NEW YORK - JULY 04: Lyle Overbay #35 of the Toronto Blue Jays watches the flight of his third inning home run against the New York Yankees on July 4 2010 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Lyle Overbay Signs With Pirates
Lyle Overbay Signs With Pirates
Live1 Total Update since December 14, 2010
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over 2 years ago Update 0 comments
Pirates' Lyle Overbay Will Be Starting First Baseman
Here are some details on the Lyle Overbay acquisition. Jenifer Langosch reports that the Pirates have signed Overbay to be their starting first baseman, so he’ll play every day. Garrett Jones will move to right field to platoon with Matt Diaz, and Ryan Doumit will move to the bench, where he’ll pick up at bats at catcher and in the outfield. Unless Doumit is traded, Steve Pearce and John Bowker don’t really have obvious roles, which is a shame, since I think they’re just about as good as the guys the Pirates will play.
The Overbay signing is for one year and $5 million, Rob Biertempfel tweets. That’s not my money, but I’d like to think if I had $5 million I could find better ways to use it, and one would think a team as poor as the Pirates could too.
It’s the decision to make Overbay an everyday first baseman, though, that really sticks in my craw. Could anyone think of a signing that would do more to make the 2011 Pirates boring?
over 2 years ago Update 0 comments
Lyle Overbay Signs With Pirates
The Pirates have signed former Blue Jays first baseman Lyle Overbay to a one-year deal, the team's Twitter account reports. I already wrote about this signing over at Bucs Dugout, but this is the sort of uninspiring move disgraced former GM Dave Littlefield would have loved. Overbay turns 34 in January. He's a decent defensive first baseman. He hit .243 this year, and there's no reason to think much improvement is on the horizon, given his age. This is about as good an idea as signing Randall Simon or Sean Casey, or maybe slightly better, which is to say it's a bad idea.
When Littlefield signed Simon and Casey, he was blocking a much more interesting player in Craig Wilson, and at least the Pirates won't be doing anything like that by signing Overbay. But this deal makes it less likely that younger guys like Steve Pearce and John Bowker will see the field. (Bowker is primarily an outfielder, but he's relevant here because Overbay's presence will cause Garrett Jones to play less first base and more outfield.) Pearce and Bowker are arguably fairly likely to match Overbay's production next year, and if one of them breaks out, the Pirates will get to keep him for several more years. In other words, there would be very little downside in just skipping out on Overbay and playing Pearce and Bowker, and at least a little bit of upside.
This move is yet another in what has become a very, very uninspiring offseason for the Pirates, who suddenly seem more concerned with getting their loss total from 105 to 90 than with building a winning ballclub.
Photographs by
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