I really don’t have anything new to add to this discussion but with the Liriano deal still being unofficial and now reports of a potential minor league deal surfacing I figured I needed to chime in and say something about this crazy situation. First let me just say can this offseason get any weirder for the Pirates. I mean think about their 5 big moves this offseason: signing Martin, resigning Grilli, non-tendered than resigning Karstens, (supposedly) signing Liriano and trading Hanrahan.

Martin

Originally it was reported that the Pirates offered him a 3 year deal but the general consensus seemed to be that the Yankees, who were known to want Martin back would eventually offer him a contract good enough to entice him to resign. It never happened and the Pirates managed to sign away a player from the Yankees who they had a definite interest in keeping. As most of you know I’m against that signing and right there is a big red flag for me but nonetheless that seems like it should be impossible to occur.

Grilli

One day we heard he had narrowed his choices down to 4 teams and was supposed to sign that afternoon but the afternoon came and went and we heard nothing from Grilli. A while later it was reported that he had resigned with the Pirates but then that report was refuted by Grilli himself which only led to another report of him resigning with the Pirates to be reported just a few minutes after his denial of such a deal. The second report of his resigning was then retracted. All of this coupled with the high-profile of his agent, Gary Sheffield, and the very slow news day made Jason Grilli and his future new home a hot topic of baseball conversation, seriously it was. However the day came and went and nothing was heard until a few days later when we finally got official confirmation that the deal was done.

Karstens

The decision to non-tender Karstens was a questionable one at the time and rightfully received a lot of criticism (from myself included). Dejan Kovacevic, a well-known Pittsburgh sports columnist, seemingly with some inside information even wrote that there was no way that this would be one of those situations where the player would resign at a lower rate and said Karstens was gone. This obviously seemed to point to a broken relationship between the club and the player. However Karstens had a very vague tweet about not believing everything you hear that might have been referring to Kovacevic’s statement or it might have been referring to the Pirates statement that they tried to work out a deal with him and also tried to trade him or it is possible his tweet was not connected to either case and was independent of all these events. Later when there was little interest in Karstens it was speculated the Pirates must have known something about his health and that was the reason they non-tendered him; this time Karstens directly challenged that statement saying something to the extent of come look for yourself my health is fine. All of this eventually led to him somehow resigning with the Pirates for not only less money than he would have gotten in arbitration but less money than he made in 2012.

Hanrahan

The first reports to surface were that the Pirates were looking for a starting pitcher in return for Hanrahan. There was so much talk about a potential Capuano for Hanrahan swap that the deal seemed almost inevitable but alas of course it wasn’t. Then there was finally news of a deal being worked out with the Red Sox but no names were known and no one even to be entirely sure that Hanrahan was in the deal, although it was widely assumed he was. Later on it was confirmed that Hanrahan, Jerry Sands and Stolmy Pimentel were all part of the deal but that it wasn’t finalized yet and that more players were involved. This led to speculation that it might be Garrett Jones or even a notable Red Sox payer in the deal. Later that day we started to hear that Mark Melancon was probably going to be included in the deal but that each side was still going to give up another player. At this point the trade speculation stopped and nothing was heard about it for around a week. Things picked back up shortly after the Christmas holiday and the trade was shortly announced as official but there was no mention of the other two names, although Melancon was confirmed to be in the deal. Finally only a little after the deal was made official the names of the final two players came to light and their identities were underwhelming considering all the build up and speculation of just who they might be.

Liriano

Now we get to what might be the most interesting case of all. It was reported in mid December that the Pirates had signed Liriano to a 2 year, 14 million dollar deal and that is was pending a physical. Not long after it was reported Liriano lost a little over a million dollars and the deal was said to be 2 year, 12.75 million. Nothing else was heard about the deal for a while; there was no official announcement or anything. Shortly after Christmas news came out that Liriano’s deal wasn’t finalized because with the holidays the Pirates were not able to get him in for a physical. Which ok that seems a little strange but it is at least reasonable. A week or so later we learn that Liriano had actually suffered a right arm injury that was preventing him from flying and that the deal was put on hold. The Pirates were said to be contacting other pitchers but they were also known to be staying in touch with Liriano. Come just about a week ago it was announced that the Pirates had once again agreed to a 2 year, 12.75 million dollar deal with Liriano but this time he was assuming risk in case he missed the start of the season due to his right arm injury. At this point we still had no idea what actually happened to his arm but the story continues. Over the course of the next couple days news about how he injured his arm, falling in the bathroom, comes out and we all get a good laugh out of it but still hope that this will only cause him to miss at most the month of April. However the story doesn’t stop there, the deal was never finalized and on Monday we heard reports the Pirates were in talks with Freddy Garcia who if Liriano signs wouldn’t have an obvious spot with the Pirates and on Tuesday we heard reports circulate that the deal could in fact be of the minor league variety. We still really don’t know what is going on with this situation and are not even certain if he will sign and even if he does we have no clue just how severe this injury is and what his recovery timetable would look like.

The Liriano story may be the Pirates strangest story of this offseason but it certainly isn’t there only one. Every significant move the Pirates have made this offseason seems to have at least some sort of drama surrounding it and while the moves themselves from a baseball standpoint have been mediocre the story lines behind them has made this a very compelling offseason. Best (or worst) of all is it isn’t over yet, the Liriano story lives on and who know if the Pirates have anything else up their sleeve.