Lock ‘Em Up
Two young up and coming MLBers finalized long-term extensions today, with the Rockies signing Troy Tulowitzki to a 6 year, 31 million dollar deal, and the (Devil) Rays signing James Shields to a 4 year 11.25 million dollar extension. This seems to be part of a recent trend in baseball where teams are locking up promising players to long-term deals in an effort to save money before they qualify for arbitration and/or free agency.
For instances like the Tulowitzki and Shields signings, this is largely a win-win situation—the player gets long-term financial security, and the club gets a potentially all-star caliber player at a long-term discount price. Albeit in brief major league experience, both Shields and Tulowitzki have shown they have the talent to be very productive MLB players, and since both extensions are heavily backloaded, the short-term investment the clubs are making is in fact quite minimal.
Assuming both players continue their development, these deals look like winners for all involved. Here’s to hoping more GMs begin considering these types of deals—not only do they make good financial sense in the right cases, they also encourage players to stay with one team, something that has become increasingly uncommon in today’s game.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Perhaps—dare I say it?—we need a Smart GMs tag.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Tulo’s a good player, but I didn’t really get locking him up NOW after one season. This might seem weird, but I actually like the Shields deal better. Three years of team options … that’s flexibility.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I agree that Shields’ deal is better (at least from the club’s perspective). At the same time, I would trust Tulowitzki’s abliity to have sustained success more than Shields—just because pitchers seem more prone to rapid demises.