The Pirates signed Carlos Santana last week and all I could think was, “This is tremendous! Oye Como Va!” 

“Black Magic Woman” will become the anthem of the Pirates, and Skyblast concert nights just got a lot more interesting! Santana’s coming to PNC Park, baby, to play after weekend night games, right?

It doesn’t get any better than that. Oh, wait a minute ... 

It all came crashing down when we found out it wasn’t Carlos Santana the 75-year old Latin American rocker coming to PNC Park but rather Carlos Santana the 36-year old infielder, who signed a one-year $6.75 million deal with the Pirates.

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We are all friends here, so I am going to spare the nonsensical “this time it is different” talking points about why all of you who are fans should be super excited about Santana the ballplayer coming to PNC Park.

That’s especially true since I’m sure you heard them all by now, everything from, “He is a plus defender and will improve first base defense,” to, “He is a career 3.0 WAR player,” to my favorite, “He hit 19 home runs in 131 games last season so he adds power!”

Please stop.

I am still of the mindset to give this Ben Cherington-led front office — now entering Year 4, by the way — the benefit of the doubt, but this is the kind of signing that makes me believe it is time to deal in reality.

This is a “more of the same” kind of move that doesn’t instill confidence that the Pirates are serious about making a legitimate step forward next season or any time soon.

Santana is a rent-a-player, so I don’t give a heck about his WAR (which, since we are being honest with each other, was 1.2 last season, -0.2 in 2021 and 1.1 in 2020 which means he is clearly an aging player in decline), his 19 home runs adding “some pop” to the lineup, or his plus defense. 

None of it is relevant because if he is any good, he will be traded for prospects at the deadline. And if he isn’t any good and nobody wants him, he will be DFA’d.

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He wasn’t brought to the Pirates to make them legitimately better, make them more competitive or help them win enough games to get closer to respectability. He was brought in as another trade chip, a veteran who may have enough magic left in his bat or his glove to have a good three months before the trade deadline so he can be flipped for another prospect.

And this is by no means meant to be disrespectful to Santana, who has an excellent career. He probably does make the Pirates a little bit better, but that’s not saying much. That is a very low standard for any player to achieve if you really think about it.

Making a team that has lost 100 games in each of the past two seasons marginally better is not exactly something to brag about. And that’s especially true when you consider the fact that if Santana does actually make them better, he will be shipped somewhere else before most Pirates fans have a chance to buy his jersey.

I know it may seem overly cynical and that I am being way too hard on the Pirates, but how could anyone look at this move through any other set of eyes?

We are supposed to give them all kinds of credit for “spending more money” after things like arbitration and service time and a few more of these kinds of “veteran scrap heap” signings that naturally increase the payroll.

You know that is coming; you can see it a mile away even though “increasing the payroll” is not the same thing as “spending more money to win more games.” 

I’m not going to pat the Pirates on the back for spending more money on payroll when the increases are going to be almost all organic and forced by the system of arbitration and service time. And I’m especially not going to do it when I don’t view Santana as getting $6.7 million — it will be more like $3.7 million since he is likely to be traded in July.

Maybe I am way wrong. Maybe I am way out of line. Maybe I will be proven to be completely wrong and my cynicism will cause me to eat a whole bunch of crow when the Pirates follow up this Santana move with a bunch of other moves that legitimately do smell like a team trying to win.

I really want to believe that this offseason is different, that next season is different, that we are going to have meaningful baseball to watch in August and September ... but I just can’t get there. Not when the “big move” is to bring in an aging player whose true value is what he might bring back in a trade.

That’s why in the meantime, let me dare to dream a bit ... “I had a dream but it turned to dust, what I thought was love it must have been lust ...” 

Paul Zeise: pzeise@post-gazette.com or Twitter: @paulzeise 

First Published: December 1, 2022, 9:09 p.m.