Yeah, what I'm thinking is that the "option" (barring an NTC) is always there for the team, but maybe such a given that "we" (internet prognosticators and the like) have come to just ignore that having that option itself provides value to the club and is therefore not factored in when everybody goes thru their post-signing analysis of how good/bad of a deal is for a team.
Short of an NTC, of course, there are other factors (age, injury risk, risk of salary deflation during the time of the dea) that could render that "option" useless to the team.
Anywho, it's probably nothing, or maybe I just have it all wrong in my mind. While I don't exactly by into the recent post-Punto trade, post Vernon Wells-trade narrative that "there is no such thing as an untradeable contract", I also don't think it's true that teams are stuck with players they sign to multi-year deals, and that the fact that the team maintains this option of what to do with a player under contract has some value on its own that is ignored when looking at the deal and also I like to write extremely long run-on sentences.
EDIT: Thinking about it the other way, maybe it's that we're not paying enough attention to the contract when this option to the team is not built in -- when the player has been granted no-trade protection. Seems like that's always reported as an afterthought, when the reality seems to be that that limits the teams options, that that carries a price, and that we could start looking at what the cost of that to the team might be.