I definitely think we need to remain realistic and that Hayes + Reynolds would be a pretty big step that is worth forgoing any speculative talk about anyone else for now.
For what it's worth, last week a number of people were asking Jason Mackey about Hayes in his chat – he said that he had not heard anything like what Murray reported about Hayes' camp countering with the Acuña deal, just that they were relatively far apart and that talks didn't go that far. However, he also said that his opinion is that something will get done and that there's no bad blood at all between the sides. It sounds like it was really just a case of not wanting to rush into anything.
It's overly simplistic, but at the end of the day, when you look at it like Cherington wanting to put his stamp on the team, he really couldn't have had a better positioning outside of the obvious payroll questions, but those teams often don't get the kind of "year zero" he's essentially got here. Yes, Hayes, Reynolds, and others aren't "his", but I doubt that really matters. Once Frazier is traded and Polanco is either traded or bought out, the payroll commitment to next year is almost nothing. He inherited some young stars, a good system that he's turned into a better one (and now has to develop), and can totally build in any way he wants.
Step one should certainly be the Hayes extension. Step two is Reynolds, which I think should be fairly doable as well and at least somewhat urgent due to the lack of depth in the OF. If we aren't willing to commit to Reynolds, then he's definitely a sell high type candidate. There's a counter-intuitive possibility to do a shocker and trade him this season if some team will really pay a ransom, but I sort of don't know how you do that and satiate the fans, which I think is actually fairly important for the Pirates.
But all of this is to say, especially if you nail down extensions for both, you are pretty much going to have absolute cost certainty for 2-3 more years. There are only a handful of players who will be in or reach arbitration by then, and some of them could be jettisoned in one way or another. This is a fairly unique opportunity and investing in some FA isn't even going to require running a modest 100M payroll.
This is too meandering, but my skepticism/pessimism comes in at exactly this point, because while I think we can will get the payroll up eventually, I think it will be more of the brief window kind of thing than anything sustainably built. And if you run barebones payrolls leading up to that, you don't give yourself too much of a window in the end. If we can really become a powerhouse system that replenishes itself and develops well in all facets (i.e. impact players, supplementary players, and some solid organizational depth), then we can skate the window more sustainably, but a lot of that remains to be seen.
For now, this is worrying about many steps in advance and I think Hayes' return has clearly put an exclamation mark on how important he is over anything else. I hope the plan is really to follow Cherington's cliche of continuing to get better: we need better play than we got in May going forward, and then next year we need to build on the first steps even if it's not a full-throated attempt to compete. If you avoid injuries and young players continue to develop, IMO this team is a better OF and a solid SP away from being able to hang more against all the division teams consistently and at least more viable against the non-division teams, for the most part (certain of them come down to contingencies like pitching matchups and injuries, and in any case, you can't really try to chase everybody on paper).
Spending 25M or so on Canha and a pitcher would scratch you towards that direction, though I do think pitching is always the premium that we don't want to go after, since it really does require 10M+ commitments just for a guy who might be ok. Circling back, even though it's risky, this is why I wouldn't mind the stab at Deivi Garcia, since if you got him right, he gives you that kind of production in his innings for drastically cheaper, meaning that you can comfortably spend 10-15M on a solid bat to lengthen the lineup, maybe 3-5M on a bench bat, and just hope for the best with your young rotation. 2022 is going to be an extreme long shot regardless of how we try to draw it up, and if Yajure goes down to TJ, that's a big loss which shows the thin depth we'd have to count on in any case, but I guess the main point I would insist on is that despite this long shot, 2022 is by definition part of the window because Hayes is here.
