Pittsburgh Pirates

Tuesday 12 Qs: Jagr, Simon, Stephon, Gaby

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New Jersey Devils v Vancouver Canucks

Jaromir Jagr and his New Jersey teammates during a game in Vancouver last week. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Welcome to Tuesday 12 Qs, our chat that takes place each week at 2 p.m. and encourages you to dictate the discussion.

photo-150x150The format is simple: Use the comments section below to submit an entry. No more than one per person, please. Submit early if you prefer, and I’ll pick from that batch to get rolling, then monitor new entries once we go live. All topics welcome, as always.

UPDATE 2 p.m.: And off we go …

Snovi LLC: If the Steelers go 8-8 and/or miss the playoffs, will it be considered a mistake to bring back so many old veterans instead of letting guys like Stephon Tuitt, Dan McCullers, Shamarko Thomas, etc. cut their teeth? Might have lost a few more games, but they would have gained a ton of valuable experience.

They’re going to need these guys next year, right?

DK: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. But I’ll take it further, because I’m not sure the Steelers would have been worse at all with those players out there learning on the job as compared to Cam Thomas, Mike Mitchell and so forth.

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Friday Insider: Pirates’ payroll should top $90M

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Frank Coonelly has been the Pirates' president since 2007. -- GETTY

Frank Coonelly has been the Pirates’ president since late in the 2007 season. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

A weekly roundup of a lot of randomness from a lot of time around our city’s teams …

fridayinsider• The Pirates “certainly can and I suspect will” top the $90 million mark in payroll in 2015, Frank Coonelly told DKonPittsburghSports.com exclusively Thursday.

And yes, this will represent another significant increase, contrary to widespread misinformation and misrepresentation of the truth.

If you want bluster, click away. If you want facts, here you go …

The Pirates’ 40-man roster payroll for 2014, the one audited and verified by Major League Baseball’s accounting offices, was $82.1 million. While multiple other outlets were howling over payroll being in the low-$70 million range, this site informed you in the Sept. 5 Friday Insider that the actual projected figure for the full year was $82.4 million.

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Column: A Thanksgiving appreciation in threes

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Buffalo Bills v Pittsburgh Steelers

Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown celebrate a touchdown hookup earlier this season. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Feeling especially and personally thankful on this Thanksgiving eve …

• I’m thankful to cover professional sports in a town blessed by not one not two but three truly elite performers on each team, which I’m guessing is more than most would count into that category.

I’ll go Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell with the Steelers, each of whom can currently claim a legit argument for being the very best at his position in the NFL.

I’ll go Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and, yes, Marc-Andre Fleury with the Penguins. Because anyone who would discount the latter doesn’t fully appreciate what it meant Monday that he became the third-youngest goaltender in NHL history to 300 wins. And get this: Since making his debut Oct. 10, 2003, at the Civic Arena, Fleury has accounted for 69 percent of the Penguins’ 432 victories while sharing the crease with 15 other men.

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Tuesday 12 Qs: Brittle Beau, Mitchell, Neil

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Pittsburgh Penquins v New York Islanders

Beau Bennett is checked by the Islanders’ Thomas Hickey on Saturday in Uniondale, N.Y. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Welcome to Tuesday 12 Qs, our chat that takes place each week at 2 p.m. and offers you a chance to dictate the discussion.

photo-150x150The format is simple: Use the comments section below to submit an entry. No more than one per person, please. Submit early if you prefer, and I’ll pick from that batch to get rolling, then monitor new entries once we go live. All topics welcome, as always.

Thanks to the new commenting platform, by the way, there’s a very good chance we’ll be able to conduct this chat on a live chat platform as early as next week.

UPDATE 2:01 p.m.: And away we go …

jayjay_667: Snark free honest thoughts of whether Beau Bennett can fill a top-six role by the postseason? (Without tired cliche “fragile” commentary.)

DK: Whoa there, Snark Police! Hang on just a minute here. Let’s be crystal clear on this: Bennett being fragile deserves neither your quotemarks nor your preface that it’s a tired cliche. It’s a fact. A stone-cold fact. He is injured more often than he plays. It’s been going on ever since he turned pro. It’s highly unfortunate, but it’s also very real.

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Friday Insider: How Pirates finished with Russ

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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 …

fridayinsider• 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.

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Morning Java: Giancarlo’s echo

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DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

Beginning today, a new feature here on the site bearing an old name: Morning Java.

I’ll try to focus on issues a bit beyond our city borders, more often than not, stuff I wouldn’t commit to a column because, candidly, that just isn’t the site’s literal selling point. It might be Pittsburgh, it might be, as with this one on Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million contract with the Marlins, something that just touches on Pittsburgh.

Tuesday 12 Qs: Live from Music City

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The corner opposite the Predators’ arena, Broadway businesses and AT&T skyscraper. — DEJAN KOVACEVIC

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Welcome to the Music City edition of Tuesday 12 Qs, our chat that takes place each week at 2 p.m. and offers you a chance to dictate the discussion.

photo-150x150The format is simple: Use the comments section below to submit an entry. No more than one per person, please. Submit early if you prefer, and I’ll pick from that batch to get rolling, then monitor new entries once we go live. All topics welcome, as always.

UPDATE 2 p.m.: Away we go …

zidanesdagger: DK, assuming the Steelers do the right thing and kick LeGarrette Blount to the curb after his shameful quit-job last night, are they REALLY going to go with only Dri Archer and Le’Veon Bell for the rest of the season? Any potential targets they could sign?

DK: The fact that it’s now early afternoon and nothing has happened leads me to believe nothing will. These things tend to go pretty quickly. If Mike Tomlin was going to cut him over this, it shouldn’t have involved much deliberation.

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News/views: Russell Martin to Jays for $82M

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Russell Martin takes off his mask during the Pirates' last road trip of 2014 to Cincinnati. -- GETTY IMAGES

Russell Martin takes off his mask during the Pirates’ last road trip of 2014 to Cincinnati. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Russell Martin has agreed to terms with the Blue Jays on a five-year, $82 million contract, according to multiple reports, including the original with Peter Gammons.

Views: My God.

Just a day earlier, some of the same highly reliable national outlets were reporting that the Cubs were close with a four-year, $64 million proposal. But very, very clearly, Toronto made a conscious decision to blow that — and everyone, including the Pirates — completely out of the water.

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Column: A.J. makes it all feel so real … again

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Atlanta Braves v Pittsburgh Pirates

A.J. Burnett tips his cap to the PNC Park crowd in 2013, a familiar scene after so many starts. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

“I want to win a ring, and I want to win it with Pittsburgh.”

See, that used to be a real hoot around here, spouting stuff like that. Because the ‘ring’ in this statement is a World Series ring. And ‘Pittsburgh’ points to the Pirates, the franchise that was Major League Baseball’s perpetual laughingstock. At least until A.J. Burnett arrived in 2012.

Which is precisely why it isn’t funny anymore.

Especially when the man himself is saying it.

“It’s about winning,” Burnett was telling us reporter types in a conference call this evening, minutes after he and the Pirates signed his one-year, $8.5 million, miles-below-market-value contract to return to the place he said made him the happiest. “It’s about being in a place where I know I can win it all. It’s about how many years I’ve got left. It’s about my family and my heart. To be able to get out where I want, I’m so lucky to have that opportunity. There’s nowhere I’d rather finish my career than in that city, with that organization and those people in that locker room.”

Anyone else flings out phrases like that, especially in a no-nonsense town like ours, and they’ll get called on it. Not this guy. Not the way he always makes it feel so real. Not after all he’d already done to win over Pittsburgh in his initial stint, and most certainly not after all he did to open a second — and yes, closing — chapter.

Let’s start there: Burnett will turn 38 and, as he made abundantly clear several times in the call, he’ll pitch one more season and call it quits. He’d hinted as such before but never this bluntly.

“One more,” he said. “This will be it.”

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News/views: Pirates bring back A.J.

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MLB: Pittsburgh Pirates at Chicago Cubs

A.J. Burnett left the Pirates after the 2013 season to spend a year in Philadelphia. — GETTY IMAGES

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

News: The Pirates are bringing back A.J. Burnett, signed Friday for one year at $8.5 million.

Views: Wow, so that’s a start, huh?

I’m going to type out some stuff here in real-time, so please keep refreshing to see the whole thing once it’s done. Just wanted to put something up right away.

Burnett will be 38 in January, and he’s coming off a strange season in Philadelphia in which he pitched through significant hernia pain to log a National League-high 34 starts and 213 2/3 innings while going 8-18 with a 4.59 ERA. The latter numbers don’t look great, but 196 strikeouts, 96 walks and the injury factor all point to a guy who is still … well, A.J.

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