Sunday, March 16th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Pirates finally sign Snell
The Pirates won a baseball game for the first time in a while, defeating Boston 6-3, but that was not the news of the day. Ian Snell’s long-awaited contract extension took that honor as the pitcher and the Pirates came to a three-year, $8 million extension with two more years of club options at a combined $16 million on the end.
The contract is extremely Pirate-friendly as the first two years are excellent value for a pitcher who has proven to have the ability to be the club’s ace as well as its emotional leader. In making Snell the first player that he signed to an extension, Pirate GM Neal Huntington is demonstrating that he wants to sign players who are willing to act like they want to be in Pittsburgh, not players who make their mercenary tendencies overtly obvious (and, as one writer recently said, all players are mercenaries to some degree).
As I have written before, Snell clearly wants to win and doesn’t really care what uniform he does it in. Also, his straight shooting mentality is a nice change for Pittsburghers who have dealt with the Nutting/McClatchy administration’s spin for way too long. Snell will come right out and say what everyone is thinking, not caring what the repercussions are.
Most importantly, though, is Snell’s performance on the field. He went for 208 innings last year, striking out a solid 177 batters. Unfortunately, he kind of fell apart in the second part of last season, but for the first half he was as dominant as any pitcher in baseball (2.93 ERA). If he can channel that into a full season of work, the Pirates have a potentially lethal one-two punch in Snell and Tom Gorzelanny.
This signing can only be a good thing, even though signing young pitchers is much riskier than signing young hitters, as Snell has shown the potential to be the outspoken leader that the Pirates so desperately need if they are ever to become contenders again.
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