Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 89: The Evan Longoria Extension, the Rays, and Why Players Aren’t Holding Out for More Money

Episode Date: November 27, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss Evan Longoria’s second extension and why players aren’t holding out for a bigger slice of the revenue pie.

Good morning and welcome to episode 89 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Prospectus daily podcast. In New York, New York, I am Ben Lindberg and in Long Beach, California, where we haven't heard crickets for weeks, Sam Miller. Are they all gone? You know what? Actually, they are here. They just don't seem to chirp in the winter is what I'm learning. They're probably terrified. If they make a sound, you'll go stomp on them. Could be. I found one

not too long ago. There was one in my attic. And that was I got it quickly. I actually found it and got it. But there was a period for about 15 minutes where I just thought, well, okay, I'm going to move. Because when there's a cricket in your attic, it is deafening and it's all the time. By got it, of course, you mean hunted it down.

It's exterminated. Pumped it. It's not sugarcoat things. I'm fascinated by that side of you. So yesterday I brought a topic and today is the next day, which means that you brought a topic. What topic did you bring? Evan Longoria. Okay.

What do you have to say about Evan Longoria? Evan Longoria. Okay. What do you have to say about Steve Longoria? So I guess my – I mean, I don't know. There are some angles to take on his extension. Some of them are predictable. Maybe there are some that are not predictable. question that I have more than anything is after the last year or maybe even two years of hearing about how much money is about to flow into the game through these TV contracts, have players

just not heard about this? Do players not read the blogs and such? Because there doesn't seem to be and such, because there doesn't seem to be... I mean, this was kind of a giveaway. And I mean, I totally get it from Evan Longoria's perspective. But I don't know, where are the players demanding insane raises, Ben? Well, maybe Evan Longoria thinks this is an insane raise. If he was happy with his first extension maybe he is just he's overjoyed with this one i'm sure he is overjoyed to have the money sure anyone would be happy with that money um i mean it's possible that evan longoria is not a good negotiator or that his agent isn't

they're just kind of uh i mean his first extension extension was, of course, famously team friendly. And this is not quite team friendly to that extent, but to a lesser extent, it seems to be. I don't know, I guess the, I mean, maybe it's the TV money that enables the Rays to make this deal at all. The Rays having a hundred million dollar player is not something that we've seen before. So even if it is a good deal, maybe it's not a risk that they could have taken before with the old TV contracts where they were getting half as much money a year from that, or they would have been. So as for why he's not holding out for more, don't know I it seems like I don't know free agency is delayed at all this year not a whole lot of big names have signed but of course we're

not even quite at the winter meetings yet so there's been some speculation that teams kind of are holding off on bidding because the prices are high. And I did an article, I guess it was last week, on how the players who had signed so far didn't seem to be making extraordinary amounts of money, or at least it didn't seem to be any greater than usual inflation so far. But it's possible that those are just kind of the first dominoes to fall are the guys who would not have held out for a lot of money and that the the big name long-term guys are just all kind of waiting or teams are waiting and hoping that the demands will come down i don't know but we certainly have seen a trend towards long-term

extensions it seems like um i remember colin wires wrote an article at BP, I think it was earlier this year, maybe in April, where he said that if teams kept extending all their players and locking them up through their free agents years, that it would be possible that they'd end up spending more money because the few free agents left who were not locked up to long-term deals would have such great leverage because they're the only free agents available on the market that teams would have to overpay for those guys. So he speculated that maybe it would come back to bite teams in some sense. I don't know that we will see that. I mean, obviously, anytime that there's something that is bought or sold, there's both, you know,

there's supply and there's demand. There are two forces operating on any market. I've always imagined, and I think this is probably true, but I've always imagined that the limits on salaries are generally from the revenue side. That teams want to win, that they get perhaps emotional about winning and perhaps irrational about winning, and they spend the money that they can afford to spend to win in most cases and so if there's more money in the game as has historically been the case there will be more money going to the players um but of course there's also the supply side and i mean there is i don't know it is conceivable i guess it's conceivable that there are actually, that there are enough kind of, I don't know, that there is a large enough pool of players out there that, I don't know, that maybe players do kind of, maybe there are enough players that they're kind of robbing each other of some leverage that, I mean, obviously Evan Longoria is not a player that you can even easily replace

by another six win player but maybe there are enough players out there who are one and two win players that are sort of easily available that that teams don't really have quite as much of a need to spend big money to fill out their roster. And, of course, I mean, it is the case that from a player's perspective, they are all getting paid way more than they, you know, require to actually do this job. I mean, most of them would do it for a lot less if that's what it came to. And so, I don't know. I think that this is probably just maybe a little bit of a lag, and maybe once more teams are on equal footing with TV contracts,

we'll see the spending blow up. But I don't know. It is interesting that this offseason, I can't really, other than the Dodgers, I can't really think of any moves where you looked at it and said, wow, that team has that money. That's interesting. Well, this one doesn't make you think that at all? No, not at all. In fact, it makes me think just the opposite. I mean, it's such a prudent move. I mean, I keep seeing it sort of phrased like, oh, well, now that they've signed Longoria to this deal, will they

have enough money to extend David Price? The fact is that Longoria, now that he's cost-controlled, now that they know that they've got a potential superstar for $16 million a year for the next decade, it actually frees them up to spend the money elsewhere. They know that they've got their cornerstone. I mean, obviously, it could go wrong. They might get stuck with a guy who's not contributing. There are precedents for players like Longoria aging very poorly and aging very early. But basically, what they know is that they don't have to go spend $28 million on a free agent to bat forth and play at a corner. They got their guy and he only cost $16 million. So now they

essentially have that extra money to play with. I mean, this is, as far as I can tell, just all about cost control and having more flexibility in the future, not less. And in addition to that is the fact that his no trade rights don't kick in for five more years. I mean, it absolutely blows me away that Longoria didn't get a no trade clause in this. I mean, I guess like he just, maybe he just doesn't like to ask for things. Because it, I mean, it really is the easiest contract in the world to move. I mean, the Rays should probably trade him right now.

He is, again, the most valuable trade commodity in baseball. And if they're worried at all about the long-term consequences of having this money on their books. Well, goodness gracious, there are 28 or 27 teams that would just be thrilled to give up everything in their farm system for Longoria at this point, I think. There are the injury concerns, I suppose, which maybe could have deflated his price a little bit. Yeah, but it's sort of a thing that has

repeated or a couple times or i guess it was it was the quad in 2010 was an issue and then it was an oblique in 2011 uh and then there was a foot thing last year i think or he had surgery for i guess it was for the hamstring, or for a foot in 2011, like a year ago, and then he just recently had some sort of procedure on his hamstring. So it's something, I guess it's a factor. It's not that scary when you consider how little money he will be making relative to what he's worth if he is healthy or even if he isn't healthy, really. Even if he just kind of plays 120, 30 games a year, he will probably be worth this contract. Yeah, I think depending on what you think about salary inflation, basically, if you

accept that the options were all going to be picked up and you just you know you just start this on the the final six years um he basically needs to be worth probably 12 million 12 wins in those six years which is league average pakoda had him uh at about 19 so i mean you know it's not like it's not a it's not a huge gap it's not like they it's probably not comparable to I mean it certainly is not comparable to the first deal that they signed with him um but it's a nice move the interesting thing about these moves all these moves anytime you see a move like this is that the dynamic is is um is very clear and You see how that dynamic helps teams in that they can take on a lot more risk than the person can. The person only gets to sign this to make money once. The

person gets to play one career. There's a natural fear that if Longoria walks in front of a bus tomorrow, then he doesn't get any money. He gets $17 million, which is nice, but he doesn't have four generations of money in his bank account. And so he can't really take that risk, and clubs can. And so for them, this is just like being an insurance company and taking on risk and making a little bit of profit on each one. just like being an insurance company and taking on risk and making a little bit of profit on each one. But the raise, if there's any team that has less of a margin for risk than the player, it might be the raise. I don't know. I can see why people get it from the raise perspective as taking on this risk. But to me, the money is just so small. Once you factor in inflation, once you figure out what $16 million or $20 million actually means in 10 years, I mean, you're talking about a guy who's basically going to get paid

like, you know. It's not really a risk. If the Rays are going to exist as a team, then it's not that big a risk. If there's a risk that they're just going to go bankrupt and not exist anymore, then it's a problem to commit this amount of money. But otherwise, I mean, unless they're going to kind of chug along in current Marlins mode and not pay anyone anything, if their situation gets so dire that they can't afford a really good player on an affordable contract, then I guess they have bigger problems than just Evan Longoria. If they had just released him and made him a free agent, how much do you think he makes

as a free agent this offseason? What do the Dodgers pay him? Man, he is, what, 27. He just turned turned 27 I would think that he gets a 10 year deal for I don't know maybe like Votto kind of range Votto range is like 240

or 220 I will look it up Prince got 9 and 214, I think. So 216, something like that. So you have to think Longoria would get more than Prince, right? Yes, definitely. So yeah, maybe 10 and 270, maybe. So yeah, honestly, it would be interesting just, I think if I were the Rays just for fun, I might do like a Kevin Towers thing.

Razor him out there just to see what you could get. But, like, you take a team like the Dodgers, which would obviously love, you know, that's where their need is, their base. They have the money. They can take on the contract. have the money they can take on the the contract i honestly don't think that the dodgers have um an organization capable of being worth evan longoria like i don't think that they could trade their entire organization for evan longoria unless they send a whole bunch of money back you know like they could obviously every cash they can give up at camp and take on the salary but like i don't think that their entire farm system is worth having Longoria at this point. And I don't know that they have enough – well, I guess Kershaw is.

So, okay, so they have Kershaw. Never mind. Yeah, I guess. But you're kind of talking about – I mean, it's the surplus value, right? I mean, it's the difference between what Longoria is getting paid and what he's worth. So you're saying that that difference would be worth more than every Dodgers prospect, you think? Yeah. Well, I would say that that difference certainly would be. I mean, if we're saying that Longoria is going to get $136 million over the next 10 years, we're saying that he would get $250 million in a 10-year deal. So essentially he's $110 million in surplus value right now.

I doubt that the Dodgers farm system is worth half that. Yeah, that could be. I remember Kevin did an article on at any particular time there is a certain, there tends to be a certain number of players in a farm system who go on to be anything. And it was not a lot of players. Maybe like one star or like an average guy, like a couple average guys and a few role players or something. So yeah, that sounds plausible.

Can I tell you my favorite factoid? Yes. From today about this? This is from Jeff Passon. Until Monday, the most money the Rays had ever guaranteed a player was $35 million on December 4th, 1997 for Wilson Alvarez before they had played a single game. That is a good factoid. And they even got a team option, the traditional Rays team option.

Yeah. At what point do – does there come a point at which teams stop negotiating with the Rays because they've just never seemed to get the losing end of a deal? they've just never seemed to get the losing end of a deal. You just have to, I mean, I think that to get to that stage in your career, you have to have enough confidence that you don't think that you're going to get beat by a trade. So I don't know. The rumor was always that after Moneyball,

there were teams that wouldn't deal with Billy Bean anymore. I always wondered whether there was any evidence. Because they were afraid or because they didn't like him because he wrote a book about himself? Well, the rumor, and I was not that involved with baseball at the time, but the rumor that I remember was that they were afraid. And I always thought that somebody should go back and look and see if there's any evidence of that in the record. But I don't know. I wouldn't trade with them. I mean, I guess I would because they have...

With Friedman? Yeah, well, their needs are so different than most teams' needs that you could certainly make a trade that works for both parties, I think. Yeah, I guess so. I'd be nervous about it, though. Yeah, probably. I still can't believe he didn't get a no-trade clause. Yeah. It just blows me away. I mean, think about the frenzy that is going to exist in 2016 and 2017 as that 10-5 is looming,

10 and 5 is looming, and he is the new Felix. And it's just nothing but, does it make sense for the Rays to trade Evan Longoria? Can't wait. It's going to be constant. For a year's worth of articles about that. Should start him now. I guess we just did.

Yeah, I guess we did. All right. All right. I guess we're done so email us and we will answer your emails on tomorrow's show we need emails to talk about so send us some at podcast

at baseballperspectives.com and we will talk to you tomorrow in episode 90