The Numbers Game

Will he be the closer or a setup man for $1.4 M?

It does not seem all that long ago that there seemed to be a huge chunk of the Pirates roster that was going to be arbitration eligible. You had a rather long list:


Joel Hanrahan
Lastings Milledge
Andy LaRoche
Delwyn Young
Jeff Karstens
Ross Ohlendorf
Wil Ledezma
Zach Duke
Ronny Cedeno

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you see things, many of those players were let go by the team before we could talk about salaries for this upcoming season. The only ones to remain were Hanrahan, Karstens, Ohlendorf and Cedeno.

Karstens ($1.1 million) and Cedeno ($1.85 million) both agreed earlier this offseason. Today it was announced that Hanrahan agreed to $1.4 million for this upcoming season. I'd say that was pretty much what both sides could have expected and it locks up an integral piece of the bullpen for this coming season.

It will remain to be seen though if the Pirates are going to pay Hanrahan $1.4 million to be the setup man or to close. It seems that it is still in limbo as the Pirates brass cannot decide on who to use, between Hanrahan and Meek. To me I would simply use both of them, playing them to each other's strength or going with the hot hand, but baseball managers like things to be set in stone (less thinking I assume). So we have more than a handful, Who Will be the Closer?, articles coming this spring.

At any rate is good to not have to go to arbitration, but the jury is still out for Ross Ohlendorf as it has been reported that he has asked for $2.025 million and the Pirates threw out $1.4 million as their number. It should be interesting to see how valuable a 1-11 starter is.