The Pittsburgh Pirates have signed 3B/1B David Freese to a two-year contract extension with a club option for 2019. No word yet on the financials.
Freese is not exactly someone you’d expect to get a multi-year deal in the middle of a dang season. He has been a solid if unspectacular corner bat the past few years and has proven to be a nice offseason pickup for the Pirates on a one-year, $3 million deal, hitting .276/.355/.437 with 12 home runs and 49 RBI in 107 games. Still, players like him tend to have to go out on the market each winter and don’t get multi-year contracts as often as they did a decade ago. This could be a very good deal for both parties depending on the terms, but its very existence is something of an unexpected gift of job security for a veteran player.
Of course the Pirates have some uncertainty in their infield, with Jung Ho Kang on the disabled list and under a legal cloud, so signing Freese is as much insurance policy as anything else.