THE PALLILOG
Houston Astros just put on a clinic on how to successfully run a franchise
Dec 8, 2022, 12:28 pm
Yordan Alvarez is a bargain compared to Aaron Judge. Composite image by Brandon Strange.
Yordan Judge (1)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So said philosopher George Santayana in 1905. I would bet not one Major League Baseball owner has any idea who George Santayana was, but Jim Crane and the Astros sure know baseball history and simply seem smarter and more disciplined than many of their peers.
No MLB owner is going broke no matter how stupid a contract he doles out to a player, but this week's Winter Meetings have had fiscal stupidity on display. Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, and Robinson Cano. Three guys who were superstars when they signed contracts of at least 10 years in length that would take them to at least 40 years old. All three deals were contractual anvils years before conclusion. In the post-steroids run amok era, players not only don't get better in their mid-30s, most decline by then.
The Phillies paying 29-year-old shortstop Trea Turner 300 million over 11 years is nuts. The Padres going 11 years 280 million with 30-year-old shortstop Xander Bogaerts is nuts. Any team that gives 28-year-old Carlos Correa 10+ years is nuts. The Yankees “only” gave Aaron Judge nine years. Judge's 360 million dollars over nine seasons makes for simple math. 40 million bucks per season for Astros pitching to generally make him look silly in American League Championship Series. Judge just had one of the great offensive seasons of all-time. It's highly unlikely he'll ever match it. Still, if Judge hits 42 home runs instead of 62, bats .287 (his best average in five seasons before 2022) instead of .311 he's an elite performer. But for how many years? Judge turns 31 in April. The Yankees are the richest franchise in the game, but the back end of Judge's deal is extremely likely to be ugly for them.
Contrast Judge's contract status to Yordan Alvarez's with the Astros. Yordan's six year 115 million extension with the Astros starts in 2023. Alvarez couldn't have become a free agent until after the 2025 season which was critical to why he took the deal that gives financial security to generations of Alvarezs. Given good health and expected performance, what would Yordan have commanded as a free agent at 28 years old? A helluva lot more than the 19.16 mil per season he makes over his Astros extension. The market going haywire is fantastic news for Kyle Tucker who didn't take whatever extension the Astros offered him. Tucker is three seasons from free agent eligibility just before his 29th birthday. If the Astros want to lock him up a la Yordan, it will take Yordan money and probably then some.
The Astros' swing and miss in their pursuit of free agent catcher Willson Contreras is a disappointment but hardly disastrous. The Astros simply weren't going five years 80 mil+ for a catcher who turns 31 in May. Jim Crane and/or whoever else is making GM-type phone calls should be talking with Oakland about Sean Murphy, though the Astros' below average farm system probably makes it tough for them to make the best offer. Murphy is under team control for three more years. Ousted GM James Click was ready to trade Jose Urquidy for Contreras at the July trade deadline before Crane and Dusty Baker outvoted him. Urquidy and a prospect (outfielder Pedro Leon?) or two could be a viable offer for Murphy, but with Justin Verlander officially gone, unless the Astros had a starting pitching depth acquisition ready to go, dealing a solid back end of the rotation guy like Urquidy would be questionable.
With Jose Abreu upgrading the lineup at first base and one left-handed hitting outfielder or another seeming a likely addition, the Astros can endure Martin Maldonado batting ninth a fair number of games one more season while giving more opportunity to Yainer Diaz or Korey Lee. Diaz has hit well at every level of the minors. While plenty of prospects never amount to anything, there is essentially no chance Yainer wouldn't be a meaningfully better lineup piece offensively than Maldy. Lee, considered a reach of a first round pick in 2019 by most around baseball, hit just. 238 at AAA Sugar Land this year but with 25 home runs, and he has a throwing arm probably stronger than Maldonado's.
Stone Cold 'Stros Podcast
Lastly, invitation/encouragement to check out the Astro-centric podcast I have started taking part in with SportsMap masterminds Brandon Strange and Josh Jordan. It will typically stream live on YouTube Mondays at 3PM, available there for replay as soon as it ends, then available a couple hours later in strictly audio podcast form via Apple, Spotify, etc.
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A lockout appears unavoidable! Photo via: Wiki Commons.
Looming over baseball is a likely lockout in December 2026, a possible management push for a salary cap and perhaps lost regular-season games for the first time since 1995.
“No one’s talking about it, but we all know that they’re going to lock us out for it, and then we’re going to miss time,” New York Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso said Monday at the All-Star Game. “We’re definitely going to fight to not have a salary cap and the league’s obviously not going to like that.”
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and some owners have cited payroll disparity as a problem, while at the same time MLB is working to address a revenue decline from regional sports networks. Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball has never had a salary cap because its players staunchly oppose one.
Despite higher levels of luxury tax that started in 2022, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets have pushed payrolls to record levels. The last small-market MLB club to win a World Series was the Kansas City Royals in 2015.
After signing outfielder Juan Soto to a record $765 million contract, New York opened this season with an industry-high $326 million payroll, nearly five times Miami’s $69 million, according to Major League Baseball’s figures. Using luxury tax payrolls, based on average annual values that account for future commitments and include benefits, the Dodgers were first at $400 million and on track to owe a record luxury tax of about $151 million — shattering the previous tax record of $103 million set by Los Angeles last year.
“When I talk to the players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary cap system would be a good thing,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “I identify a problem in the media business and explain to them that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together and that is that there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”
Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, 2026, and management lockouts have become the norm, which shifts the start of a stoppage to the offseason. During the last negotiations, the sides reached a five-year deal on March 10 after a 99-day lockout, salvaging a 162-game 2022 season.
“A cap is not about a partnership. A cap isn’t about growing the game,” union head Tony Clark said Tuesday. “A cap is about franchise values and profits. ... A salary cap historically has limited contract guarantees associated with it, literally pits one player against another and is often what we share with players as the definitive non-competitive system. It doesn’t reward excellence. It undermines it from an organizational standpoint. That’s why this is not about competitive balance. It’s not about a fair versus not. This is institutionalized collusion.”
The union’s opposition to a cap has paved the way for record-breaking salaries for star players. Soto’s deal is believed to be the richest in pro sports history, eclipsing Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal with the Dodgers signed a year earlier. By comparison, the biggest guaranteed contract in the NFL is $250 million for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
Manfred cites that 10% of players earn 72% of salaries.
“I never use the word `salary’ within one of `cap,’” he said. “What I do say to them is in addressing this competitive issue that’s real we should think about whether this system is the perfect system from a players’ perspective.”
A management salary cap proposal could contain a salary floor and a guaranteed percentage of revenue to players. Baseball players have endured nine work stoppages, including a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that fought off a cap proposal.
Agent Scott Boras likens a cap plan to attracting kids to a “gingerbread house.”
“We’ve heard it for 20 years. It’s almost like the childhood fable,” he said. “This very traditional, same approach is not something that would lead the younger players to the gingerbread house.”