Cards Sign Joel Pineiro
The St. Louis Cardinals interim GM John Mozeliak has wasted no time in signing talent for next year—which makes me think he’s going to lose the “interim” tag soon—signing pitcher Joel Pineiro to a two-year, $13 million deal. Most of the chatter I have read thinks this is a little high.
I have not calculated the 2007 player values yet—I am just about to do so—but looking at 2005 and 2006, this doesn’t look to be a bad signing. I have him valued at $9.08 million in 2005 and $7.28 million in 2006. Pineiro may not be flashy, but he’s better than a lot of other alternatives.
Remember, Jason Marquis signed a three-year, $21 million deal last year. …And will you look at that: Joel Pineiro is Marquis’s most comparable pitcher according to similarity scores. (I promise that I didn’t look before I brought up Marquis.)
Baseball revenues are growing, and players are going to reap some of the windfall. This is just the first of many contracts that are going to drop some jaws this offseason.
J.C. Bradbury is an economist and associate professor at Kennesaw State University in metropolitan Atlanta. He is the author of The Baseball Economist and has operated Sabernomics.com since March 2004.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Yeah, the market price for even mediocre pitching is fairly high which is why it will be a great bargain for the Braves to sign Tom Glavine for under $10 million. I hope they sign Glavine AND trade for another pretty good starter (Blanton?).
October 17th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Why would the A’s trade one of the best young pitchers in the game who makes very little money? I don’t see Blanton getting moved.
October 17th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
JC, you had him at 7MM in 2006, with a 6.36 ERA? You are right about Marquis (and add in Jeff Weaver too). Those three were probably the three worst starters in 2006. I can see why they’d be similar.
October 19th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Maybe they signed him so that LaRussa can keep showing us that he’s a managerial genius when it comes to bullpen management.
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:34 am
JC,
I understand if the market commands salaries, but, as tangotiger says, isn’t Marquis an outlier as far as being given salaries that, even if inflated for supply and demand, are still “mistakes”? Or can things never go back once a mistake has been made? Only saying this because i’d be willing to bet that if, say, Marquis did something Jeff Kent-like to violate his contract and his team was able to let him go without penalty, that there’s no way he’s resigning for another $7mil/year contract. Am i crazy here? It seems like it’s one thing if you’re Steve Trachsel five years ago and you are totally mediocre but relatively consistent every year, but Marquis and Pineiro have not only been bad very recently but have also been very up and down… is this beside the point?
October 29th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
When Pineiro was only 25, he had a 37-20 career record. It seems he is getting his career back on track after pitching in his last outing eight strong shutout innings against the Mets, only 93 pitches and striking out 6. He deserves a much better offense to back him than the M’s did from 2004-06. He can’t possibly be worse than Horacio Ramirez.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
There is a counter-argument concerning Piniero on Tango’s blog…
http://tinyurl.com/yvsyj9