Pirates offered Gregory Polanco 7-year deal

The Pirates offered Gregory Polanco a seven-year deal with three team options worth a guarantee of a little under $25 million, Jeff Passan reports. Polanco turned the deal down. (What Passan describes is a seven-year deal, and not a 10-year deal, which is the number that's been going around on Twitter.) Jon Heyman writes that, with the options, the deal could have ranged up to between $50 million and $60 million. The Pirates offered the deal during spring training.

Such a deal would have allowed the Pirates to stop worrying about the service-time issue and promote Polanco immediately, because it would have bought out his arbitration years anyway, rendering the Super Two issue moot. The Astros did something similar with George Springer, offering him a seven-year, $23 million contract. He also turned the deal down.

I wrote last week that the Pirates should offer Polanco a seven-year deal, so I'm glad the Pirates did it. And regardless of the Super Two situation, signing a young, toolsy, talented player like Polanco long-term makes lots of sense.

Essentially, assuming the Pirates don't call Polanco up before mid-June, he's due to make only about $2 million total through 2017, so the deal covers three years and about $23 million beyond that. I'm sure the club options, which would give the Pirates control of Polanco through his age-31 season, probably were a sticking point, however. The deal might well have turned out to be an enormous steal for the Bucs, so I can see why Polanco rejected it, even though it would have given him financial security. The contract would, of course, have reflected a major display of faith in a player who hadn't yet appeared in the majors, although that's no real surprise, given Polanco's talent.