During spring training last year, news trickled out that Ben Cherington was exploring potential contract extensions with Pirates players, including Bryan Reynolds, Joe Musgrove, Kevin Newman and Ke’Bryan Hayes.
It looks like that could be the case for this spring too. And in Hayes’ case, there have been at least “initial discussions” of a potential extension again, a source tells DK Pittsburgh Sports.
No dollar figures have been exchanged for Hayes, and those discussions have been about the Pirates’ long-term plans and how the third baseman fits into it. But the expectation is that the Pirates will make an offer, though there is no timetable for when that might happen.
The baseball offseason is mostly erratic for when a big training or signing can happen, but there are a few cycles that stay the same every year. The winter meetings bring a couple high profile moves. There are a series of trades and signings before the non-tender deadline. More and more veterans start taking minor league contracts with spring invites when the calendar turns to February.
And there are always a fresh batch of extension talks once players start reporting to spring training.
“I don’t know if there’s any magical time of year for this,” Cherington was telling me. “But for whatever reason, maybe it’s just because arbitration ends and the season hasn’t started yet, and 0-3 service year players still need a contract… there’s a conversation that happens with every player on the 40-man roster. There’s a window of time where, just through the natural order of the schedule where you’re having a conversation with players anyway about their contract.”
Cherington says he wants those conversations to be “open-ended,” adding, with a chuckle, they could “talk about anything.”
That includes any extension talk. With a 40-man roster to fill, almost all those discussions result in a one-year deal. But sometimes, there is something more worth pursuing.
“Over time, we hope that there are opportunities to talk about longer-term relationships with certain players,” Cherington said when asked if the Pirates would pursue any extensions this year. “That’s not specific to any player, but we want the door open to that kind of thing.”
Not to say the Pirates would be motivated to make moves just for public relations, but with the team firmly in rebuild mode after trading three of its best players, locking up a young player long-term would make sense from a baseball standpoint too if the organization believes they are a cornerstone.
Hayes is an obvious candidate. He’s regarded as the top prospect at his position and the favorite to win Rookie of the Year after tearing the league up last September.
There aren’t a lot of examples to base a potential Hayes contract off of. The last time a high-profile third base prospect signed a long-term deal after just a few weeks in the Majors was Evan Longoria in 2008. His deal paid $17.5 million guaranteed for six seasons with three option years. Even at the time it seemed like a ridiculously team-friendly deal for the Rays. To estimate for today's game, such a deal would probably cost three times as much as it did the Rays. That would put it in line with Luis Robert’s contract from last spring. Robert was a universal top-five overall prospect who signed for six years, $50 million with two club option years with the White Sox. He had yet to play a game in the Majors at the time.
That last point is worth emphasizing. The Pirates lost a bargaining chip in any potential talks with Hayes because he's reached the Majors. The appeal of signing a player who hasn’t reached the Majors yet is that a spot on the opening day roster becomes a selling point. With a long-term deal in hand, teams have no incentive to worry about a player’s service time. Hayes had been craving a promotion since he was named the Pirates’ minor league player of the year in 2018. Now he's here, and he knows he's going to stay.
And to revisit those who talked long-term extensions last year, Reynolds is entering his last pre-arbitration year. If the Pirates believe he will bounce back, and they have said so publicly many times, there’s incentive to get a deal done now before he reaches arbitration for the first time next year and starts getting more expensive. After a down year, and with several high-profile middle infield prospects in the system – including Nick Gonzales, Oneil Cruz, Liover Peguero and Ji-Hwan Bae – a Newman extension doesn’t seem as likely. To speculate, Mitch Keller could be another candidate.
Sources told me that last year, the Pirates were still active in extension talks when the COVID-19 shutdown happened. The uncertainty surrounding the virus halted discussions, and all traction was lost. Perhaps they would have struck a deal with someone had the season proceeded as normal.
MORE PIRATES
• While reflecting on his first year as manager this offseason, Derek Shelton began to wonder if he should have called for his team to be more aggressive on the bases. “Should we have tried to maybe be more aggressive to put ourselves in a situation to do those,” Shelton said this. “That’s something we’ve definitely looked at and I have internalized. I’m still working on the answer.” He was referring to hit-and-runs more so than stolen bases, but the Pirates could certainly do more of the later, too. Last year, the Pirates attempted just 27 stolen bases. Going based on situations where the Pirates could steal, meaning there wasn’t a runner on second base, Pirate base runners only attempted a steal 4.8% of the time. The last time the Pirates’ steal rate was that low was 2008 under John Russell at 4.7%. Before that, you have to go way back to Danny Murtaugh in 1975 (4.1%). The Pirates are returning four players who averaged a sprint speed of at least 28 feet per second (the league average speed is 27 feet per second): Anthony Alford (29.7 ft/sec), Cole Tucker (28.5 ft/sec), Reynolds (28.2 ft/sec) and Hayes (28 ft/sec). If Shelton wanted to be more aggressive, he has some players who could swipe some bags. -- Stumpf
• Former Rockies Tyler Anderson and Tony Wolters are back together again with the Pirates. Both spoke highly of each other, with Wolters saying Anderson is “better prepared than anyone I’ve ever had” for pitcher-catcher meetings, and Anderson saying everyone loves the backstop “the more they get to know him.” Interestingly enough though, they had very mixed results as a battery. Anderson pitched to a 3.72 ERA when Wolters was catching him in 2016, a very good clip in Coors Field. In 2017, it jumped to 8.02. They didn’t team up as much the next two years, but their ERAs in those games were 3.32 in 2018 and 12.34 in 2019. There’s no guarantee Wolters makes the team, but if they do, that battery could either be very good or very, very bad. -- Stumpf
PENGUINS
• Ron Hextall and Brian Burke have been evaluating the Penguins for over a week now, and should be starting to get a feel for what they think are the team's most pressing needs and how they should go about addressing them. However, identifying problem areas is the easy part; putting together the moves required to shore up perceived soft spots in the lineup figures to be a lot more challenging, at least if Hextall and Burke determine a major upgrade is in order. That's because the Penguins have so few significant assets with which they can part in a trade. There are very few high-quality prospects in their system, and they've already traded away their first-, third-, fourth- and sixth-round selections in this summer's draft (although they do have three seventh-rounders). What a prospective trading partner would be looking to acquire would have an obvious impact on what the Penguins might have to give up in any swap, and unless they are willing to part with a top-six forward or a defenseman from the top two pairings, the only guys on the major-league roster who might be able to bring a substantial return likely are defenseman Marcus Pettersson -- a fixture on the No. 2 pairing before P.O Joseph's breakout performance in the opening month of this season -- and forward Jared McCann, who has pulled some top-six duty since being acquired from Florida, but who was marooned on the No. 3 line before missing the past four games because of an unspecified injury. The Penguins presumably aren't eager to part with either, since McCann is versatile and could fill in capably if someone on the top two lines is unavailable, while Pettersson is a solid young defenseman whose value was underscored by the glut of injuries the Penguins suffered on their blue line earlier this season. -- Dave Molinari
• The Penguins are three-quarters of the way through a four-game homestand, and have been back in familiar surroundings for a week. It's reasonable to assume that they're happy to be home, and not only because of their rancid 2-5-1 record in away games this season. The outcome of games aside, being on the road simply isn't much fun for NHL clubs in 2020-21. The Penguins' travel party, for example, includes a medical professional responsible for administering the frequent COVID-19 requests the NHL requires of players, coaches and staff members who go on the road. When teams are in a city other than their own, they are allowed to be in only their hotel, the arena or an NHL-affiliated practice venue. (The UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry would be an example of the latter.) There is no going to restaurants, movies, stores or anywhere else. When players aren't working, they're expected to be in their rooms. Their own rooms, because socializing in the room -- or even having a roommate -- isn't permitted, to minimize the chances of spreading the coronavirus. All of which puts players into situations they probably didn't expect to face in the NHL. Like when last Thursday evening, Sidney Crosby was spotted unloading a large box of takeout meals for teammates from the back of a delivery vehicle in front of the Penguins' hotel on Long Island. Credit him with a pretty nice assist, even if it didn't register on the stats sheet. -- Molinari
• So very, very little good -- and an incalculable amount of misery -- has come out of the pandemic that continues to touch almost everyone's life in some way on a daily basis, but one small positive for the NHL is that it has shown the league the positives associated with having teams play multiple consecutive against one opponent at the same venue. Not necessarily seven in a row, as St. Louis and Arizona did recently, but two or three, for sure. Although Washington defenseman John Carlson said recently that he would "absolutely not" endorse the format being used in 2020-21 becoming a staple of future schedules, that seems to be a minority opinion. Penguins players and officially who have spoken publicly about it have expressed approval, fans do not seem to mind their team facing the same opponent in consecutive games -- that was a prominent concern heading into the season -- and club executives surely like that travel costs are being significantly reduced because there are fewer flights involved. When, or even whether, the league will consider making multiple-game series a fixture on future schedules for teams that meet three or more times per season remains to be seen, but there's enough support for the concept that it seems likely to get serious thought. -- Molinari
STEELERS
• With the additions of compensatory picks this year for minority coaching and front office hires, there was some question as to how those picks would be counted. The NFL awards 32 compensatory selections each year for free agent losses. The minority hiring compensatory selections will be in addition to those 32 picks. The Steelers are in line to receive compensatory picks in the fourth and sixth rounds this season, so the minority hiring compensation picks this year won't affect that. Nor will they affect the Steelers next year. Teams can receive up to four compensatory picks per year, and with the Steelers set to have some major free agents in another month, they could be looking at getting some serious additional draft capital in 2022. -- Dale Lolley on the South Side
• It sure sounds like the Steelers want Ben Roethlisberger to be the one to make the decision about whether he'll play in 2021 or not. It's not all that strange. They took something of a beating for telling Troy Polamalu they didn't feel he could effectively play any longer. And it didn't exactly work out in 2013 when they asked James Harrison to take a pay cut and he refused, as well. He refused and the team was forced to cut him. Dealing with stars at the end of their career is never pleasant. -- Lolley
• It wasn't exactly newsworthy for Kevin Colbert to say that the Steelers aren't likely to use any free agency tags this year. Considering the team needs to trim some salaries to get under the cap, it hardly makes sense to want to use the the franchise or transition tags, which pay the player the average of the top five or top 10 players at their position, respectively. Yet some treated this as newsworthy. There were 14 players who had the franchise tag used on them in 2020, including Bud Dupree. The bet here is that given the salary cap situation around the league, the number of players on which teams use the franchise tag this season will be no better than half that number in 2021. Teams just can't afford to use the tag. -- Lolley
• Colbert said he and Mike Tomlin will have to be picky about which pro days they go to this year. Some schools will limit how many people from each team will be permitted to attend -- based on state rules and such -- while the actual pro days are going to start hot and heavy in March. Obviously, there are only so many days in the month, so there will be multiple pro days on certain days. For example, March 26, BYU, South Dakota State, Michigan, Virginia Tech and Boston College have scheduled their pro days. BYU has a first-round quarterback prospect in Zach Wilson, but both Virginia Tech and Michigan will have more overall prospects. So, unless you're a team that is thinking about taking Wilson, you'll send more of your scouts -- or your head coach and GM -- to Michigan or Virginia Tech. -- Lolley
