He turned into one of the best closers in the game and a valuable commodity for the Pittsburgh Pirates to have. However, the team only won 72 games and had their 19th straight losing season.
A top of the run closer seems like something that should be a luxury for a struggling young team. It's simply not as important as having starting pitchers and position players that can win games before the 9th inning.
Guess what? Joel Hanrahan is scheduled to be a free agent at the end of this 2012 season. You know what kind of money he'll get on the market if he pitches anywhere near as well this year as he did last year? Too much for the Pirates to afford. There is no chance that the Pirates give Hanrahan what he's valued for to keep him in Pittsburgh after this season, it's simply not how this team is run.
For right now, I don't think there's a chance Hanrahan is a Pirate in 2013. He isn't going to take a ton less money to stay here, don't kid yourself. He's gone after this year.
Knowing that, the Pirates need to look to trade him this season. Whether it's at the deadline or earlier, the Pirates simply can't afford to lose him for nothing. Closers have been vastly overvalued recently (Jonathan Papelbon got $50 million for 4 years and Heath Bell got $27 million for 3 years). The return on a Hanrahan trade this offseason would have been huge, which is what frustrated me when it appeared the Pirates weren't even trying to shop him around.
Don't get me wrong, the Pirates very well could have been shopping him to test the market, it may just not have become public knowledge. That's very possible. However, they didn't find what they wanted and they're holding on to him for another season. That's fine with me for now, because he's going to help this team win ballgames. However, if we still have him on our hands come October and we aren't in a playoff race, I'm not going to be a happy blogger.
Baseball is a business and you can't be a small market team that doesn't get anything in return for its best players when they leave. The Pirates have to trade Joel Hanrahan at some point this season, assuming they aren't in a playoff race.
Update: It appears that Hanrahan has another arbitration year and is under control through 2013, so I was embarrassingly wrong throughout most of this post. However, the logic and sentiments still stand.
