Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1046: The Early-Career Contract Quandary

Episode Date: April 18, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the significance of some teams’ slow starts to the season, the slowest batter in baseball, and a curious coincidence on another show. Then they have a mini baseball econ class with FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron, who discusses the non-news about Carlos Correa’s contract, the surprisingly static price […]

Already dead to me now, already dead to me now Cause it feels like I'm watching something die Hello and welcome to episode 1046 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Howdy. Later in this episode, we are going to talk to your colleague Dave Cameron about baseball economics and extensions and the death of certain types of extensions.

A little bit of banter before we get to that. You wanted to discuss a couple struggling teams briefly yeah i just i felt like we should talk about the blue jays acknowledge the fact that they are terrible uh you know they were expected to be pretty good not unlike the mariners and i know when i look at the standings i see the mariners are down there they're only five and eight although they just swept the rangers so the rangers are also struggling although that you could also just rephrase that as sam dyson is struggling and the Rangers are around him Cardinals are three and nine but all those teams whatever you sort of can overlook them because the Blue Jays are two and ten Josh

Donaldson is on the disabled list I don't have anything specifically insightful to say about the Blue Jays except that for whatever extent people talk about how it is early when you're two and ten it's really not that early anymore and your best players on the disabled list and there are already questions about your team coming in like the blue jays are trying real hard to just murder their season in the first month and i know there's the uh the old cliche about how you can't win a season in april but you can lose it and the blue jays are trying really hard when i did a little study last week when i was focusing on the mariners who at that point were yeah two and eight and the blue jays were two and eight i think or one and one and

seven at that point i like that study which you're probably about to describe because often we talk about the early playoff odds movers and we say that someone's playoff odds went down a drastic amount in a very short span of time but play odds, we don't really have enough of a historical record, right, to point to playoff odds changers and say, this is what happened to teams that lost X percentage points of playoff odds in the beginning of the season. They ended up here or there. We don't really have that long database going back that we can use. or there, we don't really have that long database going back that we can use. So often you'll see teams, you know, their playoff odds will go down to 20% or something, and then they'll make the

playoffs. And we don't necessarily know whether the odds were right. And they really did have a one in five shot at that time, or maybe the odds were wrong and they actually had a better shot than that. So it's kind of hard to say. I still look at those numbers and I still trust them for the most part, but I could understand why people might be a little bit wary about taking them as gospel, but you just used actual records and kind of showed in a more concrete way that getting off to a slow start really does hurt you. Yeah. And I think if you press anyone you press anyone on it, you, they would say, well, I'd rather my team not start one and seven, you know, everyone understands that. But I also think that this early in the season, there is a dearth of appetite for anyone even saying

the words playoff odds. I think it's just so off putting to go straight from opening day to playoff odds cut in half. Just no one, no one wants to hear it, even though that's ultimately how it matters. But yeah, I just looked at at regular wins i have like 12 years of preseason team projections that i have accumulated from a number of different sources you know it's not perfect for a controlled study but it's better than anything that i could do otherwise and i was looking at the history of teams getting off to at that point i was looking at the starts first 10 games to a season because the mariners again were two and eight and dave had already written about the blue jays that day so i was left with just one of them so i was looking at what the mariners were up to but i

can adapt this to the blue jays where i think it's very obvious that if a team starts two and ten like the blue jays have then relative to what you expected the record to be before the season you should now expect it to be worse that couldn't't be more obvious to me. However, I know there are a lot of people who subscribe to what I believe it's the gambler's fallacy calls out that you don't just make up a slump. You don't just follow a slump with a hot streak and regress to the preseason mean. That's not how it works. The games so far have sort of informed the preseason expectations such that now you have the preseason expectation plus 12 games have been played the study that i did i don't need to cite the specific numbers because i can just tell you i guess if you

just check the history of teams who started to intend that's going to be selective for very bad teams i think we have reason to believe the blue jays are not as bad as the average two and ten baseball team so that's why i wanted to go back and look at what teams who have had decent projections have done after starting horribly and surprise they've wound up winning about four to seven games fewer than the preseason projection because that is the damage that's been done the easiest way to think about it is if you thought the Blue Jays were going to win I don't know 85 games before the season well now they have just 150 games left instead of 162 so if you expected them to win 85 out of 162 that's

a winning percentage of 525 if you apply that to their remaining 150 games assuming that you don't think they're worse than you thought at all then you expect them to win 79 games over the rest of the season plus the two they've already won congratulations toronto blue jays you finish 81 and 81 which is not yeah at all what any team ever i think wants to finish except maybe this year's atlanta braves yeah right and when you're a team like the blue jays or the cardinals this year who were expected to be on the bubble basically maybe a wild card team some people picked them as a wild card team others didn't but even those who did probably would have said, yeah, they're, I don't know, a game better than the next best team. There wasn't much margin for error there. So if those teams get off to bad starts, it's not like if the Cubs or the Indians did and we say, well, we would have expected them to win the division by 10 games or 15 games anyway. So maybe now they'll only win by seven games or 12 games, but it doesn't really matter because they had that cushion.

These teams do not have that cushion. And so it's especially devastating for them. And you use the example of last year's Astros, who were expected to be maybe the best team in the division, and they started off terribly. And then they played like the astros were expected to play for the rest of the season almost all of the season really but because of that slow start they ended up just missing the playoffs i have a question for you so let's have a little fun with

this i'm looking at run differential currently in the standings so we did something like this a few days ago but here are the top five teams right now in run differential. Twins, Dodgers, Yankees, Reds, Marlins. Twins, Dodgers, Yankees, Reds, Marlins. Bottom five, you know where this is going. Bottom five teams, Cardinals, Padres, Blue Jays, A's, Angels. Which group of five teams do you think will win more games from here on out? Yeah. I'm still probably going with the bottom five, I think. I don't know. The Reds have been way better than I certainly expected. There were people who I think like the Reds better than I did coming into the season, but I just didn't see it at all.

And they've been good. And the Yankees have been kind of good and fun and exciting. And maybe I could buy that they're a little bit better than I expected them to be a few weeks ago. But, you know, it's such a short time that my preseason expectations have barely budged. And so, yeah, probably still going with group two. And, you know, if I wanted to make the bottom worse, well, the Angels are at negative 11 runs, but the Indians are at negative 10. So baseball's funny. Yeah. Well, the Angels are at negative 11 runs, but the Indians are at negative 10.

So baseball's funny. Yeah. One other thing, a follow-up to our conversation in the most recent episode about time between pitches and the pitch clock. Matt Gelb wrote a good article for the Philly Inquirer about Oduble Herrera, who is the slowest batter in baseball this season. He is taking 31.9 seconds between pitches. this season. He is taking 31.9 seconds between pitches, or at least he was when the article was written, which was one and a half seconds longer than the next closest batter. So he's taking forever, and it's not just because he's losing focus or he doesn't realize or whatever. It seems like a totally intentional strategy strategy and he tells Gelb yes yes sometimes I even notice they are on the mound ready to pitch and I'm not even in the box yet

so they look at me kind of angry so they get desperate I like getting them angry I like getting in their head so the thing that makes a spectator annoyed maybe watching Oduble Herrera take forever to hit he thinks also makes pitchers annoyed, and that helps him out. And we were wondering about whether people were even still getting warned, because we haven't really heard about it lately. And Matt has a little tidbit here that he was warned twice last season about taking too long. And then late last year, he received a third letter that told him he'd been fined for not being quicker. And then they negotiated the fine down to a warning so long as he behaved for the rest of the season and didn't take quite as long. And he did, I guess.

And so it seems like he's just testing them again now. Like he thinks he gets three warnings every season maybe or something like that so he's just gonna make them find him again or warn him again so he's taking a really long time it's not really enforced that he is taking so long he's not really getting in any kind of serious trouble and he thinks it's benefiting him so this is how it's happening and from his perspective it's smart yeah he's he's up six seconds basically from last year between pitches which is just so stupid i hate it i get it i get the strategy of it because pitchers are always out there and they want to dictate the pace and this is why sometimes announcers will talk about batters

calling late timeouts or something just to sort of like assert themselves and i i totally get it and if anything we should be sort of on the the hitter side on this day and age where hitters basically have no chance of doing anything in the league average batting line is zeros across the board i don't know if you've looked at the standings lately but nobody's actually scored a run yet this season it's all still opening day which is crazy because it's still position players pitching anyway so six seconds it's it's fun to get the strategy from the hitter side we focus so much on the pitchers because i think you and i and everyone else tend to think it's the pitchers who are responsible except for those exceptional guys like for some reason we still point to nomar garciapar even though he's been retired for like 27 years and he predated the pace statistic for the most part anyway yeah but

i'll say this much eric thames i believe is the league leader in home runs i think that's correct he's got like six that he hit yesterday and he's also has the third fastest pace for any hitter in baseball it's manny margot travis jankowski and then eric thames everybody get on board the eric thames bandwagon he domingoana, and Keon Broxson are going to be the best outfield in baseball by the all-star break. I guarantee it. I don't guarantee it. Yeah. Well, Tommy Joseph is quoted in this article and he's talking about how a lot of hitters do feel rushed when they're hitting. And he says, obviously there's a lot of us who are like, all right, I'm taking too much time. I have to do this. You worry about the pitcher.

And then he says, Oduble is worried about getting on base at all times throughout his entire at-bat. So his sole focus is getting in the pitcher's head, getting on base, and doesn't care about the sort of social convention of hurrying up and getting back in the batter's box when the other guy is ready. And so by defying that convention, he is possibly benefiting for as long as it's allowed.

So if you want to stop Herrera's reign of terror and his taking forever in the batter's box, you need a pitch clock. Would a pitch clock help? Because if you swing at a pitch, you're allowed to leave the batter's box, not the whole dirt area, but you're allowed to leave the batter's box, not the whole dirt area, but you're allowed to leave the

batter's box. And then there's the 12 second rule when the bases are empty and that's after the pitcher gets the ball. But if you're outside of the batter's box and you're not ready to hit, I guess it's incumbent on the catcher to get the ball back to the pitcher anyway. And for the pitcher to not wait for the batter to get ready, and for the pitcher to not wait for the batter to get ready like maybe a pitcher might just wait for the batter to step back in but if it's Herrera he's going to take his sweet time doing that so he probably still wouldn't be able to do this with a pitch clock right god it all just it's no balls because if the hitter wants to take extra long the pitch is going to be like all right well I don't want to be ready too early, so now I'm going to take longer.

And then Odubel Herrera's going to be like, well, I don't want him to be ready. I want to be in control, so I'm going to take longer. And then nothing happens until Odubel Herrera gets a fine that he negotiates down into a warning, and then nothing happens, and then he takes six seconds longer. Longer. Six seconds longer between pitches. I'd like to give another shout-out. I just did Eric Thames. Wandi Peralta. Wandi Peralta. Wandi Peralta is a name you've probably never heard, but I'm sure you've heard those two

names together. There's Wandi Rodriguez and Joel Peralta. Sure. There's also more famous Peraltas. Anyway, Wandi Peralta, technically a rookie with the Cincinnati Reds. He's appeared in six games so far this season, 5.1 innings. He hasn't done a whole lot, but he's struck out a bunch of dudes. His contact rate in a very small sample is under

50 which is outstanding and his pace is the fastest pace among any non-michael martinez pitcher so far this season wandy peralta has taken 17.2 seconds between pitches the uh his numbers are fantastic everybody be like wandy peralta the reds have a bunch of guys who are up there in the pace category, I don't know why But the Reds have the fastest pitching staff This season, 22.1 seconds Between pitches on average The Rays are dead last

And that sucks, and you wonder why they can't draw people It's because the Rays are like this And in the past they've had Joe Peralta And Joaquin Benoit who take for freaking ever Between pitches You are driving fans away from your ballpark, Tampa Bay. Tampa. Tampa?

St. Petersburg? Whatever. Sure. The Reds just keep demanding to be talked about. That's the answer. The Reds and the Brewers, man. It's the NL Central, except we're talking about the teams that people would think are the least appealing teams to discuss.

Yeah. All right. Before we get to Dave, I want to play you a quick clip, which I have emailed you. This is from episode 138, one of the most recent episodes of The Axe Files, David Axelrod's interview show. And this was posted in the Facebook group by a listener named Andrew. Axelrod is talking to Jason Benetti, who is a White Sox broadcaster. And I have isolated the important part. And that is all you need to know. Okay, now I listen. Yes. My feeling is I go into a show knowing that I could pull from 1200,000 million different realms. And that's the beauty of baseball. It's a jumping off point for a conversation about whatever it might be, where somebody's from,

his love for pets, his interest in volcanoes, whatever it might be. That's what baseball is. It's a trampoline in a lot of ways. This is a very strange confluence of Jeff Sullivan hot button topics. I asked you if Jason Benetti follows you on Twitter or anything. He does not. So as far as we know, he was not thinking of you specifically as he was speaking here.

No, he was not thinking of you specifically as he was speaking here, but he happened to touch on two frequent topics of yours and this podcast. I agree with his larger sentiment about baseball being a springboard, but using the word trampoline to describe it, very fraught. And volcanoes. I just don't know what connection. Jason Bennett, this is Chicago, Illinois. There's not a volcano within. Well, hold on. Let me plot my volcano map. eroded for hundreds of millions of years but there's there's no active there's no active or potentially active threat within i don't know where's where's new mexico relative to chicago illinois and i'm sure those weren't the ones he was thinking of arizona yeah all right so i know jason benetti has he's made some references in the past i think i was uh watching i i think this is jason benetti but last year every every year i i write a couple posts that are essentially about the worst called balls yeah or the the worst called strikes of the season

and i'm pretty sure the last two worst called balls have involved the white socks and i believe in the last one my time my sequencing here might be all screwed up but i think in the last one or at least one of the last ones the worst called ball is always a ball right down the middle for whatever reason you want to imagine. That's always where it goes. There's nowhere else that it could go and still be the worst called ball. But right after it was called ball, I believe it was Jason Benetti who said, you know, there are people out there who like to write about the worst called balls of the season. And I think we might have just seen a winner. Interesting. Okay. So maybe he has some Jeff Sullivan awareness then, possibly?

At least Fangraph's awareness. Yeah, right. So, I mean, it's almost too coincidental to be a coincidence or I don't know. To use the volcano example right before the trampoline, that's hard to believe that that just happened by chance. believe that that just happened by chance but and how often has he brought up a volcanoes during a broadcast if he's trying to cite some sort of example of how he tells a story around baseball yeah i don't know hey jason i think you're great if you're out there i think you're great you're great all right let's get to our guest They show the money to you. You show them what you can do. Show them your money. Make you get out, out, out. Oh, yeah.

You'll get out, out, out. Oh, yeah. Okay, so last week, Carlos Correa's agent, Greg Genske, told John Heyman that Correa is never going to do an early multi-year contract. And then Jake Kaplan went to talk to Carlos Correa and ask him about it. And he said, what? I never said that. That didn't come from me. He said he'd be more than glad to listen if approached. But he did say that he wouldn't be willing to wait long to talk about it and the price has got to be right. Wouldn't be willing to wait long To talk about it and the price has got to be right

So sounds like it will be very difficult If not impossible for the Astros to Sign Carlos Correa to an early Career long term extension which Made me think of two posts Written for Fangraphs by Dave Cameron the managing editor of that Site and one was about

The unchanging prices of breakout Stars the other was about the Possible extinction of the early career superstar extension which is the category that korea falls into so we have welcomed on mr cameron himself hi dave hi ben hey jeff hi i know you guys never get to talk so glad i could bring you two together we got you outnumbered this time lindbergh yeah i'm one of you now, just about. So can you summarize the conclusions of these two posts? I'm trying to decide whether they are conflicting or whether the two trends that you've identified here, whether it's strange that they are both happening at the same time or whether it makes sense. But we can talk about that. But can you just lay out your investigations and conclusions in each of these posts? Sure. I do think it's strange that these two things are happening or seemingly happening. Yeah. The first post was basically about the idea that the Jose Ramirez contract extension was kind of

the one I was playing off of. Jose Ramirez a couple of years ago was like a Carson Sestouli prospect, right? Like he wasn't on anyone's top prospect list. He was a good contact hitting guy who might be able to play shortstop, but probably was a second baseman, kind of a fringy guy without much power. And then all of a sudden, Jose Ramirez put up a five-win season last year, and now it looks like Jose Ramirez can hit for power, and he's doing what every other 5'9 guy can do in baseball. And so he got $26 million in his long-term deal from the Indians,

which bought out, I think, three free agent years with some team options in there. And if you look back at kind of what similar players who had had their kind of breakout year after not being top prospects, this is basically the same price people have been getting for mostly like a decade. They can go back to the Ben Zobrist deal or the Adam Eaton deal, kind of these not top prospect guys

who turn into good players who've been taking somewhere between $20 and $30 million early in their careers. And it's just interesting to me that in a time where Major where major league baseball is rolling in money and free agent contracts are mostly going up and uh you know relief pitchers had you know they broke the record three times this year for the most amount of money ever given to a reliever that we see these kinds of players not inflating the total dollars they're getting in early career extensions at all which so i think you know that's an interesting thing to consider why these players aren't getting more money.

And then you go to the other end of the spectrum and the best young players in baseball just aren't signing these deals, right? So like a few years ago, basically every good young player was taking five, six, seven year deals from their teams. And now you have, you know, Manny Machado's going to be a free agent in two years.

Bryce Harper's going to be a free agent in two years. Like all the best young players are going either to arbitration or going to be a free agent in two years. Bryce Harper's going to be a free agent in two years. All the best young players are going either to arbitration or going to free agency, and it's pretty rare now. We heard rumors of a Francisco Lindor extension. That didn't get done. As you said, Correa came out and said, we're not signing one of these deals. It's becoming

more and more rare for these elite players to give up free agent years. Yeah, so it's strange not only that people are making more money in every facet of baseball, whether it's players or teams, there's just more money everywhere. And so it's strange that these mid-tier players would be signing for the same amount that their equivalents were signing for a decade ago or many years ago. And then at the same time, these young guys are holding out more than ever before and refusing they sign these deals? Because as

you mentioned, Jose Ramirez signed a $50,000 bonus, right? So he had no big payment that was giving him long-term financial security that he could say, I don't need this money because I have some already. Yeah. And talking to some of the people in the game, both on the representative side and the team side, it really does feel like there's a bit of a disconnect with guys who get big bonuses, first round picks, big international signings, and guys who are marketable, right? So like one of the things that has come up in several columns, I think Ken Rosenthal's noted this a few times, is Francisco Lindor was comfortable walking away from a seven

year offer from the Indians, which industry speculation I've heard is was over $100 billion, which the highest previous contract for a player with his service time was to Andrelson Simmons got $58 million. So this is, you know, going to blow away anything that any team had offered previously. And one of the reasons he was willing to do that is because he's got endorsement opportunities. Lindor is a good looking young guy. It looks like he could be one of the face of baseball. He can go out to a number of franchises, Chris Bryant, same thing. Lots of comments online about Chris Bryant's blue eyes. He's not going to have any problems selling basically anything Chris Bryant wants to sell. These guys have non-baseball opportunities.

I'm imagining, like, Jose Ramirez is a really nice player. I don't think, like, you know, hair gel clubs are, like, beating down Jose Ramirez's deal, being like, hey, sell our products. So these kind of pop-up stars who are better players than maybe they're given credit for, their reputation suggests, don't necessarily have these outside baseball opportunities. Plus, they didn't get the big signing bonuses. So this is their first big cash-in, and they don't have kind of third-party income. So when you have guys like Lindor and Correa, who already have millions of dollars in the bank from their signing bonuses, and they can go sign a five-year deal with a shoe

company or a 10-year deal with a clothing company, they have opportunities to make money besides just taking a contract from their team. Obviously, when you have a very good young player, the team will, I'm sure, always float some sort of idea. Teams always want to get these players signed for some small amount of money, and then players will oftentimes say no. But when it comes to negotiating, say, a mid-tier or even lower-tier player's first long-term extension, where's the balance that you've observed, I guess, between sort of what the player thinks he wants versus how much the agent is pushing for? Because the agent might have a better idea of what the market should have a better idea of what the market is doing than a player who's just going to see $10 million and think, oh, my God, that's $10 million. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely varies from agency to agency.

Obviously, Scott Boris has a reputation as a guy who encourages all of his players to go year to year it doesn't always happen scott boris has done some of these long-term deals uh but generally boris is going to be a guy who says hey look you know if you don't sign this deal and you get hurt that's fine you're still a good player if you're represented by scott boris you're probably pretty noteworthy you're you're probably not going to get non-tendered that's one of the other things that kind of gets factored into this is if you have good early career numbers, you can make the argument that these guys

are already guaranteed $10 or $15 million. They might not have even paid that amount, but what would have to happen for Chris Bryant to get non-tendered before he reaches free agency? He would have to come out with a bubonic plague and get everyone else on the team sick. There's no situation where you can imagine the Indians are like, Francisco Lindor, you struggled in your third year. We're no situation where you can imagine the Indians are like, Francisco Lindor, you

struggled in your third year. We're going to cut you instead of pay you whatever, $5 million in arbitration or something. So these guys are basically already guaranteed their arbitration paydays down the line, where if you're a Jose Ramirez or a Dubal Herrera, who's a Rule 5 pick, the agent might come to you and say, hey, look, if you have a bad year, you were a Rule 5 pick a couple of years ago, there's no guarantee that they're not just going to cut you. And, you know, I think we've seen this with Chris Carter, right? Chris Carter is a fringy kind of lower value player, but put up the kinds of numbers that

arbiters like. So teams just keep cutting him and saying, instead of paying you $9 million in arbitration, we're going to let the free market pay you $3 million. And this has happened to him twice now. And so I think these lower tier guys who don't necessarily feel like they have stability with their franchise necessarily or guaranteed jobs the next few years probably look at it and say maybe i'm costing myself 10 or 20 million dollars if i get to free agency but i'll take the 10 or 20 million dollars now and if it you know if i end up not being able to buy a third boat that's okay do you think this is connected at all to the change

in the aging curve that we seem to have observed that young players are producing a greater proportion of the league wide war, or at least that's been the case the last couple of years or particularly a couple of years ago. Whereas in the past, maybe if a really talented young player came up and struggled and hit 230 and was not feeling so confident about his future, maybe he'd be willing to compromise a bit more than if he comes up and he's a superstar from day one, like Correa, for instance. Yeah, I do think that plays into it. And I think the team reaction to age in free agency is also playing into this.

So if you think about now, so Eric Hosmer is a free agent at the end of this year, right? I think we can agree that Eric Hosmer is not a great player. He's an okay player. He's maybe average or slightly above or slightly below depending on your opinion of his defense but he's somewhere in that range but he's going to hit the free agent market as a 28 year old this winter he's got a chance to get 100 million dollars just because he's going to be the only young free agent out there this winter and all the other options are you know on the wrong side of 30 and I think we've seen teams you know but Ben Zobris got 56 million dollars he was 34 years old he was a, you know, but Ben Zobris got $56 million.

He was 34 years old. He was a good player. Everyone really wanted Ben Zobris. There was like a crazy bidding war for him, and he still only got $56 million because of the age. And I think what we see is teams really shying away from these guys on the wrong side of 30. They don't want to do these Albert Pujols deals anymore.

So if you're, you know, a Machado or a Correa or a Seager, one of these guys, and you think, hey, look, I got to the big leagues really quickly. I can be a free agent at 27 or 28. You've got a dramatically different chance at a monster 10-year, 250, 350, $450 million contract than if you push it back even two or three years by giving up your first couple of years of free agency. And all of a sudden now you're hitting free agency at 31. That 28 to 30 window is really very valuable. And I think the long-term prognosis for you getting that seven to 10-year deal changes dramatically if you sell your first few free agent years. Yeah, you have to strike and get one of those gold mines like Jason Hayward. You have a players union that loves to see good players hit

free agency. You also have a players union that loves to see veterans making more money than young players, like pretty much every other union that exists. Where would be the motivation? If you have a tipping point that's, say, a few million dollars of security where a player feels like he doesn't now need to sign away a few free agent years for club options, options. How much energy would there be on the union side for increasing the minimum wage, which would directly take money away from older players, but would at least give the younger players a lot more security immediately? Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the interesting things, especially as we see aging curve shift and more production going to younger players. So now teams aren't spending on older free agents, and they don't have to spend on pre-arbitration and arbitration players because the system controls their prices.

That's not a good thing for the union to be in, where the system is designed to funnel money to old players and teams aren't spending money on old players. The union should fight against that. But I think the raising of the minimum salary is tricky because then Major League Baseball starts arguing competitive balance, right? So if you double the minimum salary, that hurts the Rays, who now basically have their payroll doubled, or not necessarily doubled, but a significant cost increase in terms of their relative payroll whereas like the Dodgers are like oh that guy I was paying six hundred thousand dollars to now gets a million who cares right like it doesn't it doesn't affect the top teams at all so raising the

minimum salary could be argued as a regressive tax to hurt small market teams more than large market teams major baseball is going to be hesitant to do that i do think though uh you know i've thrown this idea out there to people working in baseball and i have no one has really said that the union would ever go for this but i still think it's an interesting idea i would suggest that the union should just basically set up a fund and say look somehow we're going to funnel some money from the owners just to the union itself and we will either sell insurance or we're going to do some kind of like non-team fund where if you're one of these young players and you come to us and you say,

hey, the Indians just offered me $25 million but it cost me my first three free agent years. The union can say, hey, look, we have a nerd over here with an abacus and he did some calculations and we think you're worth $35 million. If you will either tell them you get $35 million or not take the contract offer, we'll guarantee you $35 million. If you will either tell them you get $35 million or, you know, not take

the contract offer, we'll guarantee you $2 million. Just like, we'll pay you $2 million to turn this contract down. Obviously, there's some sketchiness involved in having the union, like, dictating to a player what they should do, but you're having some kind of alternative source of funds for a guy like Jose Ramirez, so it wouldn't be like, well, if I blow up my Nia this year, I never get a payment. It could be an interesting way to create an alternative to, well, this is my one chance to get a paycheck and I better take it when I can. Yeah, because players and teams have different incentives and they have different risk tolerances. So that's part of why extensions have always happened, because teams can tolerate the risk of an extension not working out, a guy getting

hurt or something, whereas the player can't, because if he gets hurt, that's the end of an extension not working out, a guy getting hurt or something, whereas the player can't because if he gets hurt, that's the end of his career. And so he's willing to accept a smaller amount. Does the same apply to just the share of league-wide revenue that we've seen the player's share go down? Could that have anything to do with the fact that players just don't have the same incentive to extract every dollar that a corporately owned franchise does. Like if a player makes 10 million or 20 million or 30 million, it might not make all that much difference to his quality of life. He might not hold out for every last dollar if it's just a set for life sort of deal. either owned by some billionaire who has a ton of businesses that he has to pay attention to, or they have a lot of expenses, or it's owned by some corporation that is wanting to maximize revenue for its shareholders, has more incentive to extract every last dollar than a single person

would? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's definitely an accurate portrayal of the system right now, is basically everyone on the player side is doing pretty well overall. Maybe they're not doing quite as well as the owners maybe they're lagging 10 behind but there aren't there aren't any major players who are struggling to pay their bills right now or like major league players aren't sitting there being like this system is so unfair i can't believe i'm only making a league minimum of 530 000 and like the league set league average salary is four million dollars and if i'm a generic left-handed reliever like mike dunn i can get 19 million in free agency. Everyone on the player's side is kind of comfortable,

and when you have this general overall comfort, no one wants to rock the boat, and the player's only real leverage is a strike. They can't really do anything else to move the needle and really push back on the owner's demands, and no one really wants to give up their paychecks so that they can increase their wages from super rich to slightly super richer richer even if they think that overall the owners are getting the better of them and i will note like talking to people with the player side they dispute the notion that their kind of share of revenues has gone down nearly as much as been reported by the public they still

think it's close to 50 50 so i think like there just isn't this burden on the player side to feel like they're getting hosed out of a lot of money maybe they're getting hosed out a little bit of money but they're okay with that because they're all still really wealthy if you take someone like i don't know the first example that comes to mind is adam eaton at least by by our measures and by the ways that teams evaluate adam eaton he is wildly underpaid which is clearly why the nationals traded what they did to get him in the first place but maybe a fundamental question here is i don't know to what extent you could even know this but does adam eden or the average player in his circumstance care that much that he's underpaid if he's making 30 40 50 million dollars over the lifetime of one of these

contracts yeah i think that they don't care nearly as much as we do which is one of the issues right like like we're sitting here like oh we're let's write about the jose ramirez contract and jose ramirez i guarantee you had no like man this is a really sad day for me. I left $10 million on the table. He was buying a lot of champagne and inviting all the family over and having a good time. So I think from the player's perspective, they don't see this as, you know, they're getting beaten by owners regularly in these extensions.

But it is interesting that like really it has become that middle class or that lower class of kind of non-prospect Adam Eaton pop-up types who are taking these deals I think when you see the Machados and the Harpers I wonder if there's a little bit of like an alpha dog play in here where if Harper's looking at Stanton saying hey look he got 325 million dollars four years before he got to free agency what can I get if I get there and then Manny Machado being like well I think I'm better than Bryce Harper and so maybe I want to get more money than him and I wonder if there's a different kind of level of competitiveness of the top-end guys.

Because I remember, you know, like talking to some players, they've always, the words I've always heard is it's not about the money. It's about what my relative pay says about the league's view of me. So if I think I'm the best player in the league, I should be paid the most money. And if I'm paid the 27th most money, I don't actually care about that extra $50 million. I just care that the league has disrespected me from a pay perspective. I wonder if at the top end of this, there's more competitiveness than Jose Ramirez looking at me and being like, well, I'm better than that guy. I get an extra million dollars. Yeah, well, a couple of years ago, we were all writing articles about how free agency was dying and no one was going to make it to free agency anymore.

And now clearly that's not the case. All of these good players are going to make it to free agency was dying and no one was going to make it to free agency anymore. And now clearly that's not the case. All of these good players are going to make it to free agency. So maybe there's a cyclical thing where if a bunch of young stars sign extensions, then fewer players become free agents and the ones who do make more money possibly because there are fewer free agents available. And that is a greater incentive for other people not to take extensions in the future and to say no look at what these guys are making in free agency i'll just wait and then the process kind of repeats itself i don't know whether that is a cyclical thing or

whether we're just seeing the permanent end of these extensions now because draft bonuses are big enough or international bonuses are big enough that players just won't need them anymore. Although I guess now that there are international spending limits too, those bonuses will go down. No, I think you're absolutely right. This is cyclical. And whenever I bring up the idea of like reforms or like changing arbitration or having the player association set up a slush fund, and then I talk to people in the game, they're

always like, you know, a couple of years ago, like you said, everyone had this wildly different view of free agency and right now the best young players in the game kind of probably not coincidentally it just means scouts have done a good job but they all happen to be guys who are taking the top 10 in the draft right like bryce harper went 1-1 machado went three bryant went two correa went one lindor went seven cory seager went five anyway they're all like top draft picks who got millions of dollars in signing bonuses. So they don't need these early career extensions because they can already buy whatever they want

for the most part. Yeah. Although if teams are getting better at drafting, maybe that will continue to be the case that the best players will more frequently tend to be top draftees. Right. And so that's an interesting thought

is like if the pool of players that end up being great players end up being higher draft picks, theoretically, those guys have gotten bonuses that allow them to say, I don't necessarily need, you know, an early career extension. Now you have fewer guys who are kind of these breakout superstars. Like we don't necessarily have a Paul Goldschmidt right now who is, you know, not considered a real prospect and then turned into a monster. And he signed an early career extension that way underpaid him. If we don't have that kind of guy, even Chris Sale and Madison Bumgarner as pitchers took way under market deals. And I think now every pitcher is like scared to sign that deal,

which is why Noah Syndergaard hasn't signed. And everyone looks at those deals and is like, I don't want to sign the Chris Sale deal or the Madison Bumgarner deal. But it is interesting that it's, I do think it's cyclical. And I wouldn't be surprised if the next share of great players was not as represented by top 10 draft picks. And then you had some guys who were the Paul Goldschmidt's of the world where they got, you know, $50,000 signed or $200,000 to sign and they get $50 million put on the table in front of

them. And they're like, you know, this is a good deal for me. This is only, I guess, tangentially related because Bryce Harper is going to be a free agent almost certainly, and he's not signing one of those extensions. But when you have the real cream of the crop hitting free agency if you have someone like harper or machado is there even a way for them to get what they should be worth on a free agent deal because it seems like if you blend their ability and age what team can actually afford to give someone like 60 million dollars a year given where the luxury tax threshold is yeah i mean it's a fascinating thing like whenever anyone brings up harper's contract I'm almost always one of the ones arguing that he's worth more than anyone expects.

So, like, I hear people saying all the time, like, will Harper break $400 million? Like, I don't think there's any chance, unless he blows out his knee in the next year and a half, that Harper signs for less than $400 million. Like, Stanton got $325 million with an opt-out four years away from free agency. Like, for Harper to sign anything close to that for a significantly inferior player, nothing against Giancarlo Stanton, but he's not Bryce Harper.

I just can't imagine Scott Boris not beating Stanton's deal by a dramatic mark. And I think you're right. When you look at it, realistically, these players are worth 50, 60, 70, maybe in Mike Trout's case, $80 million a year in terms of what you would pay. I think when we did the Mike Trout extension a few years back, people were like, I can't believe you're

saying that Mike Trout's worth $40 or $50 million a year. And I was like, well, would you rather Mike Trout or Shinsu Chu and Jacoby Ellsbury? Because the two of them combined for $50 million a year, and I don't think anyone would take Ellsbury and Chu over Trout, right? You would clearly rather have Mike Trout. And this is what teams will pay is they'll spend $25 million a year on a three-win player, but we haven't seen them spend $50 million a year on a seven-win player. I know a lot of people like to think that like wins are exponentially valuable because you've constrained the roster spot, but there's also a lot of risk in putting $50 or $60 million of your payroll into one guy. We haven't seen a team do that. So what's a Harper

deal going to look like or a Machado deal going to look like? I wouldn't be surprised if in order to keep the total number closer to 400 million than 500 million, which I think you could argue that Harper's worth 500 million just in realistic long-term projection, perhaps, you know, it just turns into an opt-out situation where he gets an opt-out after every year or every second year, or he gets an opt-out in every September. And he's just like, I don't want to keep playing for you.

Cause you're not in contention. I'm going to go join this other team. I wouldn't be surprised if we just had some weird structure that we hadn't seen before. So it's only $450 million in total money, but it's a 14-year deal with nine opt-outs or something. So about four years ago, Sam wrote an article about the future of contract extensions. And he was writing about it at the time because it seemed to him that a strategy that small market clubs had pioneered had been co-opted by big market clubs and they were doing extensions too. So he was wondering what small market teams could do to use this strategy, but differentiate themselves. And so he had a few ideas, which was sign earlier extensions, like sign guys in the minor leagues to extensions, or sign longer extensions, just like lock up a whole career, essentially,

or sign more extensions, like just sign guys who historically wouldn't have been considered extension worthy. Like they're just marginal players and they're not the kind of guys who you necessarily want to lock up. But if you can't lock up the other guys, then maybe you just start locking up everyone you can. I don't know that we've seen any of those happen to a great extent. Maybe the last one a little bit. Yeah, I think the last one with the Indians, I mean, they just signed Roberto Perez, their backup catcher, to a five-year deal. Like that's a four-year deal with some options. Like that's a little unusual.

And I think the Astros actually tried that a couple years ago. Obviously, the Jonathan Singleton one is notable. But I remember coming out like they offered Robbie Grossman like a five-year contract and he turned it down. And Robbie Grossman got non-tendered like four times since. So maybe he should have taken their money too. So why do you think we haven't seen a guy in AA getting a long-term extension or something like that?

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question. I think that the precedent is really strong in baseball, right? No one wants to be the first guy to sign a double, you know, when you're in double A, you're a prospect and you take $3 million in guaranteed money or whatever the team's going to offer or $6 million. It's going to be something small. No one wants to be the guy who gets made fun of as the Evan Longoria contract for the next decade. Like it's a little bit of a, you know, I think risk aversion from a, from a player's standpoint and maybe rightfully so. And I think also from a team perspective, like the Jonathan Singleton contract, I think it'sversion from a, from a player's standpoint and maybe rightfully so. And I think also from a team perspective,

like the Jonathan Singleton contract, I think it's now doesn't look very good for the Astros. And I would imagine the Astros don't want to have six or seven of those in the books because it gets really hard to explain to your owner why you just wasted $50 million. I'm like all these guys weren't any good. And maybe you can make a rational economic argument for it, but how many fans are going to sit through and be like, well,

we couldn't sign Bryce Harper because we got like seven Jonathan Singletons on the payroll. So do you understand why we did that? No, of course. That's stupid. These Jonathan Singletons are terrible. I would just rather have one Bryce Harper. Explaining that to kind of the casual fan, I think, is difficult. So I wouldn't be surprised if we saw kind of more teams push.

Like, the Indians really do try and sign everybody. I think they've got seven or eight guys under long-term deals. Basically every good player on their team has at least been approached, whether they took the deal or not. And, you know, in Roberto Perez's case, he's not even a starter for them. So I do think we'll see maybe more teams go that direction, especially if there's not any inflation in that mid-tier range. That's really the best value that teams can get right now is to sign a whole

bunch of Adam Eaton type guys and hope one of them turns into an adam eaton and now all of a sudden you you wouldn't beg all right is there anyone who stands out to you as a potential target for these sorts of deals maybe if not the superstar deal that no one is signing anymore then the mid-tier deal that for now seems to still be a good deal for teams yeah i mean i think like the interesting guys are probably these like non-prospect breakout guys like today at fangrass i heard about cesar hernandez right like this is a guy who was not a good hitter for a couple of years and last year ran a four win season out of nowhere and he's hitting home runs in april if i'm the phillies i've got nowhere else

to spend money i threw it at jeremy helixson this year just because i had to spend something like i'm going to cesar hernandez tomorrow like, hey, you want $30 million? Because if Cesar Hernandez doesn't pan out, okay, we burned $5 million a year in the years we were not contending. Who cares? And if Cesar Hernandez is the next Brian Dozier or something, we just scored big. So I think those are the kinds of guys that if I'm a team looking for an opportunity to sign a guy, it's those guys who might have done a swing change who might have been hanging out with bobby tukesbury this winter like anyone who's kind of

like hanging out at driveline mechanics i'm probably just throwing 10 million at them just in case mitch hanager yeah mitch hanager right i'm giving 50 million dollars to mitch hanager any of these guys who do the kind of i might be way better than my projections but i don't know that yet the that's the guy i'm trying to sign yeah it could be easily exploited right if you were a player you could just put the word out kyle boney gets like three percent of everyone who just goes there and just becomes a super billionaire i was just reminded of when there was that one off season where uh the news came out that uniesky bedancourt was like working with raul iz every day in the offseason, which I know that sounds funny because Ibanez isn't really a workout fiend,

but he kept himself going until he was 40 or 41, and people thought, Betancourt, he's figured it out. He's motivated now. No, he showed up once. There's definitely a difference between I showed up to run the stairs at a football stadium, and I figured out how to be good. All right. Well, I guess that out how to be good. All right. Well, I guess that concludes today's econ class with Cameron.

So thank you, Dave. Yeah, thanks for having me on. All right, that will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support for the podcast include Brian Vole, Danny, Colin H. Smith, Kevin Dynan, and Seth Resnick. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. If you're looking for something else to listen to, Michael Bauman and I have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up. It's at tunein.com slash the ringer for the rest of april we talked to rick ankeel about the yips and his conversion to outfield and his new book the phenomenon and we also talked to effectively wild favorite chris davinsky the astros pitcher who's being used in some unorthodox ways keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or by messaging us

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