Devil's Bargain/ Devil's Advocacy

Best part of checking in on the Hot Stove action for me has always been seeing who falls into disfavor/ is labeled as damaged goods/ lands in the Pittsburgh Pirates lap. And I suspect that it's the same way for everyone who still roots for the Pirates against the odds: the entire city of Pittsburgh practically got an erection when rumors of Travis Lee signing with the team surfaced last spring. Travis Lee, people. The worst part of it all isn't the whiskey dick sensation that goes along with watching a collection of rotten apples and turds thumb their collective noses at the Bucs, though.

No, it's seeing some variant on the "the team's gotta trade Jason Kendall in order to keep pace in today's market" cliche in every single off-season (and pre-season, and well, mid-season) report on the team's future. Because there's two things -- actually, four now that Torres and Mesa have been inked to deals -- that are absolutely certain about the Pirates next year. First, GM Dave Littlefield won't be increasing the payroll without an additional revenue stream; this team is almost at a point where adding a Troy Glaus would pay verifiable dividends, but nowhere near the bank-breaking bump it would take to wallow in mid-market mediocrity.

And more importantly, Jason Kendall isn't going anywhere this year. Dude's still owed $34 million/ 3 years on his contract and exactly one team (the Dodgers) are in the market for a catcher. The Bucs would get majorly rooked in any trade involving Kendall -- they'd have to fork over at least a 1/3 of the money owed over the length of the contract for any team to even listen to trade talks and probably a bit more to acquire anything beyond journeymen/AAA fodder. Say what you want about Littlefield, but he has too much pride in the organization to suffer the humiliation of letting Kendall go like that.

And I like Kendall. You like Kendall. Everyone likes Kendall. His OPS ranked fourth (behind Bay and the Wilsons) amongst team regulars and he's a marvel of consistency any way you slice-and-dice his stats (home vs. away, month by month). No more ink needs to be spilled on his offensive attributes; let's talk about his talent behind the plate. Here's Kendall measured against highly-regarded defensive types Ivan Rodriguez and Jorge Posada in some select fielding stats:

Kendall .991 FP/ 7.69 RF/ 1.000 ZR/ .363 CS%
Rodriguez .987 FP/ 7.04 RF/ .933 ZR/ .322 CS%
Posada .990 FP/ 7.25 RF/ 1.000 ZR/ .272 CS%

"FP" is Fielding Percentage (put-outs + assists divided by put-outs + assists + errors), a pretty solid statistical measurement of a player's defensive ability. "RF" is Range Factor (put-outs + assists divided by innings) and its fraternal twin "ZR" is Zone Rating, which measures how well a player performs in his "assigned" zone. "CS%" is the percentage of runners caught while attempting to steal. As you can see, Kendall's tops Rodriguez and Posada in all of these categories -- I haven't checked how he stacks up against the rest of the league's battery partners yet. But if the team ain't gonna dump any more money into the payroll and the mission of 2005 remains youth development, you want Kendall in there to make Kip Wells look good, guide Oliver Perez along the way and help to fix whatever's wrong with Ryan Vogelsong.

With apologies to the amazin' Jason Bay, Kendall's still the Pirates' best player. The contract hasn't gotten any less silly over the last three years, but I'd much rather have him on the team than the extra cash the Pirates would flush down the toilet trying to sign enough warm bodies to create a bargain-basement version of the Phillies.