Pirates' early moves make tender deadline mostly irrelevant

The deadline to tender arbitration-eligible players is tonight, but most of the Pirates' work is already done. They had four potential non-tender candidates in John Axford, Jeanmar Gomez, Gaby Sanchez and Ike Davis, but they addressed the cases of all four players already -- they outrighted Axford and Gomez, designated Sanchez for assignment, and traded Davis.

That leaves the following arbitration-eligible players, all of whom are very likely to be tendered. Projected 2015 salaries are courtesy of MLBTR, with their actual salaries to be determined later in the offseason:

Neil Walker, 2B (4.166): $8.6MM
Mark Melancon, RP (4.098): $7.6MM
Travis Snider, OF (4.091): $2MM
Chris Stewart, C (4.091): $1.3MM
Pedro Alvarez, 3B (4.085): $5.5MM
Tony Watson, RP (3.101): $2MM
Josh Harrison, 3B (3.033): $2.2MM
Jared Hughes, RP (2.162): $1.1MM
Vance Worley, SP (2.139): $2.9MM

UPDATE: Of course, Sean Rodriguez is eligible as well and will almost certainly be tendered.

As I noted at MLBTR, that Melancon salary projection is almost certainly too high. He'll probably be closer to $4 million or so.

In any case, don't expect anything strange tonight. It will be interesting to see who other teams non-tender, but the Bucs aren't likely to address the top of their rotation by acquiring non-tendered players, so tonight's action will mostly just create opportunities for the Pirates to address depth.