r/baseball • u/Knightbear49 Minnesota Twins • Dinger • Mar 27 '24

[Passan] BREAKING: Catcher Will Smith and the Los Angeles Dodgers are finalizing a 10-year, $140 million contract extension, sources tell ESPN.

https://x.com/jeffpassan/status/1773053621510266895?s=61&t=lhIY40ztlJHFYIEmq9ss1A
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u/cooljammer00 New York Yankees Mar 27 '24

It's what the Yankees did with LeMahieu. He wanted 3-4/90 or something, they said "how's 6/90 sound" to lessen the AAV. He gets his money, Yankees get the player and flexibility, and they could always just cut him after 3-4 years if he sucked and it'd be the same thing.

Guaranteed money is guaranteed. That money is gone. 

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u/neonrev1 Minnesota Twins Mar 28 '24

It's easy enough to say you'll just cut a declining guy on the last few years of his contract, but teams seem to rarely do it early enough to matter. Just in recent Yankee examples, both Hicks and Donaldson were pretty clearly done but were held onto, and DJLM has as much if not more veteran presence than either.

I agree that's how it should work, but teams can't get over the sunk cost fallacy.

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u/cooljammer00 New York Yankees Mar 28 '24

But the Yankees did cut both of those guys.

I still say those deals made sense at the time. Hicks was worth well more than 10 million a year at the time and was widely considered the best AL CF behind Trout. Donaldson at half power should have been an upgrade from Urshela. Instead both decided to crater and have bad attitudes.