Bryan Reynolds Wraps Up Extension With Pirates

The good times are rolling in Pittsburgh. Though their seven-game winning streak ended on Tuesday night as they failed to hold a 7-2 lead against the Dodgers, the Pirates are off to a 16-8 start, their best since 1992, and they lead the NL Central by a game. What’s more, they’ve finally sealed a long-term deal with their star left fielder, as Bryan Reynolds has reportedly agreed to an eight-year, $106.75 million extension that covers his 2023-30 seasons.

It’s the largest contract in Pirates history, outdoing Ke’Bryan Hayes‘ eight-year, $70 million extension as the team ventures into nine-digit territory for the first time. The deal includes a six-team no-trade list, the first time in 17 years that the Pirates have included some form of no-trade protection in a contract. Notably, it does not include an opt-out clause, an item that had previously been a stumbling block when the two sides neared a deal with the same dollars-and-years framework just before Opening Day. Reynolds wanted an opt-out after 2026, meaning that the Pirates would gain only one more year of control if he were to exercise that option.

As with that proposal, the contract incorporates the 28-year-old Reynolds’ $6.75 million salary for this season, his second of arbitration eligibility (as a Super Two, he has two more remaining). He also receives a $2 million signing bonus, with salaries of $10 million and $12 million for 2024 and ’25, his final two arb years, and then $14 million for ’26 and $15 million annually for ’27-30. The Pirates hold a $20 million club option and $2 million buyout for his services in 2031, his age-36 season.

If those annual salaries seems a little light to you, you’re not alone, but the particulars of his situation make it worth a closer look. We’ll start with Dan Szymborksi’s ZiPS projection from February, which suggested a six-year, $95 million valuation for Reynolds’ 2024-29 years:

Under the actual contract, Reynolds will be paid just $81 million for those six years. On the other hand, he’ll make $15 million for what eyeballs to be about a one-win projection for 2030, so much of that shortfall comes out in the wash.

The problem for Reynolds — the reason the dollar figures aren’t bigger — is something of a perfect storm of service time and aging curves. He was stellar in 2021, making the NL All-Star team while hitting .302/.390/.522 (141 wRC+) with 6.2 WAR, but he slipped to .262/.345/.461 (125 wRC+) and 2.8 WAR last year. Even with ZiPS forecasting him at 4.0 WAR this year, going forward he projects to lose about one win for every two years as he ages. On top of that, his salary is being drastically suppressed by the arbitration system during what project to be his strongest seasons; as a free agent, he’d be worth over $30 million a year for 2023-25, but he’ll only make about 30% of that.

As Dan summarized via Twitter, “[I]t’s hard to value those seventh and eighth years very highly at all for a 3-4 win player that far away in his mid-30s. Obviously, Reynolds would have done better if he were a free agent this year. But he’s not and this price is the product of his age and MLB’s service-time rules; Reynolds just didn’t have a great deal of leverage because the Pirates already had nearly all the years they wanted.”

That’s a bit of a harsh reality, but it’s offset by Reynolds getting the stability and security he valued. Though he requested a trade in December after the team reportedly offered a six-year, $80 million extension — over $50 million short of the eight-year, $134 million deal he was seeking — he cared enough to return to the table and found a way to stay, even forgoing the opt-out.

It’s nice to see Pirates fans get nice things for a change, and the structure of Reynolds’ deal is such that even by the craptastic standards of the way the team has been run under owner Bob Nutting, none of the annual salaries should be backbreaking. Unless his option is picked up, Reynolds won’t even set the franchise’s single-season record for salary, and not until 2027 would he surpass Andrew McCutchen for the highest salary solely paid by the team, which turns out to be an important distinction given their dismal history:

Is Reynolds as good as prime Cutch? No, but McCutchen signed his six-year, $51.5 million extension 11 years ago, and industry inflation has obviously pushed salaries upwards since then. Someone was bound to break McCutchen’s franchise record before the next ice age arrived, and it makes sense that it was Reynolds, whose 6.2 WAR in 2021 was the highest for a Pirate since McCutchen’s 7.4 WAR in ’14.

As for his current performance, when I checked in on him just a couple of weeks ago, Reynolds was off to a sizzling start, hitting .356/.367/.778, leading the NL in slugging percentage and homers (five), and ranking fifth in both WAR (0.7) and wRC+ (184); amid that tear, he was named NL Player of the Week. Now he’s down to .294/.319/.553, and his 127 wRC+ is just two points ahead of last year and two behind his preseason ZiPS projection. Regression doesn’t mess around, kids.

That said, even given the ups and downs, Reynolds is hitting the ball harder this season than he has in the past, and the sample sizes are either approaching or past the point where they start to stabilize, so his performance is worth an update:

Via Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carleton, exit velocity begins to stabilize around 40 batted ball events and barrel rate at 50 BBE, so you can start to take what he’s done thus far seriously; he’s in the 84th percentile for the former and 92nd percentile for the latter. Ground ball, fly ball, and hard-hit rates begin to stabilize at 80 BBE, a total he should reach soon after he returns from the bereavement list. (Reynolds left the team for a personal matter on Sunday, which allowed the Pirates to recall 33-year-old career minor leaguer Drew Maggi, who has yet to get into a game — what’s Derek Shelton waiting for?)

With more balls in the air, a higher average exit velocity, and more frequent barrels, Reynolds has an expected batting average of .314 (95th percentile) and an expected slugging percentage of .604 (93rd percentile); he’s fallen off from the major league-leading .896 he put up during the season’s first two weeks, but that was always going to happen.

The good news for the Pirates is that even as Reynolds has cooled off, other players have stepped up, to the point that Connor Joe (.328/.423/.590, 174 wRC+), Jack Suwinski (.269/.385/.635, 166 wRC+) and McCutchen (.270/.371/.527, 141 wRC+) are outhitting him within a lineup that ranks sixth in the NL in wRC+ (108) and fourth in scoring (4.92 runs per game). Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball the Pirates are allowing only 3.92 runs per game, the NL’s fourth-lowest rate, and they’re tied with the Brewers for third in the league in run differential (+24) behind only the Cubs (+45) and Braves (+38). It’s still early enough not to get too wound up about their start, but for the first time in awhile, the Pirates are offering significant measures of hope, and wrapping up Reynolds for the future is something worth celebrating.