Jose Tabata signed an extension today with the Pirates which will, at the bare minimum, buy out his first year of free agency. The six-year deal also includes three option years, meaning Tabata could potentially be a Pirate through the 2019 season.
In addition, the deal is obscenely cheap at $15 million for six years. If the Pirates exercise all three options and control Tabata until he’s 31 years old, they’ll have only paid him $37.5 million. Even if Tabata never improves (and it’s hard to argue that he won’t improve), that’s a pretty cheap price for a league average outfielder, which Tabata has been so far. If he does improve, the deal goes from a sweet deal for the Pirates to highway robbery.
The only reason I can think of that Tabata would sign an extension like this is that he really, really likes playing for the Pirates. The guy has Roberto Clemente’s portrait tattooed on his chest, after all. There’s good reason to believe that he would want to spend the majority of his baseball career playing the outfield on the team his idol played on.
