Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 366: The Clayton Kershaw Contract

Episode Date: January 16, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss Clayton Kershaw’s extension with the Dodgers.

We've got five years, unsurprised. We've got five years, not so bad. We've got five years, no brain hurts at all. Five years, thank God we've got five years. Five years. I am wild even more after dark um so i thought we could talk about clayton kershaw i'm sure you expected this uh i wrote a little bit about clayton kershaw earlier today did you um did you have a figure in mind before today for what a Clayton Kershaw would could cost hmm hmm I guess I guess I didn't yeah I I hadn't thought about it I I I mean I would have generated one if I'd thought

about it but now I I'm trying to to retroactively come up with one and it's not it's it it's not fair yeah uh mine i think would have been higher than this i'm a little surprised that it's not more uh-huh are you surprised that it's not more um well i'm not surprised that it's not more in annual value and i'm not i guess i'm not that surprised that it's not more for years for only because it seemed maybe you can make the case that they both have an incentive to keep it at seven years the dodgers because nobody gives contracts longer than seven years for pitchers ever like it just doesn't ever happen for some reason. Like seven is okay, but eight is beyond the pale. So it makes sense from their end. And then from Kershaw's end, as you noted,

he'll basically hit free agency when he's Verlander's age, right? Mm-hmm. Verlander's current age. Yeah. So he'll get another huge payday, whereas if he were four years older or something like that, then he might not. True, but he would also be making a lot of money from the contract that he would have signed. He would, but I mean, he'll, yeah.

It's just that you want to get, I mean, a career is sort of, if you're gutsy enough to think about it this way, a career is sort of broken up into like four big paydays. Like you get your first big payday when you're drafted high, and then you get like your second big payday when you, and at that point you're kind of like, you're rich for the foreseeable future after you sign your million and a half dollar bonus. Then you hit arbitration and you're rich for the rest of your life. Then you have basically two more chances, if you're lucky,

to have a big contract, a big one you know, a big, a big one, right? Like a, like a grandkids contract. And so, um, yeah, if you're lucky, if you're, if you're a Kershaw and you come up when Kershaw did, then you have a chance to get two big ones. A lot of guys have the one chance, but you sort of have to time those big ones to some degree. Like, I mean, I'm overstating this. I'm sure I'm probably overthinking it. But you want to sort of time them. Like if you're a hitter, if you're Trout and you're thinking of signing an extension right now and you know you're going to hit free agency once more in your career, you might rather do it at 29 than 33, even if it means taking less guaranteed money right now.

And so I'm sure there's a magic age for pitchers too. I would guess that it's probably like 29 to 31 or maybe anything 31 or younger. I could see 32 being the age where now teams start looking at the majority of that deal being in your late 30s. Mike Hampton got an eight-year contract, so maybe he ruined it for everyone who came after him. I was just thinking in the current state of things, it seems like nobody gets more than seven and most people only get six,

but do you know of all the eight-year or greater contracts that pitchers have ever signed? Is that the only one? No, it can't be the only one. I'm not looking at any sort of list. Didn't Darren Dreifurt get longer than that? No, he got five years and $55 million, I think. Kevin Brown?

Kevin Brown got seven years and $. Or maybe seven in 105. Yeah, you look up a list over there. Seven in 105. My one question about a specific of the contract is the opt-out. And I have seen conflicting takes on what the opt-out means and whom the opt-out favors. So on one side, you have Ken Rosenthal, who makes the case. He says, this is the clause that makes a great deal for Kershaw even greater. Opt-out clauses hardly ever work in a club's favor. If Kershaw pitches well and is healthy after five years, he will opt out.

If he is injured or in sharp decline, he will complete his contract and still get his $30.7 million per season. Who were you just reading? That was Ken Rosenthal. Okay. Former podcast guest Mike Petriello writing about the deal at his Dodgers site, Okay. If he does, it means you signed Kershaw to a five-year contract when every rumor said he'd require 10. Do you buy that? Well, this was the argument that Joe Sheehan made when...

Sabathia, right? Sabathia did it, yeah. And I didn't quite buy it at the time. It's like, I mean, it's not like, because it's not as though Kershaw is making the decision right now to do it or not. Like, he has a lot more information at that point, and he's probably going to be pretty good at predicting

what his next two years look like. And, I mean, almost by definition, if he opts out, it's because he's worth more than they're paying him. And if he doesn't opt out, it's because he's worth less than they're paying him. So, I mean, yeah, you would rather sign him to five years than seven, but that's not what this is. You're signing him to seven and you're giving up any conceivable upside that you might get at the end. With salary inflation, it's not inconceivable that you would get upside at the end. If Kershaw makes it to year six and seven like Roger Clemens would have or something like that, then he, and with salary inflation, he could be worth considerably more. So I don't see, I didn't quite get that argument.

It seems like it's all downside from the club's perspective, and I don't quite get the logic of how it wouldn't be. Unless you think that pitchers are so volatile that you don't even want him like you wouldn't like what are the last two years like two years and 66 million or something like that yeah well it was reported

after I wrote about it Heyman reported that the deal was back loaded so let me see if I can find the terms but the more expensive years would be the ones that he would be giving up or that the dodgers would be getting out of um all right all right goes uh it's it's 22 million for for this year and then it goes up to 30 and then it's 32, 33, 33, 32, 33. So it's not a huge escalation, but it is backloaded to some extent.

Yeah, so presumably, I mean, like I just said, so if it gets to the point where Kershaw opts out, it's because the market and Kershaw knows what the market for him is. And so the market has determined that he's worth more than two years and $65 million. So the only way I see this making sense is if you think that pitchers are just so volatile that you don't even want to sign them to two-year deals at market rate or below, and that you just can't trust any team to sign any pitcher for any length of time, which feels extreme. And also, clearly that's not what the Dodgers feel because they're signing him for five. If you want to put the entire decision for those final two years in Kershaw's hands,

then you don't even want the Dodgers signing him for five years right now. You would consider that poor, too. signing him for five years right now. You would consider that poor, too. But then I remember when Verlander... I'm trying to remember what we thought about Verlander. I had some sort of theory about Verlander. Oh, yeah, no, this is a different thing. Okay.

I'm just looking at the biggest So Dave Steve is the answer Oh Was that a 10 year deal or something? 11 11 That's a long time Yeah Have there been any

Recent ones? There's only three that are listed, it looks like, that are eight or longer. Hampton was eight, Steeb was 11, and a fellow named Wayne Garland got 10. Yeah, right. So he pitched five of them. Uh-huh.

So Kershaw seems like as... His 10-year deal was worth a total of $2.01 million. So Kershaw seems like about as safe a bet as you could construct if you are committing to a pitcher for five or seven years. Yeah, so I want to, you made this point in your transaction analysis and I just want to maybe play devil's advocate a little bit. Sure. Because it seems like we do this anytime there's a long-term deal for an elite pitcher.

There's a template for how to write that transaction analysis, and you followed it very nicely, Ben. Well done. But the template goes, well, he's super good. If anybody's worth the money, he is. Pitchers are really unreliable. And then you go and you look at a bunch of pitchers who are comparable and it's a really scary list of names and in this case what you looked at 10 years ago five of the top 10 pitchers by warp were 25 or under and five years ago five of the top 10 pitchers by warp were 25 years or under and it's really scary lists like

super scary as you know and as you note everybody got worse and, and many of them were never good again, and the ones who were good again were often injured. So you make this point, and then you come back to, but, you know, it's crucial. So, like, why don't we, I mean, don't we have to have a little bit more resolve about this? If the evidence is that these go wrong, why do we keep thinking this one's okay, though? Well, I don't know. The list that I picked out, like, right, I mentioned the top five of the top ten from 2004 who were 25 and under were Ben Sheets, Oliver Perez, Johan Santana, Carlos Zambrano, Jake Peavy. And that sounds like a terrifying list now, 10 years later. But if you actually, if you look at what those guys did over the following five years, it probably wouldn't be that bad. Santana and Zambrano, I think the other three would but Peevee Peevee was okay I mean I mean Peevee

yeah I mean his next his next four years were all over, like, you know. This was when he was, oh, he was 23. 23. What year was this? 2004. Yeah, he was 23 that year. So he was good for another four years before he. He was good, no, he was good for three of the next four.

And then he was never good again, really. Never that good again again we must be looking at different i'm i don't know i'm looking at bp he was not good at 20 he was not good at 25 he was worth four wins apparently according to well anyway maybe maybe yeah sure you love the league in strikeouts yeah maybe he was so he was was good for four years, and then he was not good, and then he got hurt and became maybe an average pitcher-ish when he was healthier, a little bit better. And Perez, basically, that was his one good year.

So it's not like nobody would have compared Perez to Kershaw. Yeah, you wouldn't have signed him to a Kershaw contract at that point. And Ben Sheets sort of similar to, well, I don't know. I guess at that point Ben Sheets was looking pretty good. That was the year that he had the year. That was kind of his breakout year. He had pitched 200 innings the previous two seasons, but had not been nearly as good.

Oh, my gosh. That's one of my favorite years. 8.25. 2004 sheets. Yeah, 8.25 strikeouts per walk. So good. That was such a fun year. Yeah.

He had that one. He had that game where I think he struck out 17 and walked nobody. Yeah. And then, so his next four years were effective but injured, I guess. And then after that he was done. So he got 18 and walked one. I should say. That was a fun year.

Anyway, and then the next group. The next group is worse, probably, even though it's overall more productive, I guess. You mean the 2009 leaders? Yeah. So the 2009 top five guys who were all exactly 25 years old that year were Granke, Lincecum, Josh johnson ubaldo and john lester uh and i guess uh granky is the only one who is anywhere close to to what he was then i guess you could you could

say that jimenez was for the last couple of months there um and i mean lester is if you had signed lester to a five-year deal in 2009 uh i mean you wouldn't be well i mean making him the highest paid player in the game i mean you wouldn't you wouldn't have done that but yeah right so so i i made these comparisons and i said and then i said you know kershaw is better than all of these people so yeah uh even if he sort of follows the same pattern in that he gets worse i mean odds are the best is behind him right so your point is that these tables were actually encouraging like this was i mean i'm not i don't mean thately. Like, was that the point you were making? No. No, I mean, I guess you could interpret it either way. I mean, if you look at it just five years out from those guys,

most of them wouldn't have killed you. Looking back at it, none of them really, I guess guess turned into maybe what we thought they were going to be or continued to be what they were at that point and Kershaw probably won't either right at this point it seems like he is just miles and miles better than everyone else and he is a machine and he will pitch 200 innings and or 230 innings and lead the league in era every single season and at some point that will stop happening uh odds are it won't happen all at once uh but it will happen gradually and probably his his best seasons are behind him or most of his best seasons are behind him, I would wager. But he's good enough now that he'll still be pretty good unless he list and has been quite durable is encouraging, I suppose. Although I also...

Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to mention that it's sort of unfair because I linked to Russell's article from earlier this year about what actually predicts pitcher injuries and three of the factors he found were age and and the most important one was whether you had been injured before both of which seemed to to be encouraging things in Kershaw's case and then just raw number of pitches thrown was also one of the indicators of injury. And that's sort of unfair because Kershaw loses either way. He's been really durable and hasn't gotten hurt, so that works in his favor. But because he never got hurt, he's thrown a ton of pitches,

which does not work in his favor. So either way, he is a risk to some extent. But I don't know. You're right. I mean, this is what we do with these deals. We kind of throw up our hands and say, well, someone was going to pay this much for Kershaw because he's the best pitcher in baseball and it might as well be the team with the highest payroll in baseball who already has him.

Well, I mean, the Cardinals would not have done this though and the Cardinals do everything right. Yeah, I don't know um i mean maybe the cardinals would have done it but i mean there is there is the possibility for pool holes but that doesn't mean that they would never do something like that they may just not have wanted to do it for him yeah the point just is that somebody is going gonna pay him this much is not an argument for it necessarily i mean no but it's certainly not an argument for it yeah it's it's it's not necessarily an argument against it it could be that this works but but i mean let me let me just

let me ask you this let me ask you this so let's say five let's say five years from now, Kershaw's made 17 starts because he goes Brandon Webb, as you know, or he goes Mark Pryor, or he goes anybody, right? He blows out his shoulder in June. And that's it for him. And he makes a few dozen starts. They're mostly bad, and he's not usually available and this just goes into the list with all the other bad huge contracts that have ever been signed um like like i i don't know i guess that's my whole point like we're we're not going to be surprised i guess that's my point is like you're going to be like yeah i know that's why they shouldn't do these and then someone else someone else will get one and you'll be like well i know but someone you know strasburg

he's different right well that is not uh it's not the norm right that that a guy just goes from being great to worthless um it is not there are isolated instances where that has happened and so we remember those and we're worried that those will happen again and they could happen again. Um, I don't know. Uh, I mean the alternative to the, to that, the opposite of that argument that someone is going to do it, um, it's just like taking a really hard line stance and saying no one should ever do this and if you do this it's a mistake no matter what your your competitive situation is no matter what your payroll is and I don't know like if if I were the Dodgers I would probably probably have done the same thing yeah the Dodgers have all the money in the world that's fine I'm not I'm not mad at the Dodgers have all the money in the world that's fine I'm not mad at the Dodgers or anything like that

and I'd like to have Kershaw on my team and I'd pay him a lot of money to do what he does but I don't know I'm just saying there's an amnesia that seems to kick in anytime someone we like gets a lot of money

one other thing is that and this is more I'm just curious, but you used the age 25 mark as a comparison in a few different cases. One to demonstrate Kershaw's achievement to this date. You show that he's arguably the best 25-year-old, the most accomplished 25-year-old ever, and then looking for these sort of similar pitchers in the recent history, you had 25 or younger. And do you think that age is that significant? I mean, is there a difference really between 25 and 28 for these purposes? Because I sort of get the sense, or I shouldn't say I get the sense,

I have the gut feeling that it's not, that really, for a pitcher, there's really not that much difference between 25 and 28. And like your, like Webb, for instance, wouldn't have been in your age 25 comps because he broke in late. But if you just look at the first five years of his career

um or the first you know five or six years of his career he had a 143 era plus which is just below kershaw and if you look at lindsicum's first five years i think he was like a 137 era plus so um and but he was a little older too so do you feel like the age is a particularly significant thing with Kershaw, or is it just that he's relatively young and that this is a good sort of proxy for how many innings he's, how much he's proven, how much he's shown us, how established he is? It's partially a convenience thing, but I think it matters. It maybe matters less for a pitcher than a position player

but I mean there's a difference I think between 25 and 28 okay so if it turned out tomorrow that it was revealed that Kershaw had forged his birth certificate for some reason probably to get alcohol when he was younger

do does it change your opinion of this much at all and if he were three years older than than he actually is um yeah oh yeah so that wouldn't get him alcohol to get him oh you know what it's he probably wanted to go to the under 16 night at the local music club uh yeah i would i would like it less you would yeah significantly less um i don't think i would i don't think i care i like it as is i think i might be sort of neutral on it at that point i think i probably would be even more impressed that he had managed to not get hurt by 28 than by 25 i really i do i mean he had managed to not get hurt by 28 than by 25 i really

i do i mean he had managed to to hide his his biographical details no if he had if he had three more years of of injury freeness in his life it would actually be more impressive to me than three more years of youth on his side three more years further from the inevitable demise. What was he doing during those Clayton Kershaw of the lost years? What was he up to? Was he pitching? If he wasn't pitching, then I don't think it would make me more confident in his arm. He was doing archaeology. He was played by River Phoenix. The Cardinals signed Adam Wainwright to a five-year extension less than a year ago.

Uh-huh. Five-year extension, though, not seven. And they also didn't, well, they paid him a lot, but. Yeah, and he was 31 at the time. Uh-huh. Yeah. How long do you think Kershaw will be the highest paid annual value in Major League history? I think, I don't know, I'm trying to think of who on the horizon could possibly eclipse it.

Like last year when Verlander signed his deal and briefly had that record, it was pretty obvious to everyone that he would hold it only until kershaw did um now though yeah you could imagine if if like let's say scherzer won the cy young award again and hit the open market uh-huh yeah maybe imagine that uh you could maybe imagine but cabrera's two years away it's unlikely cabrera would because he'll probably want length but yeah but if he decided if he decided he wanted a four year deal and he had you know another mvp award under his belt maybe probably not but maybe i mean it just depends what his everybody chooses years so probably not him Otherwise Trout

Right conceivably it could last till trout Uh huh Hmm Strasburg Uh When is Strasburg a free agent Strasburg is a free agent After

2016 Uh huh Um Strasburg is a free agent after 2016. Yeah, could be. It's a lot of projecting there, but possibly. Urban Santana? Don't think so. Don't think so. But I don't think so. I don't think so. But I don't know. To me, if Tanaka is going to get something close to 120, it sounds like,

or that's sort of been the figure bandied about, plus the posting fee, I guess. Plus the posting fee, I guess. And I mean, given all the uncertainty around him about how his stuff will translate and just the workload and, you know, just a guy who's never pitched in the majors. I mean, the gap between him and Kershaw is huge. And he has commanded so much interest and seemingly will receive so much money that to me that makes this look good. And even comparing it to Verlander last year, I mean, Verlander signed a five-year extension effectively, I guess. I mean, he signed it two years before he was going to be a free agent,

so it bought out a couple of years. But five years of new money that would pay him $28 million for each of those years, which would be his age 32 through 36 seasons. for each of those years, which would be his age 32 through 36 seasons. Yeah, well, there's that age again. Right. Well, if you're going to give Verlander 28 over five years from 32 to 36, and that's, I mean, you would think factoring in some sort of discount for the fact that he was quite a ways away from free agency, then Kershaw at his age and only one season away from free agency, I would have expected more.

I think the gap is greater there than the money reflects. there than the money reflects. Well, Verlander, by warp at least, had been better than Kershaw in the previous three, four years before he signed it. The fact that it was two years away from free agency is significant, and they should have gotten some discount for that, so that's true. But again, I don't know that i care that much about verlander being 36 at the end of it i just don't know that that matters to me uh very much um but look i'm not i'm not against this at all i like i'm i'm on your side i'm i'm on your side i'm on ned's side i'm on

kershaw's side i'm i'm i'm i'm with you i just i'm just i'm just saying that in four months, when he's injured forever, we're just going to nod and we're going to go, I know this always happens with pitchers. We're going to act all smart. We're going to act all smug and knowing. Like, ah, that's what she should have. I can't because I wrote the transaction analysis, but you can. Well, I can't because I wrote the transaction analysis, but you can.

Well, I mean, we were sort of doing that with Verlander there for a little while, right? Until he turned back into Verlander at the end of the year. We were doing that thing when he had a 6 ERA in May and then 4 ERA through June and July and August. And then suddenly turned back into Verlander. But we were doing podcasts about whether he was the best pitcher on the Tigers or like the second best pitcher on the Tigers. We were not at all confident. And then he became Berlinder again. So you're right.

This could look completely different a few months from now, but I hope not because I like when Clayton Kershaw looks like Clayton Kershaw. I like when Clayton Kershaw pitches in the Midwest League as a closer. Yeah. So yeah, it's probably in your best interest that he does get hurt and has some sort of rehab assignment.

He is posted to the Midwest League where he has to work one inning at a time. For a year. Okay. Deal dissected uh we have one more show this week please send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com and we will pick some of them and answer them uh we'll be back tomorrow