For the last few weeks, word has been circulating that the Pirates wanted to sign Starling Marte to a long term contract, but that he had rebuffed their first few offers over the off-season. Yesterday, however, the Pirates finally changed his mind, agreeing to a six year contract that raises the question: if this is all that it took to get him signed, were their initial offers that he would pay them for the right to wear the uniform?

Yes, that comment is said in jest, and yes, the $31 million guaranteed money that Marte received in this deal is hardly chump change. But let’s call a spade a spade here: Marte left a ton of money on the table, and this contract is remarkably favorable to the Pirates.

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Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Pirates or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Texas / Toronto.

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The other day, Buster Olney tweeted that some executives see regression in the Pirates’ immediate future. Projection systems seem to be in agreement, and Dave talked about this very thing as soon as the Pirates were eliminated from last year’s playoffs. Nobody thinks the Pirates are going to go back to being terrible — there’s way too much talent there — but people see them more as fringe contenders than NL Central favorites, and it’s not like they’ve had the most constructive offseason, with the biggest move to date being the loss of A.J. Burnett.

Of course, the offseason isn’t over. The Pirates might still be able to get Burnett re-signed, which would be a significant improvement. They’re another one of those teams in a high-leverage position on the win curve, so any kind of improvement should be pursued. And with that in mind, right now the situation at first base involves Gaby Sanchez and unknown others. You probably know that Gaby Sanchez is a real player, but he’s never done much to draw attention to himself, and he’s not a regular. It seems like the Pirates are ripe for a first-base upgrade. But then, what’s really available to them?

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Look, I’m not one of those people who thinks that baseball season starts with pitchers and catchers reporting. There’s a whole lot of time between that date and the date at which meaningful things start to happen. But I’ll grant that we consume baseball differently upon pitchers and catchers, that it means the start of daily baseball-y updates, and the first team’s pitchers and catchers report on February 6. That’s less than two weeks away. It’s sneaked up on us, because even now there’s a lot left to happen in the offseason. We just all had to wait for Masahiro Tanaka to pick a damned hat.

The offseason’s most important decision left is the Rays’ decision to either trade or keep David Price. I don’t really even have to think about that to assert it with confidence — such a trade would make a good Rays team worse, and it would presumably make another contender better. There’d be a significant total change in 2014 playoff odds. But there’s another big decision left, and it’s bigger than Ervin Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez making up their minds. It’s a decision that affects the Pirates, and the Pirates only.

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The Braves are going to arbitration with Jason Heyward over $300 thousand dollars. It’s a wonderful sentence, full of so many words that could set you off in a million different directions. And so I followed those strings, talking to as many people involved in arbitration as I could. Many of those directions did lead me to denigrations of arbitration, and of the file-to-trial arbitration policy that the Braves employ. There’s another side to that sort of analysis though. Arbitration is not horrid. File-to-trial policies have their use. This is not all the Braves’ fault.

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After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay.

Batters
While not having realized the Sisyphean task of winning a World Series, GM Neal Huntington et al. have constructed a Pirates club that both (a) qualified for the playoffs in 2013 and also (b) would appear to have a reasonable chance of repeating that outcome in 2014.

If the Pirates don’t make their way to the postseason this year, it likely won’t be the fault of their field players. Per ZiPS, Andrew McCutchen is a candidate to win the 2014 MVP award after winning it in real life this last season. Beyond him is a collection of average-or-better players and also Gaby Sanchez. Combining the latter with Andrew Lambo (or maybe Jaff Decker or maybe Travis Snider) in a platoon might even render the club’s first-base position as average.

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I can recall a handful of baseball stats that have just blown me away upon first viewing. Most recently, I was floored by advancements in pitch-framing research, and now I can’t think about any catcher without looking up how well he does or doesn’t receive. Obviously, PITCHf/x was sort of world-changing right away, and the same goes for the glimpses we’ve had of HITf/x. Years and years ago, I thought we solved almost everything with general batted-ball data, and I also remember opening a book and seeing batting averages and slugging percentages against specific pitch types. And there was an article I read in the Hardball Times, talking about various park factors. Some of them have been obvious for a long time. But it wasn’t until that day that I realized parks can affect outcomes like strikeouts and bases on balls.

There’s every reason for that to make sense. Every single ballpark is different, so in a way, every single ballpark’s version of baseball is different. The baseball will look different to the batter, and how the batter sees the ball is sort of one of the game’s fundamental components. The batter’s decision and swing lead to everything else. But what this isn’t is intuitive, or easily explained. People don’t pay much attention to these park factors, because they’re weird and ultimately not that important. Yet they exist and ought to be acknowledged, and one park in particular is extreme in a number of ways.

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Logan Morrison came up with glove, power and patience and a big twitter presence. It was exciting. Then he was injured, the power waned, and he used that twitter account to upset his franchise. Now he’s a Mariner, traded for Carter Capps. And all of this means something for the Mets and Ike Davis.

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A lot of people are big fans of player comparables. When describing a current reality or a projected future, it can help to attach a familiar face, so that an audience has a better idea of the point being conveyed. Comps can be useful, but they’re also controversial, in part because every player is unique, and in part because they’re frequently unrealistic. A flattering comp lasts forever, and if a player doesn’t pan out it can make an analyst or scout look pretty stupid. I don’t even remember the context anymore, but a few years ago I remember seeing J.A. Happ compared to Cliff Lee, and this was well after Lee became awesome. Happ obviously hasn’t gone in that direction, and while maybe the observer was on to something at the time, now it’s a comparison to laugh at. The most one can say is that J.A. Happ is closer to being Cliff Lee than you are, presuming you’re not Cliff Lee or someone better than J.A. Happ.

Talk about Charlie Morton and, at least on the Internet, you’ll probably end up talking about Roy Halladay. The backstory is simple enough: Morton was bad, and he wanted to not be bad, so he went to a new delivery that looked a lot like Halladay’s. People chuckle, because Halladay simply had one of the best pitcher peaks ever, while Morton’s just a guy on a team. But ignore the Halladay angle and it’s clear that Morton has turned himself into something, and now he’s got a new three-year contract with the Pirates, worth $21 million. Morton saved his career, and now he’s a part of a good team’s present and future.

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The rumor mill was pretty sure the Pittsburgh Pirates would sign James Loney this week. This year’s version of Tampa’s continual reclamation project at first base has a longer history of above-replacement production than Casey Kotchman and Dan Johnson ever did. There does seem to be some buy-high risk, though. Maybe it’s not sexy to sign a guy that has the upside to be league average, but this Pirates team hasn’t seen an average first baseman since 2009’s version of Garrett Jones left the building, and he was the only once since 2001 to achieve that feat.

Coming off of a career-best season that also featured his full-season career-best batting average on balls in play, it’s tempting to say that James Loney is only average when luck fuels him. He’s not without his warts, that’s true. But when you add up the strengths and weaknesses, another average year is absolutely attainable for Loney. Especially in Pittsburgh.

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