Just at a guess, I think he’s exercising some selective memory here or perhaps just oversimplifying it.

For one thing, he did get a $2 million signing bonus. It’s more likely that Boras wanted a signing bonus in the $5.5M-plus range, and the Indians said, no, we won’t do that, but we will give you a four-year major league deal.

Keep in mind, the Indians got an extra year on the option clock because although drafted in 2002, he didn’t sign until after the season, so the option clock started with 2003 — something that you can’t do under the new CBA unless it’s a college senior — a very, very unlikely scenario all in all.

But still, the idea that giving out a major league contract is worthwhile to save $1 million or more on the signing bonus is pretty dubious. If it “works,” you’re still dealing with inflated salaries in arbitration down the road — minor league signing bonuses don’t count, but major league AAV does count. If it doesn’t work, you’ve got one less option year to use. (Interesting question, would the Indians have exposed Guthrie to Rule 5 after his horrible 2004, and if so, what about after his mediocre 2005? Just imagine if he’d been blowing up in Buffalo rather than Baltimore in 2007, in only his second option year, with the big-league club already good enough to win 96?)

All that aside, both this article and the Hoynes piece from last week engaged in quite a bit of revisionism. This article said:

Indeed, Guthrie started out at Double-A Akron and made it as far as Triple-A Buffalo in his first season. The right-hander repeated the same trajectory the next season and pitched sparingly at the big league level in 2004 and ’05.

Heh, not exactly. Guthrie dominated when he started in Akron and was awful after he was promoted. The next season he started out even worse in Buffalo and had to be sent back to Akron, where he was mediocre — how anyone gets “the same trajectory” out of that, I have no idea. The only reason he even sniffed the bigs in 04 and 05 was because by that point the Indians knew they’d screwed up and had a ticking clock with the guy, so they’d better give him a quick taste of the bigs in 04 and 05 since 06 was his last option year.

The Hoynes piece:

Guthrie was a starter, but every time the Indians called him up, they used him as a reliever. He made 16 appearances in the big leagues. Only one was as a starter … Meanwhile, a pitcher like Jason Johnson was spoon-fed starts by the Indians in 2006.

Hey, Hoynsie, way to go sliding in the crowd-pleasing slap at Jason Johnson — totally dishonest in this context. Guthrie had ended 2005 with a poor 5.08 ERA in Buffalo — at age 26 — and not one person in the media or industry thought he was ready to pitch in the majors to start 2006, which is the point at which the Indians signed Johnson. Guthrie wasn’t at the front of the line in Buffalo at that point, anyway, Carmona was. Johnson was only given 14 starts and never stood in the way of Guthrie or anybody else, except maybe the 22-year-old Carmona, who was pressed into bullpen service instead.

Guthrie finally turned in his first good season in the minors in 2006, age 27, but by that point, Carmona and Miller and Sowers had all emerged to look like above-average major league pitchers. Guthrie’s numbers didn’t even look quite as good as Brian Slocum’s, and Slocum was two years younger with two remaining options.

I don’t have all the details, but there is a different trend AWAY from giving the major league contract, which is probably leading to higher up-front bonuses.

The first three picks and the #5 pick all got $6 million bonuses, but no major league deal for any of them. The #4 and #7 picks did get major league deals.