Pittsburgh Pirates News: Ben Gamel Avoids Arbitration for 2022
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been very active today making multiple moves. This includes agreeing to terms with an outfielder.
One of the biggest surprises from the 2021 season was Ben Gamel. The Pittsburgh Pirates claimed Gamel off of waivers from Cleveland. Gamel was a somewhat known commodity to the Pittsburgh Pirates after playing with the Milwaukee Brewers in 2019 and 2020.
Gamel was acquired by the Brewers in trade from the Seattle Mariners during the 2018-2019 offseason. While he mainly served as a bench outfielder for the Brewers, he was important to those Brewers teams. Providing quality defense across the outfield and even the ability to play first base. Not to mention he was a lefty with some pop.
This did not carry over with Cleveland. Cleveland was hoping for more of the same from Gamel as but he got off to a really tough 1-17 stretch. The Indians cut which is when the Bucs picked him up. The Bucs actually cut reliever Michael Feliz to make the move, and it has since looked to work out for the Pirates.
Entering the offseason Gamel was projected to earn about $2,900,000 in arbitration (via MLBTR). A very doable number for the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, the two sides were able to strike a deal to avoid going to arbitration. Ken Rosenthal reported the deal earlier this afternoon:
Obviously, it is never a bad thing for the two sides to agree on a contract, which shows that both sides want to move forward together. However, with a pending CBA lockout, there was likely extra pressure on Gamel to get a deal done. It is unknown how this offseason may play out and the Bucs were likely able to use that to their advantage to get Gamel a bit lower of a price. For Gamel, it was not worth the risk of being non-tendered and missing out on a potential Major League contract before the lockout.
In his first season with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he turned some heads. He batted a solid .255/.352/.399 and played league average defense in the outfield. This was a breath of fresh air after watching some of the defensive issues in the outfield over the last two seasons. Hopefully, Gamel can build on his 2021 season. He has one more year of team control.