The Mets made their fans happy on Wednesday by signing all-world, defensive wizard, Juan Lagares, to a four-year $23 million extension. The deal will start in 2016, covering all four of his arbitration-eligible seasons, plus a one-year $9.5 million club option for his first year of free agent eligibility.
We talked yesterday about a potential Lucas Duda extension, and some of the points apply here. The main idea of any extension for a team-controlled player being that teams are willing to slightly overpay beyond anticipated arbitration amounts in the near-term in order to gain cost certainty over the long-term, as well as steal some free agent years from when the player is no longer under team control.
At 26-years-old, the Mets have locked in a cornerstone player for the next four, or five, years, hoping that at about $5 million per season, while they may overpay in 2016 to what the arbitration process would have granted in salary, they will make out in the long run.
A good comparable is Yankee Brett Gardner. Like Lagares, Gardner provides much of his value catching the baseball. He went through three seasons of pre-arbitration negotiations, signing for a total of $11.3 million. An injury-plagued 2012 season costing him an extra $2-3 million in 2013 and perhaps the same in 2014, as arbitration negotiations build upon the previous year’s salary. In other words, it’s not impossible to believe that a healthy Gardner, between 2011-2013, would have negotiated as much as $15-18 million in salary, or roughly $5 million per season.
The Yankees decided that Gardner was a valuable piece to their outfield, thus extending him following the 2014 season to a 4-year $52 million deal. In doing so, they bought three years of free agent eligibility, potentially paying $5 million above what Gardner would have received had he gone through his final year of arbitration.
While Juan Lagares has a similar skill set to Gardner, he is in a better position at this point in his contract timeline. He is only 26-years-old, and next season, he would likely be eligible as a Super Two player. That means that his salary would increase more rapidly than a typical team-controlled player. Jenrry Mejia turned his Super Two status into a $2.6 million salary this past offseason. That is indicative of the pay jump Lagares could have expected, independent of an extension, come next season.
As long as Lagares keeps tracking down balls in center field, and finds ways to get on base, there’s no reason to believe that his arbitration-eligible seasons wouldn’t follow a steady increase in salary. We need to look no farther than Dexter Fowler‘s 2015 arbitration amount of $9.5 million, to get an idea of an outfielder’s value late in his team-controlled years, and who, overall, isn’t as good as Lagares.
Looking at what we could expect Lagares to make through the arbitration process, and perhaps being conservative, it appears the Mets found a good discount at 4-years and $23 million. Of course, they also get that 2020 team option at $9.5 million, which turns the deal into a real cost saver.
Lagares has provided phenomenal value to the Mets over the past two seasons; his 6.9 fWAR second on the team to David Wright during that span.
Thinking about his production, particularly on defense, reminds us of Andrelton Simmons in Atlanta. The glove-first shortstop signed a contract extension with the Braves at a similar service time to Lagares. At that point, he had provided 6.6 fWAR in his first two seasons, which helped him secure a 7-year $58 million extension. The Braves bought out three years of free agent eligibility at a $8.2 million per season premium, like the Yankees did for Gardner at a $13 million premium.
For the Mets, they have a team-friendly $9.5 million option for the first year of Lagares’ free agent eligibility, and based on how other defensive stars have turned their playmaking abilities into big extensions, they are getting that option, as well as team-controlled cost certainty, at a discount.
Today is a good day for the Mets. They are showing their fans that they are willing to invest in their young players (hooray!), while being smart about the type of contracts that they sign.
Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs, Cot’s Baseball Contracts, and Baseball-Reference.Follow me on Twitter @OverWhitestone.
