The payroll's too low.
There. I said it. Yet again, for maybe the millionth year in a row.
And this is coming from someone who's stressed in every one of those years that payroll isn't anywhere near as pertinent to the Pirates' fortunes as most in the public seem to make it. But in the same breath, I'll add that it does still matter. Because both things really can be true.
As things currently stand, the 26-man payroll when the club emerges from the dugout March 26 in St. Petersburg, Fla., projects to be -- sit down for this -- $59,148,500.
Yeah, really. And I'm neither guessing, nor sharing some super-inside info.
The 15 players currently signed to major-league contracts total $58,298,500 in 2020 salaries. Since it appears the final 11 roster spots will be filled by players being paid at or near the new major-league minimum wage of $583,500 -- and rounding that up to $600,000 in realistic anticipation of modest raises for some -- that adds another $6.6 million, so now it's up to $64,898,500.
But wait: Felipe Vazquez's $5.75 million formally counts toward payroll, but there's zero chance a penny of it'll be paid, since he'll again be placed on the restricted list. So that money can't reasonably be counted toward this purpose.
Which is where we arrive at the aforementioned figure of $59,148,500.
Which is insanely low.
The projection currently ranks 27th among Major League Baseball's 30 teams, but, more telling, it's miles below their Central market peers in Cincinnati ($115,727,380) and Milwaukee ($90,341,666). And I really shouldn't call them market peers, since Pittsburgh is bigger than both.
Uglier still, the Pirates' 2020 payroll, if it stays like this, will be more than $12 million lower than the actual amount spent in 2019, which was $72,731,474. And way below 2018, which was $91,025,861. And way, way below 2017, was $98,203,030, a hair off the franchise record set the previous year.
And have I mentioned that the team's actively trying to trade Starling Marte, owner of their highest salary in 2020 at $11.5 million?
Once that occurs, presuming prospects are the return, that'll slash payroll by another 15 or so percent.
So, what's going on?
Well, the easy response is this: Bob Nutting's not exactly one to work with a wide wallet. And there's no question this will remain, after all his firings and hirings this offseason, the subject that's first and foremost on the minds of fans coming down to PiratesFest this weekend at PNC Park.
But in the continuing spirit of giving them all the benefit of the doubt -- Nutting because he made the changes, all the new people because they're new --maybe it's OK to assume something positive from this.
No?
Hm, give it a shot, anyway.
In the process of building an organization from the ground up, which always has been Ben Cherington's preferred process, it's actually necessary to have a lower payroll at the outset when working for a team that legitimately doesn't have limitless revenue. Not to mention, it's now common practice across the majors, often even for the richer teams. From there, once the talent matures and real contention's at hand, the money saved in the early years gets plugged into a payroll spike that never would've been otherwise possible.
If that's the plan, and if that's how it plays out, I'm fine with it.
But we don't know if it's the plan. Nutting, Cherington, Travis Williams and everyone else with the Pirates won't commit verbally to a rebuild of any scope. Nor are they coming close to that. And that's the primary issue I've got with the low payroll right now, that we can't know of any noble purpose behind it, if there's any at all.
It'll be a fascinating weekend.
***premium***
• Baseball can't have it both ways: Either blast cheating or ignore it.
Look, my fellow voters of the Baseball Writers Association of America are free to fill their ballots out as they wish ...
BBWAA elects Derek Jeter, Larry Walker. https://t.co/XeuIE8xL0S pic.twitter.com/E2LGbD3yvN
— BBWAA (@officialBBWAA) January 21, 2020
... but I can't help but point out with a bit of disbelief that, based on a whole lot of reading over the past few days, a whole lot of those 240-plus voters who cast checkmarks for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens undoubtedly were aghast at the Astros' drum-beating, buzzer-wearing escapades. Even speculating how the Houston affair might someday impact the Hall candidacies of Carlos Beltran, Jose Altuve and others.
As if these are somehow separate circumstances at their cores.
Wow.
• A much healthier Hall conversation can be had on the football side, and I'm proud beyond words that our own Dale Lolley has been charged with making the case for Alan Faneca's induction.
It's overdue. I'll humbly second Dale: This needs to be the year.
• Want to get encouraged about the Steelers toward next season?
The 49ers have an NFL-high 57 sacks this season (including playoffs).
They're the 7th team in the last 15 seasons to enter a Super Bowl with more than 55 sacks.
The previous 6 all won. pic.twitter.com/qGKk61Dph6
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) January 23, 2020
No team, of course, had more sacks in the regular season than the Steelers' 54.
• Not that I'm picking the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV. I can't be convinced they'll put up enough points to hang with Patrick Mahomes. Other areas seem gray. Not that one. Not with Jimmy Garoppolo throwing just 27 total passes for 208 yards over his two playoff games.
Yeah, San Francisco's run extraordinarily well, averaging 235.5 yards per game, 5.29 per carry, thanks mostly to Raheem Mostert. But Kansas City's defense strengthened down the stretch, and shutting down the Titans' Derrick Henry -- 19 carries, 69 yards -- in the AFC Championship should blow up anyone's notion that Mostert will dominate again.
• Give it up for the NFL's handling of concussions. Yeah, there was a slight increase in 2019 over 2018, but that followed a massive fall the previous year and could reasonably be dismissed as anomaly.
Besides, what matters is the focus, the execution and the very real transparency. The league lists publicly every type of injury, every type of treatment, whether a player requested it, when and how it happened, as well as doctors' recommendations for improvement. None of that upper-body, lower-body, CTE-isn't-real nonsense of the NHL.
The concussion stats that leaped out for me: Spotters stopped games a record 19 times to remove a player from the field. Better yet, roughly one-third of all concussions were self-reported, including by Carson Wentz in the Eagles' playoff loss. In all, 485 concussion evaluations were done during games.
Don't let the high-sounding numbers scare. Imagine if they were lower.
Tristan Jarry, Thursday night in St. Louis. - TAYLOR HAASE / DKPS• Admit it: It's bizarre thinking of Tristan Jarry as an NHL All-Star, much less the league's leader in save percentage. But there he is at the break, right at the top at .929, decimal points ahead of the Coyotes' Darcy Kuemper.
This is why it's wild that anyone argues about how Mike Sullivan should or will handle his goaltenders down the stretch. There's no 1A or 1B or anything of the kind. Jarry and Matt Murray are both bona fide No. 1s. That's it. Nothing else to it. And as such, there's got to be a hard, simple rotation.
Hey, if there's one coach you'd trust to navigate his way through two No. 1s, it's got to be this one, right?
• Leave it to the NHL and/or the Penguins to have an All-Star media day in which attendance is optional. Jarry made it to his session last night in St. Louis. Kris Letang didn't, and neither did others.
There are countless reasons the NFL owns the American sporting consciousness, while the NHL keeps hitting its head on a very low national ceiling. This is one of them. The NFL takes media day super-seriously because the NFL, unlike Gary Bettman's backward league and a few of its member teams, grasps that it's part of the players' responsibility to grow the brand and, through that, their own general welfare.
• In stark contrast, yesterday in Orlando, Fla., all four of the Steelers' representatives at the Pro Bowl were, as ever, eminently available on that event's media day. Heck, T.J. Watt actually took a turn as a reporter, interviewing Minkah Fitzpatrick based on questions submitted by fans:
#SteelersNation asked the questions. @minkfitz_21 gives you his answers.
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) January 24, 2020
Find out Watt you need to know about Minkah!@_TJWatt pic.twitter.com/DnxM2Iv91A
• A big kudos related to actual hockey, an area in which the Penguins are excellent ...
Had a good talk the other day in Philadelphia with Joe Blandisi and came away not only impressed with his ability to bounce back and forth between Wilkes-Barre all winter long -- "My suitcase is always packed," he told me -- but also with how he described the synchronicity between the NHL and AHL affiliate's systems.
"They're not completely identical," he began when I asked him to compare Sullivan's and Mike Vellucci's system. "But they're close enough. The guys down there know what's expected of them here, how they've got to play to get here and, best of all, when you come up, the only thing that really changes for you is the speed."
• Sullivan was named the Professional Hockey Writers Association's midseason coach of the year, which means even less than what one might think considering that the Jack Adams Award at season's end is the only one selected by broadcasters rather than writers. But it's something. And he did have my vote.
Jarry had mine for best goaltender, and John Marino for best rookie, by the way. Neither showed among the top three in those categories.
• My own wholly unofficial first-half MVP for the Penguins: Bryan Rust.
Xavier Johnson drives past Boston College's Nik Popovic, Wednesday night at Petersen Events Center. - AP• Watching Pitt-Boston College with my family a couple nights ago, and the 14-year-old man, who knows about as much about basketball as I do about his beloved robotics, casually remarks from the kitchen island that it's crazy that the Panthers just have one guy face the hoop, look for a lane, drive through it and, if it doesn't work, just try it again.
Don't worry, Hunter Homistek's beat job is safe, but that's a long-range swish right there.
• Ryan Murphy won the game, but Justin Champagnie should be winning all the hearts and minds. Doing it all over the court.
• I'm open to being proven wrong, but it's hard to see how the Hounds will take a step forward in 2020. Since their franchise-best 19-4-11 record won the USL's Eastern Conference this past summer, they've lost their top scorer in Neco Brett, the league's Defender of the Year in Joe Greenspan and now, by choice, their captain and most artful midfielder in Kevin Kerr.
One would go broke betting against Bob Lilley, and he did tell me a week ago he's got significant free-agent signings to come. But man, it sure seems like it'd have been a lot easier to just keep intact what was already here.
Would hate to see soccer take a step back in our city. Too much progress has been made.
• It's terrific that Kerr will still be around with the Hounds' Academy, but man, he'll be missed on the pitch, purely from the soccer standpoint. One of the few players in USL capable of a genuinely world-class touch on the ball.
• Spirit fans had their Paul Child. That's Kerr for Hounds fans, and hopefully he'll always be that. Child's still around the team, still active in the local soccer community. It's uplifting to see Kerr, Robbie Vincent and other top Hounds do likewise.
• Grind will take next week off. For one, it's a super-light schedule for sports. For another, in all candor, I've got sooooooooo much non-writing work to do, mostly toward the new app, and a lot of travel in February that'll take from that.
I will, however, make it over to PiratesFest for a weekend Grind.
