Red Sox extend Devers—11 years, $332 million

Ale Xander

Hamilton
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Oct 31, 2013
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Werner looks like he doesn’t want to be there (at least while Chaim was speaking), my impression at least
Fake edit: dammit Otis
 

brandonchristensen

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Feb 4, 2012
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FWIW--It was announced yesterday that he wouldn't be there. Regardless, lets jump to the worst possible conclusion about it. He's a coward? He didn't really want to do the deal? He's afraid of getting booed again? Maybe all of the above? Or maybe he has the flu? Or a kidney stone?
He was furious when he found out Devers wasn’t going to speak English there. A source familiar with his thinking has said.
 

Otis Foster

rex ryan's podiatrist
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Slo-Pitch presser so far. I wonder if there were some off-mike ground rules for staying on topic.
 

joe dokes

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Bloom and Devers' agent said they got the deal pretty much done on New Years Eve. Right in line with what Jared Carrabis' source said the timeline was.
Cant watch at work...do you think he meant *completed* that day, or closer to start-to-finish in one day?

Slo-Pitch presser so far. I wonder if there were some off-mike ground rules for staying on topic.
*That* would surely leak. I think they'd be better off dealing with whatver gets tossed at them today.
 

RedOctober3829

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Cant watch at work...do you think he meant *completed* that day, or closer to start-to-finish in one day?
Not start to finish on NYE, but things got serious mid-December when a group of execs went down to the DR to discuss contract. Bloom said significant breakthroughs came on NYE and that's when he thought they'd be able to get something done.
 

Otis Foster

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They'd been working on this continuously, so I'd guess completed not start to finish.

Edit; What Red October said (pre-emptively)
 

streeter88

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I would say not crazy at all considering how investments really should double every 7-10 years. Ortiz made the salary jump to $14M AAV starting in 2007 which is 17 years prior to the start of Devers new deal in 2024. Should have doubled almost 2 times by now, so if anything the contract is light as Ortiz $14M would be worth ~$45M pa in today's money. Ortiz made $140M of his $159M total in the 10 year span from 2007-2016.
 

InstaFace

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Sep 27, 2016
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I would say not crazy at all considering how investments really should double every 7-10 years. Ortiz made the salary jump to $14M AAV starting in 2007 which is 17 years prior to the start of Devers new deal in 2024. Should have doubled almost 2 times by now, so if anything the contract is light as Ortiz $14M would be worth ~$45M pa in today's money. Ortiz made $140M of his $159M total in the 10 year span from 2007-2016.
An investment doubling every 7 years is yielding a ~10% compound annual return. But investments (and economic growth) should outpace inflation, ideally by a lot. If we had 10% inflation here for any meaningful period of time, there'd be riots in the streets. We had 5-6% last year for a few months and some people acted like that was the end of the world.

I think the metric you want is the $ / WAR figure that we can calculate for MLB after each season. That would scale to how much salary inflation has occurred among the MLB FA class. I know those annual numbers are out there, just can't readily find them.
 

OCD SS

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The AAV used to be a straight division of the guaranteed contract value divided by the years, but now we’re seeing reports that Raffy’s deferrals lower the AAV for CBT purposes. Can anyone point to a good article with the absolute calculations for the CBT?
 

YTF

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I would say not crazy at all considering how investments really should double every 7-10 years. Ortiz made the salary jump to $14M AAV starting in 2007 which is 17 years prior to the start of Devers new deal in 2024. Should have doubled almost 2 times by now, so if anything the contract is light as Ortiz $14M would be worth ~$45M pa in today's money. Ortiz made $140M of his $159M total in the 10 year span from 2007-2016.
I'm no Charles Schwab or Edward Jones, but aren't salaries and investments different?
 

chawson

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I think Carrabis is kind of a toolshed but he 100% has sources within the Sox organization and is plugged in there. Maybe he overstated this particular thing but It’s disingenuous for anyone to say otherwise because you don’t like what he’s reporting.
The original claim here is that Carrabis alleged that fans booing John Henry directly caused ownership to add tens if not hundreds of millions to their offer to Raffy "overnight."

Jared Carrabis' podcast on the Devers signing was interesting. He said he got a text the morning the Devers news broke saying that the front office was now being super aggressive in negotiations due to the fan backlash. He also said that the report from Heyman saying the two sides were "galaxies apart" was in fact true. His source told him the Red Sox upped their offer by $100 million overnight.

To me, this is another reaction from the front office because of outside influences. Don't get me wrong I am happy Devers is signed, but the idea that this was always the plan to overwhelm Devers with a huge offer to avoid him going to the market is seemingly not the case.
That's not true. The Sox went to the D.R. on December 14 and offered him a contract above $300 million, per this report in the Athletic.

Of course Carrabis knows people here and there, but there’s no accountability in the way he deploys information. Whether it’s fact or folderol, his interest is in pumping his and his employer’s brand, not to benefit the public. And he often deliberately makes bad faith reads and narratives for attention's sake.

He comes through Barstool, and that whole universe is emphatically not my thing. But YMMV there, and I recognize that he has a following and that Bloom gave him an interview (I suspect partly to quell the bad faith bullshit that Carrabis was spewing about the team being "interest kings"). Social media is what it is, and there's nothing innately wrong with nontraditional media outlets. But I don't think Carrabis is ever "reporting" anything, per the above quote. He should be held to the standard of an entertainer, not a reporter.
 

RedOctober3829

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The original claim here is that Carrabis alleged that fans booing John Henry directly caused ownership to add tens if not hundreds of millions to their offer to Raffy "overnight."



That's not true. The Sox went to the D.R. on December 14 and offered him a contract above $300 million, per this report in the Athletic.

Of course Carrabis knows people here and there, but there’s no accountability in the way he deploys information. Whether it’s fact or folderol, his interest is in pumping his and his employer’s brand, not to benefit the public. And he often deliberately makes bad faith reads and narratives for attention's sake.

He comes through Barstool, and that whole universe is emphatically not my thing. But YMMV there, and I recognize that he has a following and that Bloom gave him an interview (I suspect partly to quell the bad faith bullshit that Carrabis was spewing about the team being "interest kings"). Social media is what it is, and there's nothing innately wrong with nontraditional media outlets. But I don't think Carrabis is ever "reporting" anything, per the above quote. He should be held to the standard of an entertainer, not a reporter.
His source likely found out at that specific time about the meeting that took place in mid-December where it went to the $300 million. If you read the article, you would see that during the postseason they gave him an offer that was slightly bigger than that of Austin Riley's $212 million contract. So they came from around $212 million to $300 million real quickly then settled on the final number which was over $100 million more than they were offering in the fall. When you leave off negotiations and the next communication blows the last offer out of the water by that much it surely can be considered "overnight". Let's also look at the date of the meeting that took place. The meeting took place on December 14th. You know what the big story around the Red Sox was in days prior? Xander Bogaerts leaving Boston for San Diego. You don't think the negative press and outrage from the fans from losing Bogaerts made the front office want to close quickly on Devers to avoid a similar situation down the road? The article even says that.

"Although the club had been in negotiations with Devers since the spring of 2021, the urgency of a long-term deal had peaked the previous week when Xander Bogaerts agreed to an 11-year deal with the Padres. At that point, Devers became the team’s top priority, and members of the baseball operations department suggested to owner John Henry that his presence at an in-person meeting with Devers would go a long way in the eyes of the third baseman."
 

mikcou

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The AAV used to be a straight division of the guaranteed contract value divided by the years, but now we’re seeing reports that Raffy’s deferrals lower the AAV for CBT purposes. Can anyone point to a good article with the absolute calculations for the CBT?
I didnt see this, but the prior CBA was quite clear that deferrals without interest (or too low of a rate of interest) lowered the AAV for CBT purposes. I havent been able to find anything about the current one. The MLBPA published the prior CBA on their website. MLB 2017-2021 CBA. Absent seeing language from the current CBA, I'd expect that its the same as its also the logical answer. Some contracts may not effectively have a discounting from a few years ago because the discount rate (federal mid term rate) was below 1.5% for a period of time. Its way above that now.

Article 23 (Competitive Balance Tax), Part E (Determination of Salary), Section 6 (Deferred Compensation):

(6) Deferred Compensation
(a) Definition “Deferred Compensation” shall mean any Salary payable to a Player pursuant to a Uniform Player’s Contract in a Contract Year after the last championship season for which the Contract requires services as a baseball player to be rendered.
(b) Attribution
(i) Deferred Compensation shall be included in a Player’s Salary as if paid in the championship season to which it is attributed under a Uniform Player’s Contract. If a Contract does not 122 attribute Deferred Compensation, the Contract shall be treated as if the Deferred Compensation was attributed equally to each of the Guaranteed Years in the Contract.
(ii) If the Deferred Compensation is to be paid with interest at an effective rate that is within one and one-half percentage points of the Imputed Loan Interest Rate for the first Contract Year covered by the Contract, then the Deferred Compensation shall be included at its stated value. Otherwise, the Deferred Compensation shall be included at its present value in the season to which it is attributed, said present value to be calculated by increasing any such payments by the Contract’s stated interest rate, if any, and then reducing such payments back to their present value by applying as a discount rate the Imputed Loan Interest Rate for the first Contract Year covered by the Contract. If the terms of a Contract are confirmed by the Association and the Office of the Commissioner before the Imputed Loan Interest Rate for the first Contract Year covered by the contract is available, the Imputed Loan Interest Rate shall be the annual “Federal mid-term rate” as defined in section 1274(d) of the Internal Revenue Code for the month preceding the month in which terms are confirmed. If a Uniform Player’s Contract uses the date or year in which a Player retires as a triggering event for the commencement of payment of the Deferred Compensation, it will be assumed for purposes of calculating Salary under this Article only that the Player retires on the day that he reaches age 40 or at the end of the Contract, whichever is later
 

OCD SS

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I didnt see this, but the prior CBA was quite clear that deferrals without interest (or too low of a rate of interest) lowered the AAV for CBT purposes. I havent been able to find anything about the current one. The MLBPA published the prior CBA on their website. MLB 2017-2021 CBA. Absent seeing language from the current CBA, I'd expect that its the same as its also the logical answer. Some contracts may not effectively have a discounting from a few years ago because the discount rate (federal mid term rate) was below 1.5% for a period of time. Its way above that now.

Article 23 (Competitive Balance Tax), Part E (Determination of Salary), Section 6 (Deferred Compensation):

(6) Deferred Compensation
(a) Definition “Deferred Compensation” shall mean any Salary payable to a Player pursuant to a Uniform Player’s Contract in a Contract Year after the last championship season for which the Contract requires services as a baseball player to be rendered.
(b) Attribution
(i) Deferred Compensation shall be included in a Player’s Salary as if paid in the championship season to which it is attributed under a Uniform Player’s Contract. If a Contract does not 122 attribute Deferred Compensation, the Contract shall be treated as if the Deferred Compensation was attributed equally to each of the Guaranteed Years in the Contract.
(ii) If the Deferred Compensation is to be paid with interest at an effective rate that is within one and one-half percentage points of the Imputed Loan Interest Rate for the first Contract Year covered by the Contract, then the Deferred Compensation shall be included at its stated value. Otherwise, the Deferred Compensation shall be included at its present value in the season to which it is attributed, said present value to be calculated by increasing any such payments by the Contract’s stated interest rate, if any, and then reducing such payments back to their present value by applying as a discount rate the Imputed Loan Interest Rate for the first Contract Year covered by the Contract. If the terms of a Contract are confirmed by the Association and the Office of the Commissioner before the Imputed Loan Interest Rate for the first Contract Year covered by the contract is available, the Imputed Loan Interest Rate shall be the annual “Federal mid-term rate” as defined in section 1274(d) of the Internal Revenue Code for the month preceding the month in which terms are confirmed. If a Uniform Player’s Contract uses the date or year in which a Player retires as a triggering event for the commencement of payment of the Deferred Compensation, it will be assumed for purposes of calculating Salary under this Article only that the Player retires on the day that he reaches age 40 or at the end of the Contract, whichever is later
I asked this to Ben Lindbergh of Effectively Wild and he passed it to Alex Speier, who responded

“"AAV has *always* accounted for more than just the size of the guarantee and the number of years. Deferrals have always been a factor lowering the net-present value of deals, thus resulting in a lower AAV. (Deferrals peg Mookie's deal as having an AAV of less than $25M per season; Sale is driven down from $29M to about $25.6M.) Option structures likewise have long factored into AAVs. The language surrounding the calculation of AAVs in every CBA since 2007-11 (when I first really started digging in on this shit for reasons that I still don't fully understand) has been incredibly dense and complex; reporters and the public just hadn't paid as much attention to the nuances as they do now."