the Jason Bay signing

My experience following baseball lately has taught me that it is folly to bank long-term player contracts as evidence a team will still have the same great player three or four years from now. Short-term player decisions involve today, tomorrow, next week, the rest of a current season. Long-term player decisions should focus on no more than the next calendar two years. Pitchers are notoriously inconsistent, mainly because of the near-inevitability of injury. Most hitters are not much different.

The draft is an obvious exception. Strong, healthy franchises will do a lot of long-term planning in areas such as the draft, minor-league affiliation, marketing, etc. When dealing with major-league players, however, I don't see the logic with expecting much from anyone in the time frame that begins two calendar years from today or tomorrow.

I imagine that teams understand this, to some degree, and that they regard long-term contracts, as I do, as a way of deferring payment for the next two seasons. In other words, I see a five-year, $45 million dollar contract not as $45M for five years but as $22.5M for two years, to be paid out over five years. Anything the team gets beyond year two is gravy.

A team could wisely invest in a select class of players, and perhaps they could expect that one of every three long-term signings will maintain that high level for the duration of the contract. But who knows how to choose one recently-high-achieving player over another recently-high-achieving player?

I bring this up because a lot of the reporting on the Jason Bay signing confuses me. He played for the minimum. For two years, he excelled; he was a top player. The Pirates reward that by buying out his arbitration years at a rate that is close (if not under) what he would receive through the arbitration process should he continue to perform at this level. I don't think the odds are great that Jason Bay will continue to duplicate 2004 and 2005 year after year after year. That's really rare.

So I think the Bucs made him a rich man, and I think the signing was generous. Well, if not generous, certainly not skinflint. They probably would have saved money had they continued to renew him one year at a time.

But then they have to take their best player to arbitration year after year, which no one enjoys. There are other good reasons to give him a lot of money. The payroll has to go somewhere. The likelihood of salary inflation means that it could be a good investment to defer payment into years three and beyond. Also, if we regard Bay's deal as $18M for two (and not four) years, we have the Bucs paying him $9M per year for two years -- about what he would command, I think, were he a free agent. Better to spend the money on Bay than to spend it on a two-year deal for an older free agent. Plus, Bay brings the chance - looks good now, but who knows - of duplicating 2005 not only in '06 and '07, but also in '08 and '09.

It was a good move, for sure, but not for the reasons I most often read. The Bucs were in no danger of losing Bay. He was going to be their player for the next four years, contract or no contract. He's not a part of some long-term plan that's likely to work; he's more like Bobby Abreu for the next two years, with gravy years and deferred salary to boot.

All hail Jason Bay. I'm glad he's a Pirate. If we had two more hitters like him, we'd be a force in the NL Central.