Chris Dickerson: Travis Snider Insurance?

Insurance isn’t sexy.  No amount of blogging, funny commercials with Mayhem pitchmen or lizards will ever make it so.  In life it’s required, but not so much in sports.  But Neal Huntington and the Bucs have learned it’s important to have.

Chris Dickerson isn’t a sexy baseball player.  Our female readers may think differently, especially when considering the shiny picture he added to his twitter profile.  We aren’t quite certain what red carpet he is on, or what exactly he is pitching, but he definently has the Jonathan Sanchez glow about him.

When I saw the Chris Dickerson signing this morning, I didn’t give it much thought.  Ahh…another depth signing by Neal Huntington and the gang.  It reminded us of all of the starting pitching depth the Pirates added last offseason.  You know, or might remember when we did all those ridiculous Mayhem photoshops.

One of our first thoughts was that Dickerson was actually Felix Pie without the tricky name to make Yinzers sound like idiots on talk radio.

And then we looked at some numbers that were flashed about on Twitter by people much smarter than me.  Dickerson’s numbers are better than Travis Snider the past couple seasons.  We aren’t sure that is a glowing endorsement, but it’s nice to know that if Snider goes down with yet another injury the Pirates have some talent on the shelf with big league experience.

Felix Pie played a role for the Pirates in 2013.  It wasn’t a large one, but he filled the gap when Starling Marte was injured.  Dickerson could do the same thing until/if Gregory Polanco is ready to board the Bucs ship in 2014.

Travis Snider was held back by a toe injury last season.  He was pushed by Felix Pie in Spring Training, but Snider won the competition and started off the season rather well.  Presumably until the injury bug bit him again.

With the Dickerson sign today, the 2014 outfield competition just got a little bit more intense.  The Bucs added a player that could hit well in PNC, has some speed and most importantly has a career triple slash of .262/.339/.406 in 708 plate appearance in the bigs.

All that, and it didn’t cost the Pirates much to make the competition more interesting.  Insurance sucks, sort of like the unsexy Bucco offseason, but it’s necessary.  Like this post.

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We wrote about the lack of sizzle in the Pirates offseason, this is a move that adds to that diet of sizzle-less-ness.  If my linking ability worked, I would link those articles here, since it doesn’t, I encourage you to look around for them.