Royals Sign Sal Perez to Long-Term Extension

did a great thing here with signing Perez. He will be one of the best catchers in baseball in the next 10 years. Most important, It really shows Hosmer and Moose that the Royals are very committed to keeping there great young players. Now lets sign Alex Gordon to a nice contract. I can’t wait for the 2012 season. LETS GO ROYALS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

They really like him. He needs financial certainty. My intuition says 5 years/15 million with 6, 8, 10 club options.

No word on the club options yet

that’s a lot of years though for someone with only 150 big league PAs. the end are club options, but i wonder how much is guarenteed. could be a steal if he turns out to be consistently good, but also could bite the royals if not.

1. Joe Mauer, $23,000,000 (2011-18)
2. Jorge Posada, $13,100,000 (2008-11)
3. Mike Piazza, $13,000,000 (1999-2005)
4. Jason Varitek, $10,000,000 (2005-08)
. . . Ivan Rodriguez, $10,000,000 (2004-07)
. . . Jason Kendall, $10,000,000 (2002-07)
7. Mike Napoli, $9,400,000 (2012)
8. Ivan Rodriguez, $8,500,000 (1999-2002)
9. Joe Mauer, $8,250,000 (2007-10)
10. Kenji Johjima, $8,000,000 (2009-11)
11. Russell Martin, $7,500,000 (2012)
12. Ramon Hernandez, $6,875,000 (2006-09)
13. A.J. Pierzynski, $6,250,000 (2009-10)
14. John Buck, $6,000,000 (2011-13)
15. Miguel Montero, $5,900,000 (2012)
16. Mike Napoli, $5,800,000 (2011)
17. Benji Molina, $5,333,333 (2007-09)
18. Jason Varitek, $5,000,000 (2009)
19. Chris Snyder, $4,750,000 (2009-11)
20. Brian McCann, $4,666,667 (2007-12)

Unless I am missing

the joke

If he’s on the roster, he’d make something like 3.5 million as a backup for those years even if he was Pena-level.

They can limit our dollars in the draft, but they can’t limit our ability extend talented / inexperienced guys already on the roster.

He would have been paid $500K for the first three years anyway, so the deal is really $5.5 million for his first two years of arbitration (plus whatever the options are). If he is an average-ish catcher, that might be a little less than he would get, although Chris Ianetta settled for a three year deal in his first year of arbitration for $1.75 million (year 1), $2.55 million (year 2), and $3.55 million (year 3).

Absolutely love it. Worst case scenario is we pay him $3.5m per next two years and he crashes/gets hurt and we decline his option. My understanding is that since this isn’t buying out FA years, declining his option just means we have to decide whether or not to offer him arbitration, which we can always decline, making him a free agent. Truth? Anyway, it’s well worth the risk. So much so that i almost wonder why Sal even signed it. Guess security is important, but man, he might be leaving a pile of money on the table.

for roughly the same ammount of money we gave a HS kid from Gardner. And we have the option for 3 more years of him at a reasonable price if he actually is good.

Hmmm….

I think I approve of this.

I don’t think he has a huge ceiling, but even if he’s just good enough for the League of Backup Catchers™, he’s at cost.

So he was going to get paid $1M the next two years pre-arb. That means as long as he does better than $2M per year for the 3 years after that, they’ve come out ahead. And what happens if he’s actually, you know, good? Then the savings are enormous.

And that was widely considered a very good under-market extension in retrospect I believe.

if they want to try to sustain any long term success. I just don’t think we can realistically afford to extend any players with Hosmer-like hype. I mean that in terms of dollars and risk. I think we’re better off trying to extend our young players, who may not have the top-tier ceilings that others have had and hope they outperform their projections. This keeps risk at a minimum and could provide some huge dividends.

Love it love it love it.

even if it was simply to have him do his killer Andre the giant impression in the post-game for the next 7 years. Huzzah!

So the market value on those FA buyout years just went up to 15 million per if Perez performs like Yadi (though a 5 year extension at 15 AAV would translate to a higher AAV for 2 years). I think he could be better or worse. Obviously, its not the most likely outcome, but I think it’s what the Royals envision as a reasonable success for Perez.

It’s hard to find anything to not like about this and he could use some optimism points :)

It isn’t a blockbuster deal, but it might be my favorite deal the Royals have done since I’ve been old enough to really follow that side of the sport. This deal has a lot more upside than downside.

The Royals take a calculated risk on a great prospect that had shown Big League promise. For Perez, he signed a nice contract with 7 mil guaranteed while only playing 39(?) games in the Majors.

Win-Win

The best part? Our pitching just got better.