Atlanta Braves Free Agent Strategy: Could They Get Creative?
For those who aren’t familiar with the term front loading, or even back loading, I’ll break it down simply. Most teams when signing free agents use one of three types of structuring in contracts: the first is the traditional set contract. In these types of contracts, players earn the same amount of money annually each year of their contract.
An example of this is last years big free agent acquisition, Nick Markakis. Nick inked a four year deal worth $44 million dollars. This included a signing bonus (a common practice with incoming free agents) worth $2 million dollars up front. The remaining salary was spread evenly between the four years at $10.5 million a season.
The next is a slowly inflating contract. These are most commonly seen among players signing extensions, but are not unheard of in free agency.
Melvin Upton, the Voldemort of Braves Country, received a $3 million signing bonus, and saw his contract slightly inflate by $1 million each season ($12.45 million in 2013, $16.45 million in his final season come 2017). This is one of the more subtle examples of an inflating contract, which in itself, is just a hybrid of a really common type of contract given to big time players in free agency: the back loaded contract.
The reasoning for back loaded deals is pretty understandable. Most teams spending big on free agents feel they are one difference maker between battling for the Wild Card and winning the World Series. And in most situations, this is because they already employ several other quality players making a decent amount of money. So by bringing in a difference maker to team with lots of financial commitments, it’s a bit easier if you can pay them less money annually up front, and keep a lot of it towards the end, where you have less money committed. There are a few other reasons, but most of them have to deal with short term value at lower salary.
Jose Reyes, Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, Ervin Santana, Mark Buehrle, Russell Martin, Josh Hamilton, Shin-Soo Choo, Max Scherzer, Jayson Werth. All of these players, virtually all of them very top free agents of the past 5 years, are signed to moderately to extremely heavily back-loaded contracts.
Giancarlo Stanton, Justin Verlander, Troy Tulowitzki, Felix Hernandez, Joey Votto, Buster Posey. These players represent ones who technically signed extensions with their teams, but were close enough to free agency that their contracts were basically free agent contracts signed before they had the chance to shop their services around.
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