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If Wells opts out, the Jays will have paid him about $13.5MM a year for five years, and gotten production out of him that would make Wells think that he's worth over $21MM a year on the open market. If Wells opts out, this is an AMAZING deal.
Yeah, I don't get it.
Why teams continue to give player opt-out clauses after what we've seen this off-season baffles me. Drew was slightly overpaid when he signed with deal with the Dodgers, but by the time he could opt out he was slightly underpaid, at which point the Dodgers no longer had a RF. Same thing with Aramis and the Cubs. Let me put it this way... if Wells is good (ie. worth the massive cash outlay), he'll opt out because the market will have caught and surpassed him. If he declines, he'll be a $20M albatross that the team can't even trade.
By winter 2011 defensive analysis will be way more advanced and accepted, and by then i'd bet Wells is either a bad CF or a LF. For that, even in 2012, 3 yr 63M will be hard to walk away from.
Yeah, the actual contract terms are explained in the Newsblog article. It's a very oddly-structured deal - in 2008 and 2009, he basically gets paid almost all in a lump-sum in March, and the deal's exceptionally backloaded, making the opt-out less likely and probably less painful to the Jays if he does take it. It seems like a very good deal for the Blue Jays to me - and from Wells' perspective, it's hard to argue that a deal that guarantees you $126 million isn't a great deal.
In theory, the Jays could invest the $5-$10 million per year in surplus value that Wells is bringing in for the next three years and use it to cover whatever negative value he's bringing by the end of this contract.
Whether or not the going rate is 30 million a year or 10 million a year, the player opt out guarantees that the Jays can't get a good deal for the last 3 years. They are either stuck with an albatross contract or he walks. Post #3 completely and utterly misses the point, while also falsely including 2007 in the equation.
I guess. Ricciardi has to get into the post-season in the next year or two to justify the current payroll to his bosses. That's gonna be tough to do without a starting shortstop or three fifths of a credible rotation.
Call me crazy, but I'm starting to wonder if 2007 comes down to Dustin McGowan. Is he traded for help up the middle (Reed + McGowan for Bill Hall? Seriously)? Do they keep him and he finally harness his stuff and turns into a credible starter? Or does he continue to stagnate back and forth between Syracuse and Toronto?
But eliminating the opt out doesent prevent the albatross potential.
The opt out just means that if Wells is really good, both offensivly and defensivly, this ends up as a 4/63 deal, then they have a decision to make on a 33 yr old Wells.
Tying to this, one thing that's under-appreciated around here, I think, is that revenue lags performance in a lot of cases. White Sox attendance jumped 26% in 2006, while the team won 9 fewer games than the year before, because, of course, they were coming off of a World Series win in 2005.
If the Jays make the playoffs and especially if they win a World Series in the next three years, then Wells' $20m+ salaries from 2010 onward probably become a lot more affordable, because the Jays' attendance will be stronger and they could well be making more in local TV/radio money depending on when contracts for those things are signed.
Now, that said, while retaining Vernon Wells increases the Jays' odds of making the playoffs (although arguably not for 2007, since they already had him), playing Royce Clayton at shortstop probably more than offsets that.
But, as others have said, backloading a contract is a good thing.
And your viewpoint excludes everything but the last three years of the contract. Either the Jays get him at a bargain price for four years, or they get him for $18 million for seven years. The $21 million at the end of the deal can't be considered without looking at the $500,000 base salary at the beginning of it.
But you can consider the backloading of the contracts separately from the opt-out clause. One is good for the team, and one is bad.
Conversely, the backloading of the contract is bad for Wells, while the opt-out is good for him. If the cost to the Jays of backloading the deal was the opt-out clause, then you have to consider them together. At which point, I think this is a good deal for both sides.
These are not the only two possible scenarios. There is also:
-Wells performs like a 18-20M player in the later years of the contract (who knows what a 20M player will be then,) and the deal ends up being bretty decent value for both sides.
-Wells performs well enough that he could opt-out for more money, but chooses not to because he wants to stay in Toronto.
Is there ever a situation when backloading a contract isn't a good thing?
I guess if some team in the 20s had signed a deal which backloaded into the 1930s, that would kinda suck.
How so? Did the value of a dollar increase from the 20's to the 30's? What if a german soccer player signed a long, backloaded contract in 1921?
You make a strong case for the reserve clause.
- it is possible, if Vernon has played well enough to opt out, that he still would stay in Toronto. It's good news that he wanted to stay here, it means he somewhat likes it here. And why wouldn't he? Nice city, great team (Halladay, etc.). And it proves Keith Law wrong!
- the deal is brilliantly structured so his optout phase is right when the new CBA must be done. If you haven't noticed a pattern, salaries tend to become hugely inflated during the formation of a new CBA, hopefully because of economic strength of the game. Salaries could dip then pop back up there by 2011.
- another factor is that he wanted to play with his best friend Michael Young at some point. Either he opts out for his hetero life mate, or Michael Young comes here after 2008 (which is just when some big salaries for the Jays start to end, like Glaus)...and the Jays still don't have a long-term SS solution. Also, I suspect the opt-out was just in case he didn't enjoy it here totally and wanted to go to Texas or wherever. He could still do that at the end of the contract anyway, and its unlikely this team would become the next KC Royals. Also, for Wells to walk away, he wouldn't necessarily have to trump the dollar value of the final 3 years (21/year), only the TOTAL sum...Let's say he's good enough to get elsewhere, at the age of 33, another 5 year deal worth $85 million.
The Rodriguez, Jeter, Ramirez, Helton and Hampton contracts were signed in the winter of 2000-01. The last CBA took effect two years later.
I'm really torn about doing this - the accuracy of projecting 2010 or 2014 is going to be pretty horrid based on so many factors and I don't know if I want to tarnish ZiPS, which I feel is a good projection system, with projection that I know are going to be horrid, if that makes any sense.
Why? It's not like they have a whole country to themselves or anything.
Would it have to be a superstation? Are teams allowed to sell tv rights outside of their immediate area, so long as it doesn't conflict with another team's territory? I could have sworn they did this for radio, at least.
Well, I'm sure parts of Canada are in other teams' territory, though - Detroit, Seattle, perhaps Minnesota come to mind as American teams that probably have geographic territories in Canada.
Yes. Inflation rates from 1928-1940, in percentages:
1928 -1.38
1929 0.00
1930 -2.51
1931 -8.80
1932 -10.31
1933 -5.12
1934 3.32
1935 2.54
1936 0.95
1937 3.61
1938 -1.88
1939 -1.42
1940 1.01
Persistent inflation is a very recent (Post WWII) phenomenon. Prior to that, there were long deflationary periods. Good data is hard to come by, but the entire period from 1865 (end of the civil war) to 1900 almost certainly saw negative average inflation.
Some persistent inflation is, I think, a small price to pay for avoiding the ridiculous volatility in the economy that existed before folks started listening to Keynes.
Here in vancouver we got maybe 150 jays games on cable this year (including TSN) and perhaps only 40-50 mariners games. The mariners had a little support here when they were good in the late 90s but it's really petered out since. The jays could have the biggest potential fan base of any team in baseball.
I also see a lot of Europeans - its the first thing people do when they come from England, Australia or what not, maybe because its so iconic or there isn't much else to do in Toronto?
The Blue Jays have access to ALL of Canada as their exclusive broadcast territory. They do not share this region with any other MLB team. This is a potential market of 34 million individuals ( probably the largest single market in the league).The Jays are owned by a large media conglomerate that also owns the "Fox" regional sports network equivalent for Canada. The team generates 400,000-500,000 viewers per game, which I understand is in the top five in all of baseball( I'd love to know the exact numbers for all teams, are they indeed at the top? ). Further benefit is accrued as the Canadian government mandates that a certain percentage of programming must be "Canadian" in origin to keep the Yankee imperialists at bay, Blue Jay broadcasts are considered to be home grown and are an extremely lucrative Canadian content anchor for the various regional Rogers Sports Networks.
Why can't the Jays just sign Marcus Giles,since they are apparently made of money now, and move Hill to shortstop, thereby not having to give up any players.
I don't see this at all. Until the Blue Jays came along with their $126 M Wells had given no indication at all that he liked Toronto, wanted to remain a Blue Jay, or had any inclinatin to re-sign with the Jays.
The talk, kwarren, is that Hill is a marginal SS but a potential GG at 2B.
Bill Hall would be a coup. Milwaukee would be smart to listen, that's for sure. They're so deep they could trade him....
Law didn't say that Wells wasn't going to resign with the Blue Jays unless they came along with a fair market offer. He stated Wells was as good as gone and that there was no chance of him resigning. Of course Wells wouldn't resign for $50M/5. The team was going to have to pony up the money to keep him.
And what sort of indications should Wells have given that he liked Toronto? Walked around with an I Heart T.O. t-shirt? Run for mayor? Become a Canadian citizen?
I guess they could do a series in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver or even Ottawa, but I'm not sure if there are the necessary facilities for that. One three game series isn't going to upset fans in Toronto or throw the players off like it did when the Expos had to play in Puerto Rico, and I'd imagine something like that would be a pretty good draw.
edit: Lots of italics, though
Lesoon of the day: unless you think a guy is on a pretty obvious HOF (or at least borderline) trajectory, you don't make him one of the highets paid AND longest signed guys in baseball
As a weak and feeble defense, he was pretty damn good in 2006 and while I did worry a little about him being a fairly big centerfielder, it's not like he was some 33-year-old TTO sloth.
Or a team in 2006, signing a deal which backloaded into Great Depression II.
Ah, 2006.
Meh.
As I've posted before, there is basically no difference whatsoever between the Wells signing and the Torii Hunter one, except Wells is younger and got 2 years more because of it. I'm not in shock that one of them bombed, though you'd think it would be the older guy. Meh. Vie.
No ####. But that wasn't my point.
The point is that if you're going to say that the Wells signing looked bad *at the time*, then you have to say the same for Torii. To make a difference without using hindsight is impossible.
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