Pirates extend Marte in typically pointless manner

I don't know what to make of this. A day after picking up Damaso Marte's option for 2007, the Pirates extended him through 2008 by chopping some money out of his 2007 contract and guaranteeing him a contract for 2008, when he only had a club option. They also gave him a $6 million club option for 2009, which means we (or someone else, but most likely us) will be paying the $250,000 to buy that out. I think this move probably means that the Pirates won't be trading Marte, but I can't tell because this move is stupidly unnecessary. According to Rotoworld, he's now guaranteed $2.45 million in 2007 and $2 million in 2008 with the club option in 2009. This is instead of being guaranteed $3 million in 2007 with a $3 million club option for 2008. Before this deal, the Pirates could tell teams that Marte is cheap in 2007 and if he's good this year, you can keep him for cheap next year as well. Now, they'll have to tell people that he's cheap for two years, but if he sucks you're stuck with him and if he doesn't, it won't be cheap to keep him for a third year. I don't understand how removing the flexibility from the original contract helps anyone, really. The change in money is small enough to be meaningless, even by Pirate standards (they'd have to pay him $6 million to pitch the next two years under his previous contract, now they'll have to pay him $4.7 million to pitch two years and buy him out). Why are we even wasting time making moves like this in the off season? So we can tell people we're doing something?

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