The baseball world is currently buzzing with excitement about Konnor Griffin. He hasn’t even hit his 20th birthday yet but is considered to be the top prospect in baseball and has a chance to break camp with the Pirates. Locking him up to a long-term deal is also a possibility, with Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporting that both Griffin and the Bucs are open to an extension.
It’s not a surprising stance from the team. As mentioned, Griffin is the top prospect in baseball and there seems to be little debating it. Baseball America, ESPN, MLB Pipeline, FanGraphs and The Athletic all have him in the top spot going into 2026. Some even consider him the best prospect in years. The ninth overall pick from 2024, he’s viewed as a rare five-tool monster. He’s a plus shortstop who was almost drafted as a pitcher, so the arm is clearly there.
Last year, he went from Single-A to High-A to Double-A, getting into 122 games overall. He hit 21 home runs and stole 65 bases. He slashed .333/.415/.527 on the year. He got some help from a .403 batting average on balls in play but everyone believes in the bat. It was reported in the offseason that the Bucs would consider carrying Griffin on the Opening Day roster this year even though he doesn’t turn 20 until late April and has no Triple-A experience. He added some more coal to the engine of the hype train when he hit two home runs against the Red Sox yesterday.
Not all prospects pan out but there are fewer busts the higher up the lists you go. Griffin seems to have a good chance to be a really good major league player for a long time. Players in this position are also often signed to extensions. In recent years, cornerstone players like Fernando Tatis Jr., Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, Wander Franco, Jackson Merrill, Roman Anthony, Corbin Carroll, Ronald Acuña Jr. and others have signed big multi-year extensions.
From Griffin’s perspective, it’s notable that he’s open to the possibility but he and the club would have to agree on a price point. Turning down a nine-figure guarantee probably isn’t easy but the potential for big earnings is still there if he goes year to year.
Juan Soto is an extreme example of the upside. The Nationals made Soto multiple nine-figure extension offers, reportedly getting as high as $440MM in 2022, but Soto made a bet on himself. That paid off as he made $79.6MM during his four arbitration seasons and then hit free agency as a 26-year old. That youth helped him secure a $765MM deal from the Mets.
That path is theoretically open to Griffin. As mentioned, he’s still about two months away from his 20th birthday. If he is able to earn a full service time this year, he could hit free agency after 2031, a few months ahead of his 26th birthday. Even if it’s too much to expect him to be as good as Soto at the plate, Griffin seems likely to add more value via his speed and defense.
As mentioned by Hiles, it’s possible for the Bucs and Griffin to sign some kind of deal that gives the club some extra years of control but still allows him to hit free agency in his late 20s. Griffin may be open to that but he would be leaving some upside on the table, as teams clearly value that youth. In addition to the Soto example, there’s Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He got $325MM, the largest deal for a pure pitcher ever, even though he no major league experience yet. A major factor was the fact that he was 25 years old when he was coming over from Japan.
Perhaps there’s some way to get creative and have Griffin lock in big earnings while still preserving future earning potential. Witt’s deal with the Royals is for 11 years but he can opt out after seven. The pact between Rodríguez and the Mariners is technically a 12-year guarantee but with a very complicated structure involving multiple options and escalators starting after the sixth full year.
Whether creative structures are involved or not, the price is likely to rise over time, as players generally have more earning power as they move towards free agency. Jackson Chourio has the record guarantee for a player who hasn’t yet debuted, getting eight years and $82MM from the Brewers. Even a brief major league debut is enough for a big jump, with many of the aforementioned names getting their nine-figure deals with less than a year of big league experience. Rodríguez got the top guarantee for guys under one year of service, getting to $210MM. After two years in the big leagues, Tatis got $340MM and Witt $288.8MM.
The Pirates would likely have to go into franchise-record territory to get something done. The biggest guarantee they’ve given out was their $100MM deal for Bryan Reynolds a few years back. Griffin has more prospect hype than Chourio did a few years ago when he signed his extension with Milwaukee, so it’s arguable that Griffin could warrant a nine-figure guarantee right now.
The Bucs generally don’t run up huge payrolls but should be able to get something done if they want to, as the long-term books are fairly clean. The Reynolds deal goes through 2030 but with a $14MM salary this year and $15MM in each of the next four campaigns. That’s a decent chunk of change but fairly manageable in the context of modern baseball salaries. The Mitch Keller deal only goes through 2028. Ryan O’Hearn is the only other guy with a guaranteed deal for 2027. Even though the Bucs are a fairly low-spending club, similar teams have gotten these deals done, with the Rays signing Franco and the Royals signing Witt.
If the Bucs and Griffin are able to work something out in the next few weeks, the team would be incentivized to not make it official until after Opening Day. Strangely, the prospect promotion incentive doesn’t apply to players who have already signed long-term extensions, so Chourio wasn’t PPI eligible for the Brewers. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Kristian Campbell and Samuel Basallo signed extensions a few days after their respective major league promotions last year, therefore keeping the PPI on the table. Campbell’s PPI eligibility was later nullified because he was optioned to the minors and didn’t earn a full year of service in 2025.
Time will tell if the two sides can work out a deal or not. Contract status aside, Griffin’s ascent is adding excitement for the Pirates in 2026. There was already a lot of talent on the pitching staff, led by Paul Skenes. The offense has been lacking but they added O’Hearn, Brandon Lowe and Marcell Ozuna in the offseason. If Griffin can come up, take over the shortstop job and succeed, that could be another boon for the lineup. It can be dangerous putting too many expectations on such a young player but the industry is unanimous in considering Griffin special.
Photo courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images
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