Mookie Betts It is a long-term Dodger. The team announced this afternoon that Betts has signed a 12-year extension until the 2032 season. It will reportedly guarantee him a whopping $ 365MM in new money in addition to this year’s $ 27MM salary (which has been prorated to $ 10MM due to the shorter 2020 season). Betts is represented by the VC Sports Group.
The contract represents the largest amount of new money promised to a major league player in a free agent extension or firm, beating Mike TroutThe previous offshore brand of $ 360MM (in a shorter period of 10 years). Trout has already signed at two years and $ 66.5MM, so his 12-year, $ 426.5MM total exceeds Betts’ 13-year, $ 392MM figure, but the $ 365MM benchmark of new money is a record remarkable.
The Betts extension, somewhat remarkably, marks the first time that the Dodgers have guaranteed more than $ 100MM to a player under president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. Although the team is known for its enormous, sometimes seemingly limitless, spending capacity, the Friedman regime has worked diligently to get rid of some previous unwanted commitments and creative limbo under the luxury tax bar. In doing so, it paved the way for the Dodgers to issue a historic contract with superior talent.
After missing a free agent search Gerrit Cole This winter, the team shifted its focus to acquiring Betts, who came to Los Angeles alongside David Price in a successful trade that sent Alex Executioner, Jeter downs and Connor wong to Boston There was a lot of talk about the team’s hope to extend Betts, but they had been frank about their desire to test the open market. Coupled with the economic uncertainty stemming from this year’s unprecedented revenue losses, there were real reasons to wonder whether a deal would be struck.
Maybe that economic downturn made Betts more likely to strike a deal now rather than test the market, or maybe he was just willing to sign if a team exceeded Trout’s new money guarantee. His exact thinking will probably never be fully known, but the end result is that Betts now appears ready to spend the rest of an already excellent race in the Dodger blue.
At just 27 years old, Betts has produced at star levels since his 52-game MLB debut in 2014. Betts, a career .301 / .379 / .519 hitter, is already a four-time All- Star, a three-time Silver Slugger winner, former American League MVP and batting champion, and four-time Gold Glove winner. He hit 139 home runs and hit 126 bases in 794 major league games, displaying an impressive combination of power. and speed, and his 13.5 percent walk rate over the past two seasons is almost the same as his 14.5 percent strikeout rate. Add that Betts is regarded as a defender from another world – he is third among all players in Defensive Races Saved since 2015, regardless of his position, and it is easy to see why Betts is considered among the game’s elite players.
The Dodgers already had at least one of those elite talents: the reigning MVP of the National League. Cody Bellinger. Betts and Bellinger will team up to form what could be baseball’s best double hit for at least the next four seasons, as Bellinger is controlled for at least the 2023 season. Slugger from nowhere Max muncy It was also signed through the ’23 campaign in a highly reasonable three-year $ 26MM pact, for the trio to continue to thrive at the heart of the order for the foreseeable future. The hope is that young talents like the infielder will grow Gavin lux and receiver Will Smith will be added to that core in the long run. Looking short term, the Dodgers are packed with above-average taxpayers, including Corey Seager (controlled until 2021), Justin Turner (until 2020), Chris Taylor (until 2021) and Enrique Hernández (until 2020).
From a payroll and luxury tax standpoint, the Dodgers can afford to sign Betts and keep looking for a mega deal with Bellinger, if they see fit. Betts’ contract comes with an annual luxury hit of $ 30.4MM (or $ 30.1MM, if included in the current deal), which is sizable but still represents only a seventh of next year’s $ 210MM luxury cap . (That number could also increase in the 2021 CBA negotiations.) Los Angeles already has more than $ 152MM in luxury commitments in the 2021 books, including this new deal for Betts, but that number plummets to $ 73MM in 2022. Betts is the only Dodger with a guaranteed deal for the 2023 season ( although Bellinger, Walker Buehler and Julio Urias all will be eligible for arbitration).
With today’s deal, Betts, Bellinger, and Buehler look like the long-term faces of the Dodgers franchise, though the club has unlimited young talent, a high-profile trade ability, and, as noted above, Lots of money to spend even with Betts pulling in over $ 30MM annually. The Dodgers have won seven consecutive National League West Division titles, and the Betts deal is a great step in continuing that trend. However, that, of course, will not be enough to satisfy Betts. As the star said during today’s introductory press conference: “I am here to win some rings.”
WEEI’s Lou Merloni earlier today reported that Betts was approaching an extension worth more than $ 300MM. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported the agreement and terms just before the team’s announcement (Twitter thread).
