Saturday, March 02, 2013
Angels renew Mike Trout’s contract for $510,000; agent stunned
(www.latimes.com)
posted on March 02, 2013 at 04:30 PM by Los Angeles El Hombre of Anaheim to angels, mike trout, shocked, shocked
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297 comment(s)
... when Trout was assigned a salary of $510,000 on Saturday, a mere $20,000 above the major league minimum, after winning American League rookie of the year honors and finishing second in voting for most valuable player last season, Craig Landis was stunned.
“During the process, on behalf of Mike, I asked only that the Angels compensate Mike fairly for his historic 2012 season, given his service time,” Landis, who represents Trout, said in an email. “In my opinion, this contract falls well short of a ‘fair’ contract, and I have voiced this to the Angels throughout the process.”
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< 1 2 3 4 5 6 >Players pay tax in all the places they play, so he would pay that tax only on home and A's games.
Maybe that was never in the cards, maybe Trout was always splitting the second he was FA eligible, but maybe not.
I wonder if the complaining is just to have an appropriate Chekov's gun to fire later on when the Angels is desperate to extend him. Or just to something to use for foreshadowing in "Deep Trout - the Movie".
There is a number out there and I don't pretend to know what it is. But there's no goodwill to be gained from exceeding it. If I were working for the Angels I'd look for the "standard" raise for guys who were legitimate stars in their first year and add $1 to it. (see the Bill Russel example for the logic)
If precedent is your answer, then there's plenty of precedent for paying a second year player -- even a good one -- barely the major league minimum. Teams do it all the time. There have been a few mild exceptions -- you have to go back 10 and 15 years to find some of them, to include Jeter and Pujols -- but so what? The precendent is to pay the player the minimum or barely above.
So precedent can't be your answer. There's _more_ precedent for what the Angels did.
If precedent isn't the answer, then there's nothing to argue for $1M over $10M or $20M. Trout says "Hey, this is insulting to me, I am worth far more than 1M to you." And your response is, "Well, no second year player has gotten that; suck it up." I don't really see why your position is much better than mine.
They sign with who they are most comfortable with, they sign to be closer to where they grew up, they sign where their wife wants to live, they sign where their best friend plays, etc. etc. and contrary to what Ray Ray thinks NONE of this is irrational.
There is no upside and a lot of potential downside to the Angels renewing Trout the way they did.
I really don't want to see Trout on the Phillies.
Players pay tax in all the places they play, so he would pay that tax only on home and A's games.
True, though when you add the Oakland / SF / LAD / SD and Toronto (where the provincial tax is 10%) games you're still talking about a minimum of 95 games on the Angels' schedule where the state bite would be 10% or more. That's still quite a few million dollars in some cases, and in all cases it's a hell of a lot more than a few hundred thousand.
That is not what I I said. I didn't say players don't make irrational decisions; I said you shouldn't try to predict them and control for them.
You have no more basis for that statement than there is for the statement that this isn't going to matter.
That pretty much cancels out Murray Chass's upcoming take, and we can now start from scratch. Maybe Ray and Sheehan might want to do lunch with Griffey and Lee and tell them how irrational they were.
Anyone with this level of prophetic ability should really go into economics.
/edit - And it doesn't address the idea of decisions he might make over a shorter time span - like whether to accept a deal to buy out his arb years.
going through best 1st/2nd year players by WAR last 20 years:
Piazza was renewed at 600K (minimum was under 200K)
Longoria signed a multi -year extension including $550K in his Soph year (150K above minimum)
Tulo made 750K his second fill year (min was 390K)
Nomah made 1.075M his second full year
Sizemore made 500K his second full year (min was 327.5k)
Heyward made 496.5k (min was 414)
Pujols was discussed
Blalock made 550K (min was 300)
so I'm sure this will surprise no one, but not on;y is Ray's reasoning wrong, but his factual premise is wrong as well
this is known as the "I'm entitled to my opinion and you are entitled to yours" argument.
But I'll play- where is the upside for the Angels? The upside is that it won't matter and they save Artie Moreno some ash tray money in the process? The downside is that this starts the poisoning of the relationship between Trout and the Angels- sure this not mattering is more likely to be the eventual result- but even if the downside is less likely it would be so much worse in magnitude.
The problem with arguing with you is I have no idea if you are just being contrary, or if you really do believe in the idea that everyone is or should be a "rational" actor running a financial cost-benefit analysis on every effing decision.
i think people mostly do, albeit relying on mental shortcuts and assumptions. he's just defining what constitutes rational behavior way too narrowly.
As I said, anyone who would hold a grudge over this, such that it will affect his decision to sign a multi-million-dollar deal to buy out some of his arbitration or FA years in exchange for the certainty that he will earn at least some huge amount of money as a hedge against him getting hurt or sucky is not being rational.
Your sample size of first year players over the last two decades was 8, one of which (Longoria) was irrelevant.
and the Dodgers gave Russell Martin 110K above minimum after his 5.4 WAR sophomore year-
so yes, hindsight being 20/20 the Dodgers should have renewed him at minimum
find ONE elite rookie (at least 4 WAR) who was renewed for 20K above league minimum or less, just one- and I'd have you beat 7:1 even throwing out Longoria.
But, go ahead, find one.
Josh Hamilton whoo hooo, made just 16.8K above minimum
Boujos made 20K above minimum his second full year after having a 4.8 WAR sophomore campaign
Austin Jackson made 26K above min hsi sophomore year
Hanely Ramirez made 22K above
basically you have to hit 5.0 WAR and under to find players treated similarly to Trout
Or how hard to play if the team isn't contending. Or how quickly to try to get back on the field after an injury.
The sample of first-year players who were very, very good isn't a very large one. How the Astros handled Wandy Rodriguez coming off his 77 ERA+ rookie campaign isn't really releveant to what the Angels should do with best-player-in-the-league Trout.
Or to put it in another thread's terms, it's like playing Russian roulette with one bullet in a gun that can fire anywhere from 6 to 20 rounds. It's "rational" only on the craziest level.
so yes, hindsight being 20/20 the Dodgers should have renewed him at minimum
Why? 100k is a disposable sum in this industry, especially to the Dodgers. If they did that for every rookie who had a 4 WAR season and it only helped sway one of those who panned out to resign it's completely worth it. And if it doesn't sway any it's no big loss.
Mike Trout.
Contractual obligations aside, what I haven't seen in this thread is a compelling case for pissing off a superstar over a small amount of money. What does it gain you? Are you taking the perspective that you will never be in a position to ask Trout for a favor, or to ask him to put in more work than he is contractually obligated to do? That Trout being unhappy has no possibility of causing unrest in the locker room?
I was being sarcastic- the Dodgers made the right move with Russell Martin because he went bust and was a fungible commodity after are promising beginning - at the time I think they were being pennywise/pound foolish.
and I was wrong about Hamilton- he was renewed at min + 16k after his 2.4 WAR rookie year, the Rangers then renewed him at minimum +150K after his 5.2 WAR soph year
It was Bourjos who was renewed at min +20K after his 4.8 Soph year-
So last 20 years, ranked by WAR-
you have 18 players with 4.8 WAR+ in there 1st and second years
only 2 were renewed for 20K above minimum or less
Trout and Bourjos
Trout will be making less than Tim Salmon did in his Sophomore Year in 1994 (600K) (4.9 WAR as a rookie)
There really is no precedent for how the Angels just renewed Trout unless you go down to Bourjos essentially getting renewed at minimum after a 438 WAR season.
what you don't find Ray's argument that Trout would be irrational to let this affect his thinking about any future offer the Angels make, and if he's that irrational you don't want him anyway to be a compelling argument?
I mean seriously, if Trout is upset at the Angels he's obviously Elijah Dukes part 2.
Yes he is the ONE, literally
that should make him feel real special.
I never said the bolded part.
It gains you that small amount of money.
I'm not opposed to teams being penny conscious - but you've got to look at the long haul.
Exactly.
So let's say next year the Angels offer Trout a Longoria-type 10 year contract, a contract which Trout agrees is absolutely in his best interests to sign but he's still pissed about the $510K. The idea that Trout would tell them no because of the $510K is so naive and silly I don't know what to make of it.
Or after his free agent year Trout is offered a competitive contract by the Angels. He and his family are happy in LA; he likes the team, the city, the schools. And yet he says "Never! The $510K! The $510K!"
Or the flip side: The Angels give him $810K this year. Five years later, a number of teams make competitive FA offers to Trout, including the Angels. The Dodgers come in $30 million higher and he'd like to sign with them, is okay with leaving the Angels. But he says to himself, "You know, the $810K. I'm going to leave the $30M on the table and go back to the Angels even though I'm fine with leaving."
Okay, whatever.
This is the heart of the discussion to me. It might be irrational of Trout to be pissed off, but irrational or not, the Angels have to deal with him. One of the perogatives of superstardom is behaving like a prima donna, and if you can take reasonable steps to minimize the chances of your superstar leaving down the road for equivalent or even less money than you're offering, you should. That said, the Angels are in a better position to know whether their actions really pissed Trout off than we are.
There are more options. What if next year, the Angels offer Trout a 6-year extension, with the last two years at free agent market value. He doesn't want to play their past what he has to, so he declines to sign anything longer than a 4-year contract.
Someone made the argument that this keeps Trout's financial incentive high to sign a longer-term deal in the near future. Give him a million dollars this year, and maybe he's more likely to say, "No thanks to that longer term deal, I'll pocket this million and take my chances year to year." Maybe Trout and his agent were being unreasonably inflexible about longer-term negotiations?
If this wasn't part of any longer-term negotiation or effort on the Angels part, then I agree it's probably not the best move. Although I don't have much sympathy for players whose union negotiated these rules (and especially not the agents who have probably profited on these same rules in that past), I'd still probably give him a more status-quo number for reigning Rookie of the Year.
Its possible he takes 6/300 with the Angels instead of 7/350 with the Dodgers, sure.
Edit: Diet Coke to [186]
This makes no sense. Why would the Angels pay him more than they'd otherwise have to for those 4 years if he's leaving after 4 years anyway? The reason to buy out some of his arb years is so that you (the team) get a discount on some of the FA years. Otherwise, there's zero incentive to do that.
I'm not saying they end up signing a 4-year deal. I'm saying they reach an impasse because he won't sign anything longer.
Do we know how much the Angels would have had to offer Trout before he wouldn't have been pissed off?
What does the agent think is fair "for his historic 2012 season, given his service time"?
bold mine. I think there's degrees of impact, as I alluded to before. There's "pissed off", "irritated", "pissed off now, but mellowing in hindsight", etc.
No, our fellow "pay him $810K" crew absolutely do not.
They just assume that he will be ok with $810K because it is in line with what some of the other stars with his service time got.
They have no plan to deal with him being upset with $810K, other than, "well, that's what these other guys got."
Based on the agent's comments, somewhat more than what they did.
OTOH, if you're on board with Ray here, didn't the Angels make a mistake by offering him anything above the minimum? If none of this will matter anywhere down the road when Trout finally has some say in his earnings, as Ray insists, then why give him a raise at all?
No, but the Angels presumably did.
Of course Trout wouldn't turn that sort of an offer down, but then what are the odds that the Angels are likely to offer such a contract?
Or after his free agent year Trout is offered a competitive contract by the Angels. He and his family are happy in LA; he likes the team, the city, the schools. And yet he says "Never! The $510K! The $510K!"
Again, not likely that with all those other factors added, he'd dwell on the $510K.
Or the flip side: The Angels give him $810K this year. Five years later, a number of teams make competitive FA offers to Trout, including the Angels. The Dodgers come in $30 million higher and he'd like to sign with them, is okay with leaving the Angels. But he says to himself, "You know, the $810K. I'm going to leave the $30M on the table and go back to the Angels even though I'm fine with leaving."
And in a case like that, it's also unlikely that the $510K would override everything else.
So now you've loaded a gun and taken all but one bullet out of the chamber. The odds are all in your favor, and your accountants are giving themselves bonuses.
But then what if the Angels don't offer a Longoria deal? What if for whatever reason Trout's not thrilled with the LA lifestyle or the 10.5% California millionaire's tax, and he'll demand a substantial bonus to stay there? What if the Dodgers are so far over their luxury tax limit by that point that they're not in the position to make a competitive offer?
IOW what if those benign scenarios you're depicting don't play out? Then where are you, and what in the hell have you gained by hoarding that chump change today? Not a damn thing other than a reputation for penny ante nittiness that you easily could have avoided.
I dunno, but I would try to make it distinctly more than the other players who are stuck at the minimum.
It's not so much that you're trying to send a good message as that you're trying not to send a bad message.
No one has thrown around a number like this.
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