2024 Off-Season Thread

[Ecbucs]

It is hard for me to understand why the Pirates couldn’t pay for either Hayes, Laueano, or Grichuk. Five million dollars in baseball money is pocket change. Please don’t sign a player like Tommy Pham. Since the Pirates are a cheap organization let’s try, Cook, Yorke, Suwinski and Palacios as the right field option, and see if it works. Don’t forget we can also try .202 Adam Frazier.

To me it is a lot better to try any of the younger players than to give Frazier at bats. I have always liked him but he brings no value to this team. I'm a little worried that Yorke is rated so high on the Pirates prospect list. He may turn out to be a nice player but unless the power he started to show last year is real he may not bring enough to the table to be a regular starter.

[Surgnbuck]

Is it just me, but is there more negativity towards Pirates Ownership now than ever before? Yes there are billboards, and shirts telling Nutting to sell, but there is more written negativity. It has been a dreadful offseason. I for one is not that excited that ST begins next week.

I believe more negativity. It's not just the usual Bob is cheap. I think it's because people had already flushed 2024 and felt with a full year of Skenes, Jones, and Keller, and with just seemingly needing just a couple proven bats and a couple more arms in the bullpen that there was serious reason to believe they could contend for the division. Instead, even with the increase of the arbitration players salary and the automatic bump the pre arb guys get, they are spending less this year. We know Soto was off the table. But guys like Bellinger and Santander and Walker were easily obtainable. Even then, fans would have been okay for a Grichuk. People like me that try and reset every year to the positive outlook side feel jaded. And that's why I feel it's more negative.

[Bobster]

I totally agree with Surg. As Pirate fans, we never get to enjoy the present. We are always told the future will be better. But at some point we want to see actual signs of that instead of just words.

Last year Skenes brought real hope that the next few years could bring the kind of baseball enjoyment the fans have been so desperate for. He brought hope that the organization might finally put their words into action by building a strong team around him.

But instead, the organization has done nothing. Instead of adding better players, they’ve scraped the bottom of the dumpster for whatever additions have been made. They’ve even lowered the payroll if that was possible. It seems as if they are no longer even trying to fool the fans. What we see is what we get. If we ever needed proof that the putrid status quo of this team is all the organization desires, we are getting it. The only thing we had was hope. And now it looks like that’s been taken away. It’s hard to find anything positive to say about this organization. And they obviously don’t care that we feel that way.