Week 10 - A week full of bagels!

Bagels are delicious. They come in a variety of flavours (I prefer the British on this one), can be eaten either toasted or not toasted, and they stay good for extended periods of time in the freezer.  The best part about bagels, at least to me, is the contrast between the rough exterior layer and the soft, chewy bread of the middle.  They are a lot like soft pretzels in that way, and if you have ever been to a sporting event or a theme park or a carnival or a grocery store with me, you know that I love my soft pretzels.

Bagels in baseball usually are talked about in terms of pitching; when a pitcher doesnt give up any runs in his outing, he is said to be throwing bagels at the other team because of the 0s put up on the scoreboard.  Whenever an annoucer talks about throwing bagels, I always picture in my head what it would look like if the pitcher was actually throwing bagels at the batter instead of balls, which ALWAYS ends up with me wondering what would have happened if Randy Johnson had thrown a bagel instead of a ball when he literally exploded that bird back in Spring Training 2001. 
Seriously.  Would the bagel have wrapped around the birds neck and taken it for a ride?  Would the bird have carried the bagel off for a scrumptious meal?  Would Randy Johnson have even thrown the bagel or would he have requested the catcher come out with some cream cheese or jelly so that he could have a nice mid game meal?  We will unfortunately never know.

This week, pitchers were dealing bagels in the traditional sense.  In total, 30 different pitchers made it through this week without giving up a run, including Bob's AutoTrackers entire RP contingent, which totaled 17 innings, 6 baserunners allowed, 26 strikeouts, a win and 12 saves/holds.  We have seen 0.00 ERAs before in the Tot league, but never this many in a single week.

What we havent seen is a position player started in our league putting up the good ole .000 batting average for a week in which that player was not injured (guys like Jason Kipnis get a pass for only being active for 1 or 2 games in the week they hit .000)...until this week.  Come on down Starling Marte!!!  It's time for a Marte Partay!!!  Marte ($31 at auction) put up a 000/231/000 line this week and is 0 for his last 20 (1 for last 28) bringing his season line down to 230/304/355.  He has actually been in such a funk that the Pirates sat him for 4 straight games this week, though he did get into 3 of them as a pinch hitter (that idea didnt go well).  With the Pirates already having one OF spot on lockdown with MVP CF Andrew McCutchen (due roughly $55 mil through 2018) and another likely locked up with uber prospect Gregory Polanco when ever the Pirates decide to call him up (they wont bring him up to have him sit on the pine), the third spot will come down to a battle royale between former top Blue Jay prospect Travis Snider (hitting 220/313/314 and making $1.2 million to do it in the last year of his contract), Josh Harrison (297/331/486 making $513k and still arbitration eligible), Jose Tabata (295/333/341 making $3 million with $8.5 more due over the next 2 seasons and then 3 team options at $6.5, $7.5 and $8.5 mil apiece) and Marte, whose salary looks like this:

Year	Age	Team	Salary	ServTm(OpnDay)
2013	24	Pittsburgh Pirates	$500,000	0.07
2014	25	Pittsburgh Pirates	$500,000	1.07
2015	26	Pittsburgh Pirates	$1,000,000
2016	27	Pittsburgh Pirates	$3,000,000
2017	28	Pittsburgh Pirates	$5,000,000
2018	29	Pittsburgh Pirates	$7,500,000
2019	30	Pittsburgh Pirates	$10,000,000
2020	31	Pittsburgh Pirates	*$11,500,000	$11.5M Team Option, $2M Buyout
2021	32	Pittsburgh Pirates	*$12,500,000

If you were a Pirates fan, you just threw up in your mouth and probably projectiled on to the shoes of the person standing next to you.  Tell them sorry from me for bringing it up.

Harrison plays all over the diamond, and he is hitting the best out of the bunch, so he makes sense as a 4th OF/utility guy who can play nearly everyday somewhere.  With Polanco's call up, Snider will likely have run out of chances with a Big League team.  But what does a supposedly cash strapped, small market team do with players like Tabata and Marte, players who they gave inexplicable, unnecessary contract extensions to after they showed a little over a season's worth of skills?  The Pirates have been shopping Tabata (who also has someone's lips tattooed on his neck) since before the regular season started, but with little to no interest around the league for an OF with little power, a low walk rate and stolen base numbers that have regresses in every one of his Major League seasons.  Hmmm...I wonder why the Cubbies arent jumping in on that trade...wait, I forgot Hendry retired. I also forgot that the Pirates were the one team that Hendry fleeced on a regular basis (thanks for 9 great years of Aramis Ramirez.  Hope you enjoyed Bobby Hill and Jose Hernandez.)

I am not sure what the answer is, but it wouldnt surprised me if this conundrum is adding to the Pirates hesistation to risk Polanco getting Super 2 status.  Polanco getting to arbitration earlier would mean another OFer to pay big money to sooner, which the Pirates obviously cannot afford and still be competitive with guys like Neil Walker due an extension and Pedro Alvarez in his first arbitration year.  This is a classic example of what happens when a team that cannot afford to risk on long term big money signings whiffs (or, like Marte, makes extremely weak contact) on their evaluation of a player.  If this were the Dodgers, who are in a similar situation with Matt Kemp, Carl Crawford, Andre Either, Yasiel Puig and prospect Joc Pederson, they would simply throw billions at it to go away (which they may very well do in the form of paying a substantial portion of one of the above's contracts to get another team to take them).  For the Pirates, it means they probably arent going to make it two playoff trips in a row.

Anyways, I promise there will be recaps and that they will feature things about our fantasy baseball teams (I feel like I make this promise every week after a long and drawn out intro, but so what this is my blog bitches).  But first...on Friday I mentioned that we had a visitor from Ukraine (1 page view), which had me pretty pumped because...Ukraine.  On Saturday I checked the stats again to see if the Ukrainian had come back.  He of she had not, sadly.  But there were 5 new page views from Russia.  And 6 more from Russia on Sunday.  And 5 more already today.  So welcome Russian friend(s?).  Leave a message in the comments please (!) telling us something about yourself and what brought you to the Tater Tot blog.