Were the Pirates Smart to Part Ways with Maholm?

The big news this week in Pirates world is that Paul Maholm will see his 2012 option go un-picked up by his former team. That makes a lot of sense to Pirate fans, and should not surprise anyone. The option was worth $9.75 million, which is a ton for a small market team to give a pitcher who is just average at best.

The starting pitcher free agent market will be interesting this offseason. Here are some of the notable names that could be on the market come December (* = player has a club option that could be picked up).

Erik Bedard, Mark Buehrle, Chris Capuano, Bruce Chen, Bartolo Colon, Aaron Cook*, Kyle Davies, Doug Davis, Ryan Dempster*, Zach Duke*, Jeff Francis, Armando Galarraga, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland, Aaron Harang*, Rich Harden, Livan Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, Edwin Jackson, Kenshin Kawakami, Scott Kazmir*, Hiroki Kuroda, Rodrigo Lopez, Jason Marquis, Kevin Millwood, Sergio Mitre, Roy Oswalt*, Brad Penny, Oliver Perez, Joel Pineiro, C.C. Sabathia, Javier Vazquez, Tsuyoshi Wada, Adam Wainwright*, Tim Wakefield, Chien-Ming Wang, Brandon Webb, Dontrelle Willis, C.J. Wilson, Chris Young

Obviously there are some names there that the Pirates would never consider. However, there are some names that you could see the Pirates going after (especially after the interest they showed in Jorge de la Rosa last offseason).

However, my question (and @rtjr's, whose tweet inspired this post), is if the Pirates have a realistic chance at signing a free agent pitcher even if they offer as much or more money than other teams around the league.

The sad truth is that players just really do not want to play in Pittsburgh. Why would they? The team has not had a winning season since 1992 and the chances of players getting big money in the future from the Pirates are nonexistent. The Pirates are going into the offseason with a big time disadvantage compared to other teams bidding on the same players, which raises a question in my head if they should have just held on to what they already had.

Maholm isn't a great pitcher, and I have said before that there is very little chance that he will pitch as well as he did in 2011 ever again. However, he is a big league arm that does not miss starts and can win ball games for you. There are a bunch of guys like that listed above, but Maholm has the one thing that they don't; he actually wants to play here.

I am not saying that the Pirates should have held on to Maholm, I believe the opposite. However, the other side of the argument that I presented above is very logical as well. Maholm might not be worth the $9.75 million, especially $9.75 million of the Pirates money, but they have to have some competency in the rotation, and Maholm may be the best pitcher that they could actually convince to play in Pittsburgh in 2012.