Extend Soto

[imref]

watch Juan Soto make tamales:

https://twitter.com/OnePursuitTakes/status/1341428141970104327?s=20

[Slateman]

[JCA-CrystalCity]

what you can do is use an opener, especially if Soto is hitting #2 or #3 in the order.   That way, the SP can come in after him and go through 17 or so hitters.  The downside would be if you did try to have him go by Soto a second time.  He's be tired and also facing those ridiculous numbers.

[nats4ever]

Any idea what is contract is going to look like?

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Any idea what is contract is going to look like?

Depends a bit on what the next collective bargaining agreement looks like, but a Betts-like or Harper-like contract probably is a starting point.  12-13 years, $30-35MM a year, then consider the market, inflation / deflation, by the time he signs.  All this is dependent on him being one of the best hitters in baseball and capable of playing corner OF.

[Slateman]

Any idea what is contract is going to look like?

Depends a bit on what the next collective bargaining agreement looks like, but a Betts-like or Harper-like contract probably is a starting point.  12-13 years, $30-35MM a year, then consider the market, inflation / deflation, by the time he signs.  All this is dependent on him being one of the best hitters in baseball and capable of playing corner OF.

[nfotiu]

Depends a bit on what the next collective bargaining agreement looks like, but a Betts-like or Harper-like contract probably is a starting point.  12-13 years, $30-35MM a year, then consider the market, inflation / deflation, by the time he signs.  All this is dependent on him being one of the best hitters in baseball and capable of playing corner OF.

It would sure be nice if the new CBA offered a mechanism to pay your home grown guys early on without losing the advantage.  He played for 600k last year, and will get 6m next year.  That's a huge advantage to the Nats getting a 30m player for that money.   It's also crippling to their luxury tax position and salary management position to give him a big contract right now.   There's so much incentive for both sides right now to not do until free agency.   It would be good for baseball, and good for guys getting paid earlier if they could figure something out to encourage home grown players sticking around.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

It would sure be nice if the new CBA offered a mechanism to pay your home grown guys early on without losing the advantage.  He played for 600k last year, and will get 6m next year.  That's a huge advantage to the Nats getting a 30m player for that money.   It's also crippling to their luxury tax position and salary management position to give him a big contract right now.   There's so much incentive for both sides right now to not do until free agency.   It would be good for baseball, and good for guys getting paid earlier if they could figure something out to encourage home grown players sticking around.

yes.  In one sense, you do get a break on the out years if you sign a guy like Soto to, say, Harper's contract right now - 13 years, $25MM AAV.  He'd get the guarantee and about an extra $30MM over the next couple of years rather than running the risk of injury or something strange.  In the long run, it is a huge break for the team, but it consumes $19MM extra in cap space this year, and if you did it after 2019 when it made sense, it would have been $25MM and probably kept the Nats from a reset on the tax. 

You'd see a lot more of these deals for guys like Betts, Soto, Gleyber, Buehler, etc... if the team didn't have to take the tax hit early. Probably, sadly, wouldn't impact the Lindors of the world where their franchise isn't spending close to the tax threshold. 

[Smithian]

https://www.mlb.com/news/juan-soto-is-on-hall-of-fame-track

Well, yeah.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-flimsy-excuse-to-write-about-juan-soto/

Bating eye discussion.  Freaky stats. 

Again, we’re just scratching the surface of swing/take decisions by crudely separating pitches in and outside the strike zone. Recall those two categories earlier — pitcher’s pitches and ones right down the heart of the plate. On pitchers’ pitches with less than two strikes, Soto swung only 19.5% of the time this year, the lowest rate of his career. His pitch recognition is so good, and his confidence in his ability to hit with two strikes so high, that he lets those pitches go by even if they might be called a strike. That was the seventh-lowest swing rate on those tough pitches, and the hitters in front of him are pretty good too:

Swing Rate on Pitchers’ Pitches
Batter   Swings   Pitches   Swing Rate
Tommy La Stella   27   149   18.1%
Trent Grisham   26   143   18.2%
Alex Bregman   21   114   18.4%
Clint Frazier   22   117   18.8%
Mark Canha   27   141   19.1%
Mike Trout   23   118   19.5%
Juan Soto   26   133   19.5%
Carlos Santana   34   166   20.5%
Cavan Biggio   35   164   21.3%
Max Muncy   34   155   21.9%
Note: pitches just off the plate in any direction. Two strike counts are excluded.
Meanwhile, he finished near average on his swings on pitches over the heart of the plate, at 64%. How many players swung at fewer pitchers’ pitches and more hitters’ pitches than Soto? None, naturally. He’s otherworldly.

All of these words, these in-zones and out-of-zones and pitchers’ pitches and hitters’ pitches and whatnot, are a complicated way of talking about a simple thing. Right now, Juan Soto has the best pitch recognition in the major leagues. He knows what to swing at and what to spit on in a way that no one has since peak Joey Votto. Oh yeah — he’s making contact more often, too. In 2018, Soto had a weakness of sorts. Even when he swung at in-zone breaking balls, he frequently came up empty. His 23.3% whiff rate there was worse than league average, and even when he did make contact, he didn’t hit it hard; he had no barrels and a 19.4% hard hit rate. He was even worse on changeups and splitters; a 27.3% whiff rate and 10% hard hit rate are both pretty dire.

This year, that all changed. In an admittedly small sample, he simply stopped whiffing. He’s down to a 16.1% whiff rate on breakers and a 15.2% whiff rate on offspeed pitches. He’s hitting both types hard more frequently — roughly 30% on each. His barrel rate on in-zone breaking balls was a ludicrous 16.1% in 2020, for goodness sake. That’s the same as Ronald Acuña Jr.’s barrel rate on all batted balls, fastballs included. Good luck pitching to that!