Pirates extension of Mitch Keller a conveniently timed PR move

Say this for the Pittsburgh Pirates and their five-year contract extension with starting pitcher Mitch Keller on Thursday – their timing was phenomenal. While the signing of Keller is a promising move to keep one of the club's best players in Pittsburgh, it is hard to overlook the fact it came 24 hours after a scathing article was published in The Athletic highlighting the franchise's lack of spending under owner Bob Nutting.

It's a good signing. It's a good headline. It's some good PR. But it's also a band-aid that simply masks a significantly larger problem with the franchise. 

The biggest bombshell in the Athletic story, written by Stephen J. Nesbitt and Ken Rosenthal, was that Nutting reportedly forced the Pirates to take $8 million out of their MLB player budget to pay for upgrades to the team's spring training facility in Bradenton, Florida, nearly a decade ago. 

Those payroll funds would have been stripped away right around the time the Pirates made their most recent playoff appearance in 2015 and also coincided with a steady drop in the team's payroll. It rightfully infuriated an already angry fan-base and again called into question Nutting's commitment to building a consistently competitive team in Pittsburgh. 

In the Pirates' defense, an extension for Keller was almost certainly in the works before the publication of that article and there is no way they just threw together a five-year, $75 million contract overnight. 

But the extension still isn't something the Pirates deserve rousing praise for and it only highlights the overall problem with ownership. 

Keller's contract is the type of thing that should be the bare minimum expectation for a Major League franchise. It should a given. It should be easy.

It is also the only type of long-term contract the Pirates seem willing to give out. One that will likely represent a bargain for them in the long-term and keep a core player for what is simply a market or even below-market contract (see also: Bryan Reynolds and Ke'Bryan Hayes). 

If Keller is able to maintain the level of play he has demonstrated over the past year-and-a-half his $15 million per year salary will be a tremendous value for a solid No. 2 starter – which he will ideally be in Pittsburgh if 2023 No. 1 overall pick Paul Skenes pans out. 

It also does nothing to improve the current outlook for the 2024 season. 

Keller was going to pitch in Pittsburgh this season no matter what and the team still has a rotation full of huge question marks behind him. They also still have the 29th ranked payroll in Major League Baseball, ahead of only the Oakland A's. 

What makes that lack of spending so appalling is that with even a little bit of effort they might have been able to field a competitive team in a National League Central without a dominant team and where nobody else seems to be trying. Even spending an extra $20-30 million another top-half-of-the-rotation starting pitcher would still keep them in the bottom-five of the league's payroll while also giving them a real chance.

But, as noted in Wednesday's Athletic piece, the Pirates haven't signed an outside free agent to a multi-year contract since 2017 and have never guaranteed more than $17 million (Russell Martin back in 2012) to an external free agent. They simply seem content to just throw one-year deals at stop-gap solutions that will likely be flipped in July for a mid-level prospect. It's just not Major League behavior. 

Keller gives them a solid No. 2. Skenes is a potential ace down the line. They have two very good everyday players in Reynolds and Hayes. There are some intriguing wild cards with star potential in position players Oneil Cruz and Henry Davis. Their bullpen looks strong. It could be an interesting team with the upside to win 78-82 games. It also could have been a potential contender in the NL Central with just little more spending on the starting rotation. Not even trying to do that still overshadows the positive news of Keller's deal.