Giancarlo Stanton’s new 13 Year Deal worth $325 MIL has got to be a red flag for other small to mid market franchises who are looking to extend their own talent. Everything is a cumulative effect on another when a deal like this goes down. Many teams are going to be asked to grant contracts of more than 10 plus years, and for ridiculous sums of money.

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Giancarlo Stanton signing his whopper of a deal has to be shaking the foundation of all but the many low to mid level market’s boots.  He just raised the bar on what young franchise players will make in terms of years and dollars,  Not good.

Arizona you better thank the lord you inked Paul Goldschmidt before he took off in his career,.  The same can be said for Andrew McCutchen in Pittsburgh and Chris Sale in Chicago.  All among the better valued deals in the game right now.

These 3 would all enter in the top 25 contracts of ALL – Time if they were Free Agents on the open market presently…. Meaning at least $135 MIL for a deal in the 6 to 7 year window.

Jose Altuve was the National League Batting leader and was inked to a major team friendly contract a few years back. The 2012 and 2014 ALL – Star has a Career 3 Slash of .302/.341/.401 – with 131 SB and 630 Hits in his 514 Games Played. Altuve also led the MLB with Hits (225) and the AL in SB (56) – in winning his 1st Silver Slugger Award. The 5 FT 4 2B was extended to a 4 YR/$12.5 MIL deal, with two Team Options in 2018 ($6MIL) and 2019 ($6.5) prior to last year.. He is one of the best valued deals in the game of baseball now.

Jose Altuve is also a great bargain dollar for dollar.

Of course Madison Bumgarner is still up there with his deal too.

To quote a car selling term “The price just went up”, but now too so do the years.  Agents will point to the Stanton deal and use it as a base for their clients in the future when talking about length

It will call come to whether teams can be creative like the Marlins just became with the Stanton deal.  Players will be given more opt out clauses, no trades and many new stipulations may arise as guys seek to gain an advantage in bargaining with their respective teams.

Consider for a minute if Bryce Harper takes the next step like Stanton, and delivers some MVP caliber of baseball in the next few years.  He will seek a contract similar to the one Stanton just received.  Maybe Washington can afford it, but what about players in smaller markets,,  Half of the teams are not going to be able to pay $25 – $30 MIL for just one player.

Those valued deals I talked about just  a few lines ago are going to be tougher to negotiate.  Heck, even the recent extensions signed for players like Michael Brantley and Matt Carpenter seem grossly undervalued now.

The dollar signs and (years of term) just went up for all of those young phenoms in Chicago if they can reach their potential, as may be the case with a young player like George Springer.

Young 3B Josh Donaldson and Kyle Seager are headed for eventual big paydays as well.  Yoenis Cespedes must be doing cartwheels in Boston, realizing that he will be able to request a top 50 all time contract next winter, if he just can club 3o HRs and add 100 RBI next year.

Inflation reared its ugly head on  player contracts once again.  Another reason to get a cap in place before the next CBA is signed MLB!  It only took one renegade owner to extend out the 1st 13 year contract.  Now it may become the norm.

Ask the NHL if they like these 11 – 17 year contracts?

At some point these teams are going to start being burned by a career ending injury.  Pitchers definitely can’t be involved in these 10+ years of contracts either.

We said at the Reports last year, that baseball was just on the verge of having one of its superstar pitchers be saddled with a pending Tommy John Surgery.

Masahiro Tanaka‘s clock is ticking on when he will go and visit Dr. Andrews.  That puts that 7 YRs/$175 MIL total the Yankees paid for services in jeopardy for more than 1 year and a half of his deal.

We also have said that a Starting Pitcher (in the $100 MIL plus range for a contract duration, will suffer a season ending surgery as a result of batting or running in the lineup)  That will be next.

I am all in favor of players maximizing their value to what they can receive, as the MLB players are only making about 47% of the more than $8 Billion Dollars in MLB league revenue, however some of the factors have to be scaled back to create equality.

The new CBA coming after 2016, has to start leveling off some financial restraints, otherwise the big market clubs will pull away from the low – mid market teams.

Some of the fans are praising the Marlins for the move on re-signing, but I highly doubt the brasses of the lower 15 payroll teams are.

THE PRICE JUST WENT UP!

McCutchen is signed for about an average of 8.5 Million Dollars a year until he hits FA in 2019. If he can be amongst the running for NL MVP every year like 2012 and winning the Award in 2013, and another 3rd place finish in 2014, and this will bode well for the Pirates value in his salary. He is the best player the franchise has drafted since Barry Bonds. The Pirates will be perennial contenders every year because the had the foresight to lock him up longterm before he met and exceeded expectations.  The Bucs just watched their 2013 and 2014 Catcher Russell Martin nearly double ‘Cutches’ salary for the next 4 years.  So you have to be lucky to be good sometimes when it comes to player contracts.

*** The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of mlbreports.com and their partners***

A Big thanks goes out to our chief writer Hunter Stokes for preparing today’s feature post.

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