FanPost

Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera-The Case For Contract Limits

I want to start off by saying that I am NOT against players getting paid. The game is doing quite well and the best players deserved to get compensated. However, the length of a contract needs to be addressed for the sake of the game. March 28th 2014, Mike Illitch decided that he wanted Miguel Cabrera to be a Tiger for life and a Hall of Famer as a Tiger. I get that and I applauded what he wanted to do. It is the way he did it that simply made no sense and it put the Tigers in a situation where it was not good for the game and definitely not good for the Tigers. Cabrera and his agent were smart in the sense that they knew eventually Cabrera was not going resemble Superman and if they can get a 8 year extension with 2 years to go on a current contract, you do it and it was a no brainer.

If in the last CBA the owners would have fought for length of contract limits in return for the players getting to free agency one year sooner, the teams with bad contracts would be in much better shape and they would not have to draw out these rebuilds. Cutting the length of contracts, will cut the length of the rebuild by at least 2 years possibly as much as 4 years. Let’s use the NBA system as the premise for why length of contracts work. The NBA team with a free agent can offer the player a 6 year max contract and all the other teams can only offer a 5 year contract. This gives the home team a decided advantage when deciding whether or not to keep their homegrown players. If they decide not to max out the contract, the other teams still can offer a competitive 5 year deal and would only offer less than another team based on their own luxury tax constraints. If the MLB had this same contract length and home team advantage in place, the max Miguel Cabrera or Albert Pujols could have been offered is 6 years and 5 years respectfully. This means Albert Pujols probably would have stayed in St Louis because they would have gone 6 years 144 million and LAA may have only offered him 5 years and 120 million or be forced to up the AAV to match the home team. The NBA formula has a max deal for 6 years and 5 years for the other teams so no other team can outbid each other. This isn’t what I am suggesting only part I’m suggesting is giving the home team the advantage of offering a 6 year deal and the other teams only can offer a 5 year deal. Remember Albert and his wife felt disrespected that St Louis offered him 30 million less? Well, if the home team can offer 1 extra year and thus more money, this would never be an issue. The Cardinals offered him 10 years and 210 million so going the full 6 years would have been easy for them. Pujols would have been a free agent again after the 2017 season and probably would have signed a 3 year for 35 to 45 million deal. Yes, his earnings would have been much less than what he received but its not like he didn’t get paid big ass bucks. Had he decided to still leave St Louis, he probably would have made less money than if he stayed in St Louis (unless LAA upped the AAV) but LAA would have been freed of his contract two years ago and they would not be so tapped out now. Miguel Cabrera’s deal if maxed out 6 years 186 million would have been over next year. The Tigers probably could have traded Miggy this season with his contract ending next year and at the very worst, he would have been traded next year. I wonder if Miggy’s contract if ending next year, if he would have just called it a career? If not, he probably goes into the one year contract deals for a couple of years but at least he would be playing meaningful baseball on a contender instead of languishing on this piss poor team. The conditions of the game would be vastly better if the length of contract gets limited to 6 years for the home team and 5 years for all the other teams who want to bid for their services.

This is not me doing revisionist history. I have written about length of contract for many years and its something that the owners need to make a stand on. The players will give them this concession IF and only IF they concede giving the players free agency one year earlier. Its truly a win/win. Players will get a higher AAV on the shorter contracts and they will be pressed to keep producing to get the big bucks. Hockey cut back the lengths of contracts from 10 to 8 and are still grappling with the current length. There’s rumblings of them cutting it back to 6. The NBA system works for everyone and even though you see salary dumps in trades, it does make for lots of trades. The hockey league is just starting to do salary dump trades but that’s all part of the salary cap game. You never see the NFL doing salary dump trades because they simply cut the player or re-do their contract. Baseball needs this change and even though the players association will initially say no, if the owners offer up one year less of control, they will probably do it.

The time has come for this to be a major negotiating issue and if both sides can come to an agreement on the length of contract and getting to free agency a year earlier, you will see a much better product on the field and you will see teams not taking 6 years to rebuild. Watching teams like Tigers and Orioles who spent like crazy and are now saddled with huge contracts that take too long to go away, is not good for the fans, baseball or the organizations that do go beyond their means.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the <em>Bless You Boys</em> writing staff.