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Shapiro is playing dumb when it comes to creative contract options. For instance if a player wants 3 years at 12 million, but Shapiro doesn't want to offer more than two years, offer the player 9.5 million for two years with a 1.0 million dollar buyout third year option or a third renewal at 4 million.
Everybody wins, Shapiro can opt out at an affordable rate of 1.0 million after two years, or opt in for a third year at an additional 4 million. The point is the ballplayer will make more money no matter what happens, yet Shapiro can limit the contract to two years if he so desires.
In the worst case scenario, Shapiro buys the contract out after two years and has paid 10.5 million, this means anything over 1.5 million that the ballplayer gets in the third year from another team is additional money above and beyond the 3 years 12 million they are being offered by another team.
The only way the player loses is if they play so poorly in the second year of the contract that nobody wants them for a third year. And yet, even in that scenario, if the guy can still play, they can do an incentive laden contract with a base of 500,000 and with a few incentives for innings for games played with their new team and really they've lost nothing and can still make more than just getting a straight three year deal from the Indians.
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ December 02, 2006 02:22 AM: Message edited by: Alex ]</font>
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The St. Louis Cardinals signed Mark Mulder to a contract that gives the Cardinals the right to match any offer that Mulder gets.
I have never heard of the Indians putting this very wise stipulation into their own contracts. Why couldn't we have done that with Jim Thome? Instead, Thome came to the Indians first and put the Indians into the position of bidding against themselves.
If the offer was too low, Thome would be offended, if the offer was higher, it would just be shopped to other clubs anyways and in the end the Indians would have bid twice, once in the beginning, than once at the end, which would probably even be a higher bid because they initiated the bidding war themselves.
