North Shore Nine

In the past few weeks, the Pirates have acquired the following players: Marco Gonzales, Rowdy Tellez, Edward Olivares, and Martin Perez. Three of these players will be signed here for one season and move on to greener pastures. These four have combined for a total of 0.6 fWAR in 2023 and will make a combined 15 million or so (depending on what Olivares gets in arbitration). For most fans, seeing this list of players would be a nightmarish off-season. A clear sign that their team had no real interest in competing. But here in Pittsburgh, this is just the norm. It happens every single year without fail, and despite knowing it’s bad we can’t help but lap it up because we love this team too much. We are stuck in Groundhog Day.

The more things change around the world and even the world of baseball, the Pirates are one constant misery that never changes. Every offseason, fans of about 25 clubs get to anticipate which moves their teams will make to get their team to the postseason. Pirates fans, on the other hand, sit back and wait for the current crop of one-year signings that most likely won’t make it past July 31st. We are told every year that next year will be different, that we may even shop in a new market of free agents. But we wake up every winter and without fail, it’s the same caliber of players year in and year out.

Like Groundhog Day, at first, it’s kind of fun. You enjoy the bad baseball with likable guys. You get to laugh and enjoy guys like Michael Chavis, Erik Gonzales, Tyler Anderson, Wilmer Difo, Daniel Vogelbach, etc. But eventually, that wears off and you want to see a competitive team put on the field. You are told that the Pirates intend to put a competitive team out and each year the signings are still the same. It’s been belabored on Twitter over and over again so I won’t go into a tirade here, but it’s mind-melting trying to understand how a team in America’s Big Four Sports Leagues, that it has been 7 years since the Pirates have signed a multi-year deal in free agency. Read Ethan Fisher’s thread as he goes into excruciating detail about how pathetic our offseasons have been over the past decade.

The Pirates continue to trot out the same 1-year deals from the discount bin of the free-agent market. Or occasionally they get spicy and give you a trade that shuffles around 40-man roster spots. Jarrod Dyson, Josh VanMeter, Trevor Cahill, Roberto Perez; These names are not here to help the Pirates meaningfully win baseball games. They are in the building because Bob Nutting needs 26 players on the field who can physically play baseball for 162 games. This year’s crop of players so far has been no different. Despite being the year the Pirates are committed to competing, they have decided to double down on the same approach they’ve taken since 2019.

Ask yourself this question; are the acquisitions of Marco Gonzales, Martin Perez, and Rowdy Tellez moves that the 2020-2023 Pirates would not have made? I argue that they are and don’t come close to moving the needle in the positive direction. We are so committed to this way of thinking that we decided that employing one Rich Hill wasn’t enough, we wanted to employ 2 soft tossing journeyman lefties that nobody else wanted. Martin Perez even signed for the same amount Rich Hill did! But wait, you may cry: the Pirates aren’t done yet, the big move is still around the corner! But I tell you, this team is Groundhog Day. We will run it out in 2024 with the same crop of rentals that will probably be disposed of at the trade deadline.

What have the Pirates done in the past 8 years to make us feel any different? We still feel the scars of 2016 where the biggest offseason moves were Ryan Vogelsong and Jon Niese. That was after the Pirates won 98 games, what makes anyone reasonably think things will change for a team that won 76? If you can earnestly believe that, I envy you. I desperately want to feel that sense of hope, but we have been beaten down year after year with the same empty promises of investment and improvements to the team. We will be back here a year from now discussing the same free-agent deals, the same trades, and the same middling budget. Like Phil Connors, it makes me want to reach for my toaster.