A two-year deal is appropriate for Victor, and a three-year deal is about the most you could offer. He’s a catcher, and not the most skilled one in the world. Catchers often fall off quickly in terms of both health and performance, so there’s that. In addition, it’s not clear how long he’ll actually be a catcher, and if the only other position he can play is 1B, that substantially diminishes his value. If you believe the Fangraphs formulas, it makes him 16M less valuable each season. That is a stretch, of course, but the real number is probably north of $8 million.

Not a slap in the face, just an opening offer. Obviously the agent leaked it in hopes that the Red Sox fans/writers will put pressure on the FO to re-sign him.

So, Victor can choose between a 2-3 year deal on a quality franchise .. or he can pick a 4-5 year with a bad franchise.

Fangraph did a Contract Crowdsourcing—I assume this is something they do, but it’s new to me—and the median guesstimate is 4 years/$12 per. It sounds right to me. Someone’s going to overpay, and it’ll be in the form of years.

cross-posting my comment at Fangraphs

I wonder what the real positional adjustment is on Victor Martinez. The basic WAR adjustment is 25 runs between catcher and first base, but here’s a guy who’s considered a mediocre defender at catcher and potentially a plus-defender at first base. Is it outrageous to think that given a full-time switch to first base, the swing in marginal defensive ability might be as much as 10 runs? (For example, maybe he’s a -6 at catcher and a +4 at first base.)

So now we’re down to a 15-run difference (assuming equally valuable replacements are available to a given team at those two positions). Next question, is outrageous to think Martinez might outperform the 15-run difference as a full-time first baseman, relieved of the physical grind of being a catcher?

Before you answer, keep in mind that when healthy, the guy consistently has rattled off 20- to 25-run seasons as a pure hitter. That means that four months on the DL equates to 15 runs. I’m not saying the position switch is worth four months on the DL per year — of course it isn’t — but I am saying that the decreased injury risk alone gets you perhaps another 5 runs closer.

So now we’re down to less than one marginal win of difference, offset by some hypothetical improvement in pure performance. Depending on what you think of that hypothetical, playing Martinez at first base rather than catcher is at least a reasonable option on the one hand, and arguably a trivial sacrifice on the other.

You’ve got to pay him like a catcher if you’re gonna play him as a catcher. This year he’s played 95 out of 107 games behind the dish. Red Sox aren’t dumb enough to make anything less than market value. My guess is 3 years/42 million with an option for 4 based upon the number of games played.