Britton hoping to work out long-term deal with Orioles

Zach Britton is set to become a free agent after the 2018 season, but if he gets his way, he'll never reach the open market.

The Baltimore Orioles closer is very happy pitching in the Charm City, and he's ready to make Baltimore his permanent baseball home. After avoiding arbitration last week, Britton revealed his ultimate goal is to work out a long-term pact with the Orioles in the near future.

"I'm not sure what the Orioles' plans are long term for me but I know they have my right for another season, so worst-case scenario I'm still here for another year," Britton told the "Orioles Hot Stove" program Thursday, according to Roch Kubatko of MASN Sports. "But obviously I'd like to extend that and be with the Orioles my whole career.

"I've been here since I was 18, so maybe it would be kind of weird, I feel like, to go anywhere else."

Getting Britton's name on a long-term agreement will likely cost the Orioles a lot of money. The 29-year-old broke out as baseball's most dominant closer with a monster 2016 season that saw him go 47-for-47 in save opportunities while posting a minuscule 0.54 ERA in 67 innings to help the Orioles reach the AL wild-card game. For his efforts, he finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting and was awarded the Mariano Rivera Award as the American League Reliever of the Year.

That kind of resume was sure to get him a nice raise, which he got in the form of a one-year, $11.4-million deal after making $6.75 million in 2016. But Britton's also positioned himself to become the next closer to earn a monster long-term deal, and the skyrocketing price for relievers on the open market will help him get that money, whether in Baltimore or elsewhere.

The Orioles face the prospect of losing both Britton and Manny Machado to free-agent mega-deals after 2018, and it's not clear what direction they'll take in negotiations with either. Britton acknowledged this fact, but noted the subject of a long-term agreement came up while he and the Orioles were working out the one-year pact last week.

"We did talk about maybe a longer-term deal, and it ... maybe got put on the back-burner a little bit so we could get the one-year deal out of the way," Britton explained.

"It's something I'm definitely interested in. But like I said, a lot of that has to do with what the team wants to do going forward. Hopefully we can start talks up later when they wrap up (arbitration) contracts with everybody else."