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A.J. Burnett Prefers the Pirates, But His Salary is Not Preferred

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Ken Rosenthal has some interesting updates on A.J. Burnett:

There’s a lot to break down here, so some quick thoughts.

1. It’s interesting that Burnett is now saying he prefers the Pirates, since his whole off-season decision was about preferring to play for the Phillies. Of course, the Phillies aspect could have been due to the fact that he was guaranteed $23 M in the deal, due to his player option (which I’ll get to in a second).

2. I don’t put much stock in what the players are looking for. Every year we hear a bit about what the players want, and it’s always the same trend. Players tend to focus on names, and not on numbers. Right now Burnett is a big name, but the numbers aren’t really an upgrade over what the Pirates currently have in their rotation.

3. Burnett’s option will go up to $8.5 M after three more starts. With the pace he’s on, he’ll probably reach 32 starts this year, making his 2015 player option a $12.75 M salary. He’s currently pitching through a sports hernia, and the last I read out of Philadelphia is that he was going to have surgery in the off-season. He could definitely return for a full season next year if that was the case. But you’d have to worry about how he returns. Cole Hamels had the same surgery after his age 27 season, and was fine the next year. But Burnett is in his age 37 season.

4. As for Burnett’s salary, Cot’s lists him with several performance bonuses coming up. He’ll get $500,000 for 24 and 27 games started, plus $750,000 for 30 games started. He should reach those, which means he’ll be owed an extra $1.75 M on top of the remainder of his $7.5 M salary this year. There’s also about $6.5 M remaining in signing bonuses. Overall, if Burnett was dealt on July 31st, he would be owed about $2.5 M this year, plus the extra $1.75 M in bonuses, plus $6.5 M in signing bonuses, plus $12.75 M next year, with the chance to earn the same $1.75 M in bonuses. That’s upwards of $25.25 M over a 14 month span for a player who wouldn’t really be an upgrade to the current Pirates rotation.

As I’ve said before on this topic, Burnett did great things while he was with the Pirates. He’s not doing that anymore. He’s also set to make a ridiculous amount of money over a 14 month span, which is an amount that wouldn’t have been worth it even at his old numbers.

The Phillies could eat some of this salary, but the flip side to eating salary is that you have to pay prospects to get a discount. Burnett isn’t going to bring an upgrade that’s worth giving up anything of value.

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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