Konnor Griffin Will Be a Pirate For a Very Lengthy Time

I’m a fan of gallows humor, and I feel that followers of the Pirates have to be as properly. The Pirates have developed their share of stars through the years, however for followers, there’s all the time the slight little bit of dread that after their younger expertise begins getting paid commensurate with their manufacturing, they’ll be swapping the black-and-gold for Dodger blue or pinstripes. So it’s time for Yinzers and the Allegheny-adjacent group, as shortstop Konnor Griffin and the staff agreed to a nine-year, $140 million contract that might preserve him on the town till after the 2034 season.

As contracts go, this can be a moderately easy one. Whereas MVP incentives can deliver up the deal by a modest $10 million, to $150 million, that’s nearly the one complexity current. There is no such thing as a deferred cash to eat away at present worth of the contract, no possibility years for the Pirates to lock in on the finish, and no opt-out provision that might get Griffin to free company a 12 months or two early. The deal features a $12 million signing bonus, which might be doled out over the following three years, definitely useful to Griffin in that he’ll nonetheless get a pleasant chunk of money even when the seemingly inevitable lockout drags into the 2027 season.

The Pirates have an actual up-and-down historical past with contracts, so it’s all the time good to see them spend on franchise expertise moderately than unfold issues round on third-tier free brokers. They managed to maintain Andrew McCutchen a couple of years previous his free agent eligibility, however for the final 50 years, many of the stars who began out in Pittsburgh turned higher related to different groups. Gamers starting from Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla to Aramis Ramirez and Gerrit Cole, a gaggle that might embody Paul Skenes in a couple of years. A few of the offers the Pirates did signal hang-out the desires of Gen X and millennial Pirates followers (Pat Meares! Kevin Younger! Derek Bell!). The Pirates signed Andy Van Slyke and paid him greater than the Giants paid Bonds throughout the latter’s first years in San Francisco.

Griffin was mainly everybody’s top-ranked prospect coming into this season, and it’s not exhausting to see why. He has extra instruments than may be discovered at a Florida spring break kegger, and in his first skilled season, he terrorized minor league pitchers to the tune of a .333/.415/.527, 165 wRC+ line throughout three ranges, together with a 175 wRC+ in his month at Double-A. That may be a drool-worthy efficiency if he have been a 23-year-old first baseman, however he did all of that as a teenage shortstop. He nonetheless doesn’t hit the massive two-oh for a few weeks. Griffin’s one of many few prospects you’ll be able to plausibly evaluate to A-Rod at an identical stage in his profession with out the listener rolling their eyes and saying, “Who, Aurelio?”

Just a few weeks in the past, I did my annual take a look at contracts I’d wish to will into existence, and ZiPS advised an eight-year, $142 million contract for Griffin. So getting a ninth 12 months is even higher!

That ninth 12 months is fairly darn worthwhile, and ZiPS can be fairly joyful to provide Griffin $40 million extra with the intention to safe the 2034 projection. ZiPS, like most projection techniques, doesn’t usually have matches of irrational exuberance, for the easy indisputable fact that it’s properly aware of how dangerous gamers are. Griffin isn’t a 5-WAR participant but, so there is threat concerned, however that’s true of all gamers, whether or not they’re elite prospects or superstars in the midst of their careers. Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera have been clearly much more “confirmed” after they signed their largest offers than Griffin is now, however the Angels and Tigers paid handsomely for that so-called proof, and as needs to be clear now, there was plenty of draw back concerned there, too.

A $140 million contract isn’t a mega-deal within the typical baseball sense, however for the Pirates, Griffin’s contract represents the largest monetary dedication they’ve ever made to a participant. They’re all-in in terms of the Konnor Griffin enterprise. Each staff and participant are actually spared issues like years of hypothesis about future trades or service-time video games ought to Griffin battle in April. Keep in mind the time the Pirates provided Gerrit Cole $538,000, and when he turned it down, they apparently wouldn’t budge previous $541,000, and threatened to pay him the league minimal if he refused? Low cost-bush league shenanigans are actually out of the query with Griffin, and the main target may be on the precise baseball.

Even when Griffin isn’t instantly a megastar, he makes the Pirates meaningfully higher, they usually understand it. He actually did look uncooked at instances within the spring, to the extent that sending him down was excusable, even comprehensible, not like when the Chicago Cubs in 2015 determined they wanted exactly 20 days some extra time to determine if Kris Bryant was a greater possibility at third base than Mike Olt. Griffin did get 5 video games with the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians, and it definitely seemed like, in a small pattern dimension, that he wasn’t actually something new towards minor league pitching. However that’s not the purpose. The Pirates are true NL Central or Wild Card contenders, and they’re much higher off with Griffin as their beginning shortstop, even when it takes him a while to regulate to the majors, than a good function participant like Jared Triolo. (Triolo has since been positioned on the injured listing with a patellar tendon damage in his proper knee.)

With the long-bubbling Griffin contract negotiations lastly full, now the Bucs can fear about the remainder of the staff, and making the Cubs and Brewers really feel uncomfortable for the remainder of 2026.

It could border on being grotesquely untimely to speak in too-concrete phrases a couple of 19-year-old Griffin and the opportunity of him someday having a Corridor of Fame plaque in Cooperstown. However no less than if such an object ought to ever come into existence, there’s now a sensible probability that it might have a “P” on the cap. That’s sufficient to make this week for Pirates followers.