Pirates and Alvarez agree to a contract
Pedro Alvarez and the Pittsburgh Pirates have agreed to a new contract ending a month long disagreement between the parties. Alvarez’s agent Scott Boras claimed that the contract that they signed with the Pirates was not valid because it came after the August 15th deadline. The MLBPA filed a grievance on August 27th over the issue and it was recently heard by an arbitrator on September 10th with the next two hearings were set to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. The new contract will pay Alvarez 6.355 million over the next four years according to a report by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The full article is available here.
I don’t know who really told both parties to start talking again but this new contract smells fishy to me. I think Bud Selig got involved and told both parties to come to an agreement before this became a bigger story around baseball. Boras was trying to blow up the entire draft system by trying to “force” the end of the signing period on August 15th. This situation didn’t just affect the Pittsburgh Pirates as Kansas City Royals prospect Eric Hosmer ended up having to quit playing this summer when the grievance was filed. Hosmer agreed to his contract after the deadline so he ended up having to sit on the sidelines waiting on the ruling. The Kansas City Star writer Bob Dutton has a great article on how this affected Hosmer that can be read by clicking here.
