Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Seattle Weekly: The Real Reason “King” Felix Chose to Stay In Seattle
(www.seattleweekly.com)
Chace’s Pancake Corral, for real. (NYT backgrounder on the star who stayed)
Read More...Seems our favorite M, who dazzles us with the K, makes it a point to visit the Pancake Corral a couple of times a week, in fact, whenever the team’s in town.
“Yes, he comes in with wife and cute little boy and he always has the strawberry waffle with bacon and eggs and orange juice,” says owner Jane Zakskorn, whose dad, William Chace, now deceased, opened the cozy little breakfast and lunch joint 55 years ago ...
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1 2 >YankeeBlue Jay by 2015.??????????????????
Johan was a good deal for the Mets the first three seasons, 14.5 WAR for 60m dollars, but the Mets have gotten .1 WAR the past two years for 46.5, and owe him 25.5m dollars this year. I have no idea how good he'll be this year, through June of last year he had a 2.75 ERA, a 8.5 K/9, and a 2.8 K/BB. Then he got hurt, and was absolutely atrocious until finally going down for the season. 5 GS, 19 IP, 16.19 ERA.
Paying $27M for five years to a pitcher 2 years out is a scary prospect.
I just don't care.
I love the fact that Seattle loves King Felix, and King Felix really does love Seattle too, and that he's going to be with the M's for a very, very long time.
Now we're talking real money.
Well, depends what you mean by "best." Which pitchers would you rather hand a $175M/7 contract to right now? I think you could make a strong case for at most two (Verlander, Kershaw).
I'd at least consider Strasburg.
EDIT: Checked Fangraphs and the velocity dip isn't as bad as I thought it was.
And then Price and Cain a tick below them.
Both are going to sign for a boat load of money on a long extension and the Yankees and other teams that were dreaming of a great free agent season next year are going to cry in their sleep.
Your math is correct, but this is not an extension.
They ripped up Felix's current contract.
The new contract is a straight $25M/yr for 7 years.
The contract years are 2013 thru 2019 - Felix's age 27 to age 33 seasons.
Felix gets a $5.5M raise for 2013 and a $5M raise for 2014,
as his previous contract paid him $19.5M & $20M, respectively.
The M's apparently don't like to backload contracts under GMZ - good!
I agree with this. It's great to see Felix stay with the Mariners.
Or at least will put a product worth watching on the field every few games.
Just like the Red Sox and AGon!
You know this was a joke referencing Dave Cameron's #6 org thing from a couple years ago, right?
Nothing personal to FPH, but from here this reference is more tired than saying "MY WIFE" like Borat at this point.
Yeaahh, baby!
No, not in a "his arm will fall off an the contract will cripple the team" sort of way. Just that for some players, sticking with one team just seems right. Like Kirby Puckett going to the Red Sox at the end of his career would have been wrong. Or Cal Ripken playing one more year with the Brewers. Or Dwight Evans finishing his career with the Orioles (that actually happened, and it felt wrong).
I'm glad Felix is happy there, and hope he ends up a career long Mariner.
BEHOLD! You're risking a patient's life!
Folks like Fancy Pants Handle and Albert Belle need to come up with new material.
So it seems.
naw, the dodgers will take on all the salary, but only if he tears his labrum or something.
this.
FWIW, Hernandez has a hair over 7 years of service time, so he'll presumably get his 10 and 5 rights late in the 2015 season. If we treat this like an extension and not a new contract, he'll have full no-trade protection towards the end of the first year of the new deal. That's not a whole lot of added risk to the player, I wouldn't think. He's got bigger problems if he or Seattle falls apart so much that the Mariners want to deal him before he gets no-trade protection.
People here were very harsh on the Yankees over Sabathia. ZIPS was particularly cruel by comparing him to Warren Spahn, then Dan followed up with the uncalled for line "there have been a lot of fat quality pitchers that lasted forever". When Sabathia signed the extension, BBTF was full of nasty comments: "CC could have easily gotten a better deal from several clubs. I hate it when the Yankees catch a break like this." "Good deal for both sides" in #10 was especially brutal. Such nastiness and anti-Yankee hatred!
Are you suggesting ITS A TRAP?
This trade raises an interesting question to me. The Mariners spent the offseason trying to obtain high-profile, expensive players (Josh Hamilton and Justin Upton most notably), and have been thwarted. When the dust settled, all of those players had been taken off the market, and all that was left were players that the team didn't want (like Michael Bourn). But failing to get the expensive players left them with tons of room in the payroll. They made a couple of smaller deals (like the Jaso-Morse trade) that made up some of the difference, but they still wound up below their target payroll number. With the Felix contract, it seems that they saw the potential to structure the "extension" so that they would pay more now, when they have spare money to spend, in order to save money in the future.
My question, then, is why teams don't "proactively" restructure contracts more often. It's not uncommon for a team to have designs on spending quite a bit of money in free agency, and then come away empty-handed as they get outbid. In such a case, there may be no players left on the market who represent good value. In this circumstance, why doesn't the GM take the money the owner has budgeted and offer players on multi-year deals the option of getting paid the same amount of money in total, but more of it in the upcoming season and less in the following one(s)? The players should jump at the opportunity, partly because they're getting the money NOWNOWNOW and partly because the money is worth more before it gets hit by inflation. In exchange, the GM gets increased future payroll flexibility without sacrificing much, since there are no players presently on the market that are worth spending the money on instead. Is this a case of the principal-agent problem, where the GM is thinking mostly about winning in the present because he might not be around to see his efforts bear fruit five years in the future? Is it something that the players, agents, or MLBPA would dislike for some reason? Would it be a source of unnecessary distraction or potential clubhouse turmoil?
NOT!
"I Fall To Pieces"?
I guess that makes sense for any contract given out to a pitcher.
Are you thinking of a situation, for example, in which the team has Player X under contract for years 2013-2015 for $10 million each year but decides to offer a restructuring of $15m in 2013, $10m in 2014, and $5m in 2015? It doesn't happen because the teams get nothing out of it. They can achieve the flexibility for 2015 by adding what they don't spend from their 2013 to their 2015 budget, and meanwhile make interest on that $5 million.
Yes, this seems to be how it works. But unspent money goes back in the owners' pocket. If the owner is willing to not pocket the money, then it could be saved towards future payroll just as easily.
It's an interesting question but I assume the answer is because an owner will almost never agree to a deal that is obviously not in his financial favor. Of course, given that may have happened here, it's maybe not the best thread for me to assert such a thing but it's possible that Felix would have demanded $28 per year over the extension if the Ms hadn't agreed to the extra front-loading.
But, given the relatively short time periods of MLB contracts, the difference between NPV and raw value is usually not a ton of money. What is it here, about $3 M more than sticking with the existing contract and adding 5/$135? Regardless, the Ms are saving at most $3 M per year in future payroll -- what you can get for $3 M is not likely to have a big impact on the quality of those future M's teams.
The M's apparently don't like to backload contracts under GMZ - good!
This is hard to say. Seems to me a lot of backloaded contracts have worked out well for the teams. Sometimes they work out well because they allow the team to add more talent this year (if they are currently competitive or on the brink). Sometimes they work out well because they are able to trade the guy after the cheap years. The Jays made out like bandits on the Wells contract, the Marlins got out of the "big" money parts of Buehrle and Reyes (and Delgado going further back). In theory, at worst, the trading team ends up having to spend their savings from the cheap years on eating part of the contract of the guy they're trading. Granted, by definition, the player is easier to trade or does less harm to your future payroll if the contract isn't backloaded but you're making less profit up front.
Given the difficulty in predicting the long-range future in baseball, teams are probably better off maximizing their return on a player in the short-term since a) money in hand better than money not in hand; b) you have a much better sense of how good the team is in years 1-3 than years 4-7; c) you have a reasonable chance of getting away from it later while retaining at least some of the profit you made early.
Basically, if Felix's arm falls off while he's still on the Ms, they're eating the entire contract no matter how the contract is structured so that doesn't really play into the decision of how to structure it (it plays into the decision to give him 7 years to begin with obviously). Contract structure is about current vs. future profit (vs. the player's equivalent desire for money in the hand now) and ease of trading later.
AND Mike Crudale.
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