Andrew McCutchen Staying With The Pirates For The Next Six Years

Still, we’ll always find a naysayer when a player gets a big new deal, and today’s naysayer is Jon Heyman:

Yeah, actually: Andrew McCutchen is a $51.5-million player. Right now. For this deal to work, all he has to do is stay reasonably healthy and keep playing baseball exactly the way he’s been playing baseball.

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McCutchen is. In two decades, with 12 different top-ten picks, McCutchen is the first player from the Pirates’ drafting efforts that they can reasonably call a franchise player. He’s the name that will be on the jerseys that Pirates fans will still wear 40 years from now. If he had followed the neo-traditional Pirates path -- play for four or five years, then get traded for a gaggle of questionable prospects -- the cycle of failure would have spun around unfettered. Another two decades of misery wouldn’t have seemed out of the question if McCutchen slipped away.

Dave Cameron? Of course he likes the move:

Of course the extension is a good thing for the Pirates. No one could hate this. I keep scanning the news, looking for news that makes this story something that’s irrefutably Pirates -- “Source: Every year after 2012 is a player option” -- but there’s nothing wrong with this.

Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast, fans of large-market teams. This one has a happy ending for the Pirates. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The Pirates and star center fielder Andrew McCutchen agreed to terms on a six-year contract worth $51.5 million with a club option for 2018 worth $14.75 million, according to a source.The deal buys out all three of McCutchen’s arbitration years, two of his free-agent years, and it includes a club option. This is probably the best news for Pirates fans in over a decade. Science hasn’t invented a knee-jerk contrarian talented enough to hate this move from the Pirates perspective. Without the option, McCutchen will be with the Pirates through his age-30 season for well below market value.