Pittsburgh Pirates officially announce the deal with Jason Grilli – MLB News
It has got the official seal now.
The Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday made official announcement of retaining setup reliever Jason Grilli. Earlier this week, Grilli was reported to have agreed to a two-year contract, worth $6.75 million with the Bucs with a bonus
of $500,000.
The deal materialized after the reliever had an emphatically great season, having had 90 strikeouts in 58 2/3 innings, limiting the batters to a .207 average. In Grilli’s 64 appearances, the Pirates were 44-20.
However, as the season concluded, the Pirates rather made a downward spiral, finishing the season with 79-83 record.
Be that as it may, the kind of performance that he put on display had already garnered enough attention not only by the Pirates but also by other teams. Prior to agreeing to the deal with the Pirates, he got offers by the Toronto
Blue Jays and the Chicago Cubs.
With years of experience, and playing with multiple teams, Grilli knew exactly where he had to be in the coming years.
"I've been on 10 different teams," Grilli said. "The grass is never always greener. It's really all the same. There's just something fitting here. It's just a baseball town and it bugs me as much as it bugs everybody else in this
city. They want this so bad."
Small wonder why his name is being considered for a closer as well. Joel Hanrahan, who is team’s current closer, will be a free agent after the 2013 season. But Neal Huntington, Bucs general manager, seems to have made his mind
about what the team plans to do.
"We fully believe that whether it's with Joel or without Joel, Jason's going to be an important part of our late-inning closing out games that we're supposed to close out," Huntington said.
With 13.8 batters per nine innings record, Grilli is going to be a great arm to be added to bullpen, and to have a closer’s role for the Pirates in the upcoming season.
"You're getting a snapshot of the man that Jason Grilli is," Huntington said. What Jason's come through would have broken a lot of lesser men's spirit."
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