ajc.com | Braves | Braves might be close to re-signing Maddux
Or maybe just him accepting arbitration. I’d rather they signed a multi-year deal, but you take what you get. Some people, for some bizarre reason, are down on Greg. Yes, he missed a little time with injuries last year. He also was second in the league in ERA.
I’d actually prefer the arbitration route over offering him a 3-year deal. To me, overpaying for 1 year is much better than locking him up until he’s 40. That payroll flexibility would allow them to look at signing Millwood and maybe even offering Sheffield another couple of years in a Braves’ uni.
I think that’s exactly how JS will treat it, too. The likelihood that Maddux would command more as a free agent next year than this year is pretty small. Of course, I think Boras knows this also.
Colin, I’m betting that the market correction from the winter of ’02/’03 will be short lived and, by next year, prices will start rising again. Plus, with Maddux’s nagging injuries, he is coming off his worst (or perhaps second worst) overall season since the mid 1980s. While betting on old pitchers *improving* is always a risky gamble, I don’t know that he needs to improve, but rather just stay healthy and watch the market rebound to make more per year with a deal offered after next year rather than this.
Plus, over the course of his career, he has made $95,095,000 in salary, plus endorsements, bonuses, playoff earnings and the like. I assume he can afford to take a slight risk that the total value isn’t maximized by accepting arbitration this year and then signing a 2-3 year deal instead of signing a 3-4 year deal now. With the arbital process, the cost corrections of this off season don’t come into play. He would probably maximize his 2003 income by submitting to arbitration. Then, unless he suffers an injury, I can’t see his ’04 and ’05 salary decreasing significantly by waiting one more year.
That is an amazing number. So sometime next year, Maddux will top 1 billion gross pay for his career! Though obviously he has not seen anywhere that number in his pockets, that’s still a pretty incredible statistic. The places you can go…
Whoops, my bad. 100 million is still amazing though, jeez! I guess i’m not going to make a similar fortune in accounting 🙂
I’m just not even sure that there is really a market correction this year to speak of. Yeah, some teams are cutting payroll, but I think the top players aren’t getting smaller offers than they would have last year. The mid-level players will be the ones squeezed. But Thome got a top-level deal for, and I sure don’t think Glavine would have done better than a $12m/year deal in years past.
Mostly, though, I see Maddux making $13m this year, and I don’t see any team offering him more than that when he’s 38 as opposed to 37. Many teams have now been burned on aging pitcher contracts.
One alternate take, though, i that Schuerholz will go for a 3 year deal this year, because he needs any Maddux contract to end before the big money kicks in on Hampton. Waiting until next year he’d have to look more at a 2 year deal, whihc would likely not happen.