Russell Martin met the Toronto media Thursday in his introductory news conference. — CTV PHOTO
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
A weekly feature rounding up a lot of randomness from a lot of time around our city’s teams …
• There are countless reasons why teams don’t divulge information about contract offers to players who reject them. And for every one of those, there’s a counter-reason why agents won’t want that out, either.
In the team’s case, above all, it can set a poor precedent. Divulge one offer, and it sets the bar for divulging pretty much everything down the road. It also can foster distrust among players or agents for future dealings. And it can unnecessarily create tension inside the locker room among other players who soon will have their hands out.
All of this, and so much more, is why the Pirates are anything but eager to divulge details of their now-well-short bid to keep Russell Martin in Pittsburgh.
Same goes for Martin’s agency, which finally has stopped leaking after months of doing nothing but leaking in any direction its interests were served.
They’d have no wish to see their client painted as greedy or disloyal or using his most recent team to raise the order of offers. And they, too, need to maintain bridges with all 30 teams, not just the one that signed their client. Makes just as much sense.
All that said, I’ve put together corroborating information from my sources on both sides of this and can report to you conclusively here that the Pirates’ final offer to Martin, made after the season, was for four years with a total value between $50 million-$60 million.
Why the range rather than a hard, singular figure?
Two reasons:
1. See above. It was pulling teeth to get this much.
2. It’s possible that the nature of discussion between the parties involved multiple exchanges that made that hard, singular figure something of a moving target.
Whatever the case, there it is. I’m further assured that the Pirates were legitimately among the final four suitors for Martin and that, while the Blue Jays and Cubs sent out the strongest vibes that they were willing to go higher, the Pirates were seen as being on semi-even footing, specifically, at the time it went public that the Cubs were offering four years and $64 million. That was just a week ago.
Do with this what you will.
It obviously didn’t matter much in the end, as the Blue Jays just decided they’d step up and blow everyone away for a player they felt could help them but also one who could help fulfill their goal of sealing all of Canada as their market, not just Toronto. Martin might help them make all that money back on that count alone.
Equally obviously, it did matter to baseball fans in Pittsburgh that the Pirates would make a real attempt to keep Martin. In columns here, I wrote repeatedly that four years and $60 million would show me they were serious. But everyone had their own bar, some lower out of fear of the investment, some higher because they just wanted to see him stay.
Now, at least, there’s as much closure on that as is available.
• If the Penguins split up Evgeni Malkin and Patric Hornqvist, they’ll do so at their own peril. And they know it. And that’s why I strongly suspect they won’t, even with Pascal Dupuis apparently lost for the season and lost to the Sidney Crosby line.
See, the easy response — some might say the logical one — would be to reunite Crosby, Hornqvist and Chris Kunitz, who were one of the NHL’s most dominant even-strength lines while together and, in a rarity, carried over as their team’s top power-play unit. It’s proven to work.
But, as I was informed very recently — post-Dupuis — Malkin at one point before this season let Mike Johnston know of his disappointment at not getting Hornqvist, even though Hornqvist was the main player acquired in exchange for Malkin’s longtime linemate, James Neal. Malkin expected and wanted Hornqvist all along.
That helps explain, by the way, Malkin blowing his top in Toronto a couple weeks ago when Hornqvist was hit, as well as Malkin’s recently aggressive attitude and very strong remarks about enjoying playing with Hornqvist.
One could say these are the problems of a two-superstar team, but I’d come right back that they’re wonderful problems to have.
• Joey Porter didn’t play hero in Nashville. I’m told he was instructed by Mike Tomlin to go retrieve the wayward LeGarrette Blount as he was bolting for the team bus. Porter was the logical choice for that task, and he did as asked.
Anything beyond that is narrative for the sake of narrative.
Also, the visiting locker room that night was a joyous place. The Steelers weren’t fussing about or at Blount in the slightest, even for the few minutes he sat at his stall following Porter’s retrieval. In fact, I saw Blount and a couple fellow backs smiling and laughing in there.
Blount’s gone, and that’s great. What he did was wrong. He was genuinely a bad seed. But man, no need to transform the actual event into some syrupy ABC after-school special.
• Matt House has achieved the next-to-impossible in the Pitt football community and become even less popular than Steve Pederson. But don’t expect him to get fired. The most recent word on that is that it’s far more likely that he’d get additional help as a defensive coordinator without forfeiting or even altering his title.
House has done a poor job, even in the context of not having the deepest or most gifted defense, especially after losing one-man symphony Aaron Donald. He’s also had key injuries at linebacker and in the secondary. That context is what has some at Pitt convinced he deserves another chance.
• The Pirates’ plan for Pedro Alvarez is to play first base. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change. They gave him more of a chance at third than was merited, and he literally threw it away, and that’s that.
So start any conversation about first with Alvarez and Gaby Sanchez, as I was told even before Ike Davis being designated for assignment Thursday.
From there, don’t rule out that Andrew Lambo would get another look in some form.
• I’ve been tough on the Steelers’ handling of Stephon Tuitt, who looks like a bull at times on the defensive line but apparently isn’t even as good as Cam Thomas judging by their snap differential. Tuitt all but disappeared Monday in Nashville, as did big Daniel McCullers after the first quarter. The coaches powerfully illustrated what they think of both players right now.
I’m told from the inside that I’m misguided in pleading for more Tuitt at this point. So I’ll respect that viewpoint and go further by sharing it with you here.
• Dupuis is rightly being lauded for a lot this week. An entire city and its global fan base are behind him, and all concerned would be delighted if this were not his last NHL goal, sweet as it was in terms of execution and chemistry with Crosby:
But let it be known that Dupuis’ greatest contribution to this group of Penguins might already have happened, and it happened two summers ago.
That’s when Dupuis, tired of seeing Simon Despres display so much talent but so little rigidity on the blue line, invited his fellow French-Canadian to join him in Quebec for several weeks of joint training. Now, when even a fitness freak like Crosby concedes defeat at trying to keep up with Dupuis, imagine what that was like for Despres, a lanky kid who never before had much upper-body strength.
“He didn’t just change my career,” Despres told me. “He changed my life.”
Despres is the Penguins’ most improved player since last season. He’s dominating at times. He’s living up to his first-round pedigree after years of disappointing.
His engine will always have a No. 9 on the hood.
• The quality of Mike Munchak’s teaching on the Steelers’ offensive line can be best observed in Kelvin Beachum, an undersized left tackle — smallest in the NFL, actually, at 6-3, 303 — who graded so highly Monday that he nearly matched Le’Veon Bell, he of the 204 yards.
Beachum’s flaws were exposed early this season, especially Week 2 in Baltimore, when the Ravens did little more than stand him up and shove him back. But since then, Beachum has stayed low and prioritized technique over brute strength, getting just enough of his man in just the right spot and in just the right direction to get the job done.
“When you’re learning from a guy like Coach Munch, with everything he’s accomplished in the game, you know you’re learning from one of the best,” Beachum told me Monday in Nashville. “I feel very fortunate.”
So should Ben Roethlisberger. Not since the prime edition of Max Starks has his blind side been so consistently well protected.
Good dude: Jim Rutherford. Inviting Dupuis to watch Thursday’s practice from the seats is one small sign of a man with a long history of a classy human touch when his players have faced adversity.
• Jamie Dixon, with my favorite line from anyone in the past week, when he asked if I’d travel to cover either of the Pitt basketball team’s insane road trips on the slate, Hawaii right now or Japan next season: “What’s one group of islands from the next?”
November 21, 2014
Friday Insider: How Pirates finished with Russ
by Dejan Kovacevic • Friday Insider • Penguins, Pirates, Pitt, Steelers
Russell Martin met the Toronto media Thursday in his introductory news conference. — CTV PHOTO
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
A weekly feature rounding up a lot of randomness from a lot of time around our city’s teams …
In the team’s case, above all, it can set a poor precedent. Divulge one offer, and it sets the bar for divulging pretty much everything down the road. It also can foster distrust among players or agents for future dealings. And it can unnecessarily create tension inside the locker room among other players who soon will have their hands out.
All of this, and so much more, is why the Pirates are anything but eager to divulge details of their now-well-short bid to keep Russell Martin in Pittsburgh.
Same goes for Martin’s agency, which finally has stopped leaking after months of doing nothing but leaking in any direction its interests were served.
They’d have no wish to see their client painted as greedy or disloyal or using his most recent team to raise the order of offers. And they, too, need to maintain bridges with all 30 teams, not just the one that signed their client. Makes just as much sense.
All that said, I’ve put together corroborating information from my sources on both sides of this and can report to you conclusively here that the Pirates’ final offer to Martin, made after the season, was for four years with a total value between $50 million-$60 million.
Why the range rather than a hard, singular figure?
Two reasons:
1. See above. It was pulling teeth to get this much.
2. It’s possible that the nature of discussion between the parties involved multiple exchanges that made that hard, singular figure something of a moving target.
Whatever the case, there it is. I’m further assured that the Pirates were legitimately among the final four suitors for Martin and that, while the Blue Jays and Cubs sent out the strongest vibes that they were willing to go higher, the Pirates were seen as being on semi-even footing, specifically, at the time it went public that the Cubs were offering four years and $64 million. That was just a week ago.
Do with this what you will.
It obviously didn’t matter much in the end, as the Blue Jays just decided they’d step up and blow everyone away for a player they felt could help them but also one who could help fulfill their goal of sealing all of Canada as their market, not just Toronto. Martin might help them make all that money back on that count alone.
Equally obviously, it did matter to baseball fans in Pittsburgh that the Pirates would make a real attempt to keep Martin. In columns here, I wrote repeatedly that four years and $60 million would show me they were serious. But everyone had their own bar, some lower out of fear of the investment, some higher because they just wanted to see him stay.
Now, at least, there’s as much closure on that as is available.
• If the Penguins split up Evgeni Malkin and Patric Hornqvist, they’ll do so at their own peril. And they know it. And that’s why I strongly suspect they won’t, even with Pascal Dupuis apparently lost for the season and lost to the Sidney Crosby line.
See, the easy response — some might say the logical one — would be to reunite Crosby, Hornqvist and Chris Kunitz, who were one of the NHL’s most dominant even-strength lines while together and, in a rarity, carried over as their team’s top power-play unit. It’s proven to work.
But, as I was informed very recently — post-Dupuis — Malkin at one point before this season let Mike Johnston know of his disappointment at not getting Hornqvist, even though Hornqvist was the main player acquired in exchange for Malkin’s longtime linemate, James Neal. Malkin expected and wanted Hornqvist all along.
That helps explain, by the way, Malkin blowing his top in Toronto a couple weeks ago when Hornqvist was hit, as well as Malkin’s recently aggressive attitude and very strong remarks about enjoying playing with Hornqvist.
One could say these are the problems of a two-superstar team, but I’d come right back that they’re wonderful problems to have.
• Joey Porter didn’t play hero in Nashville. I’m told he was instructed by Mike Tomlin to go retrieve the wayward LeGarrette Blount as he was bolting for the team bus. Porter was the logical choice for that task, and he did as asked.
Anything beyond that is narrative for the sake of narrative.
Also, the visiting locker room that night was a joyous place. The Steelers weren’t fussing about or at Blount in the slightest, even for the few minutes he sat at his stall following Porter’s retrieval. In fact, I saw Blount and a couple fellow backs smiling and laughing in there.
Blount’s gone, and that’s great. What he did was wrong. He was genuinely a bad seed. But man, no need to transform the actual event into some syrupy ABC after-school special.
• Matt House has achieved the next-to-impossible in the Pitt football community and become even less popular than Steve Pederson. But don’t expect him to get fired. The most recent word on that is that it’s far more likely that he’d get additional help as a defensive coordinator without forfeiting or even altering his title.
House has done a poor job, even in the context of not having the deepest or most gifted defense, especially after losing one-man symphony Aaron Donald. He’s also had key injuries at linebacker and in the secondary. That context is what has some at Pitt convinced he deserves another chance.
• The Pirates’ plan for Pedro Alvarez is to play first base. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change. They gave him more of a chance at third than was merited, and he literally threw it away, and that’s that.
So start any conversation about first with Alvarez and Gaby Sanchez, as I was told even before Ike Davis being designated for assignment Thursday.
From there, don’t rule out that Andrew Lambo would get another look in some form.
• I’ve been tough on the Steelers’ handling of Stephon Tuitt, who looks like a bull at times on the defensive line but apparently isn’t even as good as Cam Thomas judging by their snap differential. Tuitt all but disappeared Monday in Nashville, as did big Daniel McCullers after the first quarter. The coaches powerfully illustrated what they think of both players right now.
I’m told from the inside that I’m misguided in pleading for more Tuitt at this point. So I’ll respect that viewpoint and go further by sharing it with you here.
• Dupuis is rightly being lauded for a lot this week. An entire city and its global fan base are behind him, and all concerned would be delighted if this were not his last NHL goal, sweet as it was in terms of execution and chemistry with Crosby:
But let it be known that Dupuis’ greatest contribution to this group of Penguins might already have happened, and it happened two summers ago.
That’s when Dupuis, tired of seeing Simon Despres display so much talent but so little rigidity on the blue line, invited his fellow French-Canadian to join him in Quebec for several weeks of joint training. Now, when even a fitness freak like Crosby concedes defeat at trying to keep up with Dupuis, imagine what that was like for Despres, a lanky kid who never before had much upper-body strength.
“He didn’t just change my career,” Despres told me. “He changed my life.”
Despres is the Penguins’ most improved player since last season. He’s dominating at times. He’s living up to his first-round pedigree after years of disappointing.
His engine will always have a No. 9 on the hood.
• The quality of Mike Munchak’s teaching on the Steelers’ offensive line can be best observed in Kelvin Beachum, an undersized left tackle — smallest in the NFL, actually, at 6-3, 303 — who graded so highly Monday that he nearly matched Le’Veon Bell, he of the 204 yards.
Beachum’s flaws were exposed early this season, especially Week 2 in Baltimore, when the Ravens did little more than stand him up and shove him back. But since then, Beachum has stayed low and prioritized technique over brute strength, getting just enough of his man in just the right spot and in just the right direction to get the job done.
“When you’re learning from a guy like Coach Munch, with everything he’s accomplished in the game, you know you’re learning from one of the best,” Beachum told me Monday in Nashville. “I feel very fortunate.”
So should Ben Roethlisberger. Not since the prime edition of Max Starks has his blind side been so consistently well protected.
Good dude: Jim Rutherford. Inviting Dupuis to watch Thursday’s practice from the seats is one small sign of a man with a long history of a classy human touch when his players have faced adversity.
• Jamie Dixon, with my favorite line from anyone in the past week, when he asked if I’d travel to cover either of the Pitt basketball team’s insane road trips on the slate, Hawaii right now or Japan next season: “What’s one group of islands from the next?”