no further than Northshore Tavern. Located directly across Federal Street from PNC Park, next door to Mike’s Beer Bar, Northshore Tavern is Pittsburgh’s home for Steak on a Stone. Enjoy your steak finished on a hot lava stone in front of you, where you ensure each piece is cooked to exactly your liking. or try their rotating selection of entre, hot sandwiches, salads, and burgers, all while enjoying the ambiance dedicated to the great players and history of the Pittsburgh Pirates all around you. Come see why everyone’s talking about Northshore Tavern and Steak on a Stone. It’s Gun Storage Check Week. Help prevent unwanted access to your firearms. No one wants their unsecured gun to be used in an accident, a suicide, or a crime. Use lock boxes, safes, and locks to secure your firearms. Learn more at gunstorage check.org. That’s gunstoch check.org. Brought to you by NSSF, the firearm industry trade association. [Music] Today’s JQ comes from Paul and it’s in reference to the Paul Ske episode that I did to end last week. Paul writes, “Your points about the Pirates overarching hitting issues are all accurate, but Ben Cherington is still here. Paul Skins is still here in what could be his last year of control. So, shouldn’t the focus be on the now? Shouldn’t the owner demand it? Even if Cherington lacks the guts, it is more than fair to bury Cherington for failing to draft and develop cheap hitters. It is not fair to judge his ability to sign three good $15 million hitters. Free agents are expensive for a reason. They have a track record and Cherington has never been allowed to shop in that aisle. A lot of different stuff here. Uh first thing I I’d want to come back with is a correction. Uh Skins is not heading into any last year of control. At least I wouldn’t think so. I know what you’re getting at because I just talked about it in the opening segment as well. And that’s the allnew system. Well, I don’t think you’re going to see an all new system in which there’s a complete floodgate on everybody who has two years and change of major league service time being turned into a free agent. In fact, that strikes me as immensely unlikely. I shouldn’t have said correction. It’s just adding some context to what you wrote. As for the rest of it, if you want to judge Cherington based on the hypothetical that if he were allowed to sign $15 million hitters, or as you put it, three good $15 million hitters, you would first have to bring to me, Paul, any precedent of him signing good hitters at pretty any cost. One of the things that does happen around Major League Baseball inevitably every year is that players are signed at really low rates at one-year deals and they will pop. Only it doesn’t happen here. All that’s happened here is half a season of Tommy fam. That’s the only thing he’s got. The inability to evaluate hitting, the inability to implement a process in which hitters can be developed, nurtured, instructed, improved, also fall under this banner. They really do because what ended up happening with Fam? Well, Fam basically got himself a set of glasses. I’m being facitious, but he told me himself in Seattle that this in in his eyes, no pun intended, was purely a vision thing. It’s hard to argue with that given the way he hit once he addressed his vision thing. But ask yourself here again, looking at Cherington’s tenure, who gets better as a hitter in his watch? This trait of not being able to do anything related to hitting isn’t mitigated, at least not as I see it, by the amount of money that he’s allowed to spend. I just see it as a way that he could spend even more on failed hitting. But hopefully we can just respectfully agree to disagree. I always appreciate hearing from you, Paul. I appreciate everybody who listens to the Daily Shot of Pirates. So, we’ll be back with another one of these tomorrow. [Music]

Let’s really talk about the multiyear-free-agent thing.

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