Long term deal with Papelbon in the near future?
Posted on March 3, 2008
Filed Under Baseball Miscellaneous | 2 Comments
A recent trend in baseball prospects has popped up and that trend is signing young players to long contracts before they are even eligible for arbitration. This stops the team from having to go to arbitration with their prospects and locks up future All-Stars during the prime of their careers. The fault with this method of doing things is that the kids could end up injured or their prior performance could have been indication of their future performance.
Where am I going with this? The Red Sox and Jonathan Papelbon have had a little bit of contract discussion lately. It doesn’t look like a long term deal will be struck anytime soon because that isn’t how Theo Epstein runs things but I personally think it would be a good idea.
The Sox probably have a shaky trigger finger on this for one huge reason. Paps is under contract with the team for a few more years regardless of if a new agreement is reached or not. This means that if his productivity declines or if he gets seriously injured in the future, Boston won’t be on the line for a large chunk of change every season for the life of the deal.
The downfall, if you can call it that, is that his price tag will continue to steadily rise if he continues to show dominance as one of the best closers in baseball. K-Rod recently got $10 million dollars in arbitration from the Angels and is likely to hit the free agency market after this season. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a $13 million dollar a year deal that could stretch for 6 or 7 years. Boston could probably get Papelbon for that long, at half the price, if they signed him now.
We’ll see what happens but its likely a long-term signing won’t happen this year and that Paps will sign a 1 year contract for slightly south of $1 mil.
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2 Responses to “Long term deal with Papelbon in the near future?”
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I definitely don’t see Paps getting a multi-year deal this year. A one-year deal, maybe (or even easily), but I somehow don’t think he’ll get a big deal for a year or even two more.
I don’t see it happening either. I doubt he’ll get a one-year deal too. Its more than likely he’ll just get renewed for a standard price.
Hopefully it doesn’t do anything for his morale and drive to stay with the team in the long-term.