One Thing the Players Could Do Right Now
(Photo: Keith Allison)
The players are mad right now. They are mad at owners for not spending and they are mad at union leadership for not anticipating the lack of spending this winter. The owners are also mad — or at least pretending to be — because the players aren’t signing the contracts that the owners want them to sign. Finally, the fans are mad. Mad at the owners for not spending, at the players for not signing, and at writers like me for not writing more about baseball.
What we all really need are actual games. We won’t have that for a while, of course — although the wait for a new collective bargaining agreement between players and owners will continue even beyond this season. Because the players have to wait years for that shot, there isn’t a whole lot they can do right now. Maybe that’s why they are voicing their frustrations to the press. A spring-training boycott, such as was rumored recently, is unlikely to get them very far. Disbanding the union is a rather drastic step for the moment.
However, there is one thing players could do right now that would help them in the future — namely, stop signing contract extensions before reaching free agency.
This year’s hypothetically amazing free-agent class is missing. Jose Altuve, Paul Goldschmidt, and Mike Trout all signed team-friendly contract extensions earlier in their careers. The same thing was true last year when Madison Bumgarner, Freddie Freeman, Buster Posey, Chris Sale, and Giancarlo Stanton would have all been able to offer their services to any of the 30 teams.
The year before that, it was Wade Davis and Andrew McCutchen in a free-agent class that was already very good. It might seem counterintuitive to propose that players should be trying to get to free agency without extracting larger guarantees from their teams when the problem right now is that teams are not spending in free agency, but getting more, higher quality players to free agency would help the players immensely.
Last year, when the Red Sox were desperate for a pitching upgrade, they used prospects to acquire Chris Sale and his team-friendly contract. If Chris Sale had been a free agent, they — or another team — would have paid Sale $200 million or more. Instead of transferring money to the player, however, they transferred prospects to the White Sox. That transaction gained the players nothing.
Similarly, the Giants have no need to go out and buy an ace on the free-agent market because they already have Madison Bumgarner on a cheap deal. The Brewers traded away a bunch more prospects to the Marlins for Christian Yelich because he has five years on his deal instead of just two. Adding more good or even great players to free agency changes the spending dynamic completely, and it makes trades for cost-controlled players less desirable. When teams can’t exchange prospects for talented major leaguers, they are forced to spend money on them.
Two years ago, I ran the numbers on the early-career contract extensions signed between 2008 and 2011. I found that teams saved around a half-billion dollars in value from the few free-agent years teams had negotiated away from players. Those deals ended up neutral in free agency half the time with only a handful of deals turning out bad for the owners.
Those deals that did turn out bad for clubs presumably represented instances in which the individual player was smart to have signed the extension — because he wouldn’t have gotten paid later, that is. That would certainly seem logical. And yet, of the eight such deals I found matching that description, six of the players involved actually later signed contracts that guaranteed them more than $10 million anyway. Moreover, the $500 million in savings I’ve cited above might even understate the benefit to club, as players hitting free agency would likely sign for far more years than they gave up, increasing the payroll numbers down the line.
It’s possible that players and agents are already attuned to the pitfalls of these discounted extensions. Dave Cameron wondered a year ago if perhaps we were already witnessing the extinction of star-level contract extensions. A number of players signed such deals last year, but players like Mookie Betts, Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa, and Francisco Lindor weren’t among them.
We don’t know, though, that players who signed extensions won’t yet become stars. Jose Altuve, Paul Goldschmidt, and Anthony Rizzo weren’t stars when they signed their extensions, but they are now. Jose Ramirez’s deal from last season is already looking really good, and maybe Tim Anderson, Odubel Herrera, or Rougned Odor will take steps forward in the coming seasons.
Asking players not to sign extensions that will set them up for life is a difficult proposition. This is what I wrote last year when Carlos Martinez agreed to a deal that could prove incredibly team friendly:
It’s important to keep in mind that Martinez doesn’t get to make an extension decision 100 times and take the average outcome. He doesn’t even get to do it two times. He has this one decision to make, and passing up $50 million is a difficult decision.
The players and owners have agreed to a system that depresses salaries for a player’s first six-plus seasons in exchange for riches in free agency. That system favors smaller guarantees the further away a player is from free agency. Many players are willing to take a chance to get to free agency. Others are not, and teams still happily take advantage.
Overall, players would be much better off if nobody agreed to a contract extension before free agency — particularly that strain of deal that comes before a player reaches arbitration. Individual players, however, aren’t likely to feel the same way. The union needs to provide some sort of incentive or insurance should a player become hurt or otherwise regress as he proceeds through the arbitration process. Perhaps the MLBPA could offer a lump sum — like 10% of a potential contract offer — to be paid back with 10% of future earnings until it is fully reimbursed or forgiven if the player’s earnings never reach that level. Fantex is doing something like that on the open market, attracting players like Maikel Franco, Andrew Heaney, and Jonathan Schoop, but the player’s union might be in a position to offer better terms.
There’s not a whole lot the players’ union can do right now to battle back against the owners. One thing they can do to show unity and get themselves more money in the future is refuse to sign any contract extensions that gives away free-agent seasons. This has been a Scott Boras tactic for years, and it has generally gone very well for his clients. Rejecting that kind of money likely doesn’t make financial sense for some players, however, so the union needs to help those particular individuals to ensure solidarity. Simply advising against the deals isn’t going to be enough. Tangible, financial help is necessary to prevent players from agreeing to a lifetime of financial security. The CBA is going to be around for many more years. If players want to work within the system, getting as many of their peers to free agency as possible is the goal. The best way to do that is not to sign away prime, free-agent seasons for bargain prices.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
This doesn’t seem like a feasible possiblity (young players rejecting lifetime financial security) without making intra-union agreements, such as drastically (DRASTICALLY) raising dues to form a sort of safety net fund for young players who get hurt or otherwise flame out.
Unions leaning on members to do what the union wants is not exactly a new concept in labor management. Every so often you hear about it when a player is considering taking a home town discount FA deal.
Yeah, but how receptive would players be to the union taxing them to that extent? Especially when ballplayers tend to (understandably) skew right-wing? What’s the breaking point?
Why would any player vote for it? If I were a player, I’d much rather decide for myself, along my representation, whether and to what extent I wanted to trade my injury and performance risk for guaranteed money and longer-term security, so as to maximize my individual welfare.
I agree.
This gets at my main thought in this piece: There is a massive, massive collective action problem involved with what Craig suggests here. The union could step in to help solve that (indeed, unions are created to help solve collective action problems, and that is what Craig suggests) but I just don’t see this happening. Too many people would object to raising union dues that much, and it’s just too radical.
It would just make more sense to try and get more money to players earlier in their career so that they don’t get as desperate to sign team-friendly extensions.
In theory the union could actually MAKE money off of this (and not need to raise union dues) while also allowing the players to NOT take an extremely team friendly deal that will ensure the player’s financial future in the short term—and in the long term make them a great deal more money. This could be a win-win for players and union. And the present union leadership badly needs a jolt of goodwill amongst its constituents right now.
If those players forego the extension, then they get injured, and never return to form – Who’s giving them those millions? The extensions are worth it for the player. Imagine a player retires after playing three years at league minimum. He might have money for your standards, $1.5 million+, but if he would’ve signed that extension after year two he’d have $30+ million. There is nothing that promises him future earnings more than a current extension.
Even if he were to earn $5 million before he signs that extension, nobody knows what tomorrow brings, and $50 million can make a big difference for him and his family.
Most of the time, the team wins. The team is paying risk vs reward. The player earns reward vs risking it all.
The way to fix this (for young players) is to change the system that underpays arbitration eligible players.
$50 million can make a big difference for his family? That could make a difference for a medium size city!
Insurance. Show the offer to insurance company and take out policy for that amount. Thats what Sherzer did. Might cost 500K per year for 50 milllion (after taxes) based on Scherzers policy
I’m a fan and I’m not mad. Pitchers and Catchers started reporting to camp today!
Pound Sand
Jon S’ingleton’s 2018 earnings: $00.00
How can Jon Singleton not be getting paid when he has a “guaranteed contract” that guaranteed him “life changing money”?
Because the Astros sent Singleton down to the minors and down there he is tested for marijuana, something that can’t happen if Singleton is in MLB – or the Astros just sent him home to watch TV.
The suspension is for 100 games which is most of the minor league season and if Singleton tests positive again he is banned for life and the Astros owe him nothing.
There’s your guaranteed life changing money. Spiked food with edibles a few times and the contract disappears.
Singleton has already collected $5.5M from the Astros, which is about $4.8M more than he would have collected had he not signed the extension. He probably spent most of it on “edibles”, but that was his decision.
You make it sound like some conspiracy from the Astros to send Singleton to the minors so that he would get tested in order to not pay his salary.
Reality is Singleton is a 1st baseman whose best record in the majors is wrc+ 83.
In 2016, he hit wrc+ 96 in AAA as a 24 year old and then last year, he hit wrc+ 120, which sounds promising, except it was in AA.
The reason why his suspension seems harsh is because it is his third time getting caught.
You could argue about whether marijuana usage should be penalized or not, but Singleton knew exactly what he was doing and it wasn’t the Astros’ fault.
Marijuana should be allowed. It should definitely not be tested. I’ve never been tested for marijuana. What good reason is there to test players? None. Preemptively, if you think there is a good reason, it is not. Your reason is bullshit.
I agree with you, but your point is completely immaterial.
I enjoy marijuana. I think testing for it is silly. But when I had a full-time job that tested for marijuana, I didn’t use it. I didn’t use it for pretty obvious reasons, and I didn’t even have a million-dollar job at stake.
I feel bad for Jon Singleton that his career didn’t pan out as I’m sure he had hoped, but I can’t side with him on this. I can’t feel bad for a guy that could have just kept collecting massive paychecks until his contract expired and then smoked up all he wanted but apparently decided he couldn’t wait a couple years. He knew exactly what would happen if he got busted a third time, and he chose to risk his money. What players should and should not be tested is hardly relevant.
Extremely one sided article. Simple comment is that two sides agree to terms acceptable to both sides at the time of the signing. Hindsight is not negotiable. Don’t see the super failures giving back any money. And I never hear of owners wanting to renegotiate
I think the article could have focused on the fact that on average players would earn more by not signing these extension. That seems true enough. But whether the player is ‘wrong’ to sacrifice some potential future earnings to earn guaranteed security is up for debate. People are generally risk averse so it makes sense that they would make this trade.
It’s not just risk aversion, though. The author ignores the very real concept of marginal utility of money to the individual players, and focuses myopically on the total allocation of dollars between all owners and all players.
The obvious but ignored economic point is that the sum total of each player’s individual welfare does not equal the players’ undistinguished total welfare. Maximizing the latter does not also maximize the former.
Not sure it is fair to say I ignored it. There are multiple paragraphs discussing that very decision.
Every player has a price point where they choose to sign an extension. For some it might be $40 million, and they take that $40 million knowing that they are capping future earnings.
I’m proposing adding another price point. I suggested as an example, 10% of a potential contract. How many players are going to still take that $40 million that they know could hurt their future earnings if instead they can have $4 million right now, something most of those contracts don’t provide?
Adding that cost is going to make a player less likely to sign a team-friendly extension and still feel good about the decision given they will still be set up. Might players still opt for the extension? Sure, but it makes the decision more difficult and it might lead to higher dollar figures for the extensions as well.
Jon Singleton says “hi.”
114 MLB games. 357 AB, 151 SO, 171/290/331 76 OPS+
Currently ending his career at AA Corpus Christi
$10 million contract extension.
Guys who are glad they signed a “team friendly” pre-free agency contract extension: Singleton, Jose Tabata, Allen Craig, Matt Harrison, just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are others.
A world without pre-free agency contract extensions would reward the Altuves and Goldschmidts of the world and punish the Tabatas and Craigs. Maybe that’s a more just outcome, but it’s hardly without its drawbacks on the player side.
Ricky Romero. Really loved that guy. Bulldog on the mound. Shame he just couldn’t find the strike zone.
More like: Jon Singleton says “high”. If his MLB career is over – It’s fitting that it would end with exactly 420 PA.
Did Singleton sign away any post-arb years? I can’t recall the terms.
Good for the union as a whole, but tough in individual situations. The quality of life increase of getting that first 50M locked up is DRASTICALLY higher than going from 50M to 100M. You can blame anyone individual player for signing those deals. Someone like Harper will have already locked in life altering money in endorsements and signing bonus money.
Also how about this? Agents can be dropped at whim of the player, so unless you are a super agent, are you incentivized to get your client to sign now for 50M or when he is a bona fide superstar 3 years from now for 150M and ripe to be poached by the likes of Boras?
Personally, I think that is a brilliant idea. (With the usual caveats of unintended consequences: adding even a handful of young superstars to a FA year that already has a bunch of over-30 guys is just going to depress future earnings for the latter, based on ageing-curve metrics.)
I don’t even think that a pool of financial support should be necessary. What is this, “setting the player up for life?” A sub-set of fans already objects to the minimum MLB wage of $500+K — which to many people is “setting the guy up for life” based on a single season. (It isn’t, but that’s public perception for you.) It’s hard to see why a player should voluntarily take themselves out of an age-28 crap-shoot by depressing their peak year earnings by $5+M or so.
But of course it does involve collective action … something which the players, at this stage, seem to have delegated to a bunch of incompetent lawyers. Oh, and no doubt somebody would scream “collusion!”
I was going to post essentially this.
I think if this were to happen, more money does indeed go to “the players” at large, but I don’t see how it helps the type of players currently struggling to get paid: 30+ year olds perceived to be in their decline. Paul Goldschmidt is 30 and he’d get paid, but he’s an elite player. More money going to him doesn’t really help Logan Morrison or Lucas Duda.
And the collusion bit was my first thought, right or wrong. Maybe the union shields them some, but in my opinion, all the players collectively refusing to sign extensions early is the same was what the owners have been accused of doing, which is refusing to sign free agents, period (or at least refusing to budge on some valuations so as to lower the market to a point that favors the owners).
“Collusion” applies to the owners of capital, not to the people selling their labor.
Players can, indeed, be culpable of collusion under the current CA. I’m sure Kenley Jansen got an earful from the union when he (may have) suggested a wildcat strike. And the union was quick to shoot down the boycott idea, if you recall. That is a complete no-no when you have a signed CA.
You are correct, never mind. That is a fairly radically different understanding of collusion than in its mainstream use, but live by the CBA die by the CBA I guess.
“Perhaps the MLBPA could offer a lump sum — like 10% of a potential contract offer — to be paid back with 10% of future earnings until it is fully reimbursed or forgiven if the player’s earnings never reach that level”
This is an excellent idea. Setting up slush fund-like accounts via a preamble agreement when one enters into the union to assist players while they wait out their team controlled years would make a whole lot of sense. Get all the highest paid earners to contribute 1% of their yearly salary to fund it while players who use the funds pay interest after they sign their first free agent deal. Almost like a players “bank”.
This is asking pre-arb and arb players to do a favor for the Union, when the Union subverts their interests to those of 6+ year veterans. Pass.
Interesting idea. The greatest risk to the very talented player is probably not underperformance–it’s injury. So, if the Union wanted to go out and source really good insurance, they would give players at least the option of avoiding the extension unless it was just too good to pass up. Fans should not have a problem with that–younger players are seriously cost-controlled.
How about the players union fight for FA after 5 years instead of 6?
It’s seven years, not six.
If they’re going to go on strike – and they should – then they had better make it worth it and drop the control from seven to four years.
The flip side of this is: the owners should probably stop signing aging veterans to expensive long term contracts. Which it looks like they’ve decided to do.
So hopefully the players do recognize that. Any agent who recommends a good player sign an extension early is committing malpractice.
“Any agent who recommends a good player sign an extension early is committing malpractice.”
Not at all. It depends on the player’s preferences and risk tolerances. Injuries happen. Decline happens. There are people that would rather have a guaranteed $1 million than a 60% chance for $2 million. According to abstract economics, that is unwise, but most people do not base their decisions on abstract economics.
Even economically it’s fine to take a lower expected value for a lower risk. There is a declining marginal utility of money (just like almost everything else has declining marginal utility).
No serious economist would claim that taking a 100% chance of 1,000,000 rather than a 60% chance of 2,000,000 was irrational for someone who’s not already rich.
But collectively the union should want people to take the risk, and one way for the union to get people to do that is for the union to assume part of the risk.
A red snapper. That’s a nice fish. You can take that, or take what’s in the mystery box. What’s it going to be?
You take the box. Let’s see what’s in the box? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Stupid! You’re so stupid!
SUPPLIES!
God I love that movie.
To borrow an idea from a fantasy auction league with keepers, it is possible that these extensions have an indirect effect on all the other players. Teams may be bidding more aggressively on some free agents when more of the better players are under a contract extension in a given winter. This is likely a modest effect, but it may be redirecting pay from the very best players (who are the most likely to get extensions) to the “average regulars” who may be getting squeezed more and more in free agency.
A larger indirect effect is on competitive balance and the “rebuilding cycle”. If the Pirates did not extend McCutchen or the Diamondbacks did not extend Goldy, odds are they would be paying no one in their place, not substituting another free agent star. These teams increased their payroll because they had a bargain-priced superstar, spending more on other players to maximize their window of opportunity. Maybe Greinke should buy Goldy lunch. The longer the extension, the more years the team would increase payroll.
It is a complex task to evaluate the net effect of these extensions, but the indirect effects are likely too big to ignore.
I can see Craig’s overall point, but I see this article as really mixing a few different types of extensions.
Some of these end up extremely team-friendly because the player improves. Altuve is the foremost example of this one because he signed his extension after a couple seasons of playing like a below-average major league starter, then eventually turned into an MVP-level player. In his first ~1,500 major league PA’s (through 2013; he signed his extension in July 2013), Altuve posted a total of 2.3 fWAR. Post-2013, he’s never had less than a 4.5 fWAR season. Goldschmidt is a less extreme example of this contract, because he was better than Altuve before his extension and therefore got more guaranteed dollars, but he’s still a massive bargain especially because Goldschmidt went from an ~3 WAR player to a 5+ WAR player).
Others are, if perhaps not full free agency prices, very much big money deals. Stanton is the foremost example, with a contract that full-on did look like a free agent deal other than how the money was distributed (low-dollar early years): 13 / $325 million taking him through his age 37 season, with a full no-trade clause and a player opt-out after six years. Stanton should, IMO, be happy every day that he signed that deal, because he would have hit free agency after an injury-plagued 2016 when he only totaled 1.8 WAR in 470 PA’s. Posey (9/$167 million with a full no-trade) and Freeman (8/$135 million) are sort of lesser versions of that type of contract: not full free agent prices, but big enough guaranteed dollars that it’s understandable why even a very good player will take that payday.
Pitchers are to a large degree in a separate category, IMO, because of the level of injury risk. It’s easy to say in retrospect that Sale shouldn’t have taken $32.5 million guaranteed and given up two team option years when he had a season over 4 WAR and was just a year from arbitration, but we’ll see if someone like Syndergaard ultimately wishes that he’d taken an extension along those lines. I’m not sure what sort of guarantee Matt Harvey could have gotten post-2015 with a TJ surgery already under his belt, but it sure looks like he would have been wise in retrospect to take it.
“other than how the money was distributed (low-dollar early years)”
I think it followed how most of these deals are structured. Years that would have been pre-arb otherwise are generally put relatively close to the league minimum [like loosely what they would have gotten those years otherwise].
Years that would have been arbitration years, likewise, are put in at figures that represent what the player probably would have gotten as an arbitration eligible player.
Then it is only the FA years that get put in at ~FA values.
With Stanton, it might have been a bit less in the earlier years than the later ones than is normally the case, but this is a hallmark of large Marlins contracts- “push a bunch of money further back, so that we can enjoy the prime years at a discount, and when it starts to get expensive, trade the player for some prospects.”
It seems like an insurance company could come in here and make an absolute killing. Some have already tried, but it should be common place.
I can see how this could raise the ceiling of salaries for good young players. It would probably raise the mean salary of all players – but the median salary would stay the same.
This does nothing to address the plight of decent, average or above free-agent players as far as I can tell.
This piece reminds me of Bud Norris and Mark Mulder publicly slamming Jon Singleton for signing his 10 million dollar contract before reaching the major leagues. How did that work out?
edit: I’m glad to see that several others beat me to it.
Not well for Singleton. His “guaranteed money” was a fraud.
2018 earnings: $00.00
What about 2016? 2015?
Wrong.
Yes he’ll make nothing due to suspensions. But if he acted smart and didn’t smoke marijuana, he’d have $10 million after his 5 years. It was smart, using hindsight, for him to sign.
Pretty sure “$0” for 2018 isn’t accurate, because it’s a 100 game suspension without pay. Even with this suspension, he should end up earning about $8 to $9 million out of his $10 million contract.
Without the contract, he would have earned less than 2 years of the MLB minimum salary plus whatever he would have earned as a non-MLB player (either on or off the 40-man, as the case may be).
So taking a conservative view of the amount he’s getting from his extension and an aggressive view of what he would have earned without an extension, it’s roughly $8 million from the extension versus ~$1 million without it.
There is no reason to shift money from $6.5/WAR extension recipients to $9/WAR FA recipients, because the marginal value of a win maxes out at $6.5 as fangraphs has found.
The surplus value extensions subsidize the over-price Boras client deals.
There are only two progressive things to do really with the CBA:
(1) decrease the owner split and get more pay to players and staff
(2) improve the rights of the least paid, minor leaguers, major league minimum, and otherwise provide better and more modern employee rights
This never-ending, coordinated, tone-deaf, anti-data CAA/Boras series is the worst I’ve ever seen on fangraphs.
How about the never-ending kick you are on? There’s nothing wrong with this piece–it addresses a type of strategy that could be used now when the next CBA is significantly off in the distance. What’s your goal here? It’s their site.
FanGraphs writers are free to put out whatever they want, but many commenters like ThomServo are expressing dissatisfaction over the nature of these pieces. I suspect that it has a lot to do with Dave Cameron leaving, so they’re still struggling to figure out what to do with a new leadership structure.
Ultimately, I agree with Thom that the constant drumbeat of woe and hand-wringing is not only annoying but yet to be established as a real phenomenon. Darvish didn’t sign at a discount, J.D. Martinez probably won’t either, and Eric Hosmer is almost certainly going to receive more than he’s actually worth. Players’ demands not being met is very different from players’ salaries being besieged, and the steady stream of articles peddling the former as if they’re the latter is exasperating. These pieces aren’t the kind that made us love FanGraphs.
I fully understand that some readers may be unhappy with the content, and I’m sure that Fangraphs knows it. The market, for lack of a better word, will determine whether that unhappiness will manifest itself into less traffic, which may in turn encourage Fangraph writers to switch topics. But I seriously doubt that a handful of commenters, no matter how many times, and no matter how strenuously they repeat themselves, is going to change the arc here.
What all of us need is baseball. In the absence of baseball, it’s difficult to provide content.
IOW, longtime readers who are unhappy with the current editorial line should just shut up and go away.
That’s really what you’re going with?
Yeah, ThomServo is a bit repetitive … but so are the writers. When they start finding new topics, I imagine he will too.
Nope, not my point at all. Fans are entitled to talk, and gripe, as much as they want. FWIW I think repetitiveness numbs the impact. But that being said, I’m going to take my cue here and step away. This is a free site, I enjoy it, and I’m going to stick to reading (and not commenting) on the content.
I think by most projections, Darvish signed at a big discount.
Didn’t even need to read the comment to know this would be an idiotic spew of words. Just needed the username.
FWIW, the content of your comment may not be wrong, just is lacking in evidence. Your last sentence illustrates your lack of rational thinking and emotional control.
There are a large number of posters objecting to this turn by fangraphs.
My statement that this is the worst series I’ve seen on fangraphs, that I consider it to be Boras/CAA (often quoted) talking points; and that I consider it to include no data or analysis- does not show a lack of rational thinking or emotional control. It is rather your assessment that is over the top.
I made a couple cogent points- value of added wins is $6.5m, cost in FA is around $9. Additionally, fans support redirecting funds to the underpaid, not the overpaid. My post wasn’t an idiotic spew of words- that is again over the top.
Hi ThomServo,
One person’s opinion: I generally find your stuff to be intelligent and well-written. But to repeatedly use language like “narrative” and “tone-deaf” is to question Craig’s and Travis’s ability and integrity, and comes across as overly harsh and thus detracts from your argument.
One thing Craig is missing is that 3 of the 4 players he listed as not signing extensions (Bryant, Correa, Lindor) were 1st rd picks who already signed 7 figure contracts when the were drafted. Obviously, 7 figures is not 9 figures, but, those guys should already be set for life, regardless of what happens from here on out.
That is a big difference from a low $$ foreign FA like Altuve or a late rd pick like Goldschmidt. In a span of 2-3 years, they went from broke ass minor leaguers living on subsistence wages to getting offer 8 figure deals. They’ve lived at the bottom & it’s tough to blame them for jumping on the cash as soon as it’s offered. Same with any pitcher, who is 1 pitch away from TJ Surgery.
Jose Ramirez wasn’t even supposed to make it to the minirs, much less the show. When he signed the extension the expectation around the punditry was he’d regress to good utility player level, not take a further step into MVP discussion circles.
(Look up his 2015 season. He’d had exactly one good season when he signed his $50M deal. As is he’ll get his shot a FA at age 31.)
He had minimal prospect pedigree.
And minimal earnings to that point.
I doubt he’s kicking himself for “settling” for an eight figure deal.
People said similar things about Salvador Perez who signed a terrible contract by most standards (5 years, $7 million) after his rookie season. But when you are a poor kid from Venezuela who was signed as an IFA for $65k, how do you turn down a guaranteed $7 million dollars because other, richer people think its bad for their bottom line?
In other words, individual players should stop looking out for themselves, and instead do what’s good for “players” as a class. Risk the real chance of never getting their own big payday, but take heart that others will.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that Jonathan Singleton is pretty glad his agent didn’t think that way.
I agree with previous comments regarding the marginal value of a big money FA contract vs. a mid-money contract extension. If you’re the kind of player who can command $10m+ per year over 5+ years, you don’t really need too much more money to sustain even a remarkably expensive lifestyle, and you are most likely also making pretty good money in endorsements. The difference between the ML minimum or an early arbitration salary and a guaranteed multi-year contract is arguably bigger than the difference between a guaranteed contract and a free agent deal down the road.
Under those conditions, maximizing your earnings by waiting until free agency is not necessarily worth a) the risk of injury derailing your career before you sign the big deal (see Harvey, Matt) and b) the stress and drama of free agency (see Strasburg, Stephen and probably Trout, Mike).
And if you’re the kind of AAAA player who could be out of the majors in 2 years and your team offers you $10m guaranteed over the next 4 or 5 years, you sign that in a heartbeat, because unlike the major league minimum over a couple of years, that guaranteed money will actually set your family up for life. If you turn a corner and become an all-star, enjoy the fame and endorsements that follow. Don’t waste time regretting not holding out for a better contract.
The objective of maximizing collective money paid to players has to be much less relevant to a player than guaranteeing future security, unless you’re a Harper/Machado type who earns big arbitration contracts and is expected to make gargantuan money in free agency.
I guess another reason to sign a team friendly extension, especially if you’re an elite player like Trout, is that it frees up more money to keep the team competitive. That’s not worked out very well in his case, but I’m sure there are players who look at the roster around them and say “I like playing here, and I’d like to have better talent around me, so I’ll take a discount,” when they’re considering an extension.
I do not know why Trout signed his extension, but god, I hope that is not why.
if the owners are not stepping up to the plate for free agency spending, then they can say goodbye to the arb process when the cba comes around again.
CBA is an agreement between the players and the owners…one thing is for sure the players wont be agreeing to anything if the owners arent spending.
The owners would love to be free of arbitration.
There’s a reason december non-tenders are a thing.
(Pay Cuts after a bad season are essentially impossible under arbitration.)
Cutting a lot of (Second and Third Tier) players loose to compete for contracts is not necessarily bad for the owners.
Just look at the angst storm this year with 150 FA. Now imagine 300-400 players out there. Every Year. Most angling for one year deals.
you are kidding yourself if you think the owners want to lose the arb process. They love paying bryce harper and kris bryant 550$K for 3 years before the arb beings and then only 25% of what theyre worth.
An insurance company should be able to offer a better deal to these players than the teams are offering. Boras should be able to line this up. What’s the hold up? (I’d actually like to know.)
Insurance in this instance is pretty difficult to pull off because most of these types of insurance only pay off for a catastrophic injury that forces retirement. For players who simply fall off in performance, insurance wouldn’t be much help. That’s why I suggested the union do a bit more to help.
Future earnings can be insured – without injury.
Thats exactly what MLB wants. Dont do it guys. Use insurance to lock up security, not giving your FA years away at 50 cents on the dollar and making it harder to get a FA deal by delaying it.
So of the 13 top FA signings 11 have went to NL teams. NL has outspent AL 3 to 1.
Really bad advice. Altuve signed his in 2013, before he was a star. He took care of his family and assured his financial future. Easy for you to say these things, it’s not your money.
I’m a fan and I’m not mad.
“[Craig Edwards and Travis Sawchik] are mad right now. They are mad at owners for not spending and they are mad at union leadership for not anticipating the lack of spending this winter. [They] are also mad — or at least pretending to be — because the players aren’t signing the contracts that the owners want them to sign. Finally, [they are mad at the fans for being mad at them] for not writing more about baseball.”
This idea suffers from a lack of data-driven analysis.
Would Pablo Alvarez be better off or worse off if Altuve hadn’t signed an extension?
The answer can really only be found in data-driven analysis, although this article doesn’t even make a serious attempt at looking at the issue through theory, let alone data.
The author doesn’t even seem to consider the time-value of money- $5m in year 0, at 8% growth, is worth more than $7.5 at some point in year 6- but Craig isn’t accounting for that in his ‘findings,’ so if 100 players took $5m in year 0 instead of $6m in year 6, Craig is counting that as “200m ownership has saved and players have lost” when it is really 50m owernship has lost an players have gained.
Increasing the number of FAs doesn’t necessarily move a single penny from the owners to the players, nor does it necessarily help the middle tier of FAs. There is nothing to support statements such as
“Overall, players would be much better off if nobody agreed to a contract extension before free agency — particularly that strain of deal that comes before a player reaches arbitration.”
I’m unsure who Pablo Alvarez is; however, (whether you mean Pedro Alvarez or the name is just a generic could be anybody “Joe Baseball” name) the answer is YES! Joe Baseball is better off if Altuve doesn’t sign that extension!! So is Jose Altuve!!! This isn’t some deep data dive.
Altuve, and all the players who have sold their pre-arb years at what end up being significant discounts to the $/WAR model, end up lowering the $/WAR model.
So with all these players (Altuve, Posey, Sale, Kluber, Carrasco, etc..) selling off their pre-arb years we have a $/WAR number that is say $8M/Win. Now if those same guys had not done that, and signed some sort of market rate when they were FAs, we know the $/Win value would be higher. So we could pretend it’s $10M/win. You could do some deep data dive to try to project what this could be.
So yes, now a 1-win player would be valued at $10M a season instead of $8M a season. So yes, he’s now 25% better off because of this.
That’s how this works. That’s the whole concept and it absolutely makes sense. If you’re to believe many of the articles that’ve come out this offseason, it seems many many of the front offices appear to be working from this type of $/Win framework. So any method for increasing the $/win rate would be a win for all players when it comes down to their valuation. Even Altuve has now shot himself in the foot, again because the $/Win value is lower for his next contract!!
If this pay issue is something the MLBPA is truly concerned with, they should absolutely start looking at how much they could pay / what it would take for players to not sign those extensions.Then determine if it’d really be feasible and if the overall gains would be there to justify this.
It’s hard to pass up $50M; however, if you’ve got $5M from MLBPA sponsoring you it may make it more likely you would gamble on yourself and the big payday.
Also do you really think, if this wasn’t massively favorable for the owners, they would be doing it with such frequency?? The owners understand this concept completely!
“Altuve, and all the players who have sold their pre-arb years at what end up being significant discounts to the $/WAR model, end up lowering the $/WAR model.”
This statement reflects a misunderstanding of how analyses look at $ / WAR. These figures are specifically for only free agent dollars per WAR, usually from a retrospective analysis of how free agents actually performed during their contracts. It is not a dollars per WAR figure that includes early career extensions like Altuve’s. The underlying logic is that an early career extension for Altuve isn’t available to all teams, but only to the team that controls his first 6 years of service (in this case, the Astros).
There’s also a broader point that money to some extent moves around between buckets (amateur spending, minimum salary and arb year players including early career extensions, free agents) and is ultimately subject to some upper limits of how much teams will spend relative to revenue. Pushing more money to one of these buckets, or alternately putting a cap on it, impacts the other buckets. It’s highly unlikely that the impact is dollar-for-dollar, but there is some impact that almost certainly is more than negligible.
If altuve had become a FA instead of signing a pre arbitration deal, he would then be a free agent and not excluded from the calculation.
So if he doesn’t do that and instead signs a FA deal. He absolutely raises the $/win metric. By opting not to do it he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter how he lowers it. He is excluding himself from the calculus.
If he goes to free agency he then signs a bigger contract and likely raises the $/W metric.
Your broader point, while real in some aspects , assumes we are in a zero sum game within mlb management at this time. That’s unlikely. It’s likely an ownership group bent on winning would push a new revenue to spending ratio taking less profit themselves. Inflation and new revenue streams also exist which make this less 0 sum them you are implying.
I have ENOUGH of class warfare language. “However, there is one thing players could do right now that would help them in the future — namely, stop signing contract extensions before reaching free agency”.
Since when FG were conquered by marxian collectivists?
The are no “players”. There are a lot of individuals which make decisions for themselves. In case of “team friendly extensions” – exchanging hypothetical extra money for safety.
The class war is over, the rich won.
Craig, how would this not be seen as collusion on the player’s side? That is also subject to penalties via the cba.
I don’t think an interest-free, easily forgivable loan would run afoul of the rules for young players.