11/15: What is A-Rod Sacrificing?
Posted by: Patrick
It looks like A-Rod is on the way back. Back after he opted out, I wrote this:
Various reports have indicated that A-Rod came back to us and is making sacrifices. Hank Steinbrenner said that he was willing to make sacrifices to remain a Yankee. The question is: what sacrifices?
The deal that the Yankees are working out with A-Rod is pegged to be for ten years, in the $270 to $280 million dollar range (with incentives that could push it over $300 million). That's an average annual salary of $27 to $28 million dollars a year. It'll be the biggest contract in baseball history. At some point in the deal, he'll have the highest one year salary of all-time. This is a sacrifice? To me, it sounds like it may be the best deal available to him. In other words, he went where the money was.
The offer that the Yankees gave him before opting out was said to be for five years, in the $140 to $150 million dollar range. Let's say it was five years, $30 million per. With the 3 years on his deal already, that would have been an eight year, $231 million dollar deal. Hank Steinbrenner had called it the start of a negotiation. So, for the sake of discussion, let's go with the Yankees adding two more years and keeping them at $30 million per. That would make the extension for seven years and $210 million, bumping the total contract up to ten years, $291 million. Minus the $21 million from Texas and you have a cost of $270 million for the Yankees (before the luxury tax and all that loveliness).
So, if he signs a deal for ten years, $280 million - assuming we were willing to go to that $291 million dollar figure I just gave - he's making $11 million less. But, we're still paying $10 million more, with the loss of the Texas money. Where's the sacrifice? Dan Graziano writes that Scott Boras comes out of this as a winner. Though, my initial reaction is no... how can you say he's a loser in this if he got his client the biggest contract in baseball history. Maybe accidentally, maybe not, but he did it and A-Rod is going to get the deal. Is it that implausible to say that they made a bluff offer on us to see if we'd jump to $350 million and then when we didn't, they came back and made us pay more than we might have, anyway? I just don't see the sacrifice here.
The only way that I could see A-Rod returning now is if Boras has badly overestimated the market. Let's say, for example, that no one is even able to offer him the $27 million he would have made this year. So, then the Yankees offer him an 8 year, $26 million dollar a year contract, totaling $208 million. With the Yankees, if we added 5 years to his deal at $30 million (which, really, we probably would have gone higher), his current deal would have been worth $231 million and we would have received $21 million from Texas, so it would have cost us $210 million. So, we'd actually be saving $2 million dollars and he'd be making $23 million less. In that sort of situation, it'd be taken, publicly, as him crawling back to us. That would enable us to make the deal. Is that going to happen? Unlikely. Boras is at the top of his field, he has to know that A-Rod will command $30 million from someone. As such, A-Rod is gone.
Various reports have indicated that A-Rod came back to us and is making sacrifices. Hank Steinbrenner said that he was willing to make sacrifices to remain a Yankee. The question is: what sacrifices?
The deal that the Yankees are working out with A-Rod is pegged to be for ten years, in the $270 to $280 million dollar range (with incentives that could push it over $300 million). That's an average annual salary of $27 to $28 million dollars a year. It'll be the biggest contract in baseball history. At some point in the deal, he'll have the highest one year salary of all-time. This is a sacrifice? To me, it sounds like it may be the best deal available to him. In other words, he went where the money was.
The offer that the Yankees gave him before opting out was said to be for five years, in the $140 to $150 million dollar range. Let's say it was five years, $30 million per. With the 3 years on his deal already, that would have been an eight year, $231 million dollar deal. Hank Steinbrenner had called it the start of a negotiation. So, for the sake of discussion, let's go with the Yankees adding two more years and keeping them at $30 million per. That would make the extension for seven years and $210 million, bumping the total contract up to ten years, $291 million. Minus the $21 million from Texas and you have a cost of $270 million for the Yankees (before the luxury tax and all that loveliness).
So, if he signs a deal for ten years, $280 million - assuming we were willing to go to that $291 million dollar figure I just gave - he's making $11 million less. But, we're still paying $10 million more, with the loss of the Texas money. Where's the sacrifice? Dan Graziano writes that Scott Boras comes out of this as a winner. Though, my initial reaction is no... how can you say he's a loser in this if he got his client the biggest contract in baseball history. Maybe accidentally, maybe not, but he did it and A-Rod is going to get the deal. Is it that implausible to say that they made a bluff offer on us to see if we'd jump to $350 million and then when we didn't, they came back and made us pay more than we might have, anyway? I just don't see the sacrifice here.
Mark McCray wrote: