Quote:
Originally Posted by jd1020
Well there's a couple things different between a couple years ago with Arenado.
1) He would be a free agent and a team wouldn't be giving up prospects to get him on top of his salary.
2) He has answered the "can he hit outside of Coors?" question.
3) He's in the race for MVP.
4) Kris Bryant just got 7/182M.
He'd be pretty stupid to not leverage his opt-out to get a nice sizeable raise and I dont think a meager $11M is gonna do it.
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You don't think that had already been answered? Maybe not for some teams, but certainly for many.
His 2019 season where he put up an .866 OPS and 20 rd homers (w/ the 'Coors Hangover' weighing that down) was an extremely loud indicator, was it not?
And the 'prospects' the Cardinals gave up weren't for Arenado - they were for the $50 million offset. And even then, they didn't have anything nearing that sort of surplus value.
Bryant's 7/$182 takes him through his age 36 season and included his age 30 season. An Arenado deal wouldn't start until his age 32 season, which is a notably 'cliff' year. Bryant's deal from age 32-36 is 5/$131; substantially less than the 5/$155 I proposed.
Finally - Arenado doesn't have your classic 'old man skills'. The biggest problem with hitters as they age isn't necessarily what they do with the strikes they swing at. When you look at the aging curves, where they REALLY collapse is what they do on balls (rather than strikes) they swing at. The numbers decline substantially. Arenado is not your Big Papi style selective hitter. Arenado is a very aggressive hitter who swings at balls well above league average. Additionally, league average O-Contact rates are around 65% and Arenado's over 70% - also well above league average.
Offensively I don't expect him to age well. 34 is when the wall really comes for those metrics as well. And MLB front offices know all of this stuff as well as I do. I don't see teams falling over themselves to extend him through his age 37/38 seasons. Those aren't going to be pleasant years, IMO.