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5 young stars who are extension candidates
- Updated: November 29, 2016
Every offseason, in addition to signing free agents to help their clubs, teams try to negotiate extensions with their young controllable talent.
For the front office, it gives the team some sort of discount on the player’s future earnings while also signing him hopefully through a good portion of his prime playing years. For the player, the extension gives him financial security and an understanding of where he will be playing for the next few seasons.
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With that in mind, here are some prime extension candidates. These are the kinds of players who are still years away from free agency, but they have displayed a high enough level of performance that their clubs would be willing to make a significant investment in them.
Note: Ages listed are 2017 seasonal ages, which means the player’s age as of July 1, 2017.
1. Addison Russell, SS, Cubs, age 23 After a breakout season in 2016 when he ranked seventh among MLB shortstops in WAR (per FanGraphs), Russell is clearly a superstar on the rise. He will not be arbitration-eligible until after next season, and he will likely have Super Two status. In a similar situation back in ’14, Andrelton Simmons signed a seven-year, $58 million contract when Atlanta bought out two years of free agency, so his contract would be a helpful starting point. Brandon Crawford’s six-year, $75 million deal last offseason, signed closer to his free agency, could also be helpful. (As you might expect, players can command a bit more in these kinds of contracts the closer they are to free agency.)
Russell signing a deal with the Cubs could be the precursor to attempting multiyear contracts with other core Chicago players — including Kris Bryant, Javier Baez and Kyle Schwarber — in the coming years. The Cubs shrewdly signed Anthony Rizzo to a seven-year, $41 million extension back in 2013, when he had fewer than two years of service time.
2. Nolan Arenado, 3B, Rockies, age 26 Simply put, Arenado has become one of the best …
