The We Tried Tracker Is Back and Open for Business

Well sports fans, it’s that time again. We Tried season is officially upon us, and for the second offseason in a row, I will be keeping my eye fixed firmly on the periphery of the action. For the uninitiated, We Tried is a noun in this context. It’s the name for the phenomenon of reporters announcing, once a player has signed with a team, that another team was interested in signing that player too. Team A might have succeeded in landing the player in question, but Team B wants to make sure the public knows that they failed to sign him because they want credit for that failure. It is both our duty and great honor to award that credit. The illustrious Jon Becker has once again graciously offered to host the We Tried Tracker on his maniacally comprehensive MLB Matrices spreadsheet, so be sure to check there for all the latest in major league effort.

Jeff Passan, ESPN’s officially-licensed baseball bombardier, kicked off the real offseason bright and early on Tuesday morning (Becker tipped me off to the news not long after). At 7:00 AM, Passan published an offseason preview that featured a key piece of information about Josh Naylor, who agreed to return to the Mariners this past weekend:

The largest free agent contract the Pirates have ever handed out was more than a decade ago: three years and $39 million to Francisco Liriano. They are consistently a bottom-five payroll team. And yet the Pirates were primed to spend more than twice that on Josh Naylor before he re-upped with Seattle for five years and $92.5 million in the first signing of the winter on Sunday night — and they’re considering other possibilities to supplement Paul Skenes and a rotation that was among the five best in MLB in the second half.

We’ve got so much to unpack here. First of all, the Pirates were preparing to spend more than $78 million? Like…in money? The Pittsburgh Pirates? Naylor is Canadian; are we sure we’re not talking about Canadian dollars, which would have knocked about 28% off that total? Even more likely, maybe the Pirates were preparing their offer in some entirely different currency, possibly one that they invented earlier this month. It would make a lot more sense if they were planning on paying Naylor in Bucs Bucks, which carry a particularly unfavorable exchange rate.

As with many We Trieds, the information here is sparse. Naylor got five years and $92.5 million from Seattle. Over how many years would the Pirates have expected to dole out those 78 million Bucs Bucks? Are we talking about a shorter deal with a higher average annual value, or are we talking about a deal that just isn’t as lucrative? And did they actually make an offer, or were they, as the word ‘primed’ seems to hint, merely prepared to do so?

The phraseology is one of the more fun things about this particular entry. Last offseason, we saw 99 We Trieds expressed in 39 different constructions. But right out of the gate, we’ve got entirely new verbiage, presumably because the Pirates are brand new to this whole trying business. This is the first time anyone has ever said they were primed to make an offer, and it’s a fantastic action verb, especially when you’re using it to describe an action that you didn’t actually end up undertaking. That said, it’s honestly a little unclear whether the Pirates were primed in the sense of a Revolutionary War soldier ramming a musket ball down the barrel of his weapon, or in the sense of a Civil War solider spending 15 minutes wearing out his arm trying to get a long-disused well pump going again. Given how long it’s been since the Pirates have spent real money, the latter seems more likely, but really any anachronism will do.

Jokes aside, this is a genuinely exciting development. One of the reasons We Trieds happen, especially this early in the offseason, is that a team wants to signal to fans that they are actually going to spend money in the near future. It’s a promise. And if any fans deserve to see this kind of promise fulfilled, it’s Pirates fans, who have been waiting a decade to see not even a winner, but just an organization that does a good job of pretending to want to win. According to Cot’s Contracts, which has been tracking payrolls since the turn of the century, the highest the Pirates have ever ranked is 21st. That was in 2003. It’s been nine years since they’ve finished outside the bottom five. Within that context, letting this information get out to the public represents a covenant, and God help the Pirates if they break it.

The news about Naylor also bodes well for this exercise. He came in at no. 11 on our list of the Top 50 Free Agents. It’s exciting that even though the offseason is only just getting started, the first big name free agent triggered a We Tried within just two days. It gives me hope that we’ll light this year’s spreadsheet up like a Christmas tree.

That brings me to my last point, which is less a point than a plea. This is the part where I beg for your help: Help! Please help me fill up the spreadsheet! I will do my best to look for We Trieds myself, but should you spot one out there in the wild, please let me know. I’m no longer on Twitter for obvious reasons, but you can find me on Bluesky, where my DMs are open, and you can email me at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com, a real email address that I really check. I will enthusiastically credit you for your keen eyesight, and I respond to every submission, even the relentless spam emails that, for reasons beyond comprehension, implore me day after day in the strongest language to apply for a job at FedEx. I’m sorry, spam emails, but I saw Cast Away and I’m not going out like that. Thanks, but no thanks.