All Betts Are On
According to multiple sources, the Dodgers appear to be on the verge of signing Mookie Betts to a significant contract extension that would keep the star in Los Angeles for at least the next decade. The exact details are still up in the air — Ben Clemens will be back in this space for all that analysis when the deal is closer to final — but it’s going to be a big one:
Including 2020, the new deal is expected to keep Mookie Betts in a Dodger uniform for 13 years at more than $380 million.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 22, 2020
Whatever the exact contours of the final contract, it’s almost certainly going to be the largest commitment of resources in Dodgers history so far — don’t forget, the team had to give up Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs, and Connor Wong just to get the opportunity to make such a gigantic offer. The Dodgers have always exhibited a bit of conservatism when trading their top prospects and often for good cause; players like Walker Buehler and Corey Seager have turned out to be far more valuable to the team than anyone they would have fetched in a trade. But after a few missed World Series championship opportunities, they proved willing to be more aggressive this winter, giving up guys they really liked in order to get Betts for a single year and first dibs on signing him to a mega-contract.
Unsurprisingly, ZiPS is a fan of the signing. Ben will have all the numbers, but ZiPS suggests that a 13-year deal, including replacing Mookie’s deal for 2020, has a midpoint of about $367 million, meaning the numbers being reported so far aren’t preposterous. Betts isn’t Mike Trout, but ZiPS isn’t projecting him to be. If Betts actually were on the same level as Trout, 13 years and $380 million would be tantamount to highway robbery!
Mookie’s role with the team is quite clear: hitting leadoff and playing right field. He could still theoretically end up in center at some point, but the Dodgers have kept Cody Bellinger there throughout their exhibition games and if they were keen to mix things up in the near-future, they likely would have done so by the eve of Opening Day.
Given the uncertainty around baseball, I actually expected the market for Betts to be a little off this winter, perhaps to the point that it might have made sense for him to take a one-year, $40 million deal if one were offered and try again the following offseason in a (hopefully) more normal climate. It appears I was wrong, and I’m glad to have been. Betts’ meteoric rise from a fifth-round draft pick to an OK prospect who faced concerns about sticking at second to the 2018 AL MVP was a lot of fun to watch. Mookie Betts is one of the best things about baseball. I love that he’s going to get paid like it.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
As a die-hard Red Sox fan, I’m thrilled for Mookie. It’s a shame he isn’t a Red Sox for life, but that’s not on him so much as it is on the powers that be in Boston.
Betts turned down a 10/$300M extension a year and a half ago from the Red Sox, so I’m not sure how that’s “on” the Red Sox. They traded him because I think they suspected Sale was going to be diminished and thus their playoff chances would be rather low with the Yankees and Rays better than them. And of course their payroll taken to farm system decimated to Dombrowski-proportions. And getting Verdugo & Downs for him was pretty good.
13/$380M seems like a bargain for the Dodgers. I think he’s a 6-win/year type-player compared to 4-win types like Harper and Machado so his contract premium over those two is a pittance. I really expected him to push 10/$400M before coronavirus knocked MLB revenues down 70% this year and perhaps more next year.
I think whether or not the contract is a bargain will come down to whether his defense and baserunning continue to decline. He was so good in both those areas in 2016 and 2017 that his downward trend in 2018-2019 has been at least somewhat overlooked because they are still in elite territory, just not as elite.
Heck maybe he can even rebound those numbers a bit with some additional focus on those areas.
That said I do agree that relative to Machado and especially Harper this is a bargain.
Read the openings of your two paragraphs. If 13/380 is a bargain for the Dodgers, how exactly was 10/300 a serious offer?
The Red Sox only ever offered below market value, while leaking negotiation details in a transparent effort to get fans to label him greedy. (You don’t have to follow Henry’s group for long to see the pattern.) “He will go to free agency at all costs. Trading him now is the only way to get SOMETHING”–Amazingly, they got people to buy this. Clearly though, wasn’t the case. He was willing to accept a fair offer from a team that acted like it wanted him there. Strange!
They could have given Sale’s money to Mookie too
10 years/$300 million… That’s Manny Machado/Bryce Harper money. Betts is better than Machado and Harper, but not as good as Trout (obviously). So he’s being paid appropriately.
If true, the Dodgers are in great shape for the foreseeable future with a core of Bellinger, Betts, Muncy, Urias and Buehler all under contract for the next 4 years and all under 30 (and only Muncy is over 27). Combine that with a solid foundation of pre-arb guys and they are in great shape. Yes, they will have to deal with Turner and Joc being FA after this year and Kershaw, Jansen, and Seager after next year but that is a nice core in place
I can’t see a realistic scenario where they don’t win the NL West every year for the forseeabke future
Mayyyyybe the Padres young guns go nuts?
But yeah.
While this was always a strong possibility, maybe the shortened season played into it some too? Maybe there’s an element of “we can’t give up Verdugo, Downs, and Wong for a third of a season (maybe less) of Betts!”
What does this mean down the road for Belli? Surely Friedman (or ownership) won’t want to put those kind of resources into two OF. Will they shop Belli come 2022 or 2023?
I don’t see why not, these are the kinds of guys you make the superstar exception for. Betts will be a COF the rest of his career and Belli probably could as well, though he can also move to 1B. Plus the DH will be in the NL perhaps from now on.
The Dodgers can afford to carry two $35M+ contracts should they so choose and if they believe in the players enough, which they clearly do with Mookie, I don’t see why they would let Belli walk without making an offer at or near his market value.
You really have to like a R/L combo of Betts and Belli anchoring your offense into the future.
They more or less positioned their payroll to account for this exact inevitability. In the end, the Dodgers probably did better than they would have with misses on Rendon, Harper, and Ohtani
Shop him? Why would they do that? Good, contending teams don’t usually shop great players. Betts was an exception to this and one that many thought was a poor move.
I’d also wonder if the Dodgers could lock up Bellinger now for at least a modest discount that would keep AAV under $30 million.
I am very sure they would but its very unlikely given that Cody is a Boras client. But if they made a reasonable offer at this point, with some future market uncertainty and an absurdly good team that all the players seem to legitimately love being a part of, maybe?
Cistulli called Betts first in the Fringe Five!! Never forget!!!!
Damn I miss that series. Kluber too in NERD scores
To me this feels like a bad contract, who is going to want to pay Betts 25-30 million at 34-40. I don’t know how true it is, but it feels like the prevailing sentimate around the game is that guys who are 5’8” 170 usually do not age well. Good for him, but feels like a bad long term contract for the Dodgers.
If Betts were a FA, he would have a line of teams willing to pay him $25-30M per year for his age 34-40 seasons. That’s just kind of the way it works – you underpay for the younger years and hope that you don’t overpay too badly on the back end. It’s more like a deferred contract than anything.
I’d be curious to know if there really is any research on smaller guys not aging well. Using b-ref, since WWII there are 19 guys at 5’9″ or shorter that accumulated more than 5 WAR from age 34 onward vs. 16 guys at 6’4″ or taller. Raise it to 10 WAR and it’s 8 vs 8. And there isn’t much difference in the totals either. Chipper (6’4″) had way more than anyone with 28.5 WAR from age 34 onward but everyone else on both the short and tall list was between 5 and 19 WAR
Now, looking at the lists, there is NO question that the list of tall guys skews to sluggers banging out homers while the list of short guys does not. But the list of short guys are providing a LOT more value with the glove. Only 3 of the 16 tall guys had positive defensive value while 10 of the 19 short guys did.
The teams usually end up regretting those deals in the end. That’s why we haven’t seen as many of those kinds of deals lately, not even with Machado and Harper. Ideally, you don’t want to pay a guy top dollar past his age-36 season, maybe age-37 at worst.
Right that is the big difference. Harper and Machado aren’t signed till they are 40.
Harper is signed until he’s 39
Thinkin 38
Yeah thought the suggestion short guys don’t age well was baloney. Personally would think bigger bulkier guys don’t age well. Just off top of head Miggy, Pujols, Frank Thomas etc.
I’m not sure Frank Thomas deserves to be in this group.
I think 1 year $40m would have been far too light for a single year even given the lost revenue. Isn’t the idea of a 1 year contract that the player should theoretically get market value, maybe at a slight discount just given all the risk bundled into a single season? So maybe something like 1 year and $55-60M.
I have to hand it to F.R.I.E.D.M.A.N, the $/WAR focused program employed by two franchises yet to win a WS, that the Betts transaction was pretty badass if opportunistic. The Dodgers got a perrenial MVP and top leadoff hitter in his prime, a first division SP, a former top prospect ready to pitch in a pen, and a draft. Love the extension, well earned
The legions that protect the fortunes of the owners are going to be piiiiissssseeeed…My favorite will be those whining about only one year of sweet, powerful control now whining about having too much controlz and payroll efficiency and cap
I hate to break it to you, but the $/WAR program is employed by 30 teams
You speak truth, F.R.I.E.D.M.A.N merely considered the best
I have to hand it over to F. R. E. M. A. N, a program that focuses on war from the war that hired two franchises to win the injury, which Betts was perfectly reasonable if it were luck. The doders had a perverted MVP and a top-notch “thumping” in his first, the early parts of SP, the former main prospect, who was ready to be crossed in the fur and the plane. I like the overtime, well deserved
The body that protects the fate of the owner will be Pialial Sam … My favorite is that cooking goes smoothly, strong drivers now complain that it has too much control and performance. fruit and direction
Literally makes the same amount of sense.
Touché folks, not my best….I still like the Friedman as F.R.I E.D.M.A.N thing but there are kinks
Pre Covid great deal for LAD. Gutsy with economic uncertainty. He’ll be 28 in October taking him to age 39. Follow the Phillies who NEED to sign JT. Didn’t know what the new market will bear. Looks like the Phillies need to make JT the highest paid Catcher (AAV) ever $25M/6 yrs after Betts deal.
I am still shaken by the trade that sent Betts to L.A., although enough time has passed for that reality to marinate properly, for me this contract extension reignites that dark feeling of Mookie freaking Betts being traded somehow. Even now I still have not been able to determine a valid reason why the Sox did not succeed in providing him with a similar deal.
I think all that luxury tax talk that led them down such a path was just smoke and mirrors to hide that ownership was simply unwilling to offer that kind of contract to anyone. That, despite being a top-tier revenue creating franchise.
Yes, I am still bitter. But I am also happy for Mookie. In addition to being an incredibly amazing ballplayer, he’s also a class act in the community and role model, and deserves this contract and all the accolades. From the obvious department, L.A. just locked up one gem of a player, despite a down year financially due to the pandemic. Good for them.
It will be compelling to see how Mookie ages over the course of this deal, especially when half of it is well past the wrong side of age 30. I look forward to a detailed aging comp analysis from fangraphs!
Has everyone forgot that Betts turned his nose up at the Red Sox 10 year/$300 mil offer and repeatedly expressed that he was going to test free agency? How do you blame the Red Sox? In my opinion, the only reason that Betts is willing to accept a similar offer now is due to the economic uncertainty caused by Covid-19. There’s your valid reason, Jimmy Foxxdelorean
Betts turned his nose up at a much worse offer (not really similar) when there was not a pandemic hanging overhead? The Red Sox cried poor before fanless baseball. Allowing them to hand wave away a truly unprecedented trade is kindness they do not deserve. Carrying the water for them is ridiculous.
The only player who is on the same level as Trout got $360M/10 years extension for his 29-38 y.o. season.
Compare that to Betts’s extension of $365M/12 years for his 28-39 y.o. season AFTER Covid-19 hit.
Trout’s extension was indeed a highway robbery.