The Pirates enter a very interesting offseason as they try to continue to pivot towards being a playoff contender once again. However, part of contending is stability. The Pirates have the coaching staff and front office tied down for a bit longer to try to keep that stability. Additionally, they also have plenty of players locked in for awhile.
However, with that being said, there are always players on the roster that teams would like to extend in order to keep them around longer, and at a cheaper rate money-wise than they’d make in free agency. The Pirates have done plenty of this in the past, and much of it has wound up working out in their favor.
I fully expect them to look into signing more extensions this offseason as well. But, who would they like to extend. I think there are four players they’d like to extend more than anyone else. Let’s take a look at them.
Jameson Taillon
Jameson Taillon has been rock solid for the Pirates in his relatively short time in the majors. He has a 3.63 ERA/3.53 FIP and has been worth 8.4 WAR in 75 games covering 428.2 innings. He is also coming off his healthiest season of not just his major-league career, but arguably his whole pro career, having shattered a career-high in innings pitched with 191. He is turning into the Pirates ace very quickly and will only continue to rise it looks like. The Pirates would certainly love to keep him around beyond the next 4 years they will have him for. Also, if he continues to pitch like he has, his arbitration will get rather expensive. This is why he is their prime extension candidate.
Pirates would want to buy out the 4 years he has left and hope it winds up being less money overall than arbitration would have been (this is where they messed up with Gerrit Cole). They also would want to buy out a free agency year or two on top of that. A 5-year deal with a team option or two at the end sounds like a Pirates type of extension here. I feel there’d be at least a decent chance he’d sign it as well.
It would smart for the Pirates to get this deal done at the beginning of Taillon’s breakout and not wait a year or two until he may become a bonafide ace and then having to pay him twice as much just to stay.
Keone Kela
Keone Kela arrived in Pittsburgh in a July trade with the Rangers. He was nothing but dominant for the Pirates. Kela had his troubles on and off the field in the past, but it seems he may have exorcised those demons to become a legitimate backend of the bullpen force.
The thing about Kela is that he is only 25 (doesn’t turn 26 until April) and will be a free agent after 2020, which will be when he is only 27 and approaching his age 28 season. He can hit free agency at a pretty young age if he wants to. But that is why the Pirates have to try to get him locked in now.
Like Taillon, he seems to be beginning his actual breakout now and could become a bonafide legitimate top bullpen arm within the next year or two. Pirates have to try to sign him before he realizes that potential. Given his age, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to give him a 5-year deal because that would still only take him through his age-30 season.
The problem will lie in what kind of money he’d want. For a guy to forego two potentially expensive arbitration years and pass on hitting free agency at age 27 would take quite the contract I’m sure. He has potential to earn a lot of money in the 2020/2021 offseason as a potentially elite reliever with closing experience at that young age. Pirates would almost have to approach him with something really close to a free agent type of deal to get him to stay. I doubt he signs an extension in Pittsburgh after being around only two months anyways. He will likely wait this one out.
Josh Bell
Josh Bell has had an interesting two full seasons in the majors to say the least. He had one season in which he hit a lot of homers and played at least average defense. However, last season he hit for a higher average, got on base more and struck out less, but he hit less than half as many homers as he did in 2017. His defense at 1st base regressed though to being quite possibly the worst in the NL at his position. 2019 will be a huge season for Bell where he tries to combined what he did well in both seasons and eliminate as many of the flaws as possible.
Because of this, I doubt the Pirates give him an extension until he proves that and shows consistency. On the other hand, however, if he puts it all together in 2019, he enters arbitration with some leverage as a breakout player.
I think the Polanco situation a few years ago is a good comparison to Bell here. Pirates saw flashes of Polanco enough to give him a long-term extension before the full breakout they expected, which we still haven’t seen just yet. They could do the same with Bell. Give him a long-term relatively cheap deal now in hopes that he breaks out right after. It is a risky deal to do for sure, but they may try that route with Bell like they did Polanco.
Corey Dickerson
Dickerson may be the most interesting extension candidate the Pirates have. He had one of his better all-around seasons, hitting to a .300/.330/.474 slash line and a 115 wRC+. Even though he, like Bell, hit about half as many home runs as the year before, he reinvented himself by hitting for higher average and on-base percentage to go with fewer strikeouts (like, almost 10% fewer actually). But the biggest and most drastic change we saw with Dickerson was his defense. He was seen as a liability on defense in Colorado before going to Tampa Bay where he was primarily a DH for that reason. However, in Pittsburgh that changed a ton. He had been a negative DRS (defensive runs saved) player every year in his career prior outside of 2016 and was a career -8 DRS player, so yeah the stats didn’t lie. However, this past season, he shattered all of that. He profoundly crushed his career high 2 DRS by having a whopping 16 DRS in 2018 which reversed that -8 and turned it into a positive 8 on his career DRS. He was rewarded for this by shockingly winning the National League’s gold glove award for left field.
He is under team control through next season and will be a free agent after that. He is 29 years old and will be 30 early next season. Given his age and the amount of outfield prospects they have, they may not want to extend Dickerson, but he may be worth it now given that he has adapted his game to maybe give him a longer shelf life than that of others his age, and the Pirates at least know he can perform adequately, which rookies coming in often will struggle with. He has been a consistent performer and has become a leader for this younger team, and it may be smart to keep him around for an extra two or three years if possible.
I believe they will sign one of these guys to an extension this offseason or during spring training. My hunch would tell me they extend Taillon. But, extending Bell may be the most convenient one to do now, so it may be him. I will guess extending Kela will be too difficult, and their organizational philosophy and circumstance will cause them to take a hard pass on extending Dickerson.
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