Ken Rosenthal has a few more details on Gregory Polanco’s extension offer from the Pirates. Rosenthal says that Polanco’s deal would have guaranteed $20-25 M, and adds the detail that the length and value of the contract would have hinged on whether he was Super 2 eligible.
As I’ve written a lot the last few weeks, and as I pointed out when evaluating Polanco’s extension, teams usually add a Super 2 clause to a deal where a player would receive more money if he were to become Super 2 eligible. Rosenthal’s $20-25 M figure makes you assume that the increase would be $5 M. That’s the same price that Chris Archer and Jose Quintana received for their extensions.
With that information, the $25 M figure seems low. I compared Polanco’s offer to the extensions of Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte, noting that those two players received $25 M and $22 M respectively for their 0-6 seasons. Polanco would get more than those two if he was a Super 2 player, which means $25 M is low.
We can reasonably assume that Polanco will not be a Super 2 player, and that the Pirates will wait to call him up next month. I still maintain that $25 M is fair for his 0-6 years as a non-Super 2 player, and it seems that would be an upgrade over the original offer from the Pirates.
As for the rest of the offer, Rosenthal says that the deal would have guaranteed more than $50 M if his three option years were picked up. That means his three free agent years would be worth at least $25 M. Previously we heard that those years could make the deal as much as $60 M, which means those years would cost $35 M. That would be about $12 M per year, which might end up being a discount for the Pirates if Polanco pans out, but is right around market rate for the risk that you take on with such an extension.
There are still a lot of things we don’t know about Polanco’s offer. The only thing we do know is that he turned it down. With the disclaimer that we don’t have all of the information, I’d say that a $25 M guarantee, and $60 M overall would be fair in this deal, assuming Polanco doesn’t qualify as a Super 2 player. It seems that this would also be an upgrade over the original offer that Polanco turned down.
