The Padres signed Nick Pivetta to a four-year earlier this week. Previous reporting had revealed that it was a four-year, $55MM deal, though heavily backloaded. Pivetta will receive a $3MM signing bonus, then make a salary of just $1MM this year, followed by salaries of $19MM, $14MM and $18MM in the next three years. He has the opportunity to opt out after the second and third years of the deal. Yesterday, Ronald Blum of the Associated Press provided some new details that had not been previously reported.
The new details revolve around contingencies for the Padres if Pivetta gets injured. Pivetta’s $14MM salary in 2027 becomes a club option “if at any point through 2026 he has a specified injury or surgery related to the injury and is on the injured list for more than 130 consecutive days in any season or in a one-year period.” Blum mentions that Pivetta spent time on the injured list in 2024 due to a right elbow flexor strain, implying that the contract provision relates to a significant elbow surgery.
If the Padres turn down the option, Pivetta would head back to free agency in the 2026-27 offseason. At that point, he will have made $23MM over the first two years of the deal. If those injury conditions are not met, then Pivetta will have a $14MM player option and $18MM player option for 2027 and 2028.
The Friars can also trigger a 2029 club option for 2029, valued at just $5MM, “if Pivetta has the specified injury or surgery related to the specified injury and goes on the injured list for more than 130 consecutive days in any season or in a one-year period, all occurring from July 1, 2026, through the 2028 season.”
It seems the Padres have built in some cover for themselves if Pivetta needs to miss significant time, likely due to Tommy John surgery or a similar procedure. A major elbow surgery usually requires a player to miss 14 months or more, which can be a big sunk cost for a club’s payroll. The Padres have been dealing with notable financial restraints in recent years, so that’s perhaps even more so for them. With these contract provisions, they have a few options in the event Pivetta does get hurt.
At the end of 2026, they can walk away if Pivetta is slated to miss a decent chunk of the next year or two. If he sticks around but then suffers a major injury in the latter half of the deal, the 2029 option gives them a chance to add an extra year of control at a bargain rate.
LFGSD!
Back loaded, yet still inside the term of the contract. More than you can than they contracts the Fair Play Dodgers are dishing out !
What did you say?
Ya whiffed.
Padres went from an F to a C+ with this signing and keepin Arraez, Cease, and King.
The injury bug will hit the Dodgers, and the Padres will be right there.
Good Luck to Pivetta! SD will like his intensity.
Wow, what a one-side deal. Pivetta is only guaranteed to make a little more in those two concrete years than he would have if he took the qualifying offer. He and his agent appear to have badly misread the market.
I would think the market would have become apparent to them by late in the offseason, I’m guessing this deal was their best offer?
I would think so. My comment about misreading the market refers to early in the offseason when Pivetta could have accepted the QO.
Yep, that’s what the contract is telling us. His prior elbow injury concerns are considered by the market (e.g. all 30 MLB teams) to be so risky, that either (a) he accepts a lower paying contract overall, or (b) the contract factors in the risk, in a way acceptable to both sides.
Bottom line as far as his Q.O. is concerned: He and his wife wanted a family life (clearly stated by Pivetta in an interview), i.e. a multi-year contract, which the Q.O. didn’t support. On the other hand, his injury risk kept him from finding that longer term, higher risk contract. Ergo, AJP comes in with a contract that meets both needs, i.e. Padres for lower year one salary, and players requirements for longer term salary guarantees, and a permanent place for this family to establish his life. (Of course, I suspect there was give and take, i.e., Pivetta’s agent might have made some suggestions to AJP.
It’s one of those things Preller always stresses on his deals, “how things line up” to make it work.
Basically yes. I feel sorry for him, because it’s not entirely misreading the market (I think they understood the market quite right) but rather misreading quite where Pivetta places in that market. He probably was just a half-notch of general confidence in his game to get the sort of deal that had been talked up for him back when he declined the offer. It seems that, when push came to shove, teams couldn’t quite talk themselves into him at that sort of deal.
To be fair, this only really goes wrong for him if he suffers an elbow problem. If he’s confident that won’t happen, he still got a solid deal.
Redsox – I think the deal only goes right for him if he has an arm issue. If he took the QO and then was healthy, he easily gets a contract better than 4/34, or whatever.
Pivetta hitting the open market without a QO probably easily gets a 3/45 deal (like many projected he’d get this year prior to the QO) and he would have made more money.
But I think this deal does benefit both side. Pivetta gets guaranteed money, and Padres get a pitcher with some upside at a decent price.
Or he wanted out of Boston
Those types of stipulations aren’t uncommon, but typically only show up when a pre-existing injury exists. Medicals likely lead to Pivetta’s down market.
I don’t recall an injury cancelling a contract before the player options. That one sounds new to me.
Lackey was one for the Red Sox.
That tacked on an additional year at the minimum salary. Pivetta’s also tacks on a club option at $5 million if the injury qualifies. I just can’t remember a contract that can be terminated mid-term by the club due to an injury.
The contract was initially reported incorrectly. It’s actually a 2 year 23mil contract with 2 conditional options. There’s no termination, just incorrect initial reporting.
The decision to forgo the one year 21mil guarantee with free agency next year unencumbered by a Qualifying Offer seems to be a poor one.
Wilmer, that isn’t correct.
He was dumb for not taking the qualifying offer.
Sk – They haven’t revealed what kind of offers they turned down before signing with SD.
Chances are Pivetta was fielding a lot of interest early in the offseason, saw what Severino got, and therefore held out for more than he should have.
It almost never pays to hold out past mid-January, that’s where the mistake was.
I find it interesting the Red Sox extended the QO with full knowledge of his medicals.
I disagree, and believe the mistake was not signing early. Montas, Manaea, Severino deals were all very lucrative deals.
I said a month ago that AJ Preller would find a way to get creative and solve the Padres needs. Great job! The NL West is going to be tough!
Wow please provide more of your obviously great knowledge.
Thanks Donnie O., always nice to read your takes! Good luck with your mini-rebuild (?)!!! Come see a game at Petco on us, amigo. Cheers
What stocks should I buy?
AJ did a great job on this…it’s about time that teams protect themselves when it comes to pitching…Pivetta gets opt outs and the padres get some insurance against injuries
I remember when they signed Garrett Richard’s and he was in the middle of TJ recovery and was paid his salary in full…paid for two years and got one year of pitching. I’m sure they also have some sort of insurance policy on him to boot
Good reporting Darragh, thanks
Am I hallucinating?
That’s a lot of strikeouts per9…..and a lots of BB per 9, lots of hrs per 9…..
Most of the time I think you are indeed hallucinating, Fife! But not this time. Lots of Ks, lots of HRs.
Pivetta may be the most frustrating pitcher on your team. He has great stuff and will put it together for a few starts at a time, but then will lose it.
I think he will benefit greatly from going from Fenway to Petco. Should hopefully help keep those HR numbers down.
June last year he had a start: 10 ks 6IP 3R. Next start 4IP 7 runs.
In July: 6IP 8 K’s 0R. Next start 2.2IP 8R but 6ks lol.
Other than ERA, his stats resemble Snell
Some players actually would rather have the guarantee of work in years instead of one year of working and unsure factor in the next year. Sounds like he is betting on himself to stay healthy, productive, etc. Each player is a variance.
The signing never made sense for a team that’s not competing and is about to rebuild. The move was to trade Cease and King, not sign the bozo Pivetta.
What a bad take! Smh
I must have missed the memo where the Padres, who won 93 games last year and returned the majority of their key players, decided they were not competing this year. Someone should tell the sportsbooks in Vegas about them not trying too, so they can change the win total over/under which currently has the Padres in position for a playoff spot.
Get help with your gambling addiction fella.
OMG, lol. I know that this troll has been on this forum under 20 different Id/names, but I just can’t figure out what the last 10 were. His grade school taunts are always the same.
I assume this is a joke. Keep trying!
You’re the joke dipstick
Good one, getting better!
I mute moronic posters. I just made that up. Good riddance.
This is probably a smart move by Pivetta too. He’s getting 3 million more in guaranteed money vs accepting the Red Sox QO. Jeremy Hellickson took a QO some years ago and he was out of baseball forever 1.5 years later having made more in one year with the QO than his other years combined by a large margin. Maybe that was the right move for him and he probably bet against himself in terms of the likelihood of success in holding out and being offered a multi year contract. As far as Pivetta, if he can stay healthy the contract has a very nice average annual value over 4 years for a 4th/5th/swingman pitcher who will be pushing into late 30’s when done. In my opinion it’s a fair deal for both sides which is a rarity.
I really like the sort of stipulation like the extra year at $5M option in the event of specific missed time. John Lackey accepted a similar setup with the Red Sox back in the day, and it’s basically a nod that “hey, if my not-totally-in-the-clear body part causes me to miss a season, I won’t mind basically giving the team a mulligan year of control in return”. The $5M for the extra year would basically be his injury pay (it did happen on the job, after all), and the larger pay he would get while out could be thought of as his compensation in that extra year.
It’s such a fair sort of clause. It doesn’t screw the player, as he still gets the same total pay and even a little extra (note that I’m not talking about the other clause that would turn earlier years in the contract into team options), but it offers some giveback to a team that would already have to deal with the hit of the missing player that at a time it had planned on his help. An ungreedy win-win. Wish more pitchers would go with this, as it would smooth out the extent of negative impact over a major arm injury.
Agreed, these injury clauses should be used more imo. Of course it’s hard to get a player to agree to something like that but too often do we get a Giolito. Any pitcher signed to 4+ years is going to miss significant time to injury
how the hell did mets givs montas $34mil, and pivetta & flaherty essentially received same or even less $
Because the past is not the future.
There are a lot of things that enter into the decision process for a pitcher or any player for that matter…obviously dollars and length of contract, location, ballpark but also the chance to not only play but to play in the postseason and a team that actually has a shot at the World Series. What’s not to like about San Diego…beautiful city and weather, great ballpark and a pretty damn good roster and the NL West is going to be one of the better divisions in all of baseball…Dodgers, Giants, Diamondbacks and even the Rockies that always seem to spoil somebody’s day.
This is a good deal for both Pivetta and the Padres especially if the rotation stays the same with no trades or injuries…Cease, King, Darvish, Pivetta and Hart, Vasquez, Waldron, Kolek, Bergert and Hoeing battling for the 5 spot…I would think this rotation will do quite well
The $55 million and basic $$ per year structure had already been negotiated when he went in for his physicals and the Padres received his full medical reports. At that time they renegotiated some protection into the contract because of elbow issues they found. That is why it took so long between seeing on here and other places that he had come to an agreement pending a physical and it being official. The Padres had the room on their 40 man roster, they were getting Pivetta to agree to these protections for the team.
Good luck to you Nick. Congrats on getting out of the dysfunctional Red Sox organization.
The Padres are now in the dysfunctional category. The home stadium is more favorable for Nick.
Have you seen the Red Sox lately? We are devolving even as great players are added.
Think contracts like these, as well as the split MLB/MiLB contracts that pay higher salaries to vets in the minors, become more common in MLB going forward.
Isn’t this similar to the structure John Lackey had back in the day?
I wish my salary was “only $1 million this year.”
How’s your fastball? I hear that the Padres are still lookin’ for arms, lol.
“The Padres have been dealing with notable financial restraints in recent years, so that’s perhaps even more so for them.”
Do-Rag, you just couldn’t resist…hahaha!
Was 2023 when they were 3rd in MLB in payroll a recent year?
Brew…according to MLBTR it is. Hahaha
Kind of strange financial terms for Pivetta, but he must have faith in his health. Maybe getting out of the AL East and working with Niebla is a considerable incentive to forgo the bigger one-year deals.
You know things are going downhill when you consider trading Dylan Cease and replace him with Nick Pivetta. Money crunch or not, Padres are digging a hole for themselves in that division
$3/month. No ads. That’s just 10 cents a day.
Don’t get me started…
Add Hosmer back onto the 40-man, he’s still getting paid