Andrew Lambo and quiet offseasons

So I really like playing basketball. I played in high school, I played a lot of intramural in college, and I recently competed in a Pittsburgh Sports League. When I was a kid I was really into it and imagined being in the NBA and all that crap. Through high school I grew up mentally a lot more than physically and now, here I sit at 23 being a skinny 5'9'' white guy. At some point you have to realize that when your parents tell you that you can be anything you want to be, they aren't being truthful. Pound for pound, I'm pretty decent at baseball, but life isn't pound for pound. And neither is Major League Baseball.

I think that story is important for Pirate fans. Baseball isn't a fair sport. It really sucks rooting for a small market team, frankly I'm not sure why anybody ever does it. The Pirates finally rewarded some of their fans loyalties last year, but before that is was pretty miserable. You consciously took the short stick, but despite that, you still get upset when the obvious consequences of having that short stick show up? Grow up. I can't get to the NBA in this body and the Pirates can't play in free agency. It's the same exact thing, there are literally no differences between the two things I just described.

If that's all understood, why are people complaining about the Pirates not making a splash in free agency this year? They point to the Andrew Lambo/Gaby Sanchez platoon at first base and bring back the old comments about how terrible Pirates management is - obviously it's not on the same scale but it's still there. What's wild is that I saw that stuff consistently the last few months without trying to pay any attention to Pirates talk. I don't listen to 93.7, I unfollowed the majority of Pirates tweeters, and none of my friends are the people I described. Unless it's a coincidence, I think there was a ton of negativity out there.

My first question is why do the Pirates have to have a good player at every position? No team has that. If you look at the depth chart they're pretty solid at catcher, second base, third base, and two of the three outfield spots. That along with a pretty decent pitching staff and bullpen are a pretty good start. You can see that team being competitive, right? The best teams in the league have weak spots, 9 positions is a lot to fill all with really good players. I have a super cool personality, so I think it's fair that 90% of guys my age can lift more weight than me. Seems like a fair tradeoff to me, I'm not complaining.

My other question, who really was available? The names we heard (once again, I didn't pay as much attention this offseason) were Ike Davis, James Loney, and Mitch Moreland. We heard the Mets were asking a pretty penny for Ike Davis, a guy who hit .205/.326/.334, not sure why you'd be too anxious to give up much for those numbers. Mitch Moreland was even worse at .232/.299/.437 last year. Not sure why anybody would be excited about paying that guy actual money for numbers that you could see Andrew Lambo replicating without issue. The only one that you can argue is that they didn't push hard enough for James Loney, who signed back with the Rays for $7 million a year for three years. Twenty million dollars is a lot for a small market team to invest, obviously the Rays are in a similar boat that the Pirates are, and they thought it was worth it, but I'm not going to be upset about letting Loney go somewhere else for that much money.

My point is, there weren't obviously better options out there that would have warranted spending the money. The first base position isn't going to determine where the Pirates go this year. Andrew Lambo has the potential to be better than all three of those options this year, and they don't have to pay him. Makes sense to me just to let him have a crack at platooning with Gaby Sanchez. The Pirates money is better spent elsewhere. That's how they've been doing things the last five years and it's gotten them to a pretty competitive spot.