Major League?

Most people will agree that, in baseball, pitching is everything. Teams try to stock pile arms; starters, closers, doesn't matter. Want to trade for another teams player? The first thing they'll ask for is your young pitching. What's the value of a good arm? Just look at the deal the Yankees are reportedly offering this year's free agent darling, C.C. Sabathia. And every team is scouring the globe looking for the next potential Cy Young winner.

But the Pittsburgh Pirates have taken their search for good young pitching to another level. On Monday the Pirates signed Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel to free agent contracts. What's interesting about the signing is not that Singh and Patel are the first Indians to sign professional contracts. But Singh and Patel have never played organized baseball--at any level. The duo were part of an Indian reality television show called, "Million Dollar Arm." The goal of the show was to find athletes, in a country with a population topping one billion, who could throw Major League fastballs. Singh and Patel ended up as the top hurlers and came to the United States to audition for major league scouts. Singh's heat was clocked at 84 mph and Patel's at 90 mph. And while the Pirates acknowledge that the two pitchers are raw, they must see something in the two. Otherwise, this is a publicity stunt usually relegated to AA baseball clubs.

And this is why the whole thing reeks. The Pittsburgh Pirates are a Major League Baseball team, one with a rich history. They have won the World Series five times, the last one coming in 1979 and they were one out away from winning the NL pennant in 1992.

But their recent history has shown that this is not a good ball club. The 2008 campaign found the Pirates ending the season with a 67-95 record and 30.5 games back of the division winning Chicago Cubs. The last time the Pirates finished a season above .500 was in 1992. That's a lot of years with a lot of losing. And the future looks pretty bleak for Pittsburgh fans. The team traded their two best players last year (Jason Bay and Xavier Nady).

Now they are signing reality show contestants to contracts. I understand that smaller market teams are not going to be signing the top tier free agents. They will need to develop their talent in the farm system. But this signing is, at best, a terrible PR stunt. Is this what you are going to sell your fans who are sick and tired of losing? Is this the talent that their scouts are finding: two guys who throw (sort of) hard, although they've never played a game of baseball in their lives? Do you really expect fans to show up to your games?

While most of the Pirate players don't seem to be ready for the big leagues, Pirate management certainly has shown that they aren't either; sixteen straight losing years and countless more to come. Which leads me to question the validity of the Pittsburgh Pirates' major league status. Are they a major league ball club or simply a AAAA team?