In response to Scott Boras and John Henry (and the Daily News and Forbes), Pirates president Frank Coonelly went into some detail about the franchise's finances. Dejan Kovacevic:

Coonelly, eager to dispel mounting charges that the franchise puts big profits above winning, broke from the team's long-standing policy of not discussing finances to disclose in a series of interviews last week that the Pirates put all their profit in that span toward $11 million in baseball-related capital investments and, even then, needed to incur additional debt to cover the rest of the amount.

Those capital investments included a $5.4 million baseball academy in the Dominican Republic, $2 million toward the renovation of the Pirate City complex in Bradenton, Fla., and the recent purchase of a new Class A affiliate to play in Bradenton.

"The Pirates utilize every dollar we receive in our effort to build a winning club," Coonelly said.

All that information, Coonelly added, has been documented, audited and, as per standard procedure, can be seen by their professional peers.

I believe him.

No, I really do. Oh, I don't mean to suggest that there aren't any accounting tricks in there, or that someone's not paying his daughter good money to show up on Thursdays and smile a lot. Those things do happen. But looking at the big picture, I do believe the Pirates are using the great majority of their revenues to try to win baseball games.

Why wouldn't they? Nobody gets into the baseball business to lose baseball games, or to make money. They get in to win baseball games, and get their names in the newspapers, and maybe come out in the end with a bit of a profit.

Much of my "career" has been based on criticizing losing teams. But I'm almost always critical of what I think are poor decisions and occasionally downright incompetence. I've rarely criticized a team for being too cheap. Because that is very rarely the problem.