An Interesting Look at Why Pittsburgh Pirates Shouldn’t Be Done Yet

The thought of the Pittsburgh Pirates

standing pat on starting pitching for the 2012 season was racing through our mind tonight.  The pitching options that are on the market aren’t really pitchers that blow us away.  When looking at most of them, they each have their faults.

It doesn’t take us writing four paragraphs for you to understand that’s why they are on the market.

When we think about the idea of bringing back lefty Paul Maholm, it doesn’t really make us want to grab a couple more season tickets.  Jeff Francis doesn’t make us want to reach for our wallet, either.

But then we read this article.  Do yourself a favor and read it too.

The point is that one-year deals signed by pitchers last season were low risk, nothing really mind-blowing about it.  But the high reward returns were rather amazing.  The article shook out 19 pitchers that signed one year deals.  Looking back on it, only six of them were failures.  Sit back and admire those results.

The Pirates signing Kevin Correia to a two-year deal might have been the only way the team could get him to sign with Pittsburgh, but two-year deals were a big mistake last year.  Of course, so was Scott Olsen.

The NL Central appears to be wide open in 2012.  And of course, once again, the division will produce the World Series champion, at least according to the predictions made by Joe Sheehan. 

So with a wide open division due to a multitude of offseason happenings, Pirates fans have their fingers crossed that Erik Bedard proves to be a value pickup for the Bucs, but screw it – why stop gambling on just one?