Let's Talk Exten$ions...

PrometheusWakefield

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ESPN is reporting the Rockies and Arenado are close to finalizing an 8yr/$260mn ($32.5mn AAV) extension. He’s a year older and was set to hit FA after this year, but have to think any talks with Mookie start a bit north of that. Arenado has been a 6-7 WAR player the past 3 years vs. Mookie staking a strong claim as “best player in the MLB not named Trout.” Does 10/$350mn get it done?

Edit: Per Passan, includes opt out after year 3 that would let Arenado hit FA again at age 30 and a full NTC.

At 34.1 WAR over the course of the contract, Arenado is closer to my WAR estimates for Sale (31.5 over 6 years) than Mookie (54 WAR over 10). It looks like the Rockies are paying $7.5 million per estimated WAR (of course, given that it's the Rockies they could also be factoring in his intangibles and the value added to team Bible studies). At that rate, a 10 year Mookie contract is $405 million and a 6 year Sale contract is $235 million.
 

OurF'ingCity

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Came here to post basically what PW just beat me to - it's increasingly looking like a Mookie extension would need to be something in the range of 10 years/$400m, as crazy as that number initially seems. Given that they would be buying out his last arb year maybe SLIGHTLY under that, but not by much.
 

Al Zarilla

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I wonder if the Sox might be wary of Mookie's small size and worry about his avoiding injury/holding up. In the top 30 for all time BWAR players of comparable size were Mays, Rickey, Ott and Joe Morgan, That's probably enough representation of smaller guys percentage-wise, and he's not playing football or hockey. No argument. How about his post-season hitting though? Didn't seem to hurt Bonds or ARod salary-wise, both of whom eventually had a post season breakout. SSS still going on with Mookie in that regard also I suppose. For some reason, I wish somebody else was number 1 for top contract (well, Trout).
 

chrisfont9

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It's interesting that he went 8/260. I wonder if $300m is some sort of ceiling in the collective ownership conscience and that they way to claim some sort of boost over the 10/300 we've been hearing for Harper and Machado is this route. In that logic, Mookie maybe does 7/280 or so?
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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It's interesting that he went 8/260. I wonder if $300m is some sort of ceiling in the collective ownership conscience and that they way to claim some sort of boost over the 10/300 we've been hearing for Harper and Machado is this route. In that logic, Mookie maybe does 7/280 or so?
I think the magic number for the Rockies is not extending him past age 35-36. Eight years does that. If he were 26 right now like Harper and Machado, maybe 10/300+ might have been their offer.
 

Sox Puppet

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I wonder if the Sox might be wary of Mookie's small size and worry about his avoiding injury/holding up. In the top 30 for all time BWAR players of comparable size were Mays, Rickey, Ott and Joe Morgan, That's probably enough representation of smaller guys percentage-wise, and he's not playing football or hockey. No argument. How about his post-season hitting though? Didn't seem to hurt Bonds or ARod salary-wise, both of whom eventually had a post season breakout. SSS still going on with Mookie in that regard also I suppose. For some reason, I wish somebody else was number 1 for top contract (well, Trout).
I should preface this by saying that I absolutely LOVE Mookie and think he should be the face of the franchise for a long time.

I'm also thinking that Mookie depends a lot on outrageous bat speed and wrist strength to generate his power, and that if that ever drops off for him, it's going to be a challenge for him to maintain value. Of course, he could still be the same outstanding fielder, but that's not a $40M player.

A comp that comes to mind is Gary Sheffield, who lived off of crazy bat speed and ferocious line drives. First took off in his age 25 season (.964 OPS) and lost his effectiveness by 37 or so. Mookie was 25 this season. Optimistically, you might hope for 10 years of similar production from him, but $40M is a heavy gamble to find out.
 

JimD

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I should preface this by saying that I absolutely LOVE Mookie and think he should be the face of the franchise for a long time.

I'm also thinking that Mookie depends a lot on outrageous bat speed and wrist strength to generate his power, and that if that ever drops off for him, it's going to be a challenge for him to maintain value. Of course, he could still be the same outstanding fielder, but that's not a $40M player.

A comp that comes to mind is Gary Sheffield, who lived off of crazy bat speed and ferocious line drives. First took off in his age 25 season (.964 OPS) and lost his effectiveness by 37 or so. Mookie was 25 this season. Optimistically, you might hope for 10 years of similar production from him, but $40M is a heavy gamble to find out.
Our previous GM gambled $40 million a year from 2015 to 2018 on Pablo and Hanley. I don't have as much heartburn with giving Mookie this amount, to be honest.
 

Plympton91

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$40 million is between 1/6 and 1/7 of the upper luxury tax threshold. I suppose it could be raised significantly in 2022, but not to more than $280-$300 or why even bother. Thus, youcan’t pay that much for one player and build the rest of the 25 man roster with any depth, unless you’ve got a shit ton of young talent, which the Red Sox don’t have, and which at any rate also may get repriced significantly upward in 2022.

I think that’s what’s keeping these contacts away from that $40 million a year threshold.
 

[icon]

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If we could lock Mookie up for 10/350 or less I think we should trip over ourselves to do so.

There are only so many teams that can afford to commit that kind of cash... Machado and Harper's deals would theoretically remove those two teams from the sweepstakes. Trout in 2020 is likely to push the 400MM mark as well, which will remove that team from the equation.

Yankees already have $110MM comitted in 2021, with big money committed to Stanton through '27.

Nationals Phillies and Giants all also have around $100MM committed.

Cubs, Cards, Angels, Braves, Astros could be players?
 
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jon abbey

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FWIW, NY actually only has about $81M committed to six players for 2021 for now, Stanton's AAV number is just $22M (it was 13/325 or $25M per including pre-FA years, and then MIA sent along $3M per year to cut the AAV down even more).

 

Red(s)HawksFan

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I think icon might have been using spotrac's numbers, which do show $110M for the Yankees in 2021, but I think that includes estimates of benefits and pre-arb/optioned player salaries that Cot's only seems to calculate for the current season.
 

nattysez

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Harper got 13/$330. Machado got 10/$300. That puts 13/$390 as an absolute max for Mookie, I'd think, with 10/$330 seeming like a pretty natural compromise point.
 

Minneapolis Millers

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Harper got 13/$330. Machado got 10/$300. That puts 13/$390 as an absolute max for Mookie, I'd think, with 10/$330 seeming like a pretty natural compromise point.
And add in Arendado's 8/$260 at $32.5/yr. If the Sox could sign Mookie for one of those three deals, which would people prefer?

I think I'd take Harper's, especially with the no opt-outs. Cheaper AAV. But it's not clear cut.
 

jon abbey

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But Harper is pretty clearly the worst player of those four IMO, the other three are all stellar defenders and Harper was the worst defensive OF in MLB last year. People think he can bounce back to average (we’ll see), but still I think those other three are all better players going forward.
 

nattysez

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And add in Arendado's 8/$260 at $32.5/yr. If the Sox could sign Mookie for one of those three deals, which would people prefer?

I think I'd take Harper's, especially with the no opt-outs. Cheaper AAV. But it's not clear cut.
Mookie himself was quoted today as saying that every player wants different things, and he's right. Harper supposedly wanted to retire with whatever team he signed with, so he took long years with a no-trade, no opt-outs and slightly less per year. Arenado went for the big per-year money while betting on himself to be able to get even more with a new deal at age 35. Machado split the difference, taking big years and money, but with an opt-out.

So it comes down to what Mookie wants, including where he wants to live, how much he cares about taxes, whether he wants an opt-out, whether he can live with deferred money, and how bad a team he's willing to play for.

I'm also thinking that Mookie depends a lot on outrageous bat speed and wrist strength to generate his power, and that if that ever drops off for him, it's going to be a challenge for him to maintain value. Of course, he could still be the same outstanding fielder, but that's not a $40M player.
I have the same worry, and given that Sale was not exactly the picture of health at the end of last year, there's a lot of risk in pouring long-term money into both of them. But 10/$300 with front-loaded money (maybe something like 5/$175 for the first 5 years) and an opt-out after 5 years might work out reasonably well for everyone.
 

jon abbey

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Really? You don’t say! I’d never heard that before ;)
You can mock, but it's remarkable how little it seems to come up in any discussion about him, before or after signing. So, yes, I do write it a lot. :)
 

Orel Miraculous

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But Harper is pretty clearly the worst player of those four IMO, the other three are all stellar defenders and Harper was the worst defensive OF in MLB last year. People think he can bounce back to average (we’ll see), but still I think those other three are all better players going forward.
You certainly can argue that he's the worst of the three, and you might be right. But in light of the fact that (1) he's three years away from putting up a historically great season that the other two haven't come close to matching, and (2) is 2 years younger than Arenado (whose OPS is a whopping 200 points lower away from Coors) to suggest that it's "pretty clear" is laughable. . . especially if that argument partially depends on single season defensive metrics.
 

jon abbey

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You certainly can argue that he's the worst of the three, and you might be right. But in light of the fact that (1) he's three years away from putting up a historically great season that the other two haven't come close to matching, and (2) is 2 years younger than Arenado (whose OPS is a whopping 200 points lower away from Coors) to suggest that it's "pretty clear" is laughable. . . especially if that argument partially depends on single season defensive metrics.
Sorry, I don't think Harper is close to those other three going forward, but if you want to count on him repeating his amazing season from four years ago which he has yet to come close to since then, more power to you. Those other three are great every year, but more importantly, if they're not crushing offensively, they're still providing a ton of value in the field. Harper is doing the opposite. Machado you can mark down a bit for his sometimes dirty play, but to me he is still clearly a more valuable asset (on the field) than Harper.

Also as an aside (I just learned this in the last few months), the current sabermetric conventional wisdom on Coors Field is that the COL hitters are unfairly impacted by pitches moving so differently against them in home and road games, to the point where guys like Arenado and LeMahieu are actually underrated in reality by people just looking at their splits (again, I did this myself until pretty recently). Someone linked a whole string of these articles on Twitter earlier today, which I don't see again right now, but Chris Iannetta's history is worth looking at since he was on COL, then three other teams, then back to COL last year.



"For example, over the past 10 seasons, the Rockies scored 4,596 runs at home, unsurprisingly the most in baseball. But over the same period on the road, they scored 3,089 runs, the fewest in baseball, 151 runs behind 29th-place Houston. In order for both of those things to be true, either Coors Field would have to elevate baseball's worst offense to play like its best, or a middle-of-the-pack team would have had to receive positive effects at home and negative effects on the road -- which seems far more realistic. You can call that "the Coors Field effect.""
https://www.mlb.com/news/dj-lemahieu-leaves-coors-field-for-the-bronx/c-302622392
https://www.mlb.com/news/dj-lemahieu-leaves-coors-field-for-the-bronx/c-302622392
 

DeadlySplitter

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So the lesson is baseball should always be played at sea level, period? Not trying to get off-topic, but very interesting.

As for Mookie, I think a worst case scenario with the bat would be having a career trajectory like Andrew McCutchen, a player Mookie was compared to in 2015-16.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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I wonder how Trout refusing to discuss an extension affects Mookie. If Trout is serious that he won't talk about it until after the World Series then I think he just basically guaranteed that he'll get traded this season unless the Angels are in the mix. Trout has $66 million in guaranteed money for the next two years so the incentive to sign an extension is reasonably low unless he's not quite willing to bet on himself, so I was thinking the Angels might really try to lock him up this year with something around 10/400 or even a touch higher.

If he sticks to his decision, I think that's good. I would prefer to have Mookie setting the potential market for Trout than to have a Trout extension set the market for Mookie. Put more directly, I think a Trout extension would have put the possibility of a Mookie extension much below $40 million per year as a pretty slim chance.

I initially thought the possibility of a Mookie extension was pretty low but I'm starting to think something might get done. The incentive is there -- at $33 million the next two years and with career earnings set to be over $140 million when his current deal ends, Trout has way less incentive than Mookie. Mookie's career earnings are far less and the ability to swap this year and his Arb 3 year for a significant upgrade for the next two years plus get that big payday seems like it might make sense. I think something like 10/350-360 is possible if the Sox are prepared to include an opt out after year 4.

https://www.sportingnews.com/ca/mlb/news/mike-trout-wont-talk-angels-extension-during-season/m56wun8bmw16119yh0o76zuql
 

nvalvo

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So the lesson is baseball should always be played at sea level, period? Not trying to get off-topic, but very interesting.

As for Mookie, I think a worst case scenario with the bat would be having a career trajectory like Andrew McCutchen, a player Mookie was compared to in 2015-16.
I think this is a pretty reasonable take, although I'd note that any worst case scenario that involves a mostly healthy ballplayer can't really be the worst case scenario.

But for context, since McCutchen was Betts' age he has:
  • Played 924 games across 6 seasons, or 154 per season.
  • An MVP award.
  • A .285/.380/.479 line, good for a 135 OPS+.
  • ~32 fWAR, ~24rWAR, with big differences in evaluation of his defense.
The point is, barring injury, we'd expect Betts to be considerably more valuable than McCutchen in his age 26-32 seasons, and Cutch was pretty great!

Cutch never had quite the offensive ceiling that Betts has shown in 2018, nor was he as good on the defensive side. Cutch could play a decent CF — which, combined with a .950 OPS, is a great player! — while Betts is one of the best defenders in the game, and just put up a season with a 1.078. Apart from one league average offensive season, most of his decline as a player has come from his declining defense, and as you can see, the systems disagree on quite how far he's fallen in that category.
 

OCD SS

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Just so I’m clear on this, Harper just signed the largest deal ever while I’m Free Agency, and the only reasonable deal we can come with to extend him while he’s still in arbitration is to top what sounds like a terrible deal by $20+ million?
 

gedman211

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Just so I’m clear on this, Harper just signed the largest deal ever while I’m Free Agency, and the only reasonable deal we can come with to extend him while he’s still in arbitration is to top what sounds like a terrible deal by $20+ million?
Harper just finished a 1.3 WAR season, Mookie a 10.9 WAR season. So yeah, a bigger deal than Harper's is certainly reasonable to talk about. The expectancy with superstar contracts is you'll eat money at the end of the deal. We expect to eat money on Price's deal, on Pedroia's deal. It's the premium you pay for elite performance in their prime years. Personally, I could see them giving Mookie 13 years on a front-loaded contract and putting him LF, DH, or even 2B after age 35. He'll continue to put butts in seats even if he becomes an average player in his later years. Also, the NL is going to get the DH soon, which will raise the demand and the price for elite bats.
 

OCD SS

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Harper just finished a 1.3 WAR season, Mookie a 10.9 WAR season. So yeah, a bigger deal than Harper's is certainly reasonable to talk about. The expectancy with superstar contracts is you'll eat money at the end of the deal. We expect to eat money on Price's deal, on Pedroia's deal. It's the premium you pay for elite performance in their prime years. Personally, I could see them giving Mookie 13 years on a front-loaded contract and putting him LF, DH, or even 2B after age 35. He'll continue to put butts in seats even if he becomes an average player in his later years. Also, the NL is going to get the DH soon, which will raise the demand and the price for elite bats.
You know what puts "butts in the seats"? A winning baseball team. The idea that a single player sells tickets and can adversely affect the bottom line can be used to justify spending, put probably doesn't really contribute to real world finances. Of course the revenue stream for teams is not really dependent on ticket sales anyway, and people tuning in on NESN probably brings money to Sox ownership, but if off-field revenues can't grow at that rate, the team probably shouldn't lock themselves into a mammoth escalation of his contract if revenues are going to plateau. No one is going to pay to go and sit in Fenway just to watch Mookie if the team is terrible; Mookie will likely help the team be better over the next few years, and that will put bring fannies to the park, but it's not something to put a premium on when extending him for it's own sake, other than emotional satisfaction.

Harper's deal looks like a surefire bet to turn into sunk cost; it shouldn't be the model for any deal the Sox will give out. Paying at the back end for the front loaded performance is fine (at least as the economics are currently structured - I think teams have to be prepared that these economics are likely to change), but you have to get the perfomance on the front end. Take Pedroia and his $110M contract. Right now he's provided the Sox with about $100M in value on that (according to Fangraphs) and is coming off a negative value year. Given his injury history and recent performance, I think there's a very real chance that the team doesn't really break even on the last 3 years of the deal (of course all it will take is another 2016 for everything to smell like roses). At the time the deal was signed, many here thought it was sure to work out, and used Joe Morgan as a comp. If there's one thing I think we all should've learned is that you can't look at your own players and map their careers out as inner-circle HOFers and you can't project them off their best year.

Using what in all likelihood is going to be the best year of Mookie's career (he's not Mike Trout) is a fools bet. Last year his BABIP was over 50 points above his career average and 40 points over his next best year, and that helped propel his SLG to over 100 points over his 2016 mark, which is still another 50 points above his next best mark (which at the time seemed like it might be at least partly the result of the ball being juiced). Mookie is a slight framed player who gets by on ridiculous bat speed, but I don't know that we can look at him as a bet to maintain this kind of offensive production into his mid-30's. Mookie as a .300/ .370/.500 hitter in his prime who then sees his offense decline is not a $300M player, and I don't think he has the strength and frame of a Harper, Machado, or A-Rod who can settle in as a DH at the end of his deal to prolong his offensive contributions. When his bat speed declines his production is going to look more like Pedroia's, who is not a candidate to play DH for this year's competitive Sox team.
 

Pitt the Elder

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You know what puts "butts in the seats"? A winning baseball team. The idea that a single player sells tickets and can adversely affect the bottom line can be used to justify spending, put probably doesn't really contribute to real world finances. Of course the revenue stream for teams is not really dependent on ticket sales anyway, and people tuning in on NESN probably brings money to Sox ownership, but if off-field revenues can't grow at that rate, the team probably shouldn't lock themselves into a mammoth escalation of his contract if revenues are going to plateau. No one is going to pay to go and sit in Fenway just to watch Mookie if the team is terrible; Mookie will likely help the team be better over the next few years, and that will put bring fannies to the park, but it's not something to put a premium on when extending him for it's own sake, other than emotional satisfaction.

Harper's deal looks like a surefire bet to turn into sunk cost; it shouldn't be the model for any deal the Sox will give out. Paying at the back end for the front loaded performance is fine (at least as the economics are currently structured - I think teams have to be prepared that these economics are likely to change), but you have to get the perfomance on the front end. Take Pedroia and his $110M contract. Right now he's provided the Sox with about $100M in value on that (according to Fangraphs) and is coming off a negative value year. Given his injury history and recent performance, I think there's a very real chance that the team doesn't really break even on the last 3 years of the deal (of course all it will take is another 2016 for everything to smell like roses). At the time the deal was signed, many here thought it was sure to work out, and used Joe Morgan as a comp. If there's one thing I think we all should've learned is that you can't look at your own players and map their careers out as inner-circle HOFers and you can't project them off their best year.

Using what in all likelihood is going to be the best year of Mookie's career (he's not Mike Trout) is a fools bet. Last year his BABIP was over 50 points above his career average and 40 points over his next best year, and that helped propel his SLG to over 100 points over his 2016 mark, which is still another 50 points above his next best mark (which at the time seemed like it might be at least partly the result of the ball being juiced). Mookie is a slight framed player who gets by on ridiculous bat speed, but I don't know that we can look at him as a bet to maintain this kind of offensive production into his mid-30's. Mookie as a .300/ .370/.500 hitter in his prime who then sees his offense decline is not a $300M player, and I don't think he has the strength and frame of a Harper, Machado, or A-Rod who can settle in as a DH at the end of his deal to prolong his offensive contributions. When his bat speed declines his production is going to look more like Pedroia's, who is not a candidate to play DH for this year's competitive Sox team.
How do we expect Bett's overall skillset to erode as he ages? Bett's has incredible bat speed (or so I've been told), but he also has a great eye and feel for the strike zone. He has has above average speed, which plays up his ability on the bases and in the field, but he also has great instincts on the bases, makes great reads on fly balls, and has a great arm. Unless he's injured or otherwise unhealthy, Mookie's floor at age 35 seems closer to Pedroia's peak than Pedroia's floor.

Also, is there any evidence that smaller players break down faster? This claim has always seemed apocryphal to me. What exactly is breaking down? Don't big players need to generate bat speed to hit the ball hard? Is there any data on player bat speed at all or this all conjecture? It should at least be proportional to exit velocity, no?
 
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Papelbon's Poutine

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I’d want no part of a 13 year deal for any player, even as much as I love Mookie. I’d rather pay a higher aav.

And I find it more likely that Harper getting a non trade was a concession because he didn’t have a market, the Phillies wouldn’t give an option and Boras settled that as it’s a negotiating chip in his pocket down the road. If he wanted to retire with one team, he would have just signed with WAS.
 

steveluck7

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The no trade is kind of worthless. It only has value for the first 5 years of the contract which will be the most likely years for Harper to provide adequate value to Philly. One his 10 / 5 rights kick in, he’d have the no trade protection anyhow
 

gedman211

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I’d want no part of a 13 year deal for any player, even as much as I love Mookie. I’d rather pay a higher aav.

And I find it more likely that Harper getting a non trade was a concession because he didn’t have a market, the Phillies wouldn’t give an option and Boras settled that as it’s a negotiating chip in his pocket down the road. If he wanted to retire with one team, he would have just signed with WAS.
I wouldn't prefer to give him a 13 year deal, I'm just saying if that's what it takes to keep him, it can be justified. Jeter was still a goldmine from a marketing standpoint even when he was no longer a valuable player. So was Ripken. And if Mookie's truly unplayable at age 38, maybe they could negotiate a retirement to some ambassadorial role with the team. Isn't that pretty much what Arod did? The team might end up being faced with the difficult choice of giving Mookie more years at a lower AAV, or letting Xander or Sale walk.
 
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Max Power

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Also, is there any evidence that smaller players break down faster? This claim has always seemed apocryphal to me. What exactly is breaking down? Don't big players need to generate bat speed to hit the ball hard? Is there any data on player bat speed at all or this all conjecture? It should at least be proportional to exit velocity, no?
Small players tend to play second base, which is the second hardest position on the body. You can dive for way more balls on the right side of the infield and still have time to make the throw. Any comparison between player sizes has to take position into account.
 

bosockboy

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It hadn’t occurred to me before, but the Sox are coming up on their second major restructuring via free agency:

The first was Pedro, Tek, Nomar, and DLowe; now they have to figure out who and how to keep Mookie, Sale, X, and JBJ.
JD as well, if he opts out.
 

OCD SS

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Small players tend to play second base, which is the second hardest position on the body. You can dive for way more balls on the right side of the infield and still have time to make the throw. Any comparison between player sizes has to take position into account.
I think the problem with Mookie over the term under discussion will be age related decline. He functions on ridiculously fast twitch muscles and hand-eye coordination. He doesn't have the frame size and strength to maintain his power once those skills start to degrade. RF (or CF) may be easier on his body than 2B so the injuries that hampered Pedroia aren't as much a factor, but I don't think the list of small players that were effective into their mid-30's is very long, especially once you strike the PED guys.

That said, if Mookie will trade a lower AAV for extra years as Harper did, I'd rather the Sox go that route with the goal of maintaining some payroll flexibility against the CBT to give to other good players.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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JD as well, if he opts out.
Somehow the Sox will hold onto Mookie for 10-15 more years. I'm almost positive of that. After that, I suspect the Sox will prioritize getting JDM for another 5....and X for a 7 year deal ($15M per).... and will let Sale and JBJ walk away.
Having $90 million on two offensive players, and then add in Price, and it's $120 million on less than 1/5th of the 25 man roster. Add Eovaldi to this list and You can clearly see why they didn't (and aren't going to) go after Kimbrell. How does the team deal with the others they will be prioritizing... Devers and Beni? Rodriguez? Will Dalbec and Chavis, and Casas (all 3B prospects... .sort of...) be enough coming in to supplement the offense and where will we fit all those guys if JDM and Devers both sticking around? Will Houck, Groome, etc.... be able to fill out the rotation (there's no way that the Sox will be commiting as much $$ to a starting rotation as they did the past two seasons after '19, IMO)
 

Pitt the Elder

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I think the problem with Mookie over the term under discussion will be age related decline. He functions on ridiculously fast twitch muscles and hand-eye coordination. He doesn't have the frame size and strength to maintain his power once those skills start to degrade. RF (or CF) may be easier on his body than 2B so the injuries that hampered Pedroia aren't as much a factor, but I don't think the list of small players that were effective into their mid-30's is very long, especially once you strike the PED guys.

That said, if Mookie will trade a lower AAV for extra years as Harper did, I'd rather the Sox go that route with the goal of maintaining some payroll flexibility against the CBT to give to other good players.
All batters rely on fast twitch muscle fibers and hand eye coordination to swing a baseball bat and hit a baseball. I don't see how Betts is uniquely susceptible to the degradation of fast twitch muscle contraction with age, and therefore bat speed, relative to Trout, Harper, and other *big strong guys.*

From a biomechanical perspective, "strength" and "power" are very different things. Strength is someone's absolute ability to move a mass a certain distance, otherwise known as "work." Power is work divided by the time it took to do that work... The faster you do the work, the more power you generate and vice versa. This is an important distinction because hitting a baseball is a is an exercise in the conservation of momentum between bat and ball, and momentum is the product of mass times velocity. Ergo, all baseball players that hit a baseball with a high exit velocity must first generate the necessary momentum by producing power, which is fundamentally a function of contracting fast twitch muscle fibers. You can do that with a heavy bat at slower speeds or a lighter bat at higher speeds, but it's all controlled by the same fundamental biomechanical principles.

The biomechanics of human motion is a complex science that can (and is) rigorously studied and there are a ton of interesting data and insights that directly apply to elite athletes, but I think we need to be careful making generalizations about players and body types that are heavy on *conventional wisdom* and light on data and evidence. Personally, I think the trope that Betts has "fast wrists" and that they're the source of his offensive power is intellectually lazy because no one, to my knowledge, has ever tried to define and quantify wrist speed, whatever that is, let alone measure it and determine how important it is to hitting a baseball. It just sounds like an easy explanation scouts and other baseball guys use to explain away how a small guy that isn't that strong can generate a lot of power when, in reality, the swings of all players are complex biomechanical motions where physical strength is only one variable among many that determine power output.

Anyway, I'm not saying Betts skills won't erode - they will - but any anyone that attempts to quantify how much and how soon needs to show their work. Who knows, maybe there's a white paper out there that shows athletes with smaller cross sectional area of (which determines force output) lose power potential faster as they age. Or maybe there's a survey of MLB players split out by height and weight that do the same thing, but I need more than a general idea that small things wear out faster than big things.
 

OCD SS

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There's no way to know when any player's skills will erode; each is ultimately unique. Any work that could be shown is still only going to be forecasting, and probably rather imprecisely at that.

My position is that Betts is an amazing athlete, but that his frame doesn't point to him being a power hitter over the 10+ years of the extension that are being discussed here. He does have excellent speed, and I think that portends him keeping a good amount of defensive and base running value as he ages. But if he can't maintain his power gains, and my feeling is that he only has one way to generate that power, so he can't compensate when his athleticism declines, then starting any extension discussions at the largest contract in MLB history would be silly.
 

jon abbey

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MLB.com just did rankings of their top 100 players 'right now', just talent, ignoring salary situation. The relevant rankings:

Trout-1
Mookie-2
Arenado-3
Machado-14
Harper-15

So I think Arenado's 8/260 (32.5M AAV, one year of team control left to Mookie's two, 18 months older than Mookie) is a rough guideline If Mookie wants to stay in BOS, something between 8-10 years for 32-35M AAV, so between 8/280 and 10/350 maybe. If he wants to break records, he will bet on himself and go to free agency.
 

OCD SS

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Mookie has shown a willingness to bet on himself through his entire career so far, it's hard to see him being willing to take a discount now. On the flip side, he's coming off a career year, so it doesn't make sense for the Sox to pay him market rates now. If they have to pay him like he's a FA, then they may as well wait and negotiate when they have another year of data.

Signing him to an extension this year would also blow the team past the second CBT threshold. While they may end up going over in the end, I don't think they'll start the season past the limit (if they were willing to do that, wouldn't they have spent more on the bullpen?)
 

Dewey'sCannon

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FWIW, in a chat on MLBTR today, when asked to guess what a FA contract for Bogaerts would look like, Tim Dierkes guessed 9/216 (23 AAV).

Someone else asked whether 10/350 would be appropriate for a Mookie extension. He said if you think he's a 7WAR player in year one, at $7M per WAR that puts him at 10/392, but if you change the first year valuation to 6.5 WAR then 10/350 would be about right. But he did not indicate what he should or would get.
 

brandonchristensen

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FWIW, in a chat on MLBTR today, when asked to guess what a FA contract for Bogaerts would look like, Tim Dierkes guessed 9/216 (23 AAV).

Someone else asked whether 10/350 would be appropriate for a Mookie extension. He said if you think he's a 7WAR player in year one, at $7M per WAR that puts him at 10/392, but if you change the first year valuation to 6.5 WAR then 10/350 would be about right. But he did not indicate what he should or would get.
Why does everyone we develop have to be amazing?
 

RobertsSteal

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I think the problem with Mookie over the term under discussion will be age related decline.... He doesn't have the frame size and strength to maintain his power once those skills start to degrade. RF (or CF) may be easier on his body than 2B ... I don't think the list of small players that were effective into their mid-30's is very long, especially once you strike the PED guys.
Granted he’s not a guy I would’ve wanted to be paying super premium money for into his mid/late 30s - nor was his peak anywhere near Mookie’s - but how about Tony Phillips as a comp for stature?

Almost exactly the same size, both have power/speed combo and positional versatility. Phillips declined to essentially league average but lasted as a useful player until 38 or 39.
 

PrometheusWakefield

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Nice piece in the Globe today about Chris Sale that suggests he is the kind of player who values security over getting the last dollar, a good sign for a possible extension. Obviously it seems to me the question for the Sox is whether it makes sense to think about an extension now, or see how his arm holds up over another season before deciding how much we should offer.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2019/03/06/for-chris-sale-money-isn-everything-when-comes-contract-negotiations/Yal7KXZEjWrXh1UMWChDBK/story.html
 

joe dokes

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Nice piece in the Globe today about Chris Sale that suggests he is the kind of player who values security over getting the last dollar, a good sign for a possible extension. Obviously it seems to me the question for the Sox is whether it makes sense to think about an extension now, or see how his arm holds up over another season before deciding how much we should offer.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2019/03/06/for-chris-sale-money-isn-everything-when-comes-contract-negotiations/Yal7KXZEjWrXh1UMWChDBK/story.html
Makes sense for a guy whose arm is attached with Command hooks and FlexSeal. :cool:

(I take all these money pronouncements as basically meaningless talk until the ink is dry.)
 

JimD

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Sorry, I don't think Harper is close to those other three going forward, but if you want to count on him repeating his amazing season from four years ago which he has yet to come close to since then, more power to you. Those other three are great every year, but more importantly, if they're not crushing offensively, they're still providing a ton of value in the field. Harper is doing the opposite. Machado you can mark down a bit for his sometimes dirty play, but to me he is still clearly a more valuable asset (on the field) than Harper.

Also as an aside (I just learned this in the last few months), the current sabermetric conventional wisdom on Coors Field is that the COL hitters are unfairly impacted by pitches moving so differently against them in home and road games, to the point where guys like Arenado and LeMahieu are actually underrated in reality by people just looking at their splits (again, I did this myself until pretty recently). Someone linked a whole string of these articles on Twitter earlier today, which I don't see again right now, but Chris Iannetta's history is worth looking at since he was on COL, then three other teams, then back to COL last year.



"For example, over the past 10 seasons, the Rockies scored 4,596 runs at home, unsurprisingly the most in baseball. But over the same period on the road, they scored 3,089 runs, the fewest in baseball, 151 runs behind 29th-place Houston. In order for both of those things to be true, either Coors Field would have to elevate baseball's worst offense to play like its best, or a middle-of-the-pack team would have had to receive positive effects at home and negative effects on the road -- which seems far more realistic. You can call that "the Coors Field effect.""
https://www.mlb.com/news/dj-lemahieu-leaves-coors-field-for-the-bronx/c-302622392
If this is true, wouldn't we expect to see away teams coming into coors have worse contact rates because of uniquelymoving pitches but better power numbers because of the thinner atmosphere?
 

Plympton91

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If this is true, wouldn't we expect to see away teams coming into coors have worse contact rates because of uniquelymoving pitches but better power numbers because of the thinner atmosphere?
The opposite. The pitches in Coors aren’t “uniquely moving,” they don’t move at all. For a visiting team coming into Coors, every slider is a hanger; every cutter straightens out. I saw a related study showing that teams leaving Coors are worse than expected in their first game after playing there because they have to readjust.