On Monday, the deadline passed and 12 players received 1 yr Qualifying Offers valued at $15.3M for 2015. The Detroit Tigers tendered two players (Victor Martinez and Max Scherzer) and your Pittsburgh Pirates were the only other team to have multiple offers (Russell Martin and Francisco Liriano).
The Pirates are willing to take the gamble that if Martin and Liriano accept the QO, they will be paying $30.6M to just two players next year. But in reality, it's not a gamble at all. Martin is in high demand and will easily command a 4 or 5 year deal worth at least $50M total. Some members of the Pittsburgh media (and, to be fair, the national media) feel that Liriano could be the first player in the history of offering QO's to accept it.
There is absolutely no way he will. Liriano will pitch 2015 in his age-31 season. Even though he's pitched just 160 innings in both 2013 and 2014, he's pitched as a #2 starter caliber pitcher. The combination of his age and his skill level, especially from the left side, will make him a highly sought after commodity in the second tier of pitchers, after Lester/Scherzer/Shields.
Liriano will get a 3 year deal quite easily for probably $14M/year. There's a possibility that a team may even go 4 years. I'd love to see the Pirates re-sign him for a 3 year/$36M deal, but he's probably going to get into the $40M+ range rather easily. Liriano would be the perfect #2 behind Cole this year and act as a good bridge when Jameson Taillon comes up later in 2015.
Liriano is probably going to wait until the big 3 pitchers sign their deals. I hope that by early December the Pirates know if he'll on the bump for them in PNC Park for 2015 and beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment