Can someone provide background and insight about this deal?
What does “largest pre-arbitration deal” mean, and why is that a big deal? It seems like a tiny contract. Why would Trout agree to this? I understand why he wants a 1 year deal if he doesn’t like Anaheim (from what little I know, I think I remember hearing that he’s not their biggest fan and wants to leave).
$1 million seems like a tiny contract compared with what free agents with such great stats would make, but under the current collective bargaining agreement, a player doesn’t have much leverage until he’s played for 3 years.
After 6 years in the major leagues, Mike Trout would be eligible for free agency, and would surely get insanely high salary offers. After 3 years in the major leagues, he could take his case to arbitration, and would surely get a huge raise. But Trout has played (phenomenally well) for only two two seasons, which means he’s still largely at the mercy of the Angels’ management. The major league minimum salary is currently 500 grand a year. The Angels don’t HAVE to pay Trout more than that, yet. $1 million is the highest salary any team has paid to a player who didn’t yet have the weapon of arbitration.
Now, as good as he is and as young as he is, one could argue that the wiser move would have been to sign him to a long term deal. But the Angels have chosen to play it cheap, thus far. As it is, they’ve gotten stellar production from Trout at a bargain price.
Up to now, teams haven’t been willing to pay top dollar to players who aren’t yet eligible for free agency or arbitration. $1 million may sound like a pittance for a player as great as Trout, but it’s more than the Angels are required to pay him this year.
I don’t know how Trout feels about Southern California or about his teammates… but if he’s human, he’ll definitely want to stick it to the team next year and will probably leave for better pay as soon as he’s eligible for free agency.
And that’s odd, because Artie Moreno has shown a willingness, even an eagerness to throw money at players who are nowhere near as good as Trout. It’s hard to see why THIS is the place he’d start playing it cheap.
Under the current CBA, players remain contractually obligated to a team for 6 years. In years 1, 2 & 3, all the leverage remains with the team, only the league minimum is required (around $500,000) with some slight adjustments after 1. The contract is binding without the player’s approval. Lump it or like it. Thus any yearly contract above $500,000 is, in essence, a “gift” from the team – although it is usually done to reward an above average player in the hopes of getting a long term deal done, in favor of the team. In this case, the Angels are in the process of negotiating a long-term deal with Trout and don’t want to piss him off by paying just the minimum.
The previous record for a non-arb player contract (for one year) was $800,000 to Ryan Howard of the Phillies.
Years 4, 5 & 6, of a player’s mlb tenure, are submitted to binding arbitration (if the player and team cannot agree) and come closer to market value (with year 4 = 50% of market value, year 5 approx. = 67% mv and year 6 approx= 75% mv.)
So basically Trout is a restricted free agent and the Angels could extend him if they wanted but chose not to in favor of this 1 year deal to save a year’s worth of mega-salary before Trout opts into arbitration? Then he still has to tough it out 3 more years before he can sign somewhere else?
That’s not quite true. Players of Trout’s caliber (which are few and far between) have been getting offers quite a bit more often of late. Guys like Evan Longoria and Eric Hosmer come to mind. Clubs want to secure their services before they hit the open market, hopefully avoiding an A-Rod sized deal. Doing it during their service time is ideal, because it means guaranteed money for the player in a time when they could get screwed by an injury, and means a discounted price for the club.
No, the Angels have exclusive rights to him for the next 4 years.
No, this is the Angels saying, “we’re willing to play ball here, and we’re very interested in giving you a giant contract some time this season. Here’s a pile of cash to keep your mind off the negotiations and on the game.” (This isn’t shady, this is an olive branch, essentially.) He’ll still be eligible for arbitration if he doesn’t get a contract extension - and that arbitration would likely set all sorts of records. Both Trout and the Angels will want to avoid that, simply because a big contract extension will guarantee him major money for a huge chunk of time (something like $150m for 5-6 years, versus a one-year arbitration of ~$5m).
If he doesn’t sign a contract or extension, correct. But neither party really wants that to happen.
The Angels are reportedly close to a 6 year contract extension with Trout that would take effect in 2015, covering his 3 years of arbitration and buying out 3 years of his Free Agency. The primary reason they don’t want to have the contract start in 2014, is that any substantial deal would put them over the Luxury Salary Cap a year earlier, and eventually, get them to the 50% Luxury Tax level (50% of amount over Salary Cap) before Josh Hamilton’s contract runs out after the 2017 season.
The Angels are trying to get him for 6 years, around $140 million, which in my opinion won’t get it done. The estimates of Trout’s arbitration awarded salaries in 2015, 2016 and 2017 are $15 mil, $20 mil and $25 mil respectively. Given $60 mil is already there, the Angels would be getting 3 years of Trout’s Free Agent years for $80 mil, or about $25 mil below his estimated FA deal at $35 mil per year (and it might be closer to $40 mil.)
If I were Trout(and agent) I’d go for a 3 year deal, starting in 2015, that would lock in his 3 years of arbitration, at $50 mil. This would give the Angels a $10 mil discount over the projected arb amounts, give Trout lifetime security (in case of injury or a drop in performance), and still allow Trout to seek FA at the age of 26.
Trout has already produced the best numbers of any position player, EVER, before turning 23. He could be considered one of the best ever. He should wait until FA, and then pick a team that projects to be a contender to build his legacy. He’s from southern NJ, and a Phillies’ fan, btw, although I’m sure he could take a liking to living on the beach, 20 minutes away from Anaheim.
I find this claim that it’s the biggest “pre-arbitration deal” ever absolutely baffling. It is obviously not, and isn’t even close. Many, many players have signed multi-year deals worth FAR more than a million a year before they were arbitration eligible. Eric Hinske, of all people, was signed for about $3 million per year after one season. I’ve no idea what ESPN is going on about.
As to what Trout should do, frankly he should take whatever long term deal the Angels are willing to go for, stretching them as far as possible without making them walk away. If someone offers you a lottery ticket you don’t turn it down.
ESPN didn’t report it correctly, but other media sources reported it as "the largest one year contract to a two year player. Also, the fact that the Angels gave him a million may be an indication that they’re close to a multi-year contract extension, and this may either be a show of good faith on the Angels’ part, or a bonus on a deal already agreed to, but not to be announced until after Opening Day for lux salary cap reasons.
When you’re as good as Trout, you know you’re going to get earn a ton of money over the next 20 years. I think he should be concerned with where he plays, specifically the quality of the organization. The Angels have been poorly run the past few years… worst farm system in baseball, two horrible FA signings in Pujols and Hamilton that will handicap the club for quite a while, and a meddling owner that allegedly overrides his GM’s. It’s not like Trout is a pitcher where his career could evaporate with a torn rotator cuff. And if he can get a deal for $50 mil to cover his arb years… well it’s not Bill Gates money, but still enough to live a life without wanting for a thing.
I’m seeing this as a good-faith gesture by the Angels while they work toward that longer contract extension. They’ve been accused of being very cheap with Trout, and this might ease the sting a little. And it’s in Trout’s interest to take a $1 million deal this year and a 6 year/$150 million deal afterward instead of waiting because he’s an athlete and always at the risk of catastrophic injury. You have to make your hay while the sun shines. Evan Longoria’s deal is a big discount now, but he also got long-term financial security very early in his career and the teams have a very strong bargaining position with young players. If Trout takes the proposed deal and continues to play something like he’s played so far, he’ll be in position to get another mega-deal when he’s 29. At that point he could have three or four seasons of peak production left - and even if he doesn’t the Yankees or Dodgers could pay him another $150 million just because.
The kind of money we’re talking about begins to fall away in marginal value pretty quickly. The difference between $50 million and $150 million in terms of how it actually affects your life in a meaningful way is not nearly as significant as the difference between $5 million and $50 million, and getting that one big contract frankly dwarfs the marginal difference in likelihood of success between organizations, which is itself extremely unpredictable. Whether Trout makes $330 million or $460 million in the next fifteen years is a matter of Mike Trout’s ego and has essentially nothing to do with his quality of life. As for the quality of the team, the Angels could be the best run team in baseball in three years, and any well run team could be the worst. There’s no point worrying about that if you’re signing a long term deal because GMs have higher turnover than players; a player is FAR wiser to consider how much he likes the city itself, which is far less likely to change.
Really, it’s going to be hard for Trout to screw this up unless he signs no contract at all, which is a stupid risk to take if one is available.
Longoria is a bad example. The Rays signed him up to a six year extension one week into his pro career. They also had 4 years of club options at $7 mil per year that they used as leverage to get him to sign a 10 year extension. Longoria says he’s happy, which is great since he gets to play in a warehouse for his entire career.
Quality of life should also encompass quality of ***professional ***life, especially when you’re projected to be the top player of your generation. I’m sure Willie Mays would have preferred to stay in New York when the Giants moved to San Francisco.
As for appraising the quality of an organization, it’s not a precise calculation, but it’s also not impossible. At least the Angels are still a border-line contender, but the future does not look bright. If he can get financial security by just giving a discount on his 3 arb years, he can take a look at where he wants to spend the rest of his career. Being stuck on a loser is not a good place to be when you’re the very best. If the Angels give Trout a deal with an AAV of $25 mil, he, Pujols and Hamilton will be getting paid $75 mil per year on a team with no current talent in the minors. How much will they be able to spend. And Hamilton is signed through 2017, with Pujols signed through 2021. Good luck.
Longoria’s extension came much earlier in his career, but the reasoning is similar: both players signed extensions under team control that were bargains for the team in the long run but still provided significant raises and long-term security for the players.
Whether he plays for a doormat or contender, the $$$ spends the same.
Sure, for what, two or three years? Beyond that, I’m sorry, but you simply don’t know. You can’t write the team off for an extended period of time based on the fact Pujols’s contract sucks (Hamilton’s contract is over in four years.) The Angels can afford some bad money.
Pro sports is far too chaotic a system for you to project beyond what would be Trout’s free agency years how good the Angels will be.
You can’t predict to 100% certainty, of course, good organizations have bad luck and bad organizations fall out of trees and land on their feet. But you can judge ownership and how they do things. The Angels’ problem starts at the top. Moreno is rich but meddling. He gave an iconic manager a 10 year contract extension. When a solid GM (Stoneman) retired, he replaced him with a relative novice (Reagins) who promptly fired a capable farm director (Banes) over a personality conflict. When that GM continued to make horrible moves, Moreno hired a well-regarded “comer” in Dipoto then over-rode him to go after Pujols and then Hamilton. The Angels play in a big market, but continue to play second fiddle to the Dodgers who hell-bent on spending the Angels back into the stone-age.
I guess Moreno could learn his lesson or sell the team, but that just means you upgrade from horrid to uncertain.
Any team that is able to sign Trout to a $300+ mil deal is likely to be well-financed, but you also want to be with a team that is well-run over the long-haul. If Trout is the type that only cares about big-money now, then so be it. But he runs the risk of being the big-contract whipping boy on a perennial also-ran.
Updating this thread 5 years later:
I saw that on sports news today. Nearly a half billion dollars. Unreal.
Saw this thread title and thought “you’re off by a couple orders of magnitude” 
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