Ozzie Albies Just Signed a Stinker
The Atlanta Braves locked up another one of their key foundational pieces on Thursday, signing Ozzie Albies to a seven-year contract extension worth $35 million. Also included, since the Atlanta Braves felt like they didn’t get quite enough value in this deal somehow, are two team options at $7 million a year with a $4 million buyout, taking the total possible contract term up to nine years and $45 million.
The Evan Longoria long-term contract was probably the gold standard in team value when it came to these sorts of deals, but this one eclipses it. For those who don’t remember, Longoria signed an extension early in his rookie season for six years and $17.6 million, with three team option years. While the guaranteed dollars are a little lower, the team options were more generous at $7.5 million, $11 million, and $11.5 million. Here, the Braves buy out as many as four of Albies’ free agent years for less money than he’d likely be paid in a single year of free agency. In addition, Longoria had yet to succeed in the majors while Albies already had a full star-level season under his belt.
Quite frankly, this is a bit shocking. There’s risk aversion for a player, and then there’s risk aversion. Obviously, Albies wouldn’t get a contract equivalent to what he would get in free agency under any circumstances with a year of service time, but when I think of a risk-benefit tradeoff that isn’t horrific for a player, I think Blake Snell’s contract is a better representation of a team-friendly deal that doesn’t cross the line into, let’s be honest, exploitation. For those who didn’t read my piece on the Snell signing because you wanted to make me sad, ZiPS estimated that year-to-year, Snell was giving up $23 million on average to have a guaranteed $50 million in his pocket.
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | OPS+ | WAR | Expected ($M) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | .271 | .319 | .454 | 634 | 101 | 172 | 36 | 7 | 22 | 78 | 17 | 104 | 4.3 | 0.6 |
| 2020 | .280 | .329 | .481 | 611 | 102 | 171 | 38 | 8 | 23 | 81 | 17 | 114 | 4.9 | 0.6 |
| 2021 | .280 | .331 | .496 | 615 | 105 | 172 | 39 | 8 | 26 | 85 | 17 | 118 | 5.3 | 6.5 |
| 2022 | .279 | .332 | .504 | 613 | 106 | 171 | 39 | 9 | 27 | 86 | 16 | 120 | 5.5 | 11.9 |
| 2023 | .280 | .334 | .510 | 608 | 107 | 170 | 38 | 9 | 28 | 88 | 14 | 122 | 5.6 | 20.5 |
| 2024 | .277 | .333 | .502 | 603 | 106 | 167 | 37 | 9 | 27 | 86 | 14 | 120 | 5.4 | 52.0 |
| 2025 | .274 | .331 | .495 | 584 | 102 | 160 | 35 | 8 | 26 | 82 | 13 | 118 | 5.0 | 50.4 |
| 2026 | .272 | .330 | .488 | 566 | 97 | 154 | 34 | 8 | 24 | 77 | 12 | 116 | 4.6 | 48.9 |
| 2027 | .271 | .327 | .485 | 546 | 92 | 148 | 32 | 8 | 23 | 74 | 11 | 114 | 4.3 | 47.6 |
| 2028 | .268 | .324 | .470 | 523 | 86 | 140 | 29 | 7 | 21 | 68 | 10 | 110 | 3.7 | 43.5 |
So, umm…yeah.
ZiPS is a fan of Ozzie Albies’ future, a weird quirk of the system in that it finds young, phenomenally talented infielders with a star season in the books to be totally awesome. All told, among the game’s hitters, ZiPS projects Albies with the fourth-most WAR remaining in his career, behind only Mike Trout, Juan Soto, and Francisco Lindor. If you’re wondering where Ronald Acuña is, he’s all the way down at…fifth.
ZiPS expects that, going year-by-year, Albies could be expected to make $282 million through the theoretical ninth and final season of his contract extension. In other words, ZiPS is estimating that Albies, in return for this contract, is giving up more than $200 million on average. But let’s say that ZiPS is being way too kind on Albies and is overrating him by two WAR a year. That knocks a shocking 18 WAR off his projections for the next nine years, in which case, ZiPS projects him to make a mere $153 million going year-to-year. So even in the case that ZiPS is horribly overrating Albies, he’s still likely to be underpaid by at least $100 million for his contributions to the Braves. And remember, this is relative to what he would expect to get under the current collective bargaining agreement, not some fanciful world in which he could otherwise just become a free agent right now.
(One side note since somebody will notice, reducing his projected WAR by 18 doesn’t have the exact same linear value as WAR in his real projection does because the better a player is, the lower a percentage of their expected free agent value they get in arbitration).
If I made a deal like this when I was a kid, and had offered my friend Alan a candy bar for his Super Nintendo (he had one a few months before I did, the jerk), you can bet my mom would have marched right down to Alan’s house and made me undo that particular transaction.
Ozzie Albies is, of course, an adult and I highly value the right of two consenting adults entering into freely negotiated contracts with each other. But I can sure as sugar express that I think he got an absolutely rotten deal here!
For the Atlanta Braves, the value of this trade is obvious. They get a star player for the entire length of his twenties for next to nothing, at least in baseball terms. Already having signed Ronald Acuña to a team-friendly deal — but at least, not as team-friendly a deal — the team has no excuse now to not open their pocketbooks for big free agents in coming seasons, something they really should have done beyond Josh Donaldson this winter.
This is not a contract that players should forget at the bargaining table. With higher minimum salaries for young players and earlier arbitration, players would have more leverage in negotiations and we’d likely see fairer terms for players in their prime as a result. If nothing else, it’s a sign that to keep salaries growing in baseball, players will need to fight for the Ozzie Albieses of the league, and advocate for a system that doesn’t require salary growth to be tied to teams signing 34-year-olds to crazy contracts like it’s 1986.
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.
He signed for less money than Scott Kingery! The Acuña deal was a headscratcher but I could at least understand it; Ozzie’s agent should be decertified by the MLBPA immediately if he isn’t already.
The option seasons 7 years from now are worth less than Schoop got this year coming off a .5 win, 80wRC+ season as a speculative bounceback candidate.
Absolutely Eltneg. You are not exagerating at all when you say the agent should be decertified. This is a horrible deal for Albies……
That’s not quite true – Kingery got 6/$24. But it’s true that Albies barely got more than Kingery did before even playing an MLB game.
Kingery’s guaranteed $24 million over 6 years, but his three option years are for $13, $14, and $15 million (with a $1 million buyout). That’s $65 million over 9 years for a 23yo 2B who hadn’t made the majors yet.
Ozzie’s contract is $45 million over 9 years if the Braves pick up his options. That’s absurd.
I’m struggling to come up with a reason that he signed this deal. It might be the worst deal for a player ever.
Sal Perez I think, he got 5 years and $7 million total guaranteed.
Not that this a good player contract, obviously.
Importantly, after Perez excelled for years after signing that deal, he renegotiated to get more money. In three years Albies will have to do the same.
Agreed. I’m a huge Braves fan, but I’m not celebrating. Just seems indecent.
Indecent? LOL c’mon!
He went from making $500K last year to;
$1MM in 2019 and 2020
$3MM in 2021
$5MM in 2022
$7MM in 2023, 2024, and 2025
and $7MM more as an option for 2026.
I mean I get it: it’s a VERY team-friendly deal, but he’s getting money that will most likely set him up for life after one full season of All-Star value. ONE.
I’m a Braves fan myself, but ‘indecent’ is a stretch IMO.
Take yourself out of the equation Clint. This has nothing to do with what you consider to be “set up for life” money. This is about comparing his value and pay to peers of equal standing.
Fellow Braves fan, the “indecent” thing would be to celebrate what you and I gain–a decade of a talented and charismatic player at a price so far below his market value that we may also have a chance to cheer on all the talented players the Braves can sign or extend with the surplus–in light of what Ozzie has lost, which is the freedom to leverage his considerable potential in a genuinely free market.
Is $45M life-changing money? Yes. Is the contract, viewed in isolation, a genuine injustice? Maybe, maybe not. The genuine injustice is a system in which talented young men, many from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, have to weigh all of these risks and rewards while billionaire owners (or faceless corporate overlords) have all the leverage.
I love Ozzie; I respect his right to make these choices for himself; I’m thrilled that he’s a millionaire now; I’ll cheer him and the Braves enthusiastically for the next decade. But he very well may have left $100M on the table in exchange for security that should have been guaranteed based on his talent and industry demand, and would have been if baseball were compelled to operate according to the same rules as the rest of us.
You’re right, indecent isn’t the word for it; he should’ve instead said abhorrent. Imagine Steve Jobs selling Apple for a million dollars. Imagine a Picasso going for a hundred thousand. That’s life-changing money, Jobs would be a complete fool for not taking that deal. Let’s completely discount his future value and ignore the value of their peers’ work. Do you realize how idiotic that sounds??
Albies is so young and had the star potential to get a contract bigger than what Machado and Harper got in free agency, given the rate of contract inflation. Instead, his career earnings will probably be around a fifth of what they got.
I see that the horse is out of the barn on this one, but I think the word “potential” is key here. I mean, at risk of drawing the wrath of many Braves (or other) fans, are we sure Albies is really that good yet?
Yes, he burst on the scene brightly. Thru 7/11 of last season, he had hit 287/335/503 (120RC+) and 26 HRs in his first 147 games and 664 PAs. In the 81 games (322 PA) since then, he’s hit 234/289/344 (70 RC+) and just 5 HRs.
Say Albies had played out this season closer to the 100 RC+ pace he’s been on since the beg of 2018 and hits just 10 HRs. Maybe the Braves at that point just decide to go year by year with him. So OA took the opportunity to get some financial security now. I don’t think it’s fair for people to rag on him just because there’s little downside to this deal from the team’s perspective.
You are at minus 92 with that post. Hey wow…he gets ONE million this year and next year. And then explodes to THREE milllion in 2021. Too bad he was not a 3rd string catcher, he would make more. You say C’mon ?? We all say you are out of touch with baseball reality. Sorry, not insulting you, just the dollars that believe are decent.
Same. I’m happy to have Ozzie but I feel for him. Something tells me his agent wanted a quick payday. Something also tells me that he needs a new agent.
This one and Acuna make me irrationally angry. Such absolute bargains it could skew the NL East for years.
And I am so sick of hearing the “how can they turn down life changing money” BS. Even the minimum $550 K is life changing money, so throwing out $100 million dollars, especially for a position player, is so jaw dropping. I don’t even know where the anger should be directed, but man talk about ‘stupid money’.
What makes you irrationally angry about these two deals is the effect it could have on the competitive picture in the NL East? I’m not even sure that’s one of the top 10 reasons to be irrationally angry about all of this.
Not sure what you mean. Did someone put a gun to their heads? Obviously both players didn’t turn down what many evidently consider to be inadequate money. So who are you really mad at?
Why would his agent even listen to this? Why would he even sign it? This is shocking.
early rumor is that both this and the Acuña deal were rushed by the agents because they were worried about being replaced so they signed these super team friendly deals.
I think there is a clear gap between this deal and Acuna. I get the Acuna one for both sides, but this one…
i don’t quite understand this. the agent was concerned about losing his job so he then proceeded to perform his job as poorly as any agent in recent memory? i feel like i’m missing something here.
He wanted the 6% (or whatever) of a bad deal instead of 0% of a good deal if he got replaced. No one is going to hire him just because he didn’t urge his client to sign a cheap contract. How would he even show that was an option?
The player has to sign the contract, the player would also be the one firing the agent. Therefore this hypothetical reason makes zero sense. It’s not like the agent signed it to get himself the money.
THANK YOU! This explanation has been basically accepted but it makes no sense.
You ARE.
…THE TRUTH
If true, it might lead to a lawsuit for misrepresentation.
I’d be extremely interested to hear Ms Ring’s view on this — both in particular, and in general.
Not just a lawsuit, but his license would be revoked and he’d never agent again – in short, he’d be giving up every contract he might negotiate in the future for a little piece of this (small) one. Which is why that whole scenario sounds invented to me.
What are you talking about!?! LOL wow
This should have been an insulting opening offer that would have killed talks if the Braves had the audacity to offer it. And somehow it’s what was signed, which begs the question – what WAS the opening offer and how did these negotiations play out?
Harper got 10/300 from the Nats, and was put off that it wasn’t just an opening offer. Albiea has a better 10 year ZIPS projection and signed a deal he DIDN’T HAVE A TO EVEN NEGOTIATE for barely more than one year of that
Harper’s offer included tons of deferred money, so it was more like $220 million. That being said, this deal is insane.
Combine this with the Braves penny-pinching, and their recent international scouting violations, and I begin to wonder whether they illegally pressured Albies.
This is extremely interesting and should be investigated.
It’ll be tough to scrape by on 45 million, but I’d like to try it.
dumb
So is poo poohing 45 million.
So is poo poohing 5, or 10, or 2. Why not accept one of those?
Maths doesn’t seem to be one of your stronger subjects.
Says the guy who seems to not understand the difference between 45 million and 200 million.
But I do understand the possibility of securing enough resources to set my family up for life guaranteed, against the uncertainty of life, health, and fleeting athletic abilities. If the kid is happy with his life choice, why can’t others be happy for him?
Indentured servitude sure pays better than it used to.
“But I do understand the possibility of securing enough resources to set my family up for life guaranteed, against the uncertainty”
Again, then why not take 5 or 10 mill? Why be greedy and go for 45?
Because they offered 45
Because a race to the bottom hurts the valuation of the entire labor pool. None of these players or their contracts exist in a vacuum. It’s a little like how if older workers get too expensive, they get to train their young replacements since the young replacements cost 60% as much.
So is not treating the 45M objectively. Sure it would make your day to settle for 45M guaranteed money, but this is owners carving out larger and larger slices of the pie while at the same time jacking up gate prices and charging 25$ for a 2$ beer. The players are underpaid while the fans get overcharged and we wonder why attendance is down.
MLB needs equitable revenue splits, and being Americas pastime and getting cool things like congressional exemption from the Sherman act means they have a duty to not gouge everyone involved, so they can profit annually, before selling the team after 10 years while earning way way more then SP 500 yields over the same time period by multiple measures.
I agree that this is a horrible deal for Albies. This rationale is stupid, however. The price of tickets and beer and food has nothing to do with player salaries. Teams charge the amount they do for all of that stuff to maximize revenue—i.e. charging less might get a few more fans in the gate but the total receipts will be less if they lowered the prices–it has nothing whatsoever to do with the costs. This is micro-economics 101.
If fans didn’t buy the $25 beer the price would drop.
Well said.
Why is it dumb?
Shut up
piss off.
Roll Tide?
Forward Rebels?
Billionaire owners absolutely love this line of thinking.
Non-sport CEOs, too
You would have to have talent.
Well, with a little help of welfare I think one could make it.
Don’t worry, you won’t.
With all due respect to ZiPS…. a .230 peak ISO projection? For a guy his size? I think it’s pretty likely he never exceeds the .191 he posted last year.
That’s not meant to excuse the terrible contract he just signed.
over the past 20 years how many guys do you think had their peak ISO at such a young age….besides Heyward(he was 22 not 21 like Albies). Odds are, he has a .200+ ISO season during his prime.
For a more normal-sized player I’d agree. For Albies, I do not. Guy spent all of 2018 swinging out his ass for 24 home runs. I expect he will be an excellent player for several years, and he’ll be even better when he actually balances his game.
You’re the only person I’ve seen make this incredibly cogent point. I agree the deal sucks, but valuing this guy based on these ISO figures is comical. The dude is a generous 5’8″ and that isn’t an Altuve build. Look at his spray chart from last season. He had a few whoppers but this reminds me a bit of Mauer 2009.
The contract is still awful if you pencil him in for 15 dingers and a 100RC, which I think is way more reasonable than the HOF numbers ZIPS is spitting out, but these “worst contract ever” Comic Book Guy takes seem a bit warm, if not outright hot.
“The dude is a generous 5’8″ and that isn’t an Altuve build. ”
Dude, Albies is absolutely swole for a little guy.
It’s a cogent point based on his size? What about Mookie? ZiPS also takes into account more than just one year of hitting data to come up with these figures. Minor league data is in there as well.
I trust ZiPS far more than a random commentator’s personal opinion.
The Mauer comparison isn’t a great one since Mauer had both the tolls of catching and injury which eroded his skills.
As a Braves fan, I do not trust ZiPS; it puts Albies’s WAR ahead of Acuna’s, and Acuna is the far better player. (That being said, it criminally undervalues Acuna; it doesn’t overvalue Albies.)
And forget the ISO. He’s better with a lower ISO. His left-handed swing is not good, but he can drop the bat-head on a low, inside pitch and hit a homer with it. He did that for a month or two last year, then they stopped throwing him that, so he swung for the fences anyway (chicks dig the long ball?) and was horrible left-handed the rest of the year. That made his ISO better than it should be—he just didn’t get hits other than homers most games (against righties).
That being said, he’s so young, he can improve. And if he doesn’t in a year or so, the Braves can just tell him to hit right-handed at all times. He’ll be a superstar then. His right-handed swing is special. Size is irrelevant.
Wow, FG people sure love them some ZiPS, lol.
The point isn’t about his size, it should be made about his performance.
I’ve read thru to this point (maybe a quarter of the way) and I haven’t seen anyone else (aside from me) make the point that not only has OA not been great the past 81 games (>320 PAs), he’s actually been pretty bad: 234/289/344, 70 RC+ and just 5 HRs and 7 SBs.
Not a Braves fan here, so I don’t really have a horse in this race, but it just seems like people have gone a little over the top with outrage here. The notion that Albies will be the next Altuve bc he’s also a small 2Bman is a big stretch (no pun intended). The best argument here is that Albies perhaps should have waited a year and bet on himself to have another nice season; not that what he signed for is way below the market for a player with less than a year and a half of service time.
You’re citing an exception (Mookie) to the general rule that small dudes don’t hit for power. Betts always had consistently high end bat speed and a 50 power rating. Albies was consistently projected for less power. And his joining the flyball revolution doesn’t change that he hit some cheapo home runs and both his size and the quality of his contact doesn’t suggest you should expect another 24 dinger season. Albies isn’t tiny but he certainly isn’t “swole”. Altuve is objectively bigger. With better batspeed. Apples and skinny oranges.
I don’t know ZiPS special sauce, but his minor league track record does not suggest .200ISO/20+ homer power. Nor do his scouting reports. And by definition I’m a “random commenter on the internet” cos this is an internet comment field. If you’re going to reject every contention out of hand, just don’t join the conversation in the first place.
The Mauer comparison is based on just enough home runs. Are you seriously suggesting that Mauer actually had true talent 28 dinger power and lost it because of catching, and not that the 28 homers were a statistical anomaly? The comparison is apt because you shouldn’t expect Albies to pop more than mid-teens. Which would still mean he’s entitled to more money than this poor contract he signed, but he’s not going to be a 30/30 guy…
Past 20 years is hard because many of the player-seasons you get will be players still very early in their careers. Lets use 1980-2000 and look at players who had an ISO between .172 and .210 in their first 500+ PA season, age 20-22
.207 Ruben Sierra — had one 500+ PA season afterward any better and it was +.030
.199 Tom Brunanski — had four better, one of which was .030 better
.189 Travis Fryman — had two better, none +.030
.185 Scott Rolen — had eight better, and many well over +.030
.184 Kent Hrbek — had six better, one of which was .030+ better
.183 John Olerud — had four better, one of which was .030+ better
.181 Derrek Lee — had eight better, and many well over +.030
.177 Junior Felix — had none better, only actually had one more 500+ PA season.
My thought process as I read the first paragraph….
$35M?! –> That’s it? Is that just for arbitration years to avoid future negotiations ?
For 7 years??!! –> He’s giving up TWO free agent years? What is he getting in return?
He gives them 2 team options?!?!?!?!?! –> ::Falls out of chair::
Yeah, the headlines have been extreme, and yet they did not oversell what he gave up
Insane deal. He would have been arb-eligible in 2021, he’s very young, and while the health risk is always there, you wonder what the agent was thinking. This is the kind of deal which, if you are a lawyer, you ask your client to acknowledge in writing that you advised against it.
Again, highlights the utter incompetence of Tony Clark and the Union in this last negotiation. Champagne corks should be popping in every team office. FWIW Liberty Braves tracking stock has doubled in two years.
I think the Braves just won the Extension Belt, even if the Arbitration Belt is no more.
FWIW, no, the stock hasn’t doubled. It started at about $16, it is $28 more or less now. (More on that later.) Not doubled, but your basic point is correct.
How I imagine it likely went down with Ozzie’s agent.
https://youtu.be/JCcV5sVi5NM
In a less-imperfect world, Cobb County would get some of that surplus value cash.
No, Cobb County sucks.
I mean, really, allow MARTA in and my views might change.
I get why players would want to lock in life changing money, but what ever happened to that whole “I’m going to sell x% of my future earnings to investors” movement from a few years ago?
Exactly what I was thinking.
This kind of signing screams ‘opportunity’ for firms like BLA.
Or here is a wacky idea.
A young player could simply go through IPO and sell up to 49% of his “shares”.
But I guess there are a lot of legal ramifications and roadblocks for that.
That’s a cool idea, young players would benefit a lot from this.
NFL runningback Arian Foster considered this, I think even signed a deal with a firm, and then promptly tore his achilles. But you aren’t wrong. This is an incredibly interesting concept.
Baseball fans in Wall Street hedge funds and private equity should be all over this. Offer more guaranteed money than the team, collect his arb and free agent salary, pocket the difference. Less of a killing than the team is making, but you can do it with multiple players.
I thought the Acuna and Jimenez ones were fine (I loved the Jimenez one for Jimenez himself) but this one is incredibly bad for a player.
At first I thought it was just buying out arb and then a year of free agency but can’t believe this is a minimum of two years and then potentially two more. As Dan pointed out himself, I too am very on board with players being risk averse but this is like driving 5 miles per hour down the street with a helmet, three seat belts, and wearing floaties.
One of the weird things here is from the Braves side because they had three choices:
A) Pay this deal
B) Pay him more
C) Don’t extend him
It would have been…weird for them to chose B if Albies was willing to accept A and they clearly had an interest in C, so they offered him A.
I don’t think the Braves really did anything wrong here, they offered a team friendly deal and the player accepted it. What are they supposed to do instead realistically? This is solely on Albies and his agent. I’m not 100% sure I accept the argument that the Braves could have exerted pressure on Albies to sign the deal, as they didn’t have service time to hang over him, and though Albies got little money when he initially signed, he has service time under his belt and good performance.
There is some ideological discrepancy between an employer paying their employee a wage they’ll accept after negotiation (which we can assume there was negotiation here) and paying a player well above what they’ll accept. Were the Braves under some responsibility to not offer Albies this deal or offer him more? If Albies was willing to accept an offer, were the Braves responsible to say “look, you know this is well below market rate and what you could probably make if you just didn’t sign, right?”
It’s a tough scenario with these extensions because I can see arguments for both sides. On the one hand, Albies puts pressure on the Braves to offer him a deal otherwise they lose him to free agency. On the other hand, the Braves put pressure on Albies to accept an offer because he hadn’t made that much money so far in his career. I don’t think it is just “the Braves ripped him off” because both sides exerting some pressure and both sides negotiated a deal that both sides deemed fair (though the Braves side is much more fair).
There also was more pressure on Albies given the rumors of his agent (much like with Acuna) but then we go back to the first question: were the Braves simply just not supposed to offer this deal?
This isn’t on the Braves – it’s 100% on Albies’ agency. If Albies represented himself (which some players do) and accepted this deal, then whatever, maybe he just likes Atlanta and doesn’t care about money that much. But agents are paid to represent their clients’ financial best interests, and this deal is not it. It isn’t even close.
Mostly agree but I do think there is something unnatural about a team being able to be in the position to exploit a player because he grew up poor and wants to take care of himself and his family as soon as possible.
I’m not saying the Braves did that, just that it could happen in theory. The Braves are under an obligation to it’s stakeholders to get the best deal they can.
That is where the agent needs to guide the player with alternative viewpoints and a reality check.
Yes exactly
Not sure this argument applies to Albies. Curacao is Dutch and far richer than many other Caribbean islands such as Hispaniola (Dominican Republic/Haiti) and far richer than Venezuela, too.
But a team is not guilty of ‘exploiting’ when the said player literally has a person (that he the player employs) that has a sole responsibility of ensuring the player gets the best deal.
This is simply bad agent-ing (made that up) and the Braves are guilty of nothing.. except maybe being lucky as hell that Ozzie’s agent is an idiot
So is this like WGA in hollywood where the agents are also the studios they negotiate with. I mean the agent has a fiduciary duty to his client to get him the best deal possible!
I may not be searching hard enough, but the only thing I can find relating to agents and their clients’ financial best interests is SPARTA, which only pertains to student athletes.
Agents of professional athletes may no longer be required to perform fiduciary duties, especially since the Department of Labor rules regarding said duties are in limbo.
EDIT: you are correct; I found the relevant information.
https://sportslaw.uslegal.com/duties-of-sports-agents-to-athletes-and-statutory-regulation-thereof/
Exactly
It is kind of crazy that the Braves even offered a deal at way less than 1WAR in $ value for each year of the contract. It makes you wonder whether most initial offers we don’t hear about are laughably low. If that is the case, it makes owners look really bad in general. No company would try to hire a legitimate senior officer at twenty cents on the dollar for example. They would never be able to attract talent again.
I was thinking about that too. How many times in any deal is the first offer accepted (unless one of the sides knows something the other doesn’t). Which makes me then wonder if this deal was Albies counter offer to a lower contract, or the Braves counter to a higher contract. It SEEMS like this was Albies’ counter to a lower one because in theory, Albies should have asked for much more (meaning the Braves countered down, which man…)
This does appear like a deal that if someone in one of my fantasy leagues offered to me, I would decline and refuse to deal with him in the future. It’s nuts.
This is the first reasonable comment, regarding this topic, that I’ve seen. Well done!
Too many people are acting like the Braves are just holding guns to these players’ heads. Why would the Braves give Ozzie more if he’s willing to accept less?
This is like one of those super-unrealistic contracts you get a player to sign in MLB the Show and it’s great for your competitive prospects but it also kind of spoils the fun.
How do you think the rest of the NL East feels? Nats sub is on fire with why Rizzo can’t similarly shaft Robles and Soto in deals like this
I would be shocked if you could get a player to sign this deal even in The Show.
i was playing nhl19 gm mode earlier today and signed a 21 year old 78 overall medium elite top 4 defenseman to an 8 yr contract extension at $1m per year and thought of this comment.
I keep reading $45M, and it’s making me feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
How is 35 plus 7, plus 7 again, coming out to 45???
It’s $35M which includes the $4M buyout. So without the buyout, the initial years are $31M. That makes it a guaranteed $35M deal. Add the two option years at $7M, that is $31M + $14M = $45M.
Ahhhh – thank you.
And christ almighty . . . I cannot believe that this thing is even worse than I thought.
If Albies offers a take-it-or-leave-it offer on a 7 year $49M with two team options at $9M/year for 9 year $67M, do the Braves say no? Or a 7 year $35M with no team options? I think not.
I always try to play the devil’s advocate and rationalize one side’s thought process but this is so hard to understand.
Seems like it is a perfect storm of 1) the agent wanting to cash in, 2) Albies being insanely risk averse, and 3) Albies being not nearly as smart as he is as good at playing baseball.
I mean, the dude just saw his teammate who is a comparable player get an extension for twice the amount and agrees to this anyways?
I didn’t think about that last point and it’s spot on. How Albies doesn’t just look across the clubhouse and start from there. Hell even counter at like 75% of Acuna’s deal (Acuna is better and slightly younger).
50% of Acuna is probably right. Albies is good. Acuna is special. His upside is Trout. This deal is still silly, and yes, the Braves better agree to that counter-offer or they are stupid. Or this is part of a two-part package with the agent and the Braves will overpay Kimbrel in a couple of days—in which case, Albies should sue his agent.
I think this hits the point. I’m sure it is a combination of your 3 points where either no.1 or no. 3 are being minimized. He got robbed either by his agent’s unscrupulousness or his own stupidity.
Probably literally the worst contact from the player’s perspective I have ever seen. The second worst isn’t even visible in the rearview mirror on this one.
It’s up there with Sale and Bumgarner.
Sale signed up for 5/$32M or so with some team options after a five win season and finishing 6th in the CYA.
Giants got a 21yo Bumgarner after a four win season for 5/$35M and some team options
They’re pitchers at least, they do break much more often. Albies could miss 2 years due to injury and devolve into in an average player by free agency and he’d still would’ve made more.
Sale’s and Bumgarner’s contracts were both signed six years ago. They’re pitchers. MadBum’s was for 5 years with two option years at $12m, Sale’s was for 5 years with two options at 12.5 and 13.5. Each had bonuses based on performance.
Those contracts are not even in the same galaxy as Albies’.
You are completely leaving out the performance and circumstances and only focusing on the contract amount.
Sale had just posted the sixth best WAR that year for a pitcher, he was 23 and had a year of service time under his belt. He finished 6th in the CYA that season and just made $1.65M two years earlier when he signed after being drafted.
Sale had a ton of leverage…and then signed for barely more than Jorge Soler, who had a couple days of Cuban ball under his belt.
I don’t see why you think this helps your argument. Albies is 22. He has a year of service time under his belt. He had about $1m in career earnings coming into 2019. He just came off a 3.8 WAR rookie season as a 21-year-old (Sale was coming off 4.8 as a 22-year-old). As a position player he has far less injury risk than Sale, who everybody thought was about to blow up and soon because of his mechanics.
Albies had tons and tons of leverage … and then signed a contract for less than Sale got, 6 years ago. Sale’s contract essentially turned into 7/$56.5. My god, Albies’ maximizes at 9/$45. SIX years later.
Sale’s contract was team friendly because of the injury risk. It turned out to be a bad deal for Sale because he didn’t get injured. This contract blasts way beyond that. They’re both team friendly, but there’s team friendly and TEAM FRIENDLY. This one is the latter.
And yet he’ll still make more per game than the average teacher in Georgia makes in a year.
The average teacher in Georgia has terrible DRS, and virtually no projectable game power. Worth a late-round flier at best.
Also can that teacher make hundreds of thousands of people sit through adds for 2+ HRs, aka the real value of the players?
Interestingly though, the average teacher has a 45 hit tool.
And if he’d gotten what he was worth, he could have gone prancing around like the Teacher Pay Fairy doubling multiple teachers’ salaries after each and every game.
Yes professional athletes make lots of money! This isnt news, what rock have you lived under for the last 40 years? Would you rather have Albies making the money and giving back while taking care of his family, or the rich shareholders of Liberty making more?
I guarantee tickets wont be cheaper because Albies gave the team such a good deal. At least half the owners in MLB at any given time are some of the worst people in our country. Loria, Schott, Wilpons, McCord was it LAD, Rickett’s, Charles Johnson?SF, Yawkey(refused to integrate the Red Sox for what 15 years after Jackie broke in and was a total racist piece of shit yet still has a current street named after him next to the stadium he refused “coloreds” from), the list goes on.
Owners are the fucking worst and players making less doesnt make a single game cheaper for fans, it just pads billionaires bottom lines!
fwiw, the Red Sox changed the name of Yawkey Way to Jersey St. I agree he was a racist POS, but current Red Sox ownership is trying to distance themselves from that history.
I’ve been reading fangraphs for a long, long time. I’ve read an incredible number of incredibly stupid comments. But this one is the stupidest, and it isn’t even close.
In the last 12 months, Google has given two people $90 million and $30 million just to leave their company, because they groped women.
When people get golden parachutes in excess of, apparently, what one of the best young players in baseball thinks he’s worth for nine years, do the golden parachutes threads get a bunch of comments about teacher pay?
So the Braves locked up Acuna and Albies, projected by Zips to have the 5th and 4th most WAR for their careers from here on out, respectively, in all of baseball, for the next seven seasons for a total of $152M. That is only about $10.85M per season for each player during their prime!!!
They also get the next Acuna year after that for only $17M! 8 Years of Acuna and 7 years of Albies for a grand total of $169M!!!! WTF?
That is an insane core for dirt cheap. If Swanson has legitamely turned the corner into the stud everyone thought he could be, is his extension next? Going by this trend, they’ll sign him to a 7 year $30M deal with two team option years at $5M each!
Not everyone thought Swanson would be a “stud.” Look it up.
Dave Stewart didn’t.
But…
This takes away ALL suspense about who will be #1 on the 2019 Trade Value list. SMH.
IDK still might be Trout somehow!
Sizzle Baio
Well it might be Acuna. But Braves will have top 2
The players association should be allowed to veto deals, within reason. Like, Acunas could get through, I guess. But a deal like this, or Salvys should be turned down. I get it, I understand free market and all, but MLB wouldn’t permit the sale of a team for 1/7th the value, so why should a player be allowed to sign a deal such as that?
This one is so egregious that the PA should look into it. Something’s not on the level here.
Yep. I expect another investigation for the Braves.
Like off-the-book payments? “Reported Salary” vs. under-the-table shenanigans?
I think an understanding that if they called him to the majors early he would be indebted to them contract-wise feels more on-brand for the Braves.
But sure. Bribes. Blackmail. Girls, drugs, bodies, Liberty jobs for his friends and families, illegal payments made before he signed, all that and more is possible I suppose.
But based on nothing I’d guess it was more of a repayment for a favor they gave him when he was younger and they are stupidly cashing it in (on a contract that can only raise suspicion).
Either way. Something is rotten in Atlanta.
It is a bizarre deal. But the Players’ Association doesn’t really have investigatory powers, and MLB is not about to start voiding deals negotiated between a represented major-league player and his current team for being too club-friendly.
Doesnt the players union have to approve contracts in a similar way that MLB has to approve trades? I thought they had to submit the deals to the union, and the union has the power to void them before they enter effect. Weren’t there some deals voided by MLBPA in the early days of FA? Also a bunch of deals were voided in the 80’s after the collusion scandal, as well as a bunch of the effected FA receiving a huge damage payout from MLB.
I didn’t know this. Anyone know the last time MLBPA vetoed a contract?
To be fair, Salvy’s deal is a pretty different from this. He essentially signed it before he even broke into the league (he had 158 career PA’s when he signed it) so his career was not at the point Albies or Acuna is at. And he did not really have the prospect pedigree of them either (It would be pretty tough for ANY catcher to reach that level)
It turned into a pretty bad deal when he was putting up 3+ wins a couple years later but when he signed it it was not a crazy deal and considering he has been a sub 1 win player the past 4 years its FAR from a given he would have made a ton more as a free agent.
Comparing him to Acuna/Albies is like comparing Apples and a Ferrari
Extension Fever is becoming a pubic health crisis
Need more vaccinations!
Albies agent had to be Barry Zuckercorn or something, he has the worst fucking attorneys.
$45 million for 9 years of Acuna? The Orioles are paying Chris Davis roughly that much for every hit.
Well, this year, technically, the Orioles are paying Davis far more for no hits at all.
His $/hit is literally “undefined.”
Was this press release supposed to go out 10 days ago?
Well said, Dan. I dearly hope your last paragraph comes to fruition.
This deal is a massive condemnation of the union’s failure to do anything to rebalance the leverage since management began getting smarter about free agents. The whole structure needs to be reworked.
This deal falls way short.
I think everyone is right that Albies and Acuna and Ramirez and ______ are underpaid.
…but value and pay and other quantitative factors truly miss the most important parts of the picture. So many articles on this topic miss the nuance of what massive sum of money means. Someone, somewhere, needs to do an article on how players should quantify salary from a loss-averse, utility-maximizing way using other factors such as
a) the diminishing marginal utility of money
b) the decreasing marginal fanbase goodwill
c) the decreasing marginal chance of winning (by taking up more payroll space),
d) the decreasing marginal joy gained from playing (winning a lot all the time increases joy nonlinearly)
e) the decreasing marginal legacy value associated with massive contracts and not winning
f) the “black swan” effect of injury/performance risk.
g) amount of money vs. present value of money (contract structures, opt-outs, etc.)
h) the present value of personal/family utility is underestimated
In humanspeak,
a) for quality of life, $100M is about the same as $30M
b) players like being liked by fans or at least not hated
c) players don’t want to prevent the team from winning by taking up 20% of payroll ceiling
d) If the Cardinals win 10% more games than the Pirates, their players will have much more than 10% more fun
e) players care marginally more about their legacy perhaps more than they care marginally about their salary
f) risks of injury and/or performance decline are very, very high (20% or more) and impact expected earnings/life-changingness more than we think
g) getting $50M now is disproportionately better than a 75% chance at $100M later (see f)
h) you can never get back a day where you weren’t fully satisfied
Outside of all this, there is an argument to be made that fans value performance PERCENTILE relative to salary PERCENTILE rather than just performance (e.g. Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander are liked and highly paid bc their performance percentiles match their massive salaries; David Price is a pretty good pitcher who at 3-4 WAR is technically paid at “market rate”, but he’s way high on the percentile spectrum relative to his performance so he loses a lot more goodwill than he would if he were paid like Dallas Keuchel-percentile money for Dallas Keuchel-percentile performance).
I propose a new contract structure that mixes Trevor Bauer with Ozzie Albies:
– base pay with floor at the value of the players’ anticipated performance floor
– a marginal pay rate at the player’s anticipated performance ceiling
– awards incentives
– a pay rate while injured at the 40th percentile between those rates
After every year of the contract, the player and team go to binding, private arbitration with an arbitration firm (paid on a set five- or ten-year contract paid in equal portions by Team and the Player) to decide where in their anticipated performance spectrum they fell. Pay is contractually capped by the ceiling but performance is evaluated relative to the league. Arbitrated amounts are included in the teams salary considerations for the next year.
For Ozzie Albies, the base pay floor would be HIS CURRENT CONTRACT WHICH IS TRULY A TRAVESTY OF LABOR EXPLOITATION. Albies is obviously more loss-averse than others. So, he’s guaranteed his money. Nice. The team is protected from injury and underperformance. Fans won’t be too angry if he underperforms – there’s some sense of earning his wage. Players in general can be loss-averse but incented to continue performing well. In years where a lot of players underperform, at least teams are consoled by paying much less money.
Thoughts?
(Now that I’ve written all this, maybe I should just submit this as an article…)
If you made your comment into an article, I’m pretty sure even Highlights magazine wouldn’t consider it up to its journalistic standards.
Ha, definitely true.
I Think everyone was right when Albier and Acuna and Ramirez were suffering from low wages.
… However, the value and salaries and other quantitative factors have indeed missed the most important part of painting. So many articles in this topic are missing the largest number. Someone, somewhere, has made an article about how the gamers are needed to lose money, the utility program-Maximizing the use of other items such as
A) weakening the marginal cities
b) Decrease the mood
c) Reduce the chances of winning marginal (additional payment space),
D) Reduction of the joy of the game revenue (already saving a lot of time to increase Nelin’s entertainment)
e) A lower value of marginal inheritance from large contracts and cannot be won
f) validity “Black swan ” affects injury/efficiency.
(g) Amount associated with the current value amount (contract structure, consent, etc.)
h) Current value of personal/family program
Speaking of human beings,
A) for the quality of life 100 million is about 30 million dollars
b) Players such as those fans or at least don’t hate them
c) The player does not want to stop the winner by taking 20% of the ceiling
D) If the cardinal earns more than 10% of the pirate, their players will have more than 10% of satisfaction
e) Take care of their inheritance, perhaps more than a sweet salary
f) The risk of injury and/or performance degradation is very, very high (20% or more) and the impact of the expected personal income and injury of life more than we think
g) reaches 50 million hours more than 75% of the probability of obtaining 100 million after (SEE F)
h) You can never return to the day you are not completely satisfied
In Addition, there is also an argument that should be put in place so that fans can get involved in the profits, not just the performance (e.g. Max Scherser and Justin Verlander and a lot of wages before it is done to create the position of Christ the Answer to their giant C The salary David was pretty good, the technique was paid 3-4 in the war by “Market price “, but it was elevated to the level of the eye, compared to its performance, so that it takes more than it would have been better He will pay as far as the Keuchel-para so far K Euchel-Postotna application).
I Propose a new contract on the structure of the contract with Trevor de Ozzi Albies:
-Basic salary for the podium with the projected value of the floor for players
-Wage Assessment According to the expected level of performance of the player
-You get a prize
-Ratio of earnings, injured at 40 between rates
After each year, the contract, the player and the team will connect, separate the arbiter with the court (Pay for five months and ten years of equal contract for the team and players) to decide where in their expected spectrum. The Salary is done in relation to the ceiling level, but the performance is evaluated in relation to the tournament. The Amount of arbitrator is included in the team’s payment for next year.
For Oziu Albesa, the basic deck will be its current contract, which is actually the subject of labor exploitation. Albier is obviously a great loss against others. That’s why he gets the money. Sweet. The Team is protected from injuries and bad performance. Fans will not be too angry if it is bad–there is a feeling that its revenues are being obtained. Players can often lose-dislike, but incest because of continued performances. In the years created by many players, at least the teams are in unpaid quantities much less.
I think?
(Now that I’ve written all this, maybe I should include it in the form of an article…)
You get a prize.
This is excellent
These deals are all the rage now … so, a small request. Can we get a table attached that deals with predicted arb rates? Shouldn’t be too difficult: use comparators for floors and ceilings if you like.
I know 2Bs are Cinderellas right now, but my guess is that Ozzie would get a minimum of 50% of this deal on his arb years alone. And that ain’t no chump change.
Yall must not watch Don’t be Tardy. This type of money gets you a shit ton. He agreed to the deal. Why are people butt hurt?
Fans of other teams might be upset that the Braves will have less trouble avoiding the payroll tax than their teams will.
Fans of labor in the war against management are upset for what would be obvious reasons if you weren’t on management’s side.
Billionaires ripping off poor kids from poor families in Curaçao because English isn’t their first language and the intricacies of big deals like this one might not be their particular forte seems pretty likely to piss people off. Not sure what a crappy spin-off from a Real Housewives show, out of all possible things, has to do with Albies getting screwed.
Albies didn’t need a translator. He speaks English just fine, and Curacao ain’t poor. What you describe happens all the time with baseball players, but this ain’t it. maximize utility is also wrong. This is on the agent. If the Braves wouldn’t go $20 million more for that many years, they are insane. The agent just crapped out on this one.
OK. But we can still feel shitty that Albies has a terrible agent.
The guy (agent) is not having the best season in all directions. He is also Kimbrell’s agent, and he clearly misplayed the crap out of that one, too. I get that agents have to follow their clients’ wishes, but I can’t fathom that the Braves would have said no if there were another $15-20 million in this contract.
This was kinda racist.
I tend to shrug off team-friendly contracts as players opting for security, but, just… wow.
I don’t understand this at all. Not one bit, it just doesn’t make any sense.
The only reasonable response.
Wouldn’t it be 9/43 or 9/49? What am I missing that puts it at 9/45?
The 35M figure includes the 4M buyout after year 7. If they don’t take that buyout, and pick up the team options instead, they’ll have paid him 31M up to that point, plus 14 for the option years, total 45.
This is in the I’d feel bad about this even if my team made this deal and got the benefit as a fan.
Just came here to post that I haven’t wrung my hands over any of the extensions yet, consider them wrung something fierce re: this one.
Team’s happy.
Ozzie’s happy.
Why is everyone here so unhappy?
If only everyone foaming at the mouth were so passionate about things that matter.
You can be passionate about this and other things.
because workers being denied the profits they generate is only a problem in baseball
Albies doesn’t even know what he just signed. Here’s a quote from the Savannah Morning News:
““I mean, I see it this way. If I left dollars on the table, I’m going to play hard to get it in four or five years, seven years,” Albies said. “If I left it on the table, it’s good that now I know I can get it then, coming back.”” https://www.savannahnow.com/sports/20190411/ozzie-albies-atlanta-braves-agree-to-35m-7-year-contract
No, Ozzie, not “four or five years.” Not even “seven years.” NINE YEARS.
He just turned 22. He’ll be on the wrong side of 30 when he’s finally able to try to “get it back.”
Maybe he’s referring to trying to land a mid-extension extension? I dunno, man.
Oof. That hurts just reading it.
I defended the Acuna deal and still do. This deal is basically indefensible. It’s not the Braves fault and calling it “exploitation” is too far, other than in the way all of these types of contracts exploit the CBA. You don’t really think the Braves used some sort of threat to get this, do you? Perhaps the MLBPA should look into his agent, but most likely Albies just really wanted to make a deal and the Braves were willing to do this one and negotiated an amazing deal for the team.
You shouldn’t be absolving the Braves completely. Legally they did nothing wrong, but morally they absolutely did. Sometimes you find yourself in situations where you have the ability to take advantage of someone in ways that do not violate the law but you still know to be inappropriate, and hopefully in those situations you will choose not to engage in exploitation. Everyone in Atlanta’s front office knows that this contract is wrong, and that it only exists due to gross incompetence if not malfeasance by Albies’ agent. The Braves could have and should have offered something more defensible than this and they still would have come out massively ahead in surplus value.
Next Braves announcement: Dansby Swanson inks a 12-year contract extension for the Papillon per diem. Bread, broth, bugs. Every day, for a dozen years. How could he say no?!
This is unfounded speculation, but is there any chance Albies has a BLA deal or is in a Pando pool [possibly with Acuna]?
The idea behind those is that they’re supposed to give the player leverage to hold out until reaching FA status. So, this is is extremely galaxy brain, but perhaps: 1) Albies is already set forever based on those arrangements and he doesn’t care [enough to not get misled by an agent]; 2) He would possibly pay a larger percentage of his earnings into the pool if earning above some AAV threshold [and it’s an EITC-style thing]; or 3) he hates his poolmates and investors and wanted to stick it to them.
I think ZiPS’s bullishness on Albies is an important fact here — how different are the algorithms used to identify players to target for pooling likely to be from the best publicly available metrics? Probably not terribly different, right?
Or he doesn’t care much about money and has a shitty agent that didn’t convince his that this was dumb. One or the other, I guess.
This is the worst deal in baseball history. This wave of extensions is getting very gross.
Good for Albies. I guess it doesn’t take a gazillion and a half dollars to make him happy.
Did this deal result in life changing money for the agent as well? Where he could have kept being an agent for a while longer and made a lot more money but felt like this was enough security?
Because I’m not sure how he finds work after this.
I bet Marcus Giles wishes he’d have signed a contract like this.
Marcus Giles wishes they put in PED testing about 15 years later.
While I saw that this situation had the potential to be a game changer when it began to develop in the early stages of the off-season there was no expectation that the pendulum would swing so actively and end up so much in the favor of the teams. I am all for fairly negotiated contracts that meet the needs of both sides and thought that the trade-offs, essentially “A Bird in the Hand for Two in the Bush”, were not as grotesquely out of whack as some here have seemed to think. This contract that Albies signed has the opportunity to provide great value to the Braves and I commend them for it, but are the Braves being unethical? Absolutely not. This contract was fairly negotiated and agreed upon by both sides. We have no knowledge of the reasoning behind it. We do not have any idea of the situation in which these players families are living in Latin America. It is not unreasonable to think that many of these very young players have large, extended families and 8-10 million a year paid for the next locked in number of years is of more importance than 100 or 200 million will be in seven years. This deal is a different colored horse for sure, almost mystifying, and possibly as team friendly as the deals that came before, Hamilton, Pujols, Ellsbury, Tulowitzki, Kemp, Melancon, Mauer, Heyward, and that guy who plays in Baltimore were devastating to those teams. Is Andrew Benintendi, already a proven player, making $717K this year ridiculous? Is signing a 31 year old pitcher, who is an all-time great but is on the edge of the cliff, to a three year deal for $93M even more so? The thought that keeps crossing my mind concerns the overall pay of the players over the course of their careers. It appears, at first glance, that early career extensions will depress overall career earnings for all of the MLBPA. If teams can control the cost of their stars this will be a gigantic windfall to the teams. The players will not accept a decline in overall percentage of revenue. All I have is questions, lots more of them, but somebody better find some answers before the next CBA negotiations.
“This contract was fairly negotiated”
How do you know that? It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Albies’ small-time agent was more worried about cashing in before Ozzie switches to a bigger agency than getting the best deal for his client. It’s also very possible that Albies did not fully understand the nature of the deal and his alternatives.
+1 – this organization literally had to release a bunch of players, lose draft picks, lose future international signing capabilities, and lost a longtime executive to a lifetime ban, less than 18 months ago, for breaking league rules and engaging with unethical behavior with player agents.
And I’m supposed to accept the assertion that this clearly egregious contract was fairly negotiated? I’m not saying it definitely wasn’t fairly negotiated, but I don’t know how anyone can assume it definitely *was* fairly negotiated when it comes to the Atlanta Braves.
He woke up to find a horse head in his bed?
They absolutely are being unethical here. Every single person in that front office knows that this contract was not remotely close to being fair compensation. Whether that contract exists due to the agent’s incompetence or something more nefarious, just because you can take advantage of someone certainly doesn’t mean that you should.
*facepalm* Curacao has one of the highest GDPs per capita in Latin America, ranking slightly higher than Mexico, and Albies has two siblings. You could have found out either of those things with less than a minute of searching before submitting your comment.
i did. His father passed away at age 40.
And? That means his family is even smaller…
This really does seem like it might be the worst extension ever signed. But, he accepted it and he certainly didn’t have to accept it. If he is happy then so be it.
I guess that’s true. The debate revolves around whether he really had the capacity to understand this contract. It was his agent’s job to make sure that he did, and it certainly appears that said agent did a remarkably shitty job of communicating and/or was ethically compromised.
There’s just no way this was the best deal the Braves would agree to.
Well, waiting for the other shoe to drop and we all find out the Braves are giving kickbacks to agents in exchange for selling these contracts to their clients. Acuna was a bargain, this one is a shock.
I’m still of the mind that the Acuna deal was a terrible deal for the player, but even by that standard Albies probably should have gotten about double what he got here.
Acuna is going to receive over 100 million guaranteed dollars. The deal is an excellent deal for the club and Mr. Acuna. The Braves are paying for Mr. Acuna’s peak years, and not his decline years, and the Braves are taking all the risk. If Acuna busts the Braves lose 100 million dollars. If Acuna is next Hank Aaron or if he ends up waiver wire fodder in fantasy leagues he still has 100 million dollars. Acuna did well and so did the Braves.
Is it wrong that I placed an order for Braves stock tonight after hearing about this contract?
Braves probably weren’t ready to extend him, especially while he’s still really cheap and coming off of an awful 2nd half, but Albies wanted to lock up long term security years ahead of schedule. So Albies’ agent goes to them looking for an extension. Braves give him a huge raise, but ask for 2 FA years in exchange. That all makes sense. The club options make less sense, but let’s not act like he’s a lock to be a perennial all star. His stat cast numbers don’t indicate him coming anywhere near the power he displayed in the first half last year.
I am pro owner. I am loving what I am seeing. The reserve clause is back, but better. With these extensions, the owners are keeping their players during their peak years, and then they cut them loose in their 30s thus avoiding paying for the decline years. Free agency is done. In the future, a truly elite player will make the free agent market, but Trout set the max with his extension. Free agency is over and the reserve clause (in a modified form) is back. This new generation of owners kicked the player’s asses the last two CBAs and I am beginning to see the destruction of the players union something I wanted since 1981. No 400 million contracts. Harper got an APV of 26 mill per year. The owners are on a roll and the beauty of this is all the players who signed these extensions are going to want to be paid. There will be no work stoppage. Yes, the players will cry a bit, but the owners hold all the cards now. Finally, after the players rolled the owners for over 30 years the owners have struck back. I bet they are crying in their beer at the Player’s Union right now. I love it.
Hell yeah! If there’s one great thing about baseball, it’s venture capitalist profit margins! Maybe the owners should be the ones who play the game while we’re at it.
As Bill James said the players are the most easily replaced commodity. If MLB fired all their players tomorrow there would be people waiting in line, clamoring at the gates to take their spots.
This is either a great troll job or you are the stupidest, worst motherfucker that ever lived
Yes, and Bill James isn’t some kind of infallible deity, because we tried “replacement players” and the quality of play was terrible. Bill was wrong this time.
We did not “try” replacement players. The courts stepped in and stopped it. This time around the courts won’t help the players union, and they know it. If the players strike again there will be replacement players and the courts are much more rightward-leaning than in 1995.
The crowds would look like Tampa, and the TV stations would sue over not getting what they paid for. Replacement players would not work.
How in the world can any Baseball fan be pro owner? I just can’t understand that. Are you mad/jealous that players are getting paid fairly (actually, for most players, they are still underpaid) for bringing in so much revenue?/
This post just made me switch my opinion. I now want the NL to adopt the designated hitter. Congrats. You have a hellava power of persuasion.
Most of this is great. But nobody getting paid 5,000,000 dollars a year to play baseball is being exploited.
Your house was worth $200,000 when you bought it. When it’s tax time, it’s assessed at $300,000. When you’re ready to sell, it’s assessed at $100,000. Nothing has materially changed except how eager you are to sell or not sell.
Add a zero. Exploitative behavior isn’t really about the dollar figure at all. It’s about taking advantage of people and treating them fairly: in accordance with at least something approaching fair value.
“When you’re ready to sell, it’s assessed at $100,000. ”
FWIW- I bought my first house for $160k and it had a $137300 assessment. I lived there for 11 years and sold it for $230k, with a $137300 assessment on it. The 2019 assessed value is still $137300 now.
The assessed value doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with market value. over the span of 15 years, the assessed value of that house didn’t change — when they want more taxes, what are they going to do?
Spend loads of money sending people to every single house, looking inside and out and then figuring out which ones are similar to each other *and* to similar homes recently sold and then do a shit-ton of math to put a value on every house… or change from a 1.89% of assessment tax to 1.91%?
So, 4:15am does not produce quality analogies.
My personal opinion is that it is a little ludicrous for a small house to cost $100k-$200k or more, depending on where you live; most people built these on their own up until a few generations ago.
The idea was that if you get someone unethical involved in your personal holdings – buying, selling, or in between – it’d cost you money. I don’t know why right and wrong changes based on how big the price tag is. Right and wrong is supposed to be infallible, and the amount of money involved is sort of secondary information.
I’d just like to throw out to any pre-arb mid-20s player who may be lurking: sure, I may be lacking a law degree, but I can undercut the rates literally any sports agent is charging you – throw me, say, $75k – and I’ll get you a better deal through your first or second FA season than Albies just got. It still won’t be a great deal, but at least you’ll pay the agent a whole hell of a lot less, and keep more in your pocket.
What an abomination of a contract. This is some grade A flaming garbage right here.
Only in Bizzaro world is 35 million considered garbage. The “Let us make up a contrived value hate the owners crowd” are bitter people. Albies is going to make 35 million dollars he is set for life, but the hate owners crowd say that isn’t enough. This is one of the reasons I became pro owner. 5 million a year is serious money, but the pro player crowd is so wrapped up in their ideology they can’t see the woods among the trees.
The crowd is not “making up” a “contrived value”. Salaries for young players are determined by an arbitration panel, prior to free agency. Nobody’s making up anything. There are decades of datapoints from arbitration hearings and pre-hearing settlements. Feel free to take a look at data, or the article we are commenting on, before attacking people as if they are just pulling numbers out of nothing to advance an agenda.
Red, I dispute the data gleaned from the arbitration hearings and the pre-hearing settlements. The pro pay the players the moon crowd says a player is worth x and their numbers are nonsense. A player is worth what the owners are willing to pay nothing more just like it is at your job.
Almost all of the revenue in MLB is generated by the players. They are the best in the world at what they do, and they cannot be replaced. Salaries are based on what owners are willing to pay in the context of the current CBA. The pendulum has swung to the owners side in recent years in free agency because the idiot GM’s that gave out stupid contracts to aging players have been replaced by savvier ones and the model has changed. The next CBA will likely reflect this and put things back into balance. I would assume that the owners are not foolish enough to not make sufficient concessions that there is a strike. There is tons of money to go around for everyone and if there is a strike, the pie goes away for a while and comes back smaller.
As for arbitration numbers, they are based on what other players have received in arbitration and free agency. The numbers used are the ones known to both sides. To argue what you did about that is pure nonsense.
No, it’s not just like it is at my job, at all. Because at my job, if another company offers me twice my current salary to do the same job, I am free to accept that offer and leave my current employer. Baseball players don’t have that option, at least until they reach free agency after six years in the major leagues (and a team-determined number of years as essentially an unpaid intern in the minors).
If other teams were able to bid for Albies’ services, I don’t think there’s any doubt he would have received many offers far better than the one he signed.
So you’re against the “overpaid” millionaires – but on the side of the billionaires?
Just as in every other industry in the country, the money is travelling ever upwards. I feel a little sick, looking at those numbers.
If this is what the union is able to deliver for its players at a time of unprecedented revenue growth in the industry, I can only imagine how weakened unions in other industries have become over the past several decades. That’s a shame. I mean, unless anyone is excited about getting some middle school kids working 15-hour factory shifts with no workers comp and no OSHA. Lose a hand, next in line.
The Players union never would have defeated the owners in the 1970s and 1980s if it wasn’t for the intervention of the courts. The players if they are stupid and strike won’t have the courts to help them this time. The Players Union is done as a major player in the MLB. The Owners have taken back their rightful role as stewards of the game. The owners have spent over 2 billion during the offseason, the players receiving the 2 billion will not vote for a strike. The courts will allow the owners to use replacement players. When the NHL owners destroyed the players union the courts did nothing. The owners in the NBA crushed the players and installed a max salary, and the NFL Players union is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. The NBA and NFL destroyed their player’s union now it is the MLB turn.
Yeah Ozzie is getting screwed pretty bad (when it comes to the yearly AAV), but he was obviously WAY more interested in security; which is understandable. He comes from a poor upbringing and players such as him probably don’t value money the way we do (which is really admirable BTW).
But regardless, the ZiPS projection is pretty ridiculous. Ozzie is a very talented player, but those predictions are pretty far-fetched…
TLDR: Ozzie isn’t getting paid what he’s worth right now, but we must remember he has exactly one full season in the big leagues. Chances are he will be a consistent mid-to-top-tier player, but there’s also the chance that he never puts up a 3.8 fWAR season again.
Not only security. It seems he likes to be there. He likes to play with Acuna and others. It has value too. Money isn’t everything.
None of that changes the fact that if Albies’ agent had offered the same deal with $20M added on – say $45M guaranteed with options at $12M/year instead of $7M – the Braves would, or at least should, have rushed to sign that deal.
Maybe somebody just forgot to carry the 1.
Obviously he higly values opportunity to play together with Acuna etc.
great post
If it comes to pass that the agent was really trying to get this done before getting fired and the player was somehow convinced that this is a good deal (since it isn’t), then I think the MLBPA and the Owners/Commissioner need to get together and talk about whether voiding this contract (or at least attempting to renegotiate) is “good for the game”.
There are people who are risk averse and, thus, will trade in some money later on for the guarantee. I think we have seen some of that in what has been signed so far recently. But this deal is a few standard deviations to the left of the “mean” for risk averse. It isn’t good for the game for a potential young star player to have signed such a long term deal at these terms.
Someone mentioned that Sheryl should comment on this (an article?) and I think that would be very interesting.
Perhaps this can be renegotiated (using a new agent and with the approval of MLBPA) to be closer to the other player Atlanta just signed. In that way, at least there is something to go by and Atlanta gets to sign this player long term…and the deal isn’t horrific.
Question – does $/WAR take into account the fact that “purchasing” WAR could vary from position to position? In other words, a single unit of WAR could be much more valuable at, say, SS than at 1B because the supply of WAR at 1B is larger? I wonder if part of this contract is pricing in baseball’s forecast of how much WAR will be available for purchase at the 2B position in the key years that Albies escapes team control.
Don’t agree at all with people here being portrayed as pro owner or pro union. I think most reasonable people are talking about being fair to the player. I think everyone is rightly looking at this as an outlier and not something that is going to set the market. Future players didn’t get badly hurt by this deal specifically, just Albies. It’s not a union concern, it’s an Albies concern and people rightfully feel bad he was taken to the cleaners.
I am always blown away by corporate greed, and so this is something i consistently underrate as a driving force… But I cannot believe the Braves did this, honestly. They had to know just how terrible of a contract this was, and I wonder if there will be friction between the players union and this team moving forward simply because of just how shitty of a move this was. Like, I seriously wonder if this is going to hurt the Braves in the immediate future regarding free agents, extensions, and just general public attitude. I don’t know, I guess everyone forgets about how Chick-Fil-A is anti-LGBTQ, so I guess when the public wants to forget something bad in the face of something they want to like they just forget it, but if I was the head decision maker for this team and this contract came across my desk I would say something like ‘how can we get this contract figure high enough that this is not going to make us look aggressively terrible?’
I don’t see that happening regarding free agents. They are going to care about what they are offered, not deals made with other players. If this allows the Braves to spend more on others, it might help them.
I don’t care about Chick Fil A personal beliefs, Dustin I only care if they make good chicken sandwiches.
I don’t care very much about their personal beliefs.
I DO care very much if they actively discriminate against LGBTQ people (whether in hiring/employment practices, customer service, supplier selection, or otherwise), or if they use a portion of their profits to support anti-LGBTQ activism or lobbying efforts.
This is literally karma for MLB dishing out that absurd punishment to the Braves for international signings a couple of years ago… Now the Braves have direct control over 2 premier talents for an absurdly small amount of money…
I’ve been critical of FG for the “player X gave up too much for security” articles. I have to agree on saying that for this contract. He’d get that even was barely average over the next few years. And as a Mets fan, not happy that ATL is getting a few nice bargains.
The best part about these contracts is the consternation caused to fans of other NL East teams. 😉
The Acuna deal was fine, good for both sides, probably heavier to the Braves benefit, obviously. This deal, though, makes me cringe. I hope that if Albies does have 3 years of 5+ war productions as Zips projects, the Braves rip this contract up, extending him for more years and way more dollars. It’s important to keep the player happy and to pay them what they are worth.
This is definitely a plausible scenario. He could also never break out and the deal ends up being not particularly thought about. I guess he could also go all Singleton and just spend all of the money on weed and be out of baseball soon. (He is a Dutch citizen after all, so he needs no visa to get to Amsterdam.)
I can’t help not to feel bad for him. He’s obviously set for life, but this is the kind of thing you regret for all of it. He obviously won’t live up to his Zips projection, but like some other commenters were saying, we would get almost all of this with only his arb years. I think someone screwed him and it wasn’t the Braves. Just hope there’s an undo button somewhere.
Even as a Braves fan, I cant get behind this. You don’t take advantage of people like this, and it isn’t good business in the long run.
This isn’t just buying a stock at a low price to take advantage of market inefficiencies. This is a person that will obviously see the ramifications of this mistake, and when he realizes it, he wont be happy about it in the future. At that point it wont matter if it was his agent or his naivete that led to this mistake. He will be unhappy about what happened and eventually create friction between him and the Braves. Furthermore, if he and Acuna are friends for life as has been presented, whose to say he doesn’t get upset with his contract either. The positives of this whole thing are really outweighed by the negatives that could derail a franchise’s trajectory….All for what? Say, another $50MM more spread over 9 years? Give me a break.
It takes a lot of assholes in a room to even consider offering something like this, and then even bigger assholes to high five each other as he signs it. I’m wearing thin of AA and Liberty’s routine and don’t really like rooting for my team today.
Yes, 100 times yes. This is the thing that I cannot understand, and it makes the Braves seem shortsighted, and, for lack of a less simplistic and harsh term, pure evil. This feels a lot like blatant corporate greed, in a way that no contract offers/extensions signed feels like before. I mentioned this before, but I re-iterate it here: I don’t understand how the Braves braintrust didn’t look at this offer they had written up (even maybe after it was signed) and not predict this obvious backlash. There really should have been someone that intervened in this process and said ‘you know, we gotta at least make this *look* like we’re doing this in good faith’.
For the Braves, simply doubling this offer would have cost them next to nothing over the course of the next 9 years, still given them a steal, and would have eliminated any of this blowback. This is to say nothing of the fact that the difference in earnings for Albies would be much more significant.
Solid comment. I’m revolted by the contract, but to try to make sure it isn’t my rooting interest, I’ve been trying to imagine how I’d feel if the Nats signed Robles to this contract. And I’m confident that I’d feel the same way.
I could live with Soto agreeing to a contract in the neighborhood of what Acuna received, b/c $100M is a justifiable figure and he’d still hit FA in his 20s. But signing Robles for 9/45 would just feel exploitative and horrible for the league going forward.
If the Nats gave him that deal next year, after he posted a 4 WAR season and made the ASG, locking him in until he’s on the wrong side of 30, I have no doubt that I’d feel sick about it.
Yeah, I mean, obviously the kid is being led astray, they knew it, and their response was to suck every penny they could out of that fact.
If this is someone you want to be the face of your franchise for the next 9 years, why in the world would you want to completely take advantage of him like this? It makes no sense.
Well said.
It may not be so apocalyptic as you think. If Albies breaks out and becomes a superstar, it just gives the Braves more leverage in extending him again—ala Trout’s recent extension. If he’s that good, there is no guarantee that this contract actually plays out before it is replaced by another. Same with Acuna.
Everyone assumes Albies is some kind of idiot who will eventually be enlightened and hate the Braves for this. I doubt that this is true. Why he did it is beyond me, but it is tons of speculation to believe all of the following as you do: (1) he had no clue that he was leaving tons of money on the table (he’d have to be a complete idiot for this to be true and since he said he was leaving money on the table during the press conference, it begs belief for it to be true; (2) he will come to resent the contract; and (3) he will blame the Braves for it rather than his agent.
Yeah I mean that’s fair, I did have a good deal of speculation in my post, but that wasn’t really the crux of my argument.
My whole point is that the Braves know better, and you don’t treat people like this, especially ones you want to be productive and happy on your team for the next 9 years.
Karma is a bitch.
Karma is a bitch indeed. Recently the Royals had Salvador Perez on a similar out of balance contract and showed class by reopening the contract and, in the classic sense, suffered from the truism that “A good deed never goes unpunished”.
“If Albies breaks out and becomes a superstar,” then the publicly-traded corporation is going to behave like a publicly-traded corporation.
They just raked Albies over coals when he was a 22-year-old All-Star. You think they’re suddenly going to become generous and pay him more than they have to?
We now know how the Braves treat their players. Expecting them to ever pay a player a dollar more than they absolutely have to is delusional.
So out of morbid curiosity, I re-read the comments sections in the Trout and Harper contract articles. Not a single “he should be happy to get any offer of life-changing money, and asking for more is just greedy” comment like we’re seeing here and in Acuna’s article’s comments sections.
I’m not sayin’ anything, I’m just sayin ‘…
The Braves, punished severely for their exploitation of young Latin American players continue to do so under a new regime. Yes I get that it is completely different, but its just the irony of it.
I do wonder if there is something in that both Acuna and Albies took smaller deals because of their background. Would an American player who went through the draft process and got himself a decent bonus of around 1 million take this deal? We haven’t quite see something like this for an American player, although Snell is probably the closest but I don’t think that Snell’s is a bad deal for the player. This is gonna be hell for future players going forward
I doubt it. People love to mention this factor, but I don’t think the “impoverished background” argument works with either player. Ronald Acuna, Sr., played in the minors and Venezuelan winter league for a total of 11 seasons. While these don’t pay well compared to MLB, he is hardly as poor as many Venezuelans. Ozzie Albies, like all Curacaoans is a Dutch citizen. Curacao is not dirt poor Latin American country. It is a relatively affluent Caribbean island.
And the comparison shouldn’t be to someone drafted and paid a $1 million bonus. Plenty of amateur free agents get such bonuses to sign. I imagine the same incentives would apply to an American player drafted in Round 7 or 8 as for these two, who were not huge bonus guys. Albies signed for $350,000 and Acuna for $100,000.
A couple thoughts:
1. Maybe the Braves said “all or nothing”.
2. Maybe albies ( and Acuna) are focused on winning. Signing for this length and these amounts gives the Braves tremendous upside. The rest of the NL east should be furious
1. The Braves would have to be unfathomably stupid to say “it’s this deal or nothing”, given that they could add $20M to it and it would still be a great deal for them. And even if they did, it seems the consensus is overwhelming that “nothing” (i.e. arbitration and free agency) would have been better for Albies.
2. If you’re focused on winning, why not just play the next five years at minimum/arbitration salaries, and then you can decide five years from now whether the Braves’ outlook at that point warrants giving them a discount in free agency.
I saw the title and blurb and laughed to myself, what did he sign for– 8 years for $40 million?
7/35 or 9/45. My God, how can anybody feel like that it a “fair” deal for Ozzie?
I understand signing an extension but why not hold out for a little more money? Would the braves have really said no to 45m+ 2×10m team options if he waited a few weeks?
That stil wouldn’t be that much but at least gave him a chance for 65m.
How is it not rude to discuss a person’s income? How is it acceptable to essentially ridicule a person for not making enough money? If he gets hurt, then won’t work out too bad for him. I have a feeling that Ozzie and his family are going to be doing quite well, which is all that matters in my book. It saddens me that so many people want to chastise a person for not being greedy. 35 MM to play a game – I’m in. I get that the entire system is just a ball of greed, but that cycle only ends with people making choices like this.
I don’t think people are angry with Albies. Just the situation. And his agent.
There is a massive difference between not squeezing ownership for every last dollar and accepting a massive underpayment on your value. Trout clearly left money on the table, but no one is saying he got screwed. Imagine if Trout had signed for $200 million/15 years. No reasonable person would be saying “Good for him for not being greedy!” they’d be saying “WTF is wrong with that guy?” or “His agent should be prosecuted!”
When the Acuna contract was announced, there were a few comments along the lines of “If Albies had signed for this amount I’d think it was an underpayment, but probably ok if he wanted to sell out for security.”
If (some) people considered 100/8 an underpayment for Albies, what can you possibly say about this actual deal??
Why not cap player earnings at $65,000 / year? They’re just playing a game, right? It’s greedy to want more than you need. All that money that would go to the players would definitely go to a much less greedy place.
From Albies’ comments at the press conference (I’ll work hard and get an extension), he doesn’t appear to know what actually happened, and what it means for him. This is shocking and sad.
John Wall is going to make more to not play basketball next year than Ozzie Albies will earn in the first 8 years of his career.
Wall will make more in the final season of his contract than Albies will earn in his first 10 years.
Somehow this is worse than the deal Kramer accepted for the spilled coffee.
https://youtu.be/jpcEietIoxk?t=146
I have been defending these early extensions. Even though they tilt in favor of the teams, I could at least rationalize the decisions from the players perspective. This one I can’t. This feels far more exploitative or even fraudulent.
The league has stepped in the past to nix egregious trades. This feels like a similar situation. Would the “best interests of baseball” clause potentially be applicable?
Unbelievable deal, should not have had happened for baseball. I could have done better as agent.
That being said, at the end of the day, Albies agreed to the deal, and its his fault(if anything there is to blame).
For those outraged at the outrage the rest of us feel when looking at this deal, or saying he’s set for life regardless…let’s do a hypothetical.
You’re fresh out of college and managed to land a paid internship for one year. It’s not a lot of pay relative to your peers who are permanent employees, but it’s better than you would have made had you not gone to college.
Your one-year internship is up, and management wants to hire you full-time. Your expected pay rate should be $100k per year, but management offers you…oh, let’s say $20k, with the opportunity for a modest raise (relatively speaking) every five years for most of the rest of your working career.
Would you really be satisfied with that?
I get that the numbers are much larger in his case, but that’s essentially what just happened.
I understand your analogy, but the size of the numbers involved do make a difference.
A slightly different hypothetical….you create a web app that you think is no big deal, but all of a sudden it becomes really huge. A year later, Facebook offers you $20 million for the rights to the app. Money that would have you set for life.
You also know that many similar apps have sold for $100 million+, so you consult with some experts. They say that your app is almost certain to top that amount, if you’re willing to wait for the price to get bid up. You ask how certain is the $100m value, and they say 90%.
So your choices are:
(1) Take the $20m and be set for life.
(2) Take the 90% chance of getting > $100m, knowing that there’s a 10% chance that you’ll get next to nothing and continue having to work a second job at Burger World.
In this context, I think a sizeable % of folks would take the certain money without hesitation. Even if it’s WAY below what others are getting for comparable worth.
Sure, most people would take the $20m in this hypothetical – but that doesn’t represent the entirety/majority of the app creator’s working career. Said app creator can go on to create more apps and sell them. Ozzie, unfortunately, sold the prime of his working career.
I think you have to devide this into two things:
1. Team friendly extensions in general
2. The numbers of this contract
Both is terrible here. His agent did a bad job, the best first year extensions are about 15m higher than this, the agent simply pulled the trigger too early instead of holding out a few more weeks.
But then there is the other issue, even if the agent did a fantastic job and got 20m more which is essentially the best ever for that group of players this is still leaving like 100m on the table. This risk aversion of both players and agents is the bigger issue than this individual agents perfomance. I mean even a great agent like boras could not have gotten more than 60m here, the real issue is that players pick the low hanging fruit and prefer 40m guaranteed over maybe 200m in 4 years. Can’t really fault them either, those 40m are more life changing than the following 160m especially if you only signed for 100k and come from a poor country and maybe needs to not only support himself and wife but also family in home country.
Harper showed the blue print for how it would be best:
-graduated early from HS to get drafted at 17
-did insane amount of training as a teenager so he was ready for the show almost immediately despite the age.
-refused any extension
Harper’s parents basically planned young free agency for him when he was 15.
Of course that is easier if you have a 10m signing bonus and your parents are not living in a failed country because then you can risk a career ending injury and never getting paid, albies could not and mlb teams are abusing that fear to get them signing away FA years.
Lindor, Kimbrel, Castellanos, Dietrich…
Longoria had yet to succed after his rookie season? Longoria was an all-star in his first three seasons in the majors. He had a 4.8 rWAR in 122 games played in his first year.
He didn’t sign the contract *after* his rookie season. He signed it six days *into* his rookie season.