This isn’t just a pie-in-the-sky suggestion or other wishful thinking: the idea of locking up Ronald Acuna for the long term has suddenly become essential.
The Atlanta Braves are now being forced into a position that they were likely hoping they could avoid for at least another year. It’s about making a huge financial commitment to a player with less than 1 year of major league experience.
You could almost see this coming. First, it was about establishing thresholds and slots for players to fall into. That was the case with Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, Nolan Arenado, and now Mike Trout as their teams have committed over $1.3 billion in salaries to these 4 players within just the past month.
(Ed. update – by new reports Thursday afternoon, we can now add Paul Goldschmidt to this list… and we’re now at roughly $1.5 billion for 5 players).
That’s more about the elite veterans, though. They are in a category of their own. What I’m thinking about today are the youngsters… the superstars who are coming up fast, but still don’t have a lot (or ‘any’ in some cases) of major league service time.
Not Just about the Extension
There’s a different reason that teams are scrambling to lock up their young, pre-arbitration superstars this week, and it’s a reason that the Braves absolutely have to be paying attention to as well.
First, let’s review what has just happened with extensions this off-season (most of them this week). You might be surprised at how many are included.
That said, we’ll start that list with one that was executed this time a year ago:
(Note: all contract incentive clauses are ignored; no trade clauses are included where known; sources are all over the place – mostly baseball-reference.com links)
SCOTT KINGERY – PHILLIES, 2018. POS: Util.
- Service time at time of extension: 0
- Player age then: nearly 24
- Number of years: 6
- Number of arbitration years bought out: 3 (all of them)
- Number of free agency years bought out: None*
- Terms:
- Salaries of $1, 1.5, 1.75, 4.25, 6.25, 8.25 millions
- *3 possible option years at $13/$14/$15 million; single $1m buyout
- All option years would be free agency years
- Total guarantee: $24 million
This one might have gotten the ball rolling this off-season… and you might concur seeing the numbers on the next page.