2019 Contract Extension Crowdsourcing
Over the last month, a lot of players have elected to forego participation in future free agent classes by signing contract extensions. Ten players within two years of free agency have signed contracts worth more than $50 million, totaling over one billion dollars in future guarantees. The list includes the best player in baseball, two of the very best pitchers in the game, and multiple other MVP candidates. It’s hard to get a sense how much of signing these contracts is due to players trying to avoid free agency, and much is due to teams simply having boatloads of cash and happily paying their star players to stick around. Earlier today, we published Opening Day payroll numbers showing another decline, with these extensions having little effect on current salaries. To help make some sense of all these extensions, there is a survey below that might help answer some of our questions.
The survey is relatively simple one, asking two basic questions about each of the 10 players who signed extensions, as well as one other rumored to have been in talks. The first question gets at how good the player is now by asking what type of contract he would have received had he been on the open market this past offseason. While I could ask how the player did with his extension, the answer can be kind of mushy. Instead, I’ll ask you to project in the future, and based on what you know about the player now, estimate what the player would receive in free agency when he would have become eligible. For all but the the last three extensions, that period is after the current season.
The relevant player pages with projections are linked below, with the survey to follow.
Thanks for your help.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
ugh i had trouble with that with the market as it is. I love Polls though!
Anthony Rendon?
I think that Sale, Goldschmidt, Mikolas, and Verlander essentially maxed out. Arenado came pretty close to maxing out. Trout, deGrom, Bogaerts, Hicks, and Hendricks left money on the table (most aren’t that surprising, since three of those five weren’t in their walk years and Hicks has had an “interesting” career).
Trout: I think there is a psychological barrier that can’t be broken at once for player salaries. Trout might be $1B, so even if he got paid 60% of that, it would be $600M. But in reality, no team is going to give him $600M because salaries seem to be progressive and going from $330M to $600M is a big leap. Maybe Trout left a little on the table but I think the risk/reward for him made sense. Does he want to risk turning down $430M to go for say, $460M in two years?
Bogaerts: I kinda felt like he got about right. It reminded me of the Kyle Seager extension. Both very good overall players (Seager was worth 3.8/4.2/5.2 leading up to the extension) but I’m not sure their skillset gets paid in free agency (solidly above average hitters but not elite hitters or fielders).
deGrom: Deal was good for deGrom I think on the surface but once the news about the deferred money came out it turned into awful for him. Made a bit back with the opt out and no trade clause but still probably could have done better in free agency when you NPV the money.
So I don’t buy that Trout actually got a $430M extension, because the first two years overwrote his current (well compensated) contract. It’s really more like a 10 year extension at $360M. An actual 12 year extension at $430M–tacking it on to the end of his current deal–would be a great deal for him. I think there’s a pretty good shot for him getting $500M, and $360M is a lot of money but it’s not exactly a fair discount.
I more or less agree with you on deGrom and the deferred money, but even without the deferral issue, he left a lot of money on the table is because he bought out a year of arbitration. He left a lot of money on the table to avoid a catastrophic scenario. Is that fair? Maybe. Probably? I think that’s probably the biggest difference between him and the Chris Sale contract.
As far as Bogaerts goes, I think he left money on the table–the question is how much. At first, I thought he probably left about $70M on the table, but now that I think back to it, maybe it’s less because lots of teams don’t seem interested in paying big money for a shortstop. He’s a year older than Machado but worth about a win less; that’s awfully good and worth a mega contract. The example I come back to is Jason Heyward, who also hit the market young without looking like a classic star.
RE Trout: Yeah good point, I forgot it was $430M of new money. Certainly would have beaten a de facto $360M if Harper got $330M
RE Bogaerts/Heyward: Heyward though was an elite fielder at two positions (CF and RF, if that matters but he was very good overall) and ALSO hit like Bogaerts. And I know this will sound hypocritical (given that I cited the Seager extension) but I think Heyward maybe was a contract of the past and not the current precedent we’ve seen where only truly elite players are getting those big long deals. I just don’t think if Xander hit FA today he’d get $180 like Heyward did.
Disagree on hendricks. He strikes me as someone who could have ended up as a 1/8 guy if his velocity keeps dropping and the babip suppression dries up. I think he did well to cash in now. Likewise, Hicks is now approaching 30 and his medical record is spotty as hell. I’d have been surprised if he got more than $70 total on the free agent market. Sale and Goldschmidt look like they made out like bandits, though.
The trouble with this exercise is the anchoring effect – we know what these guys just signed for so we have a basis to do a projection.
Acuna….haha
I was JUST talking about this with a friend the other day – we speculated that his extension ability would look something like, if starting at the listed age and assuming he’s a superstar as anticipated:
21: 8/$120
22: 9/$150
23: 13/$220
24: 12/$250
25: 11/$275
…
Whoooa I didn’t know what that referred to and now I do. It looks something similar to the Longoria deal: 10 years, $124M. It’s a ridiculously smart deal for the Braves. A hell of a lot better use of their money than chasing Craig Kimbrel. It’s buying out something like…3 arb years and 4 free agent years? And basically none of them are “decline” years.
Anything that keeps stars with the team that they are most closely associated with for the long term is something I am all in favor of. This is definitely putting a lot more money in the pockets of the young stars early in many of their careers which is something that many scribes have been carping on. It also seems to be avoiding some of the acrimonious free agency situations that are apparent to all. During the debate over getting fair amounts of money to pre-arb players one argument was to shorten the period of team control. This is totally unfair to the teams that have spent large amounts of money developing these players. Baseball isn’t the NFL or the NBA who get handed a steady supply of talent, much more easily evaluated because they are competing against equals, and developed on someone else’s dime. Baseball teams give huge amounts of money to teenagers who are competing against other kids., not men. The Phillies, for instance , got less than 1 WAR out of their first round draft picks combined between 2003 and 2013. For every Aaron Nola, eventually, there are Adrian Cardenas, Anthony Hewitt, Zach Collier, many more, and finally even the continuously super-hyped J.P. Crawford. It is so difficult to hit on a draft pick that the team should get quite a few years of control for that acumen. The idea of more early and less later seems more equitable. In some of the deals the team may benefit, but they are the one taking the risk. For every Ronald Acuna, there is a Jon Singleton and where will Eloy Jimenez fall in the mix? Will this continue to be the trend? It is new, certainly in this magnitude, and how it evolves will be interesting. The questions of when will be the optimum time to make an offer or, from the players perspective, what are the pros and cons of accepting are only beginning to be hashed out. This is a lot better than free agency in which these players look like mercenaries trying to squeeze every last dime out of the system and the teams look like misers if they don’t acquiesce to the sometime exorbitant demands of the players and agents.
I’m in favor of any system that allows employees to live and work wherever they want under whatever terms are acceptable to them. I find it grotesque when people describe players who switch teams as “mercenaries” or similar terms.
Players in the draft end up on teams arbitrarily and have no control over that. You grew up in Florida and would like to be reasonably close to your family? Tough shit, the Mariners drafted you. Even international players tend to take money up front, for understandable reasons, but they may have equally good reasons for wanting to leave 10+ years down the road. The only thing a player can do is leave in free agency if things work out well enough for them to be able do that (not to mention you might get traded around to any other place in the meantime and there’s nothing you can do about it). Given that teams can pick you regardless of your wishes and trade you regardless of your wishes, I find it exceedingly unfair to criticize players who just sign wherever the hell they feel like in free agency.
And what the heck is “unfair” to teams who spend money developing players? They often get huge rewards on the players who outperform their low salaries early in their careers. That’s a huge benefit to those teams. I don’t think they’re entitled to get underpaid production until the end of time from any player they want.
It is difficult to see both sides of an issue and attempt to come up with a reasonable compromise that is satisfactory to all concerned. I am neither pro-owner nor pro-player. I am pro baseball. I grew up during the era of the reserve clause and there is no defending a system that as Curt Flood said was slavery. Well paid slavery but slavery none the less. The rights of the players could have been written on the head of a pin. As we approach 50 years of free agency the system seems to be working well for both sides. The balance may wander back and forth but, at least in the majors, nobody can scream poverty. This could not be possible without some sort of agreement on the distribution of talent. The CBA attempts to provide a plan that assures a reasonable level of competition and compensation. You seem to be advocating some type of universal free agency and that isn’t feasible. The question that confronts the game is how to properly compensate players for their present performance. The way free agency has worked in the past is no longer working. Teams are no longer willing to play along with the idea of paying aging stars for past performance and the veterans are upset. Extensions are a way to get more money into the hands of young players before they become free agents. Is it a good way? Will it only effect top players? Let’s wait and see. I have no problem with players making the most money they can if that is their priority but is lifetime security, which is guaranteed in any extension contract, more important than an additional $100 or so million dollars so time in the future? That is for the two sides to decide and I am not the person who has any right to make that judgment but do not say that the player is getting the shaft. Any deal requires an agreement between the sides and that has been the case in each extension.
These extensions are wonderful for baseball. The players win (obv they just put pen to paper, the owners win ( gain stability), the fans when and baseball wins as a whole-
Literally the only ones mad here are the ones who are doubling down on some witch hunt conspiracy theory that all the owners are slave-laborers who light cigars with hundred dollar bills –
I think it should be stipulated that the crowdsourced projections are not factoring opt-outs into the equation. So for Arenado, for instance, it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison between his extension and his hypothetical free-agent contract.