Pirates whiffed on chance to sign Lee from Indians
PITTSBURGH – Talk about being the master of the obvious. Club president Frank Coonelly told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Dejan Kovacevic last weekend that the Pirates would be able to significantly increase their payroll next season but warned that “we won’t be signing Cliff Lee.”
No foolin’. The Pirates have a better chance of getting to the World Series this year than having owner Bob Nutting hand out an eight-figure contract to talented Texas Rangers left-hander.
Nutting has a pretty good racket going without spending money as The Associated Press reported Sunday that the Pirates made a combined profit from $34.3 million during the 2007-09 seasons despite being a combined 91 games under .500 in that span.
However, there was more than a little irony that Coonelly would use Lee as an example. Pirates general manager Neal Huntington had a deal in place at his first winter meetings in 2007 to acquire Lee from the Cleveland Indians.
The Pirates would have traded Jason Bay and Ronny “Roids” Paulino to the Indians for Lee, Kelly Shoppach and Franklin Gutierrez. Huntington and Cleveland general manager Mark Shapiro had a verbal handshake on the deal before Coonelly stepped in and told his neophyte GM to back out.
It was an early vote of no confidence in Huntington, who certainly knew the Indians’ organization inside and out after spending more than a decade working in their front office. Yet Coonelly, whose claim to fame had been being Major League Baseball’s lead labor lawyer, apparently had some information in his legal briefs that overrode Huntington’s scouting reports.
Lee, of course, has blossomed into one of the very best pitchers in baseball over the last three seasons. Even if the Pirates couldn’t have afforded to keep him, they certainly would have gotten a nice ransom back in a trade.
Gutierrez has developed in a Gold Glove center fielder with some pop. Shoppach is a serviceable catcher who also can hit some home runs.
All in all, it would have been a nice haul for a rookie GM.
Instead, the Pirates held onto Bay until the non-waiver trading deadline in 2008 then got four players back from Boston and the Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-way deal. Andy LaRoche, Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen have all washed out, leaving Class AA Altoona right-hander Bryan Morris as the lone remaining hope for the Pirates.
Morris has considerable talent. However, he is far from a sure thing considering his long injury history and questions about his durability.
The nixing of the Lee trade should have been an early warning sign then that the Pirates’ current brain trust was going to be a dictatorship headed by Coonelly. That is exactly what it has become and the losses keep piling up at an astounding rate.
Herald-Standard sports correspondent John Perrotto is editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus.com.