PITTSBURGH – As I calculate it, the Pirates have a current projected payroll of a little over $96 M. That figure removes money from what the Pirates saved from Jung Ho Kang’s 2017 salary ($2.75 M, assuming he will miss the entire year) and Starling Marte’s time on the restricted list (just under $2.2 M).
If you add those two figures back in, the Pirates would be at $101.3 M right now. Adding them back gives some perspective, as it shows what the Pirates were planning on spending with both of those players on the team.
The Opening Day payroll was $98.9 M, which removed Kang’s figure. The Pirates also released Jared Hughes, and prior to that move, the payroll was projected for around $101 M. If you add Kang back to that number, then a payroll with Hughes, Kang, and Marte for the full season would be at around $103 M.
So the Pirates have money to spend. We don’t know the exact figure that they intended to spend before it was known that Kang would probably be out for the year, or before Marte was suspended, or before Hughes had a bad Spring Training. But it would be a safe guess to put them at $101 M, at the least, especially since they started the season around that level in 2016.
If that’s the case, the Pirates currently have at least $5 M in unspent money this year, and possibly more when you consider that they usually spend more money throughout the year than their Opening Day projection.
Yesterday, Neal Huntington told reporters, including our own Alan Saunders, that the team intends to put this money back into the club “when the option becomes available.”
“As soon as that option becomes available, we’ll gladly pour the money back into the club,” Huntington said. “April trades are essentially non-existent. May trades are hard to come by. As we get closer to the deadline, that is the intent: to utilize the dollars that created. … That money is sitting there, waiting to be used at the appropriate time.”
The Pirates are not off to a good start for their season, currently sitting four games below .500. They are a better team than this if all is going well. Unfortunately for them, hardly anything is going well this season. The current speculation isn’t that they will add at the deadline, but that they will subtract by trading players who have expiring contracts, or only a year or two remaining beyond 2017. Huntington left their approach up in the air for now, but said their current intent is to add.
“We’ll obviously measure where we are when we get closer to July,” Huntington said. “As we sit here now, our intent is to do what we’ve done the last six years, which is to add to this club, to put ourselves in contention to play meaningful baseball in September and for the fourth time, playoff baseball in October.”
That part is true about the Pirates adding every year. They weren’t strong contenders in 2011, but they added Derrek Lee and Ryan Ludwick. They added every year after that, including the 2016 season, when they traded for Ivan Nova. That deadline was a bit different, since they both added Nova and subtracted Mark Melancon, getting Felipe Rivero for the future. It’s possible that this approach could fit the Pirates in 2017, especially if they’re looking to sell and get what they can for departing guys, while also looking to build early for the 2018 season.
“We’ll continue to monitor the situation,” Huntington said. “Our intent is to be in a position to add. If there’s a year where we’re not in a position to add, then we take a look at the players that are going to leave us at the end of the year in free agency. What’s our best return there? Some cases, it’s to hold them.
“A year ago, we held a number of guys that were leaving via free agency or potentially leaving via free agency because we wanted to give this team a chance to compete. We made one trade Melancon for Rivero. We added Nova. We traded Liriano. We may be in a buy and sell situation. But each situation is unique. I don’t know that anything changes our intent to be in a position to help this club win every year.”
One thing to consider is the current makeup of the team. I wrote at the end of last week about the position-by-position breakdown for the short-term and long-term. The Pirates have options at each position for the next few years, and prospects at most positions for the long-term. As far as adding to the team, they could certainly pick some spots to try and reduce the amount of spaces they are relying on prospects to fill. But that’s going to be difficult to decide which young players they go with, and which spots need outside help.
“We’re going to have to continue to have to fold young guys into it,” Huntington said. “We’ll supplement those with some veteran additions whether via trade or free agency. As our young players continue to grow and develop, we need to have the next wave behind. That’s why what’s happening in Bradenton is important for the future Pirates. That’s why what’s happening as we prepare for the draft is important for future Pirates. Whether it’s direct because they come up and play a meaningful role for us or it’s indirect, because we were able to use some good players in our system to trade for established Major Leaguers.”
The Pirates have used plenty of prospects to trade for MLB players, with the most recent big example being Tito Polo and Stephen Tarpley for Nova. I’d expect to see more of that going forward.
As for spending, it will be interesting to see how this is done in 2017, especially if the team is in a position where it would make more sense to sell, thus subtracting payroll in the process. They did that last year, and subtracted future payroll in the Francisco Liriano trade, then spent that money on guys like David Freese and Ivan Nova.
I’d be less concerned about the 2017 payroll reaching a magic figure — especially if they’re out of the mix — and more concerned on how they spend the money going forward. It really doesn’t matter if they’re spending $98 M or $101 M in 2017. But if they cut millions of dollars in future payroll, then you’d hope they will add that payroll back in the future. Fortunately, they’ve already had that scenario in the last year, and spent the money they saved. I’d expect a similar approach in 2017 if the current season goes the way it is going.
