Yesterday, Dejan Kovacevic reported that Mario Lemieux made an offer to buy the Pirates. While most Pittsburghers have gotten extremely excited about the Pennsylvania, such as the writers at thepensblog.com, I am not on board with this at all.
Now the reason I'm against it is not because I don't think Mario could do a good job, I don't think there's a way to predict how he would fair, my reasoning comes from elsewhere.
I'm going to just come out here and say this right now, and it may cost me some readers, but I don't care - I don't like the Penguins. All of my friends and most of my fellow bloggers that participate in the game blogs know that, and now all of my readers are going to know it as well.
It hasn't always been like this, I was a huge Penguins fan growing up, but since the lockout I have not been a fan. I tried to get back into it, but all of the new fans and all of the hype about Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin really turned me off. Now if you talk to me in person, I am pretty violent in my talk about the Penguins fan base. I will try and be more reasonable and more sensible about it here, though. In my experience, a lot of the Penguins fans I know have very little knowledge about the game and the team. Very few of them gave any regard to the team when they were losing, and then a winning season and a pretty-boy face come to town and they jump on the bandwagon like there was free money on it. That, a long with the fact that it seems half the league doesn't speak English has turned my slight distaste for hockey into a pretty full-on dislike. I'm not going to use the word 'hate', but we're getting closer to it.
So there's a short version of my story with the Penguins, now let's back on topic.
The Pirates are closer now to being a contender than they have been in a long time, however most Pittsburgh sports fans don't see that. The unintelligent baseball fan looks at everything the Pirates have done negatively, and gives no thought to the idea that all the moves made were necessary. Now keep that in mind for a minute.
Let's say that Mario buys the team, and two years later they make a playoff run. Who are the new bandwagon Pirate fans going to give the credit to? Neil Huntington and current management for rebuilding the team correctly and being smart with their money? No, they are going to make even more of an idol out of Mario Lemieux than he already is. They will say that the Pirates never would have been successful if Mario hadn't bought the team. And if I would ever hear somebody say that, I would probably be more angry than I have ever been in my entire life.
The fact is that if the Pirates have a winning season or make a playoff run in the next 5 years, almost all of the credit should go to Neil Huntington, Bob Nutting, and the rest of the Pirates management team. If Mario Lemieux buys the team and they start winning, there are going to be multitudes of the dumbest fans in America coming into PNC Park to see the Pirates play. All of those fans will be blindly praising Mario Lemieux for "saving the Pirates". While that is not the worst thing in the world, I think the current ownership and management deserve the chance to finish what they started and get credit for what they do, if that credit ever turns out to be due to them.
So that's where I stand, I may be standing alone, but I do not want to see Mario Lemieux buy the Pittsburgh Pirates.
*edit*
I don't think I made my main point clear enough here. The reason people want Mario to take over, besides the fact that he is a familiar face and he has a good track record running a small-market team, is that they don't trust Bob Nutting. I am one of the few that do trust the Pirates' management. They have laid out this plan for making the team competitive again, and they have stuck to it, so far. Therefore I believe they deserve every chance to finish that plan and not be bought out before they can start reaping the benefits. I have nothing against Mario Lemieux, and yes, my hatred of bandwagon fans probably weighs my points down at times, but I like the road the Pirates are on and I want to see the end result with Bob Nutting and Neil Huntington in the drivers seat.
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12 comments:
This is zemba...
Ok right here
"Let's say that Mario buys the team and two years later they make a playoff run."
and also right here
"The Pirates are closer to being a contender than they have been in a long time, however, most Pittsburgh Sports Fans don't see that. "
Ok, one. If mario buys the team he will be saving it. I guarantee that actually. Make Lemieux the owner because he will actually dish in more than 5 bucks to his players. Are you kidding me? How many time's do I have to post on here and show people the correlation between money and winning. This is a business, not a game. If you wanna know why, I already explained it in a previous comment on jon's blog. A-Rod's Salary this year is almost more than all of the players on the pirates team. He made like 25 mill, pirate's will open the season at 35. Is that a joke? like really? Man up, unbunch your panties and put some green out to some good player. Mario obviously has the money for that. Not some idiot Bob Nutting.
I don't even know what to say about that second quote, it's almost laughable. I pretty much threw up in my mouth when I read that. Let's get realistic here. Yeah, your team might, just maybe, possibly could be getting on the right track, and I'm really stressing maybe. But most fans, managers, and owners could probably agree that a contender would be at least in the upper 70 wins range. You can't contend to win the world series by winning 62 games in a season. The only thing you'll be contending for is last place. If your pirates have a few closer to .500 seasons then maybe we'll have this discussion again. But I hate to say it, but with 16 losing seasons in a row, I really don't know how people can be so optimistic. You guys act like they have made playoff runs for the last 5 years.
At least bringing lemieux in would bring in a winner......
Guaranteeing that Lemieux would make the Pirates start winning destroys ANY credibility you have in this comment. You keep preaching about how the Pirates need to spend money to START winning. If you had any knowledge about how baseball works and the history of successful small-market teams, you would realize that winning has to happen BEFORE you spend money.
In order to be a good team, you have to have a good core of players. There is not a team in the major leagues who acquired their core of players by spending money in free agency. The biggest spenders in the league - the New York Yankees - have a core of guys they acquired through the draft or acquired when they were young and in the minor leagues, and then grew them into great big league players, I'm talking about guys like Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and a lot of others.
My point is, you can't buy your core of players. You can buy enhancements that put your team over the to, like the Yankees do yearly with guys like Sabathia, Teixeira, etc.
With all of the trades made in the last 2 years the Pirates have made, they are starting to acquire a lot of young talent who can all be in the majors at the same time and form a solid core of players. When and if those players turn out to be successful, the Pirates will start to see some wins go up on the board. Now, the players they have might be good enough to take them to being a World Series contender, but when they become good enough to be a winning team, that's when the money should be spent - to add what we need to put us over the top and take us to the next level.
Going out and spending a bunch of money would only set us back. The Pirates are a small market team and don't have the money to go out and buy wins, we have to grow them through our farm system. Once we start winning when the young guys come up and play together, revenue will increase and we will be able to start spending money with the other teams in the league and give our core guys the money to want. And we WILL have the money to do it, because of all of the money we spent by getting rid of guys like Bay, Sanchez, Wilson, Nady etc. who were past their primes and overpaid.
If you don't believe me, read this - http://www.buccofans.com/2010/01/right-time-to-spend.html
that second to last line should say "all the money we SAVED", not spent
SZ
Ok for one, in the first paragraph, I already proved to you the stats of your horrid small market teams, I'm not going to sit here and go over statistics and that prove it. Because I'm right on it. Go back and if your still going to argue it. What was it like under 10 percent of teams that are in the bottom half of the payroll win the series every year.
The bottom line is, I don't give a crap whether or not the pirates are a small market team. Do you not realize what I mean when I say bringing in Mario would be an improvement. I can guarantee you that he would spend more money to either A. Help sign players B. Throw in money for trades for your "hopeful prospects C. Buy a good player or two to start your core players.
It's obvious that whatever they have been doing isn't working. And although it might work for a club like the rays once every ten to fifteen years, we don't have a big name prospect besides the MC.
Just throwing this in, when we do get a few good players, they get traded because of why, because of MONEY. Then when we get the hopeful prospects, let's say 10 in the trades of the season. Two will get good. Then what happens, you need to sign them to long term deals. Oh wait a minute, we can't pay out that kind of money. Let's trade them. I'm not sure but I see a trend developing. Bay and Mcclouth could have been a great outfield combo if we had another 40 million to spare..
Did you even read my comment?
The fact is, all of the baseball experts and analysts say that the Pirates are doing the right things. If you don't believe me I'll send you multiple articles that back that.
You say spending money is the answer, and the team's that win the world series are almost always in the higher rankings of payroll. I can just re-state my previous point here to prove you wrong.
But first of all, let me address your point in that final paragraph, and tell you that the trades that happened last year were NOT done to solely save money. The players we traded were not good enough to make the Pirates competitive. Look at there numbers from last year, look at their projections for this year, Jason Bay is the only one with good numbers. We could have saved every single player we traded, paid them all a ton of money, and ended up with around 80 wins. Sure, we might break .500 and make some fans happy, but then our money would be gone and we'd be stuck with a bunch of declining mediocre players for the next decade, and we wouldn't have any pitching.
Before the trades, the Pirates had nothing in the minors and nothing in the majors. Now, we at least have SOMETHING in the minors, that's better than where we were before.
Now I wouldn't expect you to know this, because you really have no idea what's going on with the Pirates rebuilding project, but the Pirates spent a ton of money in the draft last year. There were only a handful of players that spent more money than us on prospects and draft picks. The Pirates went after top high school prospects that were already verbally committed to playing in college, and paid them enough money to get them out of that commitment. Guess what that means? We got 1st and 2nd round talent in the middle rounds of the draft. We added more talent almost every other team in the majors in 2009, so you can be quiet about management not spending money.
And when you don't have a lot of money, you have to spend it wisely. Guess what, if you sign a major league free agent, you pay more for less. They get premium dollars and you have less control of them. They end up hitting arbitration and leaving your team after only a few years. When you spend money in the draft, you get more control of those players. You can keep them longer. The Pirates can get players when their young, and have them reach their potential with the Pirates instead of already being past it and just declining with us, and we get to keep them for longer and pay them less (at least for the first 2-3 years).
The Rays were a small market team whose top prospects all came up around the same time and played great. But guess what happened after that. The Ray's payroll went up. Once they saw that the team could compete, they went out and spent money in free agency, and now they are an annual competitor. That's the same approach the Pirates are taking, and it's proven to work.
and your aforementioned "statistics" don't prove anything. All you said was that the team that wins the World Series most often has a high payroll the year they win it. Those stats don't look into any of that payrolls or money situations in the years building up to that World Series run. When the Pirates win the World Series, their payroll is going to be a lot higher than it is now. They aren't stupid, and they are trying to win. If their plan works, they will up their payroll and you will see them fit right into those statistics. However, right now is not the right time to have a high payroll, and if you think that signing a big free agent like Matt Holliday would have helped the Pirates win the World Series faster - you are incredibly wrong.
If I'm wrong, then the pirates probably should have at least made the playoffs one of the last 17 damn years. And it's only gonna get longer unless you do what I say. Rebuilding is damn near impossible when you have teams spending a billion dollars a year
I mean, shouldn't they have considered rebuilding then? They have had an ample amount of time HA HA HA
you should really stick to arguing about things you know. Any intelligent baseball fan would see that your thinking is completely wrong.
But you know it's true. You just can't argue with that fact. It's inevitable Mr. Anderson
I can't argue with it? Then what have I been doing ^ up there??
jon, I read your blog...can't say I've read all the comments...but for some reason, I don't want Mario buying the team either...I have nothing against the pens or mario...I'm just not a big fan of the sport of hockey in general...I dont know, I'd like to see his reasoning on why he wants to buy them?
Also, as far as money goes, Neal is doing the right thing. The young players we have right now aren't at high-salary status yet...so sure our team payroll is low, but Neal said he's not gonna buy washed-up vets just to boost it...he's isn't Dave Littlefield (not another Matt Morris, please. In a few years, when we're contendning, he said the payroll can get to that 70 million dollar status, just like the reds and brewers...but at this point, he's not gonna spend money just to spend it.
I like where things are heading...they're doing a much better job this time around, and I've talked to other baseball fans who feel the same way, which is reassuring...
Let's Go Bucs
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