Alleged Pronk contract offer

Jones just turned 30 and plays a premium defensive position. A lot of his value is tied up in his ability to play CF, or at least OF. His 2006 was probably out of line but this is a guy who, when "right" (which he isn't right now) creates somewhere between 10-18 win shares with his bat and another 5 or so with his glove.

Hafner just turned 30 and is a guy who creates 20-25 win shares when right, all with his bat. I think the implication is pretty clear-Jones is going to lose value as his defense declines furhter. Hafner just has to get his bat right and his value is back.

Hafner's 04, 05, and 06 seasons are all better than any season Vaughn ever put up. Vaughn signed a 6 year $88 million dollar deal after his age 30 season. That's more expensive than the proposed Hafner deal, in total dollars, per year dollars, and years. And that's in 1998.

With both Vaughn and Jones, if I was more speculative, I might make an argument about baseball years vs. regular years. Hafner has played about half as long in the majors as either Mo or Andruw and one might think that's a good thing. This argument is made with the NBA and players who enter as teenagers-they age faster. I doubt it's a very good argument as it relates to baseball, but throwing it out there.

There's no more reason to think Hafner's going to age like Vaughn than there is to think Hafner is going age like Edgar Martinez. Vaughn had a number of weird injuries that drove him from his peak.

I don't know how Travis is going to age but I think it's an ok gamble to get him on the (relative) cheap and see if you end up with a bargain. I mean if you could get him as low as 4 years/60 would you do it? That's the other total speculated in the article, right?

It's like anything else: you can take the chance now with the bigger risk or you can wait and maybe miss out on a bargain or miss out on misspending a whole lot of money.

And just as a point of information, would we be buying out his option year (2008 at 4.75 million) and doing the additional years after that or is it adding the length of the contract after the option year?

That team option is F'ing brilliant by the way. Go Shap, go.

My point is the A's don't sign their FA players, and you seemed to be saying that doing so is out of the question.

07:$10M, 08:$14.5M, 09:$18.5M, 10:$18.5M, 11:$18.5M, 12:$19M, 13:$20M, 14:$18M club option ($7M buyout)

So, it sucks. But they've got the advantage that Lowry and Cain are both super cheap right up through the ends of 2010 and 2011 respectively. Lowry has a 6.25 option in 2010 and Cain has a 6.25 in 2011. That's cheap today for those guys; if the market keeps moving up it's going be incredibly cheap by 2010/2011.

Lincecum will also still be crazy wild cheap then.

Now that I think about the biggest hindrance to them signing CC might be that they already have too much pitching. Looking at Zito's deal, they'd have about 30 already in pitching by 2010. If they're salary is at around 100-110 by then, meh. I think you can justify putting half your payroll in starting pitching if it involves three of the best in the league (Tim L, Cain/Lowry, and CC). They need to start stacking up cheap position players now.

The parties agree that the player is worth, in the abstract, $75 million over five years, or 15 x 5.  But he's willing to give a hometown discount, like $48 million for four years, or 13 x 4 plus a fifth-year option.  Problem is, without a no-trade clause, the player might give the discount and then get traded out of the hometown.

So what you can do is build in escalator clauses in the event of a trade.  So if the player is traded, his salary immediately jumps from 13 to 15, and the fifth-year team option becomes guaranteed -- or maybe it becomes a player option.

Quite a few players now have these kinds of clauses -- including Grady Sizemore.  He gets 500K in cash plus a 10% raise across the rest of his contract -- and his 2012 team option becomes a player option.