Funny water

Dejan has a good article today about the Pirates offseason spending spree. His point is that no matter how much the Pirates spent, their payroll still comes in under everyone in the NL Central, Brewers and Reds included. He reports that between the revenue sharing money and the central league fund (national TV money, etc) the Bucs pulled in $45 million or so last year, which (you guessed it) is just about enough to cover the payroll. Still, a team like Cincy managed to spend $60 million on payroll for next year, while the Brewers are at $50 million.

McClatchy also decided to keep his mouth shut at the team luncheon after the "funny water" comment debacle of last year. When asked about the overall huge spending spree that baseball went on this winter, McClatchy said,

Teams do what they have to do. Teams like Kansas City and Toronto and Pittsburgh spent more money this offseason. Were there some bad signings out there? You know what? We've done bad signings in the past, so I probably shouldn't point fingers.

Yeah, Kevin, pointing fingers is a bad idea at this point, I'll give you that much. Mostly because this offseason you gave two of the biggest free agent contracts in team history to guys older than Jerome Bettis who are for the most part over the hill and not better than anyone you already had on the team. You trumpeted a giant payroll raise that was really only modest, and it was mostly poorly spent because there was very little you did with the money made the team better for 2006 in terms of actual competitiveness. You made the best argument possible against a salary cap in baseball, because one isn't needed in a world where the Pittsburgh Pirates can afford to pay Jeromy Burnitz $6 million and Joe Randa $4 million. So yeah, just keep smiling to yourself about how stupid everyone else is. Maybe if you think it hard enough it'll actually be true.