I second that. The Athletic has tons of content. It's the digital Sporting News from my youth with 100x more content. It's an especially good buy if you follow a lot of sports but it's worth buying just for baseball. The national writers are names everyone would recognize: Bowden, rosenthal, gammons, Sarris, Stark and plenty more. They had Pos for awhile and then he left which was a shame. Good team coverage - it's not game recap coverage - mostly in depth stuff. NYT has not ruined them yet which is a good sign.

I suspect they will buy something like Fangraphs soon.

He's been there 3 years so if he's only halfway done, remind me to pay attention to the Pirates around mid-season 2025.

Grrr ... tried to edit, it didn't take. Anyway, that sounds more dissy than he deserves. The Pirates are an incredibly tough gig at any time much less the shape they were in after 2019 (then covid, etc.). But 100 losses suggests there's still a long way to go and I doubt they're halfway there yet.

Too late now but it occurs to me that MLB should have given some extra draft picks to the Pirates of the league in 2021 and 2022. The one-year disruption to the minors was bad for every system but was surely therefore more disruptive to the organization as a whole for the Pirates, etc. whose only hope is to develop talent. Tossing in an extra around of CB picks would have helped.

Why would the rest of MLB be any more interested in the Pirates being competitive than the Pirates' owners are?

They're paid by the other owners to provide the real teams with easily beatable competition. They deliver what they're being paid to deliver. The arrangement works well for everyone (besides Pirates fans, but there are fewer of those every year--the problem solves itself.)

Because MLB already takes many, many, many steps to maintain competitive balance or at least the appearance thereof. There's the draft, there's the waiver order, there's all the money shared, there's the amounts allowed to spend internationally, there's the competitive balance picks after the 1st and 2nd round, there's the compensation picks (of course not limited to the poor teams). Whether you think those are effective or just a (barely noticed) PR stunt, there's no reason MLB wouldn't do more of it under the circumstances. And of course it costs the other owners nothing to give the poor teams extra picks (or a bigger international pool or whatever).

I agree with Walt that Pittsburgh seems like an impossible job for a GM. Is there any promise that at some point they will invest some money if he gets them to the brink of contention?

Is there any promise that at some point they will invest some money if he gets them to the brink of contention?

Yes, they have promised for the last 35 years that they will not invest any money. This is pretty consistent across ownership groups.

Passan reporting that the Pirates will sign Carlos Santana for 1 year, $6.7 million.

If Pittsburgh didn’t already have a major league team it would never get one.
In 1950 there were 650,000 people living in the burgh; today, less than 300,00.
In the county surrounding the city the population went from 1.5 M to 1.2 M today.
Not many places in America lost such significant numbers of people over the past 70+ years while Americas population increased by 150M.
I left in 1963 to join the Navy, then settled in Virginia after 4 years only returning to visit my wife’s family.
I am sure my experience is not unique.
Will the Pirates ever contend again?
Not while they are housed in Pittsburgh.
New ownership would need to relocate for that to occur.

Pittsburgh is the 24th largest DMA in the US. Ahead of Baltimore, San Diego, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee.

Will the Pirates ever contend again?
Not while they are housed in Pittsburgh.
New ownership would need to relocate for that to occur.

They did reach the postseason three times in the last decade (just). I don't think you can overstate how poor they've been at acquiring amateur players and turning them into good players for Pittsburgh.

If Cherington is allotted as much runway as Moore had in Kansas City, then anything's possible.

If I was him, I'd be calling the Rangers to see how many guys I could get for Reynolds. I'd ask for Duran, Smith, Carter, and one of White/Leiter/Porter