100% agree that baseball ops people, especially those of the stathead variety, would not think that signing Pablo was a good idea. IMO, this definitely screams of Lucchino's influence.
That said, while I was against Pablo's contract, I can understand the baseball rationale in signing him. We needed a 3B, and Pablo should have been better than the production we received the previous year. It still wasn't a good signing, but it shouldn't have been this bad.