The Overbay Signing and the Offseason Strategy

The Overbay signing has resulted in a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from Pirate fans internet-wide. I'm not sure why, really. It seems like most people get terrible Littlefield-flashbacks whenever the Pirates sign a mediocre veteran to a stopgap deal. That's understandable, as this was a common Littlefield tactic and Littlefield's regime, overall, was a nightmare. But of course every team signs mediocre stopgaps, and a team as bad as the Pirates needs more of them than other teams do. As long as the stopgaps aren't blocking more talented players, and as long as they aren't the entirety of your team-building strategy, as they were for Littlefield, there's really nothing wrong with them. They provide some stability so that you aren't stuck with a black hole somewhere in the lineup/rotation when Jeff Clement or Charlie Morton don't live up to expectations.

It's clear that the Pirates plan this offseason is to supplement the talented young players on the team with non-terrible veterans who can provide some stability. It's essentially a "Drive for 75"strategy (another horrifying Littlefield flashback), but one that doesn't inhibit the broader goals of rebuilding. It's an attempt to win 70-75 games (instead of 55-65) in 2011 while waiting for the young players to coalesce into the core of a competitive team. There's nothing wrong with that.

Complaints seem to center on the idea that in Garrett Jones, Steve Pearce, John Bowker, and Ryan Doumit, the Pirates already have plenty of guys who do what Lyle Overbay does, making him a $5MM redundancy. Worse, some people still believe that Jones, Pearce, and/or Bowker has upside that could make them valuable to the Pirates in 2013 or whenever it is that the Pirates are finally decent again.

Well, neither of those things are true, though. The latest CHONE update from last year pegged Jones, Pearce, and Bowker as 2, 8, and 8 runs above average over a full season (hitting plus fielding), with Overbay at +11. The ZiPS projections peg all four players exactly the same: OPS+ at 101-102 and average fielding at first. But what Jones, Pearce, and Bowker can't provide is the stability I mentioned way back in paragraph one.

To provide some illustration, prior to the 2010 season, CHONE projected Jeff Clement to be 7 runs above average as a firstbaseman. Clement went on to hit .201/.237/.368 in his brief, 154 PA trial in the majors. That's not to say that Clement is terrible or will never hit major league pitching. But the risk you run with unproven players is that they just won't be able to perform in the majors. Because of the lack of track record, we can have very little certainty about how guys like Pearce or Bowker will perform if given full-time roles. Thus, there is some benefit to a guy like Overbay, who has a long, relatively-consistent track record. He's definitely not going to hit .200/.250/.350. You can take 1.5-2.5 WAR to the bank, and that confidence is worthwhile for a team like the Pirates that has a lot of question marks.

Still, that certainty might not be worthwhile if, as some critics of the Overbay signing suggest, Overbay blocks players with upside who could potentially help a winning Pirate team in the future. I know Pirate fans are desperate to find some good, long-term answers, but Pearce, Jones, and Bowker are quite simply not those guys. They project as just-slightly-above-average hitters for a reason: they're not all that good. It's not like any of them are young guys who could improve if they had consistent playing time, either. Bowker's the youngest and he'll turn 28 in July. There's just not a lot of upside there.

If one prefers to try guys like Bowker or Pearce on the off-chance that the bust out as above-average players, that's fine. (Garrett Jones, of course, is the cautionary tale, as a guy who seemingly bust out in 2009 only to revert back into a just-plain-bust last year. You shouldn't confuse random variation with change in true talent.) But even if letting Bowker or Pearce play is one's individual preference, I find it hard to fault the Pirates for having a different preference. They'd prefer to sign a cheap veteran to provide some stability in the field and in the lineup and forget about the minimal chance at upside that AAAA guys* like Bowker and Pearce provide. Maybe Overbay isn't much of an upgrade, but he's not a downgrade, provides some stability, and doesn't block anyone more talented. So even if the move isn't very exciting, I don't think there's much reason to actively dislike it.

*I usually find it annoying when other people use the term "AAAA player," so let me clarify by saying that I don't think there's some magic intangible that allows some players to transfer their skills from AAA to the majors while others inevitably fail. When I say "AAAA player" I don't mean a guy who's good in AAA but terrible in the majors; I mean a guy who's good enough to be in the majors but not good enough to be a starter in the majors. John Bowker, for instance: he has hit really well in AAA the last couple years, but has not hit well in the majors. I don't expect him to continue to hit .240/.290/.390 in the big leagues just because his AAA pixie dust doesn't transfer, but I also don't think that a slightly-above-average hitter (as ZiPS sees him) who's not a particularly good defender should be starting at first base or a corner outfield position.

On a more general note, I'm getting a bit annoyed with the incessant negativity that's greeted every move the Pirates have made this offseason. They haven't made a single bad move, and signing mediocre stopgaps to low-money, short-term contracts is exactly what a team as crappy as the Pirates should be doing. They aren't going to win anything in 2011 (or 2012, for that matter), so the best thing they can do this offseason is add the depth that will keep them from losing 100 games again. Kevin Correia, Scott Olsen, Matt Diaz, and Lyle Overbay aren't good players, but the Pirates are far more likely to be respectable in 2011 with them than without them. They don't cost much money, they aren't long-term commitments, they don't block anyone with substantial upside, and they provide good depth. What's not to like?

April 25 Journal Project

Better late than never, I hope, here is the completed journal project that we all participated in last April. Sorry for the delay. I am lazy. I am hoping to be less lazy in the future. (The fact that I couldn't quite bring myself to use "endeavoring" instead of "hoping" there probably speaks volumes about the chances that I'll ever actually become less lazy [and the fact that I considered using "endeavoring" but couldn't allow myself to do it for vague and complex ethical reasons speaks volumes about my personality, as does the fact that I chose to confess all of this to whomever might end up reading this post]).

The project is a .pdf document, but since my computer skills are limited to setting up a free blogspace provided by google, I have no idea how to get the .pdf from my computer to your computer. So here's how you can access it: sign in to gmail under the username "april25project" with the password "journals." There should be just the one email in there, from me, with no subject heading. The document is attached. You can download it if you've got Adobe or some other program that can open .pdf files, or you can open it as a google document. You'll notice that it consists of a bunch of pages with four fields per page. They should be read top-left, bottom-left, top-right, bottom-right, respectively. So there's that.

It's formatted like that so you can turn it into a calendar. If you want to make the effort, just cut out the four fields from each page, order them, and bind them at the top, at which point you'll have a nifty desk calendar which won't actually tell you what date it is but will look kind of cool and artsy and immediately transform your desk or cubicle into an art show.

You can learn the basics of home bookbinding here. It's pretty easy, and you can move onto prettier and more complicated techniques from there.

So that's the project. I hope everyone likes it, and for those of you who participated, I thank you for your help and apologize again for not getting this done in a more timely manner. If there are any other questions, you can post them in the comments (I think).