{"id":279671,"date":"2025-11-13T04:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T04:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279671\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T04:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T04:42:10","slug":"pirates-could-spend-30-40mm-this-offseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/279671\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates Could Spend $30-40MM This Offseason"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pirates are desperately in need of offense to support an excellent young pitching staff. General manager Ben Cherington said yesterday<\/a> that the front office has \u201cmore flexibility than they\u2019ve had in [any] other offseasons\u201d since he was hired going into the 2020 season. That might enable them to make multiple additions from the middle tiers of free agency.<\/p>\n

Mark Feinsand of MLB.com<\/a> reports that the Bucs could commit between $30-40MM to their 2026 payroll. That\u2019s at the higher end of what they\u2019ve spent in previous offseasons. They spent narrowly above $30MM in free agency going into the 2023 and \u201924 campaigns. That dropped to roughly $20MM last winter. They haven\u2019t signed a multi-year free agent contract in nearly a decade. Their $10.5MM signing of Aroldis Chapman<\/a> over the 2023-24 offseason is the only eight-figure free agent deal of the Cherington era.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh offloaded the remaining four years and $36MM on the\u00a0Ke\u2019Bryan Hayes<\/a> contract in their deadline trade with Cincinnati. Dealing\u00a0David Bednar<\/a> to the Yankees subtracted an arbitration salary that MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects<\/a> at $9MM. The Bucs have $30.5MM committed to\u00a0Mitch Keller<\/a> and Bryan Reynolds<\/a> next season. They\u2019re likely to spend somewhere between $12-15MM on their arbitration class. They opened this past season with a player payroll around $88MM, so it makes sense that they could add something like $30-40MM. That\u2019d put them a little shy of this past season\u2019s level before accounting for $10-15MM in minimum salary players to round out the roster.<\/p>\n

The bigger factor may be whether the Pirates more aggressively pursue free agents on multi-year deals. Cherington told MLBTR\u2019s Darragh McDonald in August that the Bucs have made multi-year offers<\/a> over the years, but none have been accepted. They haven\u2019t signed a free agent who rejected a qualifying offer since Francisco Liriano<\/a> in 2014.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d register as a surprise if they break that trend for Gleyber Torres<\/a> or\u00a0Trent Grisham<\/a>, though they theoretically have the payroll space to accommodate a three- or four-year deal for one of those players if they wanted to focus most of their resources into one acquisition.\u00a0Ha-Seong Kim<\/a>,\u00a0Luis Arraez<\/a>,\u00a0Ryan O\u2019Hearn<\/a> and Harrison Bader<\/a> are borderline two- or three-year deal candidates \u2014 none of whom was tagged with the QO.\u00a0Mike Yastrzemski<\/a>,\u00a0Cedric Mullins<\/a> and\u00a0Max Kepler<\/a> could sign one-year deals that are towards the higher end of what Pittsburgh has spent in prior offseasons.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also possible the Bucs leverage their starting pitching on the trade market. Dealing Keller would knock another $16.5MM off the books while probably bringing back a mid-tier hitter or two. They could swap Mike Burrows<\/a> or\u00a0Thomas Harrington<\/a> for a similarly controllable bat who has shown some promise. Cherington and his group can look at virtually every position for offensive help.\u00a0Spencer Horwitz<\/a> is set for the lion\u2019s share of playing time at first base. Oneil Cruz<\/a> will be somewhere in the outfield, probably center, while Reynolds is locked into right field. There\u2019s virtually nothing else set in stone, though top prospect\u00a0Konnor Griffin<\/a> certainly projects as the long-term answer at shortstop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pirates are desperately in need of offense to support an excellent young pitching staff. General manager Ben…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-279671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}