Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Mackowiak's arbitration case

Joe Rutter has the numbers here. Dejan Kovacevic has the story too. I think he'll lose. In every other case, I thought the Pirates got a good deal with their players. I don't doubt that Mackowiak isn't worth what he wants, but I do doubt the Pirates will need to pay that figure.

Few teams have relied as much as the Pirates on super-utility-guys. Until Rob hits left-handed pitching better than most right-handed pitchers, he'll have a hard time finding comparable players on other teams that make what he asked for.

Perhaps Rob knows that he will lose his case and submitted his number knowing he would lose. It's not a bad gambit for a guy who is trying to throw off the super-utility label. Let everyone pay a lot of attention to what he did and didn't do last year for the team. I doubt the publicity can hurt him in his more important case, i.e., his case for similar playing time in 2005.

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