Value. Potential. Character. Health. These are some of the things to consider when players are off the books, a.k.a., free agents.
Picture two scenarios. In Scenario A, there is a budding talent who just came off a career year with your team (you are the general manager, so you do not own the team). He has yet to reach his “peak”, so to speak. He is just as good as his counterparts at his position, yet they are several years older than him and earning triple his salary. Now, this player who is no longer required to work for you is going to have suitors. You are obviously inclined to offer him a new contract, but how would you determine how much he is owed? In Scenario B, one of your veterans just wrapped up his final year under contract. He was the star player who helped you win a championship a few years ago. Although he is still in his prime, at his age, his production could drop off noticeably a couple of years into the new contract, if it is a long-term deal. You are aware that he is searching for financial security and would be insulted if he is not offered a contract of five years.
What would you do in both scenarios? I purport that these situations are contemplated by executives on teams on a weekly (if not daily) basis.
Every player has their prime – it is a window of their best performance during their career, based on their respective position and age. Inevitably, once a player is out of their prime, their performance will decline. Basically, there is an obvious inverted relationship with an increase in age and a decrease in performance, which occurs after a player comes out of their prime. Ideally, you would like to lock your player up before they reach their prime so that your team can reap the benefits of their productivity throughout their best years. The danger in locking players up to lengthy contracts (unless it is an NFL contract, which is only partially guaranteed) is the issue of buyer’s remorse if the player underperforms, gets into trouble with the law, or gets seriously injured.
There are two schools of thought, with perhaps a hybrid emerging in recent years. The question to be answered is whether the team wants to reward the player for what he has done or what he can do in the future. That is, should the general manager (GM) in Scenario A pay the player based off what he has done in the past (he has shown lots of potential, but has been average at other times)or reward him for how the player is likely to perform in the future? Should the GM in Scenario B grant the player a hefty contract based on his contributions to the team or make the new deal commensurate to the fact that the player is likely going to perform at a subpar level because of his age and the toll on his body? There are pros and cons to both paradigms.
Many people were outraged when Kobe Bryant signed a two-year, forty-eight million dollars contract extension at the age of thirty-four, just months shy of his ruptured Achilles tendon surgery. Why reward a player whose best days are behind him? Why cripple the franchise financially because of an aging veteran? Conversely, look at the (albatross) contract of Robinson Cano, who, signed with another team, but was paid handsomely based off his quick rise to fame and potential at a relatively young age – at least in baseball. It is safe to say that Cano has not lived up to his ten-year, $240 million contract – at least, not yet.
Regardless of the approach, there are inherent risks. Reward the aging player who has done a lot for the franchise, but, at some point, he will be one of your highest paid employees and not one of your most productive. Perhaps you would like to “outbid” the other suitors of your budding, rising star by offering him an insane amount of money to convince him to stay. What happens if that anomalous year that he had was just a fluke? What if he performed at such a high level because he knew it would incentivize teams to give him the contract that he wanted? Is there a chance that this player will take his foot off the gas once he is secured financially?
Now, teams are witnessing a happy medium, with veterans taking less money or restructuring their contracts to allow the team to reward younger players. Perhaps the aging veteran still wants to be paid competitively, but is willing to take a shorter contract, or frontloads the deal so that the team bears the majority of the cost early while the player is still relatively “good.”
The answer lies in the culture that is created in the organization. Are the employees truly valued or are they ostensibly a means to an end? Executives in sports are becoming expendable. Their jobs hinge upon duties that are based off (for lack of a better word) luck, sometimes. Scouting, making phone calls to other executives, and evaluating trade offers all require research, negotiation, and excellent communication skills, but in reality, a lot of what happens to teams is good or bad fortune. That is why GMs have to make sure that they place their team in the best possible position to succeed by making the most intelligible moves so that in the event that success was not in the cards, they do not look like unqualified yes-men with no business acumen.