I agree. A left-hander who slugs .500 is something this team needs. At $1.3M - Smizik's guess - Ward's a solid gamble. There are about 20 healthy and active big-league sluggers who hit left-handed. Take them from the top and their salaries for 2003 are $18.0M (Bonds), $9.3M (Edmonds), $12.2M (Thome), $11.6M (Helton), $4.6M (Ortiz), $1.3M (Burnitz), $4.2M (Drew), $6.8M (Casey), $10.6M (Abreu), $2.1M (Durazo), $5.3M (Chavez), $7.0M (Matsui), $5.0M (Valentin), $8.2M (Gonzalez), and $4.5M (Koskie). It's not like the Pirates will have a chance to get one of these players in free agency without gambling, as Colorado did with Burnitz. The only affordable guys are pre-arb or in the early years of arbitration eligibility: $450K (Dunn), $317K (Hafner), $550K (Blalock), $326K (Overbay), $375K (Wilkerson). In the minors, the Bucs don't have a left-handed slugger who looks ready to play every day next year.
$1.3M would be too much to gamble on players with other skills (e.g., middle relief). It's not too much to gamble for a player who might give us 500 at-bats of left-handed power.
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