5 years $65 million guaranteed.
After much speculation as to exactly what kind of payday Jose Bautista's monumental 2010 season would garner, we have a concrete answer.
The contract breaks down thusly; $8m for 2011, $14m per for 2012-15 and a $14 million club option for 2016 with a $1m buy out. I thought it might be clever to cover some of this contract in the here and now, load it top heavily and have his contract be less obstructive as time goes on, perhaps freeing up more money when the Jay's are into their targeted competitive point (2013 and beyond, most likely), but apparently the opposite was more beneficial to the Roger's corporation. I'm not an accountant.
So, this contract has the Jay's and Bautista linked until he is 35, potentially 36, which I suppose is a good age to have a contract end (for the Jay's). Usually players look to sign long term contracts around the 32-34 year range when they are at the twilight of their peak, sign for 4-6 years taking them into their late 30's and then, most likely, retire. We won't be overpaying Jose for his knitting years. He'll have to earn another contract at that age.
This seems like a lot of money to me based on the fact that Bautista has only 1 productive MLB campaign under his belt. But then, if he had a longer track record of doing remotely what he had accomplished in 2010, we wouldn't get a sniff at the guy for this amount of money.
So, it's a mutual risk. If he regresses to the 10 bomb hitting Pittsburgh Pirate, we got bamboozled. If he hits 50 dingers for 5 straight years, he's the steal of the century. But neither one of those things is going to happen, quite frankly, with both seeming as unlikely as the other. What the Jays are betting on is that Jose will have a floor of .250, 30 HR, 100 RBI with an OBP of .350, which seems pretty legit. If this is his line for the next 5 years, maybe we overpay slightly with this current contract, but not terribly. Anything above that line and we draw a little smiley face on his pay cheque.
Alex Anthopolous said it well when he explained that you have to bet on someone, and he and his team of scouts were happy to bet on Jose Bautista. They bet on him because of his attitude, his work ethic, his ability to be a bridge between the young spanish speaking players, coming up soon or already there, and the english speaking players, and they bet on him as a leader of the clubhouse.
If you are a Blue Jays fan, now you've been asked to bet on Jose Bautista too.
No comments:
Post a Comment