Gene Collier- Here's the pitch: Pirates should sign Jeff Suppan

Landing him as a free agent would show ownership is interested in winning
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Nothin' but blue skies for the Pirates ever since they stopped, you know, playing ballgames.

The offseason has been another predictable financial success with revenue-sharing payments coming due from capitalists on the other end of the baseball universe -- the Yankees and Red Sox -- and for a change, there was even some good news in free agency.

The gleeful agent for free agent pitcher Kip Wells announced last week that the former Bucco bust would not entertain a return to Pittsburgh, instead taking a $4 million, one-year deal from the St. Louis Cardinals.

Whew! That was close.

Wells won two games last year, cashing in at $2 million per win with the world champion Redbirds, who are clearly still drunk. Not only did Wells go 2-5 last year with an earned run average north of 6, he finished the year in Texas where he began it with the Pirates -- on the disabled list. He's 57-74 lifetime.

Yeah, sounds like $4 million.

Walk Jocketty, resident front office genius in St. Louis, recently called the free agent market "silly." Gee Walt, I can't imagine why. Meanwhile, Walt's apparently willing to let Jeff Suppan exit his own clubhouse after helping pitch the Cardinals into the World Series and on to their first championship in 24 years, earning -- whoops -- $4 million.

Shrewd.

Suppan, a far more successful former Pirate, won six times as many games as Wells and it's said can be had for $9 million a summer for the next three or four years. The Pirates are pretending to be interested, mostly because their serious fans are aware that Suppan is exactly what their callow left-handed pitching rotation needs, a 32-year-old hard-throwing right-hander. Kevin McClatchy's club can afford to pretend because there's plenty of cash laying around and because even he and the Nutting-ventured-Nutting-gained Nuttings know that there are enough other interested teams -- reportedly more than a dozen -- to ensure that the winning bid will be considerably higher and likely from a much more competitive club.

Why would Suppan, after all, pitch in Pittsburgh, where it'll be all he can do just to get the club from one bobblehead night to the next, when he can pitch somewhere where a pennant might be at stake?

As it happens though, Suppan is one of the better litmus tests of ownership interest to come along in years. If the Pirates were to somehow sign him, even as part of lifting their payroll out of the McClatchy flatlands, they could create the impression that they're actually interested in competing in this industry.

Which is, of course, why they won't.

The Pirates got $25 million last year from revenue sharing alone.

That particular windfall is expected to be greater this time, so it wouldn't surprise anyone if the Pirates got enough money to cover their payroll before they even sell a ticket, especially if they're planning on keeping payroll at something, to use general manager Dave Littlefield's term, "fiftyish." It was 47(million)ish last year.

The Pirates insist their Bud Selig-endorsed welfare checks are plowed into player development, which could explain why the money hasn't helped the product -- the Pirates are terrible at player development.

They'd be better advised to plunge into free agency on the reasonable chance of landing a player someone else has developed into a legitimate competitive force, perhaps like Jeff Suppan.

The actual retail price won't likely be known until the stratospherically salaried pitchers begin to get slotted, particularly Barry Zito, currently being held hostage by the game's uber agent, Scott Boras.

Jason Schmidt won't take a lot less than Zito, Greg Maddux won't take a lot less than Tom Glavine, if any. Roger Clemens is still out there waiting to be begged and handed some kind of one-year, eight-figure contract with a lot of 2s in it because his uniform number is 22.

I live for this?

(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283. )