Here’s Why the Ozzie Albies Deal Was Terrible
Dan Szymborski has already laid out why Ozzie Albies’ recent extension with the Atlanta Braves is surprising, and a bargain for the team. He detailed the hundreds of millions of dollars Albies is potentially giving up by signing this contract. This post deals less with Albies’ future and more with his past. We can speculate on what Albies might do in his career and what he might be worth, but we don’t need to speculate about what he’s already done and what other players in similar situations have received in contract extensions.
Since 2014, nine players have signed contract extensions after accruing at least one year of service time and less than two. These were all players needing five full seasons to reach free agency, and each signed away at least one year of free agency based on a search of MLB Trade Rumors. Here’s the career WAR of each of those players when they signed that contract.
Albies compares favorably to the two best players on this list, Christian Yelich and Andrelton Simmons.
Now, here’s how each of these players did on their guarantees.
Yelich and Simmons got over $50 million each, but their guarantees were about 50% higher than the one Albies just got.
Generally, teams pay extra for free agent years. Here’s how many free agent seasons the above guarantees bought out.
So Albies gave up more free agent seasons than any similar player despite a top production profile and a middling guarantee.
When we look at the payments closely, it gets even worse. Here’s how much money the above players received or will receive through one free agent season.
Simmons got double what Albies will receive, and there’s a fairly clear precedent for every other contract in the $30 million to $35 million range. We don’t know Albies’ number for sure, but the $24 million figure above is based on the $35 million guarantee that includes a $4 million buyout and an assumption of a $7 million salary in 2024.
Here’s what it looks like through two potential free agent seasons.
Juan Lagares drops off this list, as he would become a free agent. The numbers for Albies don’t include a $4 million buyout, but that still places him well behind every other extension save for Gomes. Even worse for Albies, while Polanco, Yelich, and Marte all have options worth at least $13.5 million for one season before they hit free agency, Albies signed away two more seasons for $14 million, which is really only $10 million more when the $4 million option is taken into account.
When Ronald Acuña signed his contract, I concluded with the following paragraph that could apply equally here by substituting Albies’ name and a few other relevant facts.
We should look at the big guarantee for a player with Acuña’s service time, note that it secures Acuña for life, and understand how tough it would be pass up that kind of money given that we don’t know or understand Acuña’s motivation or circumstances. We can bemoan a system that suppresses salaries for more than half a decade. Those factors are all ones we should consider with contracts of this type, but we also need to consider what the player has potentially given up, as well as reasonable alternatives that meet some of the same goals. The balance between the guarantee is the free agent seasons, as well as the potential arbitration awards. Players simply haven’t given up four free agent seasons this far from free agency, especially players of Acuña’s caliber. A guarantee for half that amount that ensured that Acuña hit free agency in his 20s likely would have been a better deal for Acuña and a positive deal for the Braves. This deal isn’t a steal because of the system that players and owners have set up. This is a deal that, even within that system, will likely prevent Acuña from ever being paid at a level anywhere near his true on-field value.
Albies deal doesn’t make much sense when compared to similar players. His two best comps, Yelich and Simmons, received significantly larger guarantees and signed away fewer free agent seasons. The table below includes much of the information above, as well as the average MLB payroll at the time of the contract. Since Simmons signed his deal, contracts have increased by about 25% while they’ve increased by about 15% since Yelich signed his deal.
| Year | Career WAR | FA Seasons Given Up | Guaranteed Dollars | Dollars Through 1 FA Year | Dollars Through 2 FA Years | Average MLB Payroll | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ozzie Albies | 2019 | 5.6 | 4 | $35 M | $24 M | $31 M | $151 M |
| Ketel Marte | 2018 | 2.1 | 2 | $24 M | $31 M | $41 M | $152 M |
| Stephen Piscotty | 2017 | 3.3 | 2 | $33.5 M | $33.5 M | $47.5 M | $155 M |
| Gregory Polanco | 2016 | 2.7 | 3 | $35.5 M | $35.5 M | $45 M | $151 M |
| Christian Yelich | 2015 | 5.9 | 3 | $49.6 M | $34.4 M | $49.6 M | $130 M |
| Juan Lagares | 2015 | 5.2 | 1 | $23.5 M | $32.5 M | FA | $130 M |
| Starling Marte | 2014 | 4.5 | 3 | $31 M | $31 M | $41.5 M | $121 M |
| Yan Gomes | 2014 | 4.2 | 3 | $23 M | $23 M | $32 M | $121 M |
| Andrelton Simmons | 2014 | 5.3 | 2 | $58 M | $43 M | $58 M | $121 M |
| Jedd Gyorko | 2014 | 2.3 | 2 | $35.5 M | $35.5 M | $47.5 M | $121 M |
Even within the context of team-friendly extensions, Albies’ deal stands out.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
the stage is set
now the rest of the ‘Mericans can follow suit
figure this out you guys or you will be taking much much less at your job too
LOL what? Literally zero of my salary is dictated by agents, players, the MLBPA, or contract negotiations with an MLB organization. Do we think there are any other factors in play besides those?
What does this even mean?
I’m 99% sure OP is Ozzie Albies’ agent.
Pretty sure this is a racist’s attempt at a joke.
I’m safe, my WAR is much higher than Albies, so he’s not a good comp for me. Thank you for your concern though…
The sick joke is the MLB actually lags behind real industry in this regard
Day drinking is badass.
This is the most nonsensical comment I’ve ever seen on Fangraphs.
When’s Serbian to Viatnamese to Klingon and Back?
It’s unquestionably a terrible deal. But here’s what we don’t know: A) what his personal situation was like–did he get advice from his family, were they in economic straits that weren’t within his ability, on a MLB minimum salary, to help? B) Does he know something about himself, his health, that wouldn’t be public but would incline him to making an early deal, C) Where was his agent on this? What kind of professional advice was he getting? At the end of the day, it’s his life, and his life choices. And if he didn’t take the money, and he ended up getting injured, who was going to make that up to him? It’s fine to say “gamble on yourself” but what if you fear having nothing if you gamble and lose?
Now, having said all that, it’s almost an incomprehensibly bad deal–and he made it for whatever his personal reasons were–but it’s reflective of excess leverage by the Braves, and that is reflective of abysmal negotiating by the Union.
The thing is, with competent representation, Albies could’ve gotten a much bigger guarantee while giving up fewer FA years *right now.* Unless his family’s hypothetical financial straits couldn’t even wait a week, or a psychic told Ozzie that he’s going to tear his ACL tomorrow, none of this makes sense.
He could get more than this with a torn ACL. So even less sense.
This. People overrate the risk of career-ending injuries, especially for position players. The go-to worst-case injury is a torn ACL, but these days most athletes return at essentially full strength in 9-12 months. That’s not career-ending.
as far as point C is concerned – I don’t think anyone really knows what his agent was doing in this deal. Even if they (Albies + Agent) were to counter and work their way to a let’s say $50M guaranteed value.. I’d still think the Braves absolutely take that deal in a heartbeat. Like even if he were to not want to “gamble on himself” there was plenty of money still left on the table just based on a numerous levels of comparison standpoint (this piece, others have covered such).
and that still doesn’t really acknowledge the ludicrously low option year payouts. and you’re right, incomprehensibly bad and a poor reflection on the current state of player relations to the front office/ownership.
Sure, this is a fairly reasonable devils advocate take you have here, but (as you sort of point out yourself), the degree to which this deal is bad is probably what is so remarkable about it.
There seems to be a story, here. I don’t know if this is crooked agentry, or (as you point out) some sort of secondary issue that pushed Albies to sign this contract with some immediacy, but something seems off about this extension. Something seems so off that my internal alarms are going off, and giving me the sense that there’s something more at play to explain such an egregious miss of a contract for the player. As Sarachim points out… It’s not even *just* that Albies took the money over betting on himself, it’s that he took, possibly, half, a third, or even more than what the Braves would have been likely to be happy to accept.
The fact that Albies doesn’t even know it covers 9 years (he said in his press conference he would make up the money in “5, 6, 7 years”), makes me lean toward unethical agent.
Is it really “unquestionable?” The majority view here cannot be questioned..? Is that really what this down to?
Well, at the risk of lots of bad things happening to me, I’m gonna question it. I’m gonna ask if we’re really sure that OA is all that good… because that’s the part that seems to be glossed over in this and the other reaction piece. Yeah, I think Albies is probably pretty good, but right now his 1st half of last season seems a little flukey. In more than a half season of games since then, he’s been really lousy. Lots of people seem to be glossing over this nugget.
Anyway, that said, it’s true that he could have gotten a lot more gteed money if he had had a solid 2019 season and looked for a deal then. And prob not fair to compare him to Christian Yelich.
He has a 126 wRC+ this year with excellent K:BB rates. What are you talking about?
In 83 games (since 7/13/18), Albies is hitting 241/298/355 and 5 HRs. An RC+ of 75.
That’s what I’m talking about.
There’s some good sociological evidence that risk tolerance is correlated with a combination of childhood stress and personal expectations of mortality. If life expectancy in your community is in the 40’s, you are more likely to play lottery games instead of bank and save, for example.
Albies’s father died at the age of 40 in 2013 from a heart attack when Albies was 16. He’s from Curacao, but I haven’t read much about his non-baseball childhood.
In 2015 he fractured his thumb and sat out the rest of the year – a fluke injury but maybe that makes you weary of fluke injuries. Anyway, the contract suggests to me that Albies has uncommon risk preferences.
I was thinking about this in relation to both Albies and Acuña. I don’t know a ton about either of their childhoods, but probably fair to infer that they come from much poorer background than their peers who were born in the U.S.
Not a great look for the Braves to take advantage of that outlook to drive bargains so hard that everyone in baseball is kind of wincing, but it might suggest this isn’t necessarily part of a larger trend, but rather two players who really craved certainty in various senses.
Acuna’s deal moved the market. Yes, it was nothing close to what he’s worth, but it was more than anyone in his position had ever gotten. Comparing that deal to this deal and lumping them together is ridiculous. Acuna’s deal is in line or at least close to what you could expect given the CBA. Albies’ deal just makes no goddam sense.
Acuna was the consensus #1 prospect a year ago, lived up to the hype in his rookie season, and gave up four FA years with less than a year of service time for $100M. That’s not that close to what one could reasonably expect in the current CBA environment. People are quickly forgetting how bad the Acuna extension was because the Albies extension in so unbelievably horrible.
Is that another reason for teams to play in the International FA market? If you DO hit on a guy, he’s more likely to sign an extension for less $$, which just increases the value of the initial signing?
Feel kind of dirty typing that, but, if you’re a team exec & it’s your job, you kind of have to think that way, don’t you?
Good question. Compare Acuna to Harper.
Excellent point. And capping international bonus money just adds further to the massive ROI that teams can realize on international FAs who become stars.
Could the players’ union decertify Albies’ agent? I don’t think they could do so to void the deal but either legally or de facto block them from ever working with MLB players again. It might be the only power flex they can do after something like this.
Maybe the agent advised Albies not to take this offer but the player went ahead and took it anyway.
> Maybe the agent advised Albies not to take this offer but the player went ahead and took it anyway
If this is true and I’m this agent, I immediately and publicly resign as Ozzie’s agent and tell the world this story. There’s no reason to let everyone blame me for this terrible contract and I want to let potential future clients know that.
I wouldn’t resign a client relationship for that. An advisor’s job is to advise and let the client decide. Clients frequently don’t do what a business advisor would advise. It’s not the same as oncology advise. It’s not life and death.
This reminds me of when I’d play MLB 2000 as a kid, change Mo Vaughn to a CF who was 50 overall, sign him to a pittance for 10 years, then change him back to his superstar self.
Mo Vaughn? He was 32 in 2000 and was worth 1.6 WAR for his career from that point. I think polygon Mo Vaughn actually fleeced you.
I’m pretty sure MLB 2000’s in-game projections weren’t based on WAR. Dood had himself a 36 HR 117 RBI season that year.
The premise was a 10 year contract. One assumes he’s already on your roster for that year of the video game. He then missed all of the next year and then I urge you to check out his “Anaheim Angels” wikipedia entry.
Dood was accident prone and was airing out soon-to-be world series champs.
Hell, I have no beef with Mo Vaughn, ask George Bell, if it was Tony LaRussa Baseball, I’d be trying to fleece the sumbuck too.
He was alsothe cover athlete
In Franchise Mode of “All-Star Baseball 2003,” I noticed that the CPU would occasionally accept a 1-for-1 trade where it gave up a player ranked one grade higher than the player they were getting (such as trading me a B- player for a C+ player). So I once took advantage of that to go through a long series of trades that incrementally improved my team until it was full of A to A- ranked superstars.
This will be a deal that gets looked back on as insane no matter how far in the future you go. This was presumably a negotiation, so I can only wonder what the starting offer was. Albies said himself he just wants his family to be safe, and that’s fine and admirable, but he could have probably asked for double and they would have given it to him. This is really bizarre and the more I look at it, the more bizarre it gets. I don’t think I’ll ever understand this deal from the player/agent side.
The only thing I can think is that the agent absolutely misjudged the market (intentionally or unintentionally), offered this deal as a starting point, and the Braves said “Done” in a nanosecond.
I can’t decide which is worse: the agent making this offer, or the agent receiving this as a first offer from the Braves and accepting it.
I honestly think that this may have been the Braves’ starting offer. And Albies and his agent just accepted it without even countering.
So here’s the thing I don’t get about the argument that this contract might be reasonable because of risk aversion. It seems to me like it’s an insanely narrow set of circumstances that could occur where this contract is helpful to him.
To be morbid, if he dies, he doesn’t get paid anything other than the signing bonus and whatever he earned to date, right? Ok, so pretty little security in the unlikely event of his untimely demise. (And of course, he could get life insurance to cover this possibility).
If he suffers a serious injury, the vast majority of injuries he’s most likely to suffer won’t effect his long term earnings. If he tears his acl or labrum or breaks his leg or whatever, he’s going on the shelf and it might cut his arb earnings somewhat because he didn’t produce, but it’s not like atlanta’s going to non-tender him for any of those injuries. Most likely, he would be expected to return 80-100% (or thereabouts) after recovering and, at worst, he’s going to make a good chunk of money through his arbitration years. Likewise, even if he regresses to a 2 WAR-ish player, it’s almost inconceivable he wouldn’t make several million dollars before the braces moved on.
So, almost the only set of circumstances where this contract gives him significant security is if he is horribly injured to the point that he is so bad at baseball that the braves would non-tender him or that he’s totally disabled from a baseball related injury (a la prince fielder) BUT he’s not killed. While I get some people might want to hedge on all possibilities, the odds of that exact set of circumstances happening is so low, it would seem ridiculous to say this contract is a sensible bet against that risk.
Heck, Allen Craig DID suffer an injury that effectively destroyed his career, but even he got every dollar that the Cardinals promised him (and then later tricked the Red Sox into paying most of it) in his early career extension. MLB contracts are guaranteed unless the player voluntarily retires early, he gets suspended, or some rare kind of off-field issue somehow negates it.
Unless the player is pre-FA and hasn’t signed an extension, which is the alternative we are talking about here…
I have to admit, I really disagree with how this deal is being categorized (“was terrible”, “is a stinker”, etc). You have eloquently argued that he didn’t maximize his earnings, but in most other contexts, we don’t criticize people for that. “Hey, you could have gone to work on Wall Street instead of your local bank and maybe 3x the money!” isn’t a criticism I hear much.
I think it would be more constructive to tone back on the moralizing and just say, I dunno, “The Ozzie Albies deal was very team friendly and here’s how” or something, rather than essentially call the young man stupid for taking a terrible deal.
>“Hey, you could have gone to work on Wall Street instead of your local bank and maybe 3x the money!” isn’t a criticism I hear much.
comparisons like that don’t work in this context.
Ozzie doesn’t have anyone else competing for his services signing this early, the Braves are the only team that can negotiate with him (until his FA timer). Exclusive negotiating rights leave it up to Ozzie and his agents to be the ones that counter their way into a more market-friendly deal.
I don’t mind Ozzie getting his security early like he did, but it’s still a pretty gross underpayment even from a conservative estimate of $15M additionally guaranteed.
There are different circumstances in place when choosing between two different jobs. That’s not what Albies did.
It’s more like you get a job offer and take the first offer they give instead of trying to negotiate a higher salary, better benefits, etc. It doesn’t make you an idiot, and lots of people make the same mistake. But it is still a terrible deal and bad negotiating.
I don’t think he compares favorably to Yelich. Projection systems don’t yet realize he is on a short list for 2nd best player in game.
He might not compare favorably to today’s version of Yelich. But he does compare favorably to Yelich at the point Yelich signed his extension.
Which, I should of realized.
What kills me about deals like this is when people say ‘it’s life changing money, how can you pass it up’ or speculate that ‘his family may really need money’ …. if that’s the case then just offer the team a huge deal on all your pre free agency years.
If Albies offered the Braves all his pre-arb and arb years for some crazy deal – only $8, $12, $15M (pick a number) – I bet the Braves take it. He’d likely make at least $30M in 3yrs of arbitration so the team still saves a ton. And $8-15M is still set for life money, BUT you don’t give away any free agent years.
A couple thoughts:
First, Albies is an international signing.
A capped signing. He got something like $360K. Gross. How much after agent fees and taxes? Somewhat less.
Second, whatever was left, he had to live off for his minor league career; four, five years?
There’s no telling what his finances were like,what debt he accrued, or with whom. His agent? Some loan shark?
Third, as stated, there’s no telling what his family medical history might be like or what
congenital condition he might be carrying. (Think Albert Belle’s hip.)
That the deal is not particularly good is beyond debate here. The question is why.
It might actually be as good as he could get out of need, lack of leverage, or other unknown factors. It is easy to assume he was misinformed, cheated, or just ignorant. But without knowing the full story there’s no telling just how bad the deal is or why it is seems so bad. Jumping to assumptions without full data is dangerous.
Odds are there’s more to the story.
One thing we do know: a lot of these team friendly deals are going to young international players signed to capped contracts. The union bears a partial share of blame for not considering the unintended consequences of helping teams squeeze international players and ignoring minor leaguers.
I also wonder what a language barrier plays into all of this.
I agree, the why is the most important element to this story.
I’m an analytical person, that’s what drove me to this website 10 years ago. And that part of me can separate any qualitative aspects to this deal. However, deals don’t get done without those qualitative aspects.
I know I triggered some people with my other comments. I just want to be clear that of course quantitatively speaking this was probably the worst deal a player has signed to date. I just think we can’t be outraged because of the qualitative reasons of which we are not aware.
He also doesn’t understand that this deal covers 9 years (potentially), since he said at the press conference that he’ll make back any money he lost out on in “5, 6, 7 years.” No Ozzie, no you won’t.
Coming from a place of privilege, it doesn’t shock me to see the outrage that a bunch of white, male, baseball writers have.
First, fangraphs employs women and people who aren’t white. Second, are you really labeling internet baseball bloggers as privileged?
It’s okay to hate a bad deal for the sake of it being a bad deal. It really doesn’t matter that it’s life changing money. Essentially Albies hit the genetic lottery by being a gifted athlete who is really good at baseball. Lets say you hit the life lottery in a different way and inherited a $2M home from your family. If someone offered you $1M for it would you not hate the offer? $1M is still life changing money after all.
This is why people hate this deal. Albies is worth far more than this. It is a below market, bad deal. Doesn’t really matter that the $ are huge.
I’m not here to jab at FanGraphs specifically, just the general conversation. I have not seen anybody but white males voicing their hatred of this deal.
You can tell a person’s melanin deficiency and gender by their online screen name?
Impressive.
Again, I’m not targeting anyone specifically. I’m talking about the conversation I’ve seen in different places (mostly twitter) over the last 24 hours. And I’m also talking mostly about the reporting being done. If someone can show me a link to a non-white/female baseball writer who had outrage at this, I’d love to see it.
Make jokes though, that really helps move the conversation forward.
I actually think that’s a fair question, though I think it is better to ask why (presumably) writers who grew up middle class or better are the only ones criticizing this deal. I don’t know which writers grew up lower class (in the US or outside), but I haven’t seen any writers say “I grew up poor and I know the temptation of taking a deal like this, but it’s still a bad deal.”
Now, it is possible that there are very very few baseball writers like that. It’s also true that the majority of prominent baseball writers are white men. I did some searching, and all of the first 2 pages of Google results for “Ozzie Albies deal awful” or “bad” were white men. Take that for what it is.
However, I also saw that Tommy Pham, a person of color who grew up very poor, also criticized the deal: https://sports.yahoo.com/one-mlb-player-gave-a-brutally-honest-opinion-on-ozzie-albies-extension-170158494.html
There is also the SI writer Jon Tayler, who MIGHT be a person of color, based on his photo? https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/04/11/ozzie-albies-contract-atlanta-braves
So I think it is more instructive to ask what people like Pham are saying. People who grew up poor with few obvious opportunities, whether they are white or not.
Let me expound: everyone I’ve seen arguing about how awful of a deal this is 1) white and 2) male, two of the greatest privileges a human can have. It’s unfortunate that our world is setup that way, but history has shown that to be the case. There is no way any white male from the United States can understand what it’s like to be Ozzie or any other player who signs a team-friendly deal.
Now, of course, from a purely analytical and data-centric POV, this is an on-paper unbalanced deal. No questions asked. I really don’t think we need 100 articles showing that because it’s fairly obvious.
However, Ozzie and his agent signed the deal they wanted. Not the one everyone else wanted. Instead of contributing to a twitter war and tire fire of outrage, perhaps we should report more on the reasons why these deals are being signed, from the PLAYER’S perspective.
Do we know it was the deal he wanted or just the deal he could get?
In legal circles they call it “assuming facts not in evidence”. (Like assuming things about commenters without factual support.)
There’s such a thing as “settling”. Usually comes under “take it or leave it” negotiations.
Just a few moments of research have turned up the following.
Non-white critics of the deal:
Tommy Pham
Harold Reynolds
Jon Tayler
Non-male critics of the deal:
Lauren Theisen
Not to mention that it is likely that at least a couple of the commenters here that you’re just assuming are white and/or male are not.
Two questions:
1) Would you be any less critical of the exact opposite “white-privileged” reaction — i.e., “this nonwhite kid should be happy to get anything”?
2) By taking this angle to defend his decision, are you actually promoting the kind of change you seem to want?
The predominant view is that Albies could have done much better for himself — either getting more money for the 9 years he signed away, or taking somewhat less (but still “life-changing”) money for fewer years and thus preserving a better chance at a big free-agent payday before he turns 30.
You might be right that class status affected his decision. Even so, I think asking everyone to just accept that factor uncritically will actually help perpetuate the conditions that led him to do so.
If you want to approach this from a privilege angle, shouldn’t it bother you more that Albies took a deal that was worth so much less than a white male (Yelich) despite comparable performance and contexts?
Do we know that Albies did not come from a middle class educated family? Why assume he was not as privileged as those on this site?
That’s another good question. I could only find hints that maybe he wasn’t super poor growing up, as he played tennis with his girlfriend at the time, who was described as “a high-level tennis player.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/sports/baseball/atlanta-braves-curacao-ozhaino-albies.html
Anytime you have a discrepancy in knowledge in a market then most transactions are not fair. Clearly Albies doesn’t have the ability or understand how to project himself and what that projection is worth which put him on a clear path of less understanding than the Braves. This is a market failure!
Granted, I don’t know if Albies acted without heeding the advice of his agent. However, isn’t “understanding how to project himself and what the projection is worth” exactly the information an agent is supposed to provide for a player? And if Albies had access to that information and simply ignored it, that’s not a market failure. That’s a choice made by a single actor in a market.
This deal is a textbook case of asymmetric information. we simply don’t know what knowledge the player possesses, but I am inclined to give Albies the benefit of the doubt.
while it’s easy to write “this is a bad deal”, given that any writer possesses only knowledge of the terms as opposed to the rationale behind Albies decision, any supposed insight offered beyond the comparisons offered above is merely speculation. In other words, it could also be the case that this is a good deal for Albies. One can’t rule it out, and further, to suggest that he was somehow taken advantage of beyond the structural inconsistencies of the international FA program strikes me as paternalistic at best.
put another way, I think Yuca is on to something.
It’s kind of the job of the agent to possess the relevant market knowledge and pass it on to his client accordingly.
As for Albies’s rationale, what reason could possibly exist to take a bad deal now instead of negotiating another week or two to get a much better deal? The Braves clearly would’ve given him a better deal (up to a certain point) if he had just asked for it. It’s not like this was a take-it-or-leave-it offer.
Gomes’s deal doesn’t look very good, either.
Ozzie Albies is from Curaçao.
If you’ve lived there, this deal makes sense, in a way.
On the island there is a real hunger to make sure you have enough money to live on. Everyone takes pride in taking care of their families. Once you have more-than-enough, though, the drive for more money dissipates.
We had a maintenance guy at the hotel where I lived. Guy totally worked his hole off. Management was so happy, they gave him a 25% raise on his hourly wage. After that, he was still a great worker, on the days he came to work. Some days he just wouldn’t show up. They took him aside, asked him if everything was OK with him and his family. Sure, everything was fine, but since he got his raise he had more money that he needed…so if he woke up and felt like staying home, he figured he’d just stay home. The work would still be there tomorrow. The (European) hotel manager told me he nearly fell off his chair. The guy came to work every day after that. I’m told he gave a lot of his “extra” money away.
Now this does NOT excuse the agent for not bringing Ozzie a better ‘first’ deal to look at. God knows Andrelton Simmons got a better (what Andrelton thought was a) first offer. But ANY of the Curaçaoleni players I talked to never gave any indication that they felt the need to play hardball at contract time.
“Curaçao has one of the highest standards of living in the Caribbean, ranking 46th in the world in terms of GDP (PPP) per capita and 28th in the world in terms of nominal GDP per capita. It possesses a high income economy, as defined by the World Bank. The island has a well-developed infrastructure with strong tourism and financial services sectors”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Curaçao
at what point is it a disincentive for Albies? As much as I’d hope he wants to be a great player, he could stop trying entirely and still be rich. Maybe in years 3 or 4 he realizes his mistake and doesn’t quite try as hard knowing he doesn’t have much to gain.
I work in sales and see something similar with salespeople with huge base salaries but capped commissions.
Salvador Perez signed a deal that analysts considered “below market”. The Royals sort of made it up on his next deal.
OTOH Bronson Arroyo signed a below market deal with Boston because he liked it there and they traded him to Cincinnati because it suited the team ruthless interest. Youneverknow
Would we enjoy baseball more or enjoy baseball less if we didn’t know a blessed thing about the money?
I personally would enjoy it much less. The business side of baseball is almost as interesting and entertaining to me as the actual game.
Honestly, who cares. The man decided he could be set for life if he took the money now and made a choice. Honestly, I’m happy for this contract. Baseball players, no matter how good (Albies is not even that good. He has massive inconsistencies on offense and much of his WAR comes from his speed) do not deserve 30 million dollars a year. That is the reason the game is dying. It’s not because of pace of play or because of strikeouts, it’s because these people make millions of dollars a year and the fans are the ones that pay for it. Baseball became America’s past time because it was extremely accessible back in the day. A kid could scrounge up a couple bucks and spend a whole day at the ballpark. Now it takes hundreds of dollars to attend a single game with hugely inflated ticket prices and food and drinks that are literally marked 800-1000% up from their retail value. Not only that, games used to be on local networks, now you need to have cable to watch half the games. And not just basic cable, you need to pay for 25 other sports channels you’re not going to watch in order to get the one that you are. Baseball needs to become more accessible again, and the people that actually still care about the game should not be gouged and exploited. I know it’s never going to happen, but a baseball lover can dream.