More on Mario

Well after having some intense discussion with some people about this Mario Lemieux situation, I realize more needs to be said on this blog.

A good friend of mine (Steve) made a comment on my last post which led to a pretty good back-and-forth argument. I'll recap it real quick and then explain my position more clearly:

Steve's Position: Steve took the stance that in order for a pro baseball team to compete for the World Series, they almost have to have a high payroll. He provided statistics to back it, and accompanied with his accepting that is not ALWAYS like that (the exception of the '08 Rays), his point was a good one. Now, the less reasonable part of his argument was when he stated that he thought that Mario Lemieux would surely save the Pirates, and until he buys them, they have no chance of competing in this league. His reasoning for this was that "Mario would pay his players more than 5 dollars". I had a major problem with those statements.

In that last post, I explained that I didn't want Mario to buy the team because I wanted to see Nutting and company finish what they started. I am one of the few who trust them and think what they are doing is the right thing and that it has a good chance of working in the end. The last thing I wanted to see was this glorified "saviour" come in and reap all the benefits of the hard work Nutting and Huntington put in. After thinking about it, that stance was very personal-centered and really had nothing to do with the welfare of the Pittsburgh Pirates as a team. So here is my new-slightly altered stance, which responds to the arguments of Steve:

If Mario would buy the Pirates, ticket sales would go up and people would be more excited about the Pirates for the first year or two. After that, if the team still isn't winning, I think the ticket sales would gravitate back to where they were last year. The Lemieux flux wouldn't last too long if the team still loses. Steve would say that Lemieux would guarantee the team more wins and people would be excited about the Pirates because they were competitive again. However, in mine and many other of my Pirates' bloggers opinions, Lemieux would have very little affect on the Pirates' win totals.

The reason I say this is that Lemieux really wouldn't have too much of a choice but to follow the plan that is already laid out by Huntington and Nutting. Let's face it, regardless of Lemieux's history with the Penguins and their small-market franchise, there's no way he knows enough about baseball to feel confident enough to take over the system and deviate from the plan. I'm sure he would realize that what they are doing now is the best way to do it, and even if he didn't agree with it, they would be too far into now to give up on it. Therefore, everything would go the same way with Mario in charge as it is going now. The only variable here is if Lemieux and Burkle were willing to chip in some of their own money to help the team. Now Burkle is worth over 9 billion dollars, so that's not completely out of the question. However, I can't see him investing enough of his own worth in the team to make a significant impact. It's also pretty ridiculous to say that Nutting WON'T spend money when the time is right. There is no grounds to say that Lemieux would spend money when Nutting wouldn't. When the time is right (when the Pirates have a solid core of home-grown players), the team will spend the money necessary to take us to the next level and start competing with the best teams in the league.

So there you have it. If Mario buys the team, I'm not saying anything bad will happen, I am just saying that not enough good will come out of it to make it worth while. I still stand by Nutting and stand by my stance that he deserves to finish what he started.

And if Steve or any of you disagrees with all that, go be a Yankees fan or something :)