A little over a week after signing Ronald Acuna to an 8-year, $100 million contract, the Atlanta Braves locked up another one of their young players. Only this one is being termed by some the worst contract extension ever for a player.
Ozzie Albies agreed to a 7-year, $35 million contract that includes two team options, reports said Thursday. The value of the contract can max out at $45 million over nine years if the Braves pick up both options.
Told two option years for Albies are $7M each with $4M buyouts. So if both picked up, #Braves get Albies for 9 years, $45M.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) April 11, 2019
Albies, 22, is batting .364 with a .929 OPS this season. The second baseman was an All-Star as a 21-year-old last year when he batted .261 with 40 doubles and 24 home runs.
Albies is in his second year of service time, meaning he was not set for arbitration until 2021 and free agency until 2024. He would have made just over a million dollars or so through 2020 and would have begun making at least a few million in his first year of arbitration and likely several million in his final two years of arbitration in 2022 and 2023. Then he gave away potentially four years of free agency, all for the maximum of $45 million guaranteed.
If Albies continues to produce like he did last season, he might be worth double or more the total amount of money he received guaranteed. That is why people around the game are wondering if it’s the worst contract ever, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
It's typical that agents criticize competitors' deals. But I've now heard from executives, players, analytics people, development side and scouts who are saying the same thing: The Ozzie Albies extension might be the worst contract ever for a player. And this is not hyperbole.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) April 11, 2019
Keith Law said he thought there was a typo when he saw the amount. He called it “brutal.”
when someone sent me the details of the Albies contract I thought the dollar figure had to be a typo. this is a brutal deal for the player. Just brutal.
— keithlaw (@keithlaw) April 11, 2019
So why would Albies accept such a contract rather than take things year to year and see how he and the market develops? The way the past two offseasons have gone have likely left players fearing that the money they may have expected to earn in their careers would no longer come. That’s part of the reason why Mike Trout took the contract extension he did.
Albies did not sign for much bonus money as an international free agent and was only making $575,000 in 2019. Now he has guaranteed himself $35 million even if his production falls off, he gets injured, or the market tanks even further. But he sacrificed the ability to potentially make much more if he took things year by year. Now he won’t be able to explore free agency until 2028. Who knows what the market will look like for players by then?
If you look down the road and wonder how the Braves are so stacked and can afford such a good team, you will probably be able to point to the extensions they signed Acuna and Albies to and how much value they’re getting out of these guys relative to what they’re making. It’s another credit to executive Alex Anthopoulos, who did the same thing with Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista in Toronto.
