Remember late last week when there were reports that Edwin Jackson had some three-year contract offers that he was spurning in favor of taking a one-year deal? As it turns out, one of those offers was from the Pirates:
Sources: #Pirates made 3-yr offer to Edwin Jackson. Also made him 1-yr offer below reported $11M Jackson received from #Nationals MORE #MLB
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 6, 2012
Do not know exact amount of #Pirates‘ 3-year offer to E. Jackson, but told it was substantial, in range of $10M a year. #MLB
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 6, 2012
On the one hand, I’m heartened to hear that the Pirates 1.) tried to upgrade their rotation via a good free agent whose value dropped enough to make him a relative bargain and that 2.) the Pirates properly valued Jackson to the point that they didn’t do something stupid like offer him a six-year deal (here’s why I thought signing Jackson to a deal that long would be a bad idea for the Pirates). Because of Jackson’s age, a one-year deal makes some sense for him as he’ll still be young enough to hit the open market and potentially get that long-term contract next winter. A one-year contract at age 28 and a five-year contract at age 29 definitely has the potential to pay off more for Jackson than a three-year deal at age 28 and a three-year deal at age 31.
On the other hand, it’s just lame to know that as things currently exist, a three-year/$30+ million contract offer from the Pirates isn’t acceptable even if it’s the best offer on the table (we don’t know that it was best offer on the table of course, but let’s just say that it was; he clearly wasn’t signing with the Pirates either way). No one’s actually going to believe that the Pirates are serious about signing a guy like this until they actually do it, but they can’t really pull it off in the fiscally responsible manner that their financial situation requires. It’s a difficult Catch-22 for the team.
All that being said, the Pirates being interested in Jackson is an inherent admission that they know their rotation is a potential problem spot for 2012 and that they tried to do something about it. That means that if you’re like me, with your fingers crossed that they’re going to do something from setting off into the 2012 season with a dangerously thin rotation, there’s still at least some reason to believe that they could try to make something happen before the season starts. It’s time to convince a team without a centerfielder that Gorkys Hernandez has trade value.
