Toe Nash said:
I think you're underestimating this. It depends on the person but Longoria, Rizzo, Singleton, Salvador Perez, Goldschmidt and probably some others I'm not remembering have all left a lot of potential money on the table in exchange for the guaranteed salary.
Maybe Betts won't do this, and that's fine, but it's definitely worth asking.
Maybe they have, and that's fine. But I don't think Betts is in the Longoria/Goldschmidt tier of hitting prospects, firstly. I mean, check out
Longoria and
Goldschmidt's minor-league careers, and then compare
Betts. He's not far behind, but he's not a leading contender for ROY either, no matter how much he mashes in spring training.
Secondly, the more important thing is, for every Longoria or Goldschmidt who are instant stars, or Rizzo who's an all-star by age 24, there are tons of hot commodities who flame out once the league adjusts to them and they never adjust back like Pedroia famously did. Just going through recent top OF prospects who have completed their indentured-servitude years, take a look around:
- Delmon Young is a barely-above-replacement-level outfielder who has a legit ML career but is nobody's idea of a guy you need to lock down to 8 figures immediately; he was the top OF prospect of 2007 and 2005 and #1 overall in 2006. He demolished the minors, killing it at AA-AAA at age 19 and in AAA at age 20.
- Cameron Maybin is a backup, fringe major-leaguer; he was the #2 OF prospect in 2007, #3 in 2008. He had a Betts-like minor league path.
- Colby Rasmus was the #2 OF prospect in 2008, and #1 in 2009 (#3 overall); he has had an up (2010, 2013) and down (2011, 2014) career in the majors so far. You'd be happy to get his first 6 years, but he's a long way from Longoria territory.
- Travis Snider, like Delmon Young, has been marginally above replacement level, playing roughly half-time; most of his career value came last year at age 26. He was the #3 OF prospect in 2009, after two years of being near the top. He destroyed the minors in a Longoria-like fashion.
- Lastings Milledge was the #2 OF prospect in 2005; out of baseball by age 25, the less said of him, the better.
- Jeff Francoeur was the #3 OF prospect in 2005 and #5 in 2004; like Rasmus, he had an up-and-down career in Atlanta, accumulating 7.8 bWAR in his 6 cost-controlled years, but was sub-replacement-value for 2 of them. Had one good full year in 2011; is probably done as a major-leaguer.
I could go on, but I hope my point is now clear: even the best OF prospects fizzle at quite a high rate. Until you've got a year or two of ML production, you have a very-high-variance asset still. The Giancarlo Stantons are rare, but you know them by the end of their rookie year with probably 50% probability. Then again, Francoeur and Snider had impressive rookie seasons too. And Betts, I should remind everyone, was the #75 overall prospect last year.
maufman said:
I think it's funny that 3 or 4 people have said this, as though a successful big-league season won't dramatically increase Mookie's asking price.
I tend to agree that the Sox should wait, but the added certainty of waiting for him to be a productive big-leaguer over the course of a full season will come at a steep price. If you're absolutely convinced that he'll stick as an MLB regular, you should take the plunge now.
I actually don't think the bolded is true, for reasons I stated: as a top MLB prospect, Mookie is undoubtedly as convinced today of his future stardom as he would be after a year in the majors.
You're confusing these people with
Homo Economicus, the mythical, fully rational cost-benefit optimizer of textbook lore. As if Ben Cherington could sit down and say "here's a probability distribution of your likely outcomes during your cost-controlled years and a weighted expectation; if you accept that our discount rate for performance is 12% for proven major-leaguers and we add an 8% risk premium for your higher variance, then a fair offer to you right now on an NPV basis would be blah blah blah", and Mookie would analyze it and say "yes, this makes perfect sense, where do I sign?".
People at Mookie's exact stage are overrating their chances of success and are not yet considering their career mortality. This is the exact wrong time to be signing them. We want to sign them when our estimation of their future success exceeds theirs, or at least is close enough that they'll be swayed by the emotional appeal of "being set for life" and "not letting the potential of injury stop you from assuring your wealth and security".
