Jeff Passan at Yahoo Sports took a look at the ten most team friendly deals in the game. With the season Andrew McCutchen is having this year, combined with his contract extension last off-season, it should be expected that he’d be on this list. Passan ended up rating him as the second most team friendly deal in baseball, falling only behind Evan Longoria, who surprisingly has only made $8.5 M in his first five years in the league.
Passan notes that over the last 50 years, only George Brett, Jeff Bagwell, Larry Walker, Todd Helton and Barry Bonds have finished a season with triple slash numbers better than McCutchen’s current .368/.429/.627 line. The Pirates have McCutchen under team control through the 2018 season. Assuming they pick up his $14.5 M option in 2018 (which is a safe assumption), McCutchen will be paid $63.25 M from 2013-2018, or $10.5 M a year on average.
Passan notes that if the Pirates would have waited until after this season to extend McCutchen, they could have been paying Matt Kemp prices. Kemp is making $21.2 M a year on his deal, which is a little more than double what McCutchen is making, for roughly the same production based on their numbers this season.
