Pittsburgh Pirates: Todd Frazier Makes A Surprising Decision

Friday evening veteran infielder Todd Frazier made a surprising decision as he opted out of his contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates becoming a free agent

With Opening Day less than a week away roster moves happen all of the time and do not usually come as a shock. The latest move with the Pittsburgh Pirates came as a surprise.

Jon Heyman announced via his Twitter that recently signed free agent Todd Frazier has decided to utilize his opt out option that was embedded into his new deal.

While this is surprising, since to most it seems like Frazier just randomly made this choice, but Jason Mackey tweeted out some news that shines light into why Frazier did what he did.

This shows that despite his strong spring, the Pittsburgh Pirates were not going to keep Frazier up in the Majors. Frazier has hitting .250 was a .353 on base percentage and a .996 OPS. Also, Frazier was tied with Bryan Reynolds for the most home runs by the Pirates this spring at three each.

These are pretty solid numbers especially for the backup role that he was projected to have this season., which makes the fact that the Pirates were not planning on keeping him around even more of a shock. In addition to the good stats, Todd was to be the older role model type player for this young Bucs squad.

A couple weeks back when the Pittsburgh Pirates faced off against the Yankees and former Bucco, Jameson Taillon, Frazier made a comment to Taillon. This comment was, “I’ll take care of your guys over here”. Frazier saying this made it appear that he was going to be around for a while and help to mentor the young players on the Pirates squad.

But this all changed as he is now a free agent again and will almost definitely  get signed as a backup on another Major League squad, if not a starting role. Wherever he lands though we wish him the best of luck.