Don't Hold Your Breath on a Fielder Long Term Deal

Interesting story in the LA Times about the wave of young players signing long term deals (a la Ryan Braun).

Brewers owner Mark Attanasio is quoted in the story, talking about how it is to the advantage of the big market clubs to not sign their young players to long term deals, as opposed to what Milwaukee did with Braun.

"You have a lot of advantages when you're a bigger-revenue club," said Mark Attanasio, the Brewers' owner. "You can afford to wait."

Here's why: Teams control a player for six years, with salaries determined solely by the club for the first three years and subject to salary arbitration for the final three. Then a player can try free agency.

"You have to get to them early," Attanasio said. "The sooner you can get to them, the more you can keep the contract at a manageable level."Once the players get a smell of free agency, it's very hard to do anything. At that point, the Yankees and Red Sox can afford it, and clubs like ours can't."

And it sounds like you can forget about Prince Fielder signing a similar deal, at least while he's represented by Scott Boras, who thinks that clubs who offer these long-term deals aren't really taking much risk:

"You see those contracts, and to me the risk is substantially rewarded," said agent Scott Boras. "They may be paying 30 cents on the dollar."

Boras says he has been approached by players years after they signed such a deal, regretting how many millions they might have lost. He said teams generally limit such offers to premium players.

"The teams are not usually wrong about their talent assessment," he said. "If the teams aren't wrong about their talent assessment, then someone is wrong for taking it."

Basically, Boras is calling any agent an idiot for taking the Braun-type deal for their client rather than letting them hit arbitration and then free agency. This statement makes it rather unlikely he'll be advocating this position for Fielder, his client. If you hear that Fielder has fired Boras, however, that could be a pretty clear indication that he wants to do a Braun-type deal.

Finally, Pat Gillick, the Phillies GM, didn't think that the Braun signing was a good idea...for the Brewers:

"If the guy goes in the tank, they're sitting on a contract they can't move," he told reporters in Philadelphia.