Kevin Correia has been a good free agent signing for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Lyle Overbay, well, not so much.

That is the nature of free agency. When you go fishing in the offseason, sometimes you reel in a 20-pound walleye.

And sometimes all you snag is a crappie.

Free agency is littered with successes and failures. The big market teams, like the Yankees and Red Sox, can be more aggressive in free agency, but also tend to have the biggest flops.

Most of the time, they can withstand such mistakes because of their deep pockets. Should the Pirates mess up (and they have), it haunts them for years.

Following is my list of the five worst free agent signings by the Pirates:

5. Ryan Church, 2010. Sure, this was a reclamation project, but $1.5 million for a reclamation project is pretty steep.Church was solid with the Mets and Braves until a concussion derailed him.Church, though, was dreadful with the Bucs, batting just .182 in 170 at-bats. As you will see, the Bucs have had little success with free agent outfielders.

4. Jeromy Burnitz, 2006. The Pirates thought they got a break when Burnitz backed out of a two-year deal with the Orioles to sign with them.As it turned out, Baltimore got the break. Burnitz was overweight, a butcher in the field, slow and unmotivated and lost all of the pop that made him moderately dangerous with the four teams in the four previous years.The Pirates got all of that for a cool $6 million.

3. Pat Meares, 1999. The Pirates got 219 games, a .230 average and an injury lawsuit for $15 million.

2. Raul Mondesi, 2004. His numbers weren’t bad in the 26 games he played for the Bucs in 2004. It was the fact he only played 26 games that was the problem.In May, he took a personal leave, then refused to return to the team. The Pirates finally released him and 10 days later, he signed with Anaheim.Mondesi was clearly at the end of the line anyway — a perfect resume for a Pirate free agent signing.

1. Derek Bell, 2001. Two words: “Operation Shutdown.”Those two words will go down in baseball infamy.Bell signed a two-year contract worth nearly $10 million with the Buccos after a so-so season with the New York Mets in 2000.Bell stunk from the start, batting .173 in his first season with the Pirates. He compounded his problems in spring training the next season when, miffed after being told he was in an open competition for the right field job, said he was going into “Operation Shutdown.”Not a great way to endear yourself to a blue collar fan base: threaten to quit working when things don’t go your way.Fans hated him. The Pirates front office hated him. His dog probably hated him.The Pirates cut him and Bell took his $10 million and sailed away with it into the sunset.No, really. He did. He bought a boat with his stolen Pirate scratch and sailed away.You can’t make this stuff up.Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.