At noon today I was frantically trying to finish up some lab work and working on getting ready for my four hours of recitation this afternoon when this came across my Twitter feed. I blinked, I scrolled back to see if I missed something, I hit refresh to see if it was a mistake, and then the confirmation tweets rolled in. One day into the 2015 season, one year after Josh Harrison struck like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky, the Pirates signed him to a four-year extension with two option years, meaning the Pirates now have Harrison signed beyond his arbitration years, as far as the first three years of his free agency, should they pick up the two options. The deal guarantees him $27.3 million and between his options and bonuses could be worth up to $50.3 million.
I realize I’m a bit behind the reaction curve on this one, but my basic feeling is the same as Charie’s at Bucs Dugout: I didn’t think that the Pirates needed to sign Harrison to an extension, it’s hard to argue that this is a bad deal for the Pirates. His salaries through his arbitration years aren’t excessive, and the $27 million total for those three years plus his first year of free agency (meaning this year, 2016, 2017, and 2018) don’t seem excessive. The option years are just that; they can be re-evaluated after the 2018 season when it comes time to think about the 2019 roster and the value of players then. It might be nice for the Pirates to have Harrison around at $10 million then, but it won’t be terribly expensive for them to buy him out for $1 million if he’s not worth the money.
From a more zoomed out standpoint, these sorts of deals almost always make sense for the Pirates (assuming the pay is reasonable, which it seems to be here), even if they don’t work out. The Pirates are getting a tremendous amount of value vs. price from Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte right now, so much so that the sunk cost of Jose Tabata barely registers. All of these sorts of extensions are calculated risks and, I think they’re generally risks worth taking for the Pirates, even with guys like Harrison that weren’t necessarily on the top of my “Players for the Pirates to extend” list.
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