Mariners’ Very Creative Extension for Julio Rodriguez

[Vanimal46]

Worth the click and reading through Passan’s thread about the extension. Can’t say I’ve seen a deal like this constructed before in baseball. 

[Game7-91]

Good for Seattle and Rodriguez. Serious guaranteed money but dual-options b4 escalators kick-in. Takes commitment and risk on both sides, hope it will work out well.

[bean5302]

I'll break things down for the deal here as reading multiple condensed paragraph tweets is a bit annoying.

			Team Option	Team Option 2	Team Option 3	Team Option 4	Team Option 5	Team Declines	Team Declines	Team Declines	Team Declines
			0x Top 10 MVP	2x Top 10 MVP	4x Top 10 MVP	MVP + 2x Top 10	2x MVP	Player Opt 1	Player Opt 2	Player Opt 3	Player Opt 4
Year	Age	Base Contract				OR 3x Top 5 MVP	OR 4x Top 5		(8x) SS and/or AS	(10x) SS and/or AS	MVP + 2x AS
2023	22	4,000,000
2024	23	10,000,000
2025	24	18,000,000
2026	25	18,000,000
2027	26	18,000,000
2028	27	18,000,000
2029	28	18,000,000
2030	29		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000	18,000,000	20,000,000	22,000,000	25,000,000
2031	30		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000	18,000,000	20,000,000	22,000,000	25,000,000
2032	31		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000	18,000,000	20,000,000	22,000,000	25,000,000
2033	32		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000	18,000,000	20,000,000	22,000,000	25,000,000
2034	33		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000	18,000,000	20,000,000	22,000,000	25,000,000
2035	34		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000
2036	35		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000
2037	36		25,000,000	30,000,000	32,500,000	35,000,000	35,000,000
2038	37						35,000,000
2039	38						35,000,000

 

[bean5302]

Here's the chart as an image

[bean5302]

In all honesty, this seems like the Mariners being... the Mariners. It's like they're trying to find lousy contracts. Rodriquez is very fast and will likely be a very good center fielder for the next several years, but the insane amount of risk to the Mariners here for what?

If the Mariners just let things play out, and he continued to be a 4 WAR player, they'd have Rodriguez under contract in something that looked like this:
2023 - $1,470,000 (Assumes RoY)
2024 - $1,240,000 (Assumes $500k pre-arb performance bonus)
2025 - $6,000,000
2026 - $12,000,000
2027 - $18,000,000
2028 - $24,000,000
6 yrs - $62.7MM vs. 6yrs $96MM & 6-8yrs $108-368MM 
Now, what would it take to lock Rodriguez up in 2 more years, when he hits his first arbitration year? I find it hard to believe the 2nd team option at 8yrs and $240MM wouldn't be sufficient.

The risk of Rodriguez being another 1 year wonder RoY and then falling back to a good, but not great player is pretty high, and that leaves the Mariners on the hook for 12yrs and $204MM for an average starter (or even a player who isn't starter quality), who will be in significant decline for at least 1/3 of that contract. It's not a true albatross, but it's not great.

[Dman]

16 hours ago, bean5302 said:

In all honesty, this seems like the Mariners being... the Mariners. It's like they're trying to find lousy contracts. Rodriquez is very fast and will likely be a very good center fielder for the next several years, but the insane amount of risk to the Mariners here for what?

If the Mariners just let things play out, and he continued to be a 4 WAR player, they'd have Rodriguez under contract in something that looked like this:
2023 - $1,470,000 (Assumes RoY)
2024 - $1,240,000 (Assumes $500k pre-arb performance bonus)
2025 - $6,000,000
2026 - $12,000,000
2027 - $18,000,000
2028 - $24,000,000
6 yrs - $62.7MM vs. 6yrs $96MM & 6-8yrs $108-368MM 
Now, what would it take to lock Rodriguez up in 2 more years, when he hits his first arbitration year? I find it hard to believe the 2nd team option at 8yrs and $240MM wouldn't be sufficient.

The risk of Rodriguez being another 1 year wonder RoY and then falling back to a good, but not great player is pretty high, and that leaves the Mariners on the hook for 12yrs and $204MM for an average starter (or even a player who isn't starter quality), who will be in significant decline for at least 1/3 of that contract. It's not a true albatross, but it's not great.

I agree the Mariners are taking on a lot of risk here.  We in Minnesota know just how hard it is to keep center fielders healthy and the M's will be locked into the higher salaries as he hits his most likely to be injured longer years.  

The bet has to be that they see salaries for elite players moving into the 40M range.  Still I think the injury risk alone would have had me waiting to do this.  I guess they think his comp might be Soto and they don't want to end up like the Nats losing a potential generational player.  I get that they have a pretty young roster and the cap space to front load this deal but they don't seem to be gaining "that" much on the backend to me if he performs at the MVP level they anticipate and even if he turns into a pumpkin and they decline the options they are on the hook for good junk of money.

If things work out well this could be a good deal for the M's still but I am inclined to agree with Bean that at the current market rates I don't see this as a slam dunk "great" contract for the M's.  if the rates for star players rise then maybe this could be a steal of a deal but to me this looks like a very good deal for Rodriguez. He gets more money earlier in the deal and he is covered for any decline in performance as well.  Very good risk mitigation on the player side and if he performs well he won't be cheated that much on his yearly salaries over the life of the deal.  I like this deal for the player and if he performs the team comes out OK too if not then that is a fair bit of money to be tied to an average or below average player over time.

[Trov]

17 hours ago, bean5302 said:

In all honesty, this seems like the Mariners being... the Mariners. It's like they're trying to find lousy contracts. Rodriquez is very fast and will likely be a very good center fielder for the next several years, but the insane amount of risk to the Mariners here for what?

If the Mariners just let things play out, and he continued to be a 4 WAR player, they'd have Rodriguez under contract in something that looked like this:
2023 - $1,470,000 (Assumes RoY)
2024 - $1,240,000 (Assumes $500k pre-arb performance bonus)
2025 - $6,000,000
2026 - $12,000,000
2027 - $18,000,000
2028 - $24,000,000
6 yrs - $62.7MM vs. 6yrs $96MM & 6-8yrs $108-368MM 
Now, what would it take to lock Rodriguez up in 2 more years, when he hits his first arbitration year? I find it hard to believe the 2nd team option at 8yrs and $240MM wouldn't be sufficient.

The risk of Rodriguez being another 1 year wonder RoY and then falling back to a good, but not great player is pretty high, and that leaves the Mariners on the hook for 12yrs and $204MM for an average starter (or even a player who isn't starter quality), who will be in significant decline for at least 1/3 of that contract. It's not a true albatross, but it's not great.

I fully agree this is a huge risk Mariners.  I find it to be little risk for J-Rod.  I say that being even if he could have earned more over the lifetime of his career he will still make plenty of money over his career now.  I mean sure maybe by the first few years of FA the contracts would be 5 to 10 mil more for an elite player, assuming he gets there, but really he will not be begging for money ever in his life now. 

It is the exact opposite of Soto, who turned down similar money over similar length because he wanted to be the highest or near highest per season and did not care about the overall total.  I think he also did not want to be tied to Nationals because of unknown ownership, but it is crazy to turn down over $400 mil because injuries can derail a career very quickly. 

[bean5302]

He just got a bare minimum of 12 years and $204MM for 3/4ers of a good, but not great, rookie campaign. If Rodriguez doesn't turn into a Mike Trout level player, the Mariners lose. Betting on your prospect turning into one of the top 20 greatest baseball players of all time without even watching them for 2 years is asinine.

[Sean.h]

This is a steal if he is Ken Griffey Jr. In all likelihood that will not happen.

[nicksaviking]

Interesting summary.

But if it's going to take you a half dozen tweets to spell out the terms of the contract, it's probably content worthy of something more than the highly disposable Twitter platform.

[bean5302]

3 hours ago, Sean.h said:

This is a steal if he is Ken Griffey Jr. In all likelihood that will not happen.

14 years and $464MM is what this will cost the Mariners in that instance. A steal, eh?

Mike Trout, so far in his 2-15 years at $280MM. The Mariners will be paying $180MM more than the Angels paid Trout, and Trout already has a better career than Ken Griffey Jr despite only having earned $175MM total.

If Julio Rodriguez turns into Ken Griffey, Jr., the Mariners will have overpaid. If Julio Rodriguez turns into Barry Bonds or Mike Trout, now the Mariners maybe win.

[Bigfork Twins Guy]

Kind of like the Randy Dobnak contract with the Twins although the risk is slightly lower:-)

[Sean.h]

7 hours ago, bean5302 said:

14 years and $464MM is what this will cost the Mariners in that instance. A steal, eh?

Mike Trout, so far in his 2-15 years at $280MM. The Mariners will be paying $180MM more than the Angels paid Trout, and Trout already has a better career than Ken Griffey Jr despite only having earned $175MM total.

If Julio Rodriguez turns into Ken Griffey, Jr., the Mariners will have overpaid. If Julio Rodriguez turns into Barry Bonds or Mike Trout, now the Mariners maybe win.

Sure after it’s all said and done trout might have a better career than griffey, not a given yet. Just because mariners pay more than angels for griffey performance does not make it not a steal 

[bean5302]

13 hours ago, Sean.h said:

Sure after it’s all said and done trout might have a better career than griffey, not a given yet. Just because mariners pay more than angels for griffey performance does not make it not a steal 

Trout already has more fWAR and he's only 3 bWAR short of Griffey, Jr's career.

[SwainZag]

On 8/29/2022 at 9:50 AM, bean5302 said:

He just got a bare minimum of 12 years and $204MM for 3/4ers of a good, but not great, rookie campaign. If Rodriguez doesn't turn into a Mike Trout level player, the Mariners lose. Betting on your prospect turning into one of the top 20 greatest baseball players of all time without even watching them for 2 years is asinine.

What would you call a great rookie campaign?  On pace for a 5+ WAR season in his rookie season at age 21.  Before this year he played a grand total of 20 games above A ball.  The kid has superstar written all over him.  I certainly think it's a risk but if he earns the full contract, he will have certainly been worth the money. 

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, SwainZag said:

What would you call a great rookie campaign?  On pace for a 5+ WAR season in his rookie season at age 21.  Before this year he played a grand total of 20 games above A ball.  The kid has superstar written all over him.  I certainly think it's a risk but if he earns the full contract, he will have certainly been worth the money. 

I think it's fair to criticize me on that adjective. I looked the other day and Rodriguez was at 3.5 fWAR. He could hit 5.0 fWAR just because of how WAR works, but he's on pace for a 4.4 fWAR season. Still, I think you're right about that being worthy of "great." About as good as you could hope for from a Rookie. I guess I meant "great" as in one of the all time great rookie campaigns and that it's not. A 4.5ish fWAR season from a rookie happens just about every year, I think.

[Sean.h]

4 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Trout already has more fWAR and he's only 3 bWAR short of Griffey, Jr's career.

True, hadn’t checked trouts numbers in awhile. Wow!

[bean5302]

50 minutes ago, Sean.h said:

True, hadn’t checked trouts numbers in awhile. Wow!

Yeah, it's crazy. He's been playing with significant back issues this year and even though he's played fewer games than Buxton, Trout still has a lead in fWAR. Trout should hit maybe 110-115 games this year and he'll finish with over 5 WAR. Still, the injuries are seriously threatening the tail end of his career. At this point, I'd expect Trout to finish up at 115-135 career bWAR, putting him way up there, but not with the guys like Mays, Ruth, Bonds, etc.