Great stuff.

Hindsight 20/20 and all that, but the Angels really missed the boat on this one.

Should have taken a page out of Friedman's book and offered him an extension right away. Now they're going to pay through the teeth.

Not sure how it's humanly possible for Trout to perform better than he already is now. To me, the questions is whether or not his current performance is sustainable, and if so for how long.

While we're on the subject of sustainabiltiy, how sustainable is his .398 BABIP? Sure, he's good, but he's also been a bit lucky. While Alex Rodriguez had a tremendous 1996, he didn't come close to that kind of production again until 2000. It is probably wrong to assume that Trout will remain "this good" and similarly, whatever the Angels do about a Trout contract shouldn't pay for this level of performance.

I know there's a huge literature on pitcher injury rates at a young age, but what about position players? Do you learn anything about the 'skill' of staying healthy for position players through their 20-23 year old ages? I would hate to be the Angels if it turns out Trout has a problem with a labrum somewhere. When to clubs/players usually figure out if a position player is injury-prone?

They'll probably keep paying him the least they can until Wells, Hunter, etc. are off the books.

Man, Longoria's agent should be exiled- what a terrible job he did.

I just think that Trout has the leverage to wait until free-agency and sign at worst and ARod deal. I think these numbers are way low.

With the increase in TV deals and the values of these franchises way up, would anyone be surprised if Trout signed a 10 year $400 million dollar deal in 2017 when he's a free agent at 26? Mauer just got $23 mill a year with way less leverage.

Now, if you accept that, with a possible $300-$400 mill deal looming, is there any way he accepts below $200 mill to buy out the next 5 years?

I like the cautious route (1) too. Wait one more year and then take a look.

fun article. seeing as how the $$$ numbers keep going up for elite players a 12-15 year contract at $22-$25mil per year might look very good towards the end of the deal if only because in 8 years a player of slightly lesser ability might be the same amount if not more

“I don't think anything is too much for Trout,” said another NL official. “It's just such a different situation given the leverage. If I'm the Angels, I'm looking to do something historic, and we're talking those 12-15 years, to make sure he is the man for our franchise for as long as possible.”

The situations aren't terribly comparable, but replace Angels with Twins and Trout with Mauer and I think you have similar lines of thought. Mauer has been pretty good, but nowhere near worth what they're paying him.

Either wait for him to cool down in a year or two or offer him 13 years, 320 million which would make it the largest contract ever, carry him through his likely peak years and still be reasonbale on a $$/year basis at about $24.

For Trout, it gives him a record contract in length and dollars, instant life-long security, and still a chance for him to secure another contract at age 33 in which he might still secure another $200-250 million for 7-10 years.

I would approach this totally differently. First, Trout is under control for the next 5 years. The Angels are at no risk of losing him over this time period and therefore no long term contract has to be issued. This places the onus and risk on Mike Trout to maintain his performance.

Second, in terms of free agency, there are very few teams that can compete in terms of dollars with the Angels, in addition to the advantage of the club being in Southern California. The Angels should take advantage of what they have to offer and wait.

Kevin,

This was a really, really well-written article. I know you don't think of yourself as a good writer, but you really maximized this piece given the word count limitation.

I do think there is one important factor that went unconsidered: inflation in player salaries. Salary inflation is the single biggest reason that Pujols' contract ended up providing such value to the Cardinals, and given the general expectation (gleaned through comments here and there) of real increases in cable TV revenue in coming years, I think we could see significant salary inflation. If this happens, even a $130M contract for Trout could end up being a bargain.

The big pink elephant - They're already locked into some huge long term deals. Pujols, Weaver, Wilson, Eybar, Kendrick. That's nearly half a billion all by itself.

All of whom are probably at or past their prime btw.... but that's an another topic.

What about the risk Trout takes in waiting and not asking now? What if this very limited sample size is the outlier and in 2 or 3 years he's a .275/.340/.420 player? Now, I don't think that will be the case but it seems everyone just assumes his production is going to continue to be off the charts and there is ZERO guarantee of that.

The biggest point that nobody ever mentions in these speculations is the time-value of money. Trout should be seeking his money as early as possible and the team should be looking to defer.

To receive the money and security early, Trout would need to willingly trade off some of that total contract value. But with vulture agents, especially Boras, the ability to strike this balance isn't very likely. For this reason, and because of probable regression or injury, I would seek a solution two years down the road. Might as well keep some of that money in my pocket for a little while longer if I'm the Angels.

I have to think that regardless of how good someone is, the realistic max you're going to give someone is around 30mil/year. So right now the Angels have very little risk in waiting another year.

If Trout finishes the year at .340/.420/.580 and goes .325/.400/.575 in his first 200 ABs to start 2013, I still don't think he's driven his price up all that much.

So $55mil for the next 5 years, then somewhere between $25-$30mil/year for as many years as it takes to convince Trout to sign on the dotted line.

Getting it done before 2013 starts does allow them to pay him $5mil or so instead of $1mil, and spread out the cash a little more if they're worried about the luxury tax, but that's about it. So instead of going:

2013 - 0.5
2014 - 1.0
2015 - 15
2016 - 20
2017 - 20
2018+ at 27mil/yr

They could go something like this:

2013 - 5
2014 - 5
2015 - 20
2016 - 20
2017 - 20
2018+ at 24mil/yr