The Extra 2% (25 page)

Still, offering contracts to players who are two-plus years, or a year and change, into their major league careers? Big deal. At no point in a player’s professional career is his future so uncertain as when he’s toiling in the minor leagues. The vast majority of minor leaguers never even sniff the majors, and the tiniest percentage of them actually achieve some degree of success thereafter. For any player, even a “can’t-miss” prospect, getting the call to the show means a big celebration (and a sigh of relief). What if a team could convince a top prospect, on the cusp of making the majors, to trade in that uncertainty for an eight- or nine-year contract? What teenager or early-twenties up-and-comer, the idea went, wouldn’t want to lock up tens of millions of dollars before playing his first big league game?

In 2004, soon after settling into his new role in baseball, Friedman approached B. J. Upton with that very idea: waive your arbitration rights and forgo free agency for a little while, and we’ll make you an instant multimillionaire. Upton had already received a $4.6 million signing bonus, to be paid over five years, as the number-two overall pick in the 2002 draft. He was also baseball’s number-two prospect, as rated by
Baseball America
. But he was just nineteen years old, having just arrived at Triple A. Plenty of uncertainty lay ahead.

As it had done with Crawford, the new regime spearheaded the discussions while Chuck LaMar watched from a distance. “I thought it was an innovative idea, well thought out,” LaMar said. “You take a risk. But you save money if it works out. And you give
lifetime security to a young man who knows that if he plays well, he’ll have another big contract coming. B. J. Upton was exactly the type of player they wanted to try to sign.”

Upton turned down the D-Rays’ overtures. Still, Friedman wasn’t about to abandon the idea of targeting a top prospect for a long-term deal. He just needed to find the next suitable candidate. Someone like Evan Longoria.

In sizing up the possibility of inking Longoria to a multi-year contract, Friedman seized on the practices he developed in his private equity days. When investing in a company, he had to assess not only that firm’s operations but also the quality and risk tolerance of management, the current trends within its industry, and the state of the broader economy. Likewise with a potential Longoria deal, Friedman had to consider a lot more than the quality of the player. The success of the Crawford contract and similar deals across baseball offered a sound precedent. The Rays’ revenue streams—outside of the estimated $70 million to $80 million a year they would pocket in revenue shared via MLB Advanced Media and other leaguewide ventures, as well as from richer teams—remained tight. And then there was the matter of Longoria’s agent.

Paul Cohen, an agent for Los Angeles–based TWC Sports whose client list included Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano, Braves pitcher Tim Hudson, and Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, also repped Tulowitzki’s former Long Beach State teammate Longoria. After tearing up Double A for most of the 2007 season, Longoria’s numbers tailed off slightly in Triple A as he hit .269/.398/.490 with 29 strikeouts in 31 games. Cohen had just locked down a six-year, $31 million contract for Tulowitzki—the biggest contract of all time for a player with one-plus seasons of major league service time—with a $15 million club option at the end. Would his other high-profile Long Beach State Dirtbag client,
Baseball America
’s number-two prospect for 2008, be willing to consider an even longer deal, coming off
zero
seasons of service time?

“Evan said, ‘If I can get financial security for my family, in line
with other multi-year contracts, I’d have interest in doing that,’ ” Cohen recalled. “ ‘If I have a health or performance issue, what happens to me and my family?’ ”

Cohen discussed multiple scenarios with his client. What would happen if he went year to year instead of signing a long-term contract and then hit .300 with 40 homers every season? What about .250 with 10 homers? Cohen then explained how the Rays might handle Longoria’s service time. If he didn’t sign a deal, the Rays might be reluctant to bring him up to the majors until they were sure they could contend. That way they could save money now by waiting longer to get to salary arbitration and, eventually, free agency. On the other hand, if he did sign, the Rays would be more likely to promote him as soon as they felt he was ready and there was an open spot. Longoria considered all the what-ifs. Like most of Cohen’s clients in his twenty-plus years as an agent, he didn’t come from a wealthy family. And while the $3 million signing bonus he got for signing after the ’06 draft could keep him going for a while, Longoria understood the potentially short shelf life of a professional athlete.

Finally, Cohen proffered one last thought. “I told him what it would look like in the media, from an intellectual standpoint, if he signed the deal and became a star. I told him, if media perception was important, don’t do it.”

Longoria decided the positives outweighed the negatives. No player had ever agreed to a contract quite like the one the Rays were proposing. He would be the first. When Willy Aybar got hurt a few days into the 2008 season, the Rays called up Longoria to play third base, knowing they no longer had to artificially hold back his service time. Six games into his big league career, both sides made it official: Longoria had signed a six-year deal for $17.5 million. As with Shields’s deal, the Rays tacked on three club options at the end, making the total package a potential
nine-year
contract worth about $48 million.

Three years into the deal, Longoria had fulfilled Cohen’s prophecy: he became a star, triggering criticism and even some
mockery for signing the contract he did. According to FanGraphs’ win values, he earned nearly $85 million for Tampa Bay through 2010, with six years to go on the deal if the Rays trigger all three options—which, barring some cataclysmic event, they surely will. Longoria won Rookie of the Year in 2008, made the All-Star team in his first three seasons, and emerged as an MVP candidate. In his annual “MLB Trade Value” column, which considers a player’s ability, age, and contract status, then ranks the top fifty players in baseball based on who’d have the most value in trade, FanGraphs’ Dave Cameron ranked Longoria as the single most valuable commodity in the game in
each
of his first three MLB seasons.

“Yes, I know, he only has a half-season of major league experience,” Cameron wrote in 2008, “and we have to be careful drawing too many conclusions from sample sizes that don’t include more than 300 major league at-bats. However, the value of his abilities is so great, and his contract is so ridiculously awesome for Tampa, that the positives more than outweigh the negatives and make him the guy I wouldn’t trade for any other one player in the game.”

Friedman defended the deal, noting that Longoria was owed $20.5 million (including a potential 2014 buyout) after six games in the big leagues. Still, it was clear the Rays had made out like bandits.

“I might just have to retire his jersey if I keep doing this list going forward, because unless he gets hurt or takes a big step back, it’s hard to see anyone passing him for the next five years,” Cameron wrote about Longoria in his 2009 trade value column.

“His on-field value puts him in the discussion with the best players in the game, but his contract is just so unbelievably team-friendly that no one else comes close to his overall value to their club. He’s going to be paid like a league-average back-end starting pitcher through a potential Hall-of-Fame prime. Agents, this is the template of what not to do with your best client going forward.”

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays spent eight years in baseball hell. Under Vince Naimoli, the club took up residence in the American League East’s basement and repelled fans with a poorly maintained stadium, belligerence toward the local community, and general indifference toward public opinion.

The D-Rays then spent two years in baseball purgatory. New management blew up every major element of the previous regime. Marketing efforts became more focused, more creative, more successful. A new generation of number crunchers began studying ways for the team to find new, stealthy talent sources. But the results on the field still stunk: two more last-place finishes and 197 more losses.

In 2008, everything changed.

The most noticeable difference was in the team’s name. After ten years’ bearing the likeness and moniker of a large, batlike fish known as the devil ray, the team dropped the “Devil” from its name. They were now called the Tampa Bay Rays, complete with new uniforms
and a new logo. Now the players needed only look at their own chests to see the changes the Rays had made. That off-season brought more than branding changes and cosmetic adjustments, though. After two years of evaluating the organization’s talent, Andrew Friedman and his staff spent the winter reshaping the roster.

Delmon Young, the mercurial former number-one overall draft pick, was gone. So was starting shortstop Brendan Harris, designated hitter Greg Norton, and most of the bench. The bullpen exodus was more dramatic: four of the team’s top six relievers from 2007 weren’t invited back for the ’08 season. New faces were everywhere. Veteran Cliff Floyd was already making new friends, on his way to filling the role of team leader and elder statesman that management hoped he’d embrace. Willy Aybar and Eric Hinske would join Floyd as newcomers in the opening day lineup. Matt Garza ascended to the starting rotation. The recast bullpen featured seasoned pickups like Troy Percival and Trever Miller, with incumbents J. P. Howell and Grant Balfour thrust into higher-leverage roles. The Rays’ perennial youth movement remained in full swing: college superstar and number-one pick Evan Longoria looked primed to grab the starting third-base job ahead of schedule.

No one knew if this new cast of characters would make the team markedly
better
. But there was no doubt that the 2008 Rays were
different
.

“People ask all the time what our expectations were,” said Friedman. “We don’t get caught up in those things because we’re so caught up in the process. We believe, with the right process, good things will happen. I felt like we would score more runs than we allowed. What that meant, we weren’t really sure.”

There was another change in the Rays’ approach, though it was so subtle that most pundits and fans scarcely noticed. Traditionally, rebuilding teams tend to stockpile assets. They trade veterans for prospects and take fliers on cheap, unwanted talent, hoping to hit the lottery. They rarely sign major league free agents. Spending significant money on a veteran free agent and potentially giving up a compensatory draft pick rarely makes sense for a team coming off a
last-place finish. Yet the Rays spent the 2007–2008 off-season making the kinds of moves you’d expect from a contender.

This new approach made sense from multiple angles. Even the most patient ball club, stacked with promising young talent, can’t simply wave a wand and go from cellar dwellers to champions. Losing teams eventually need to make the kinds of moves you’d expect from a contender, thus making them more likely to become contenders themselves. For the Rays, this wouldn’t involve handing $100 million contracts to free agents so much as acquiring veteran talent that could help fill in whatever gaps remained once the team’s young core had been assembled and push them closer to a playoff berth. There were off-field considerations too. In “Is Alex Rodriguez Overpaid?”—a chapter from the 2006 book
Baseball Between the Numbers
—Nate Silver showed that each additional win earns a ball club about $1.2 million in additional ticket, concessions, merchandising, and other revenue. So even if the Rays merely bumped their win total from 66 in 2007 to 71 in 2008, they would stand to add $6 million (or more after accounting for inflation) to their top line.

The Rays announced two more signings about a week before spring training. Trever Miller signed a one-year, $1.6 million deal to serve as the team’s lefty relief specialist, while journeyman outfielder Eric Hinske, a former Rookie of the Year, took an $800,000 deal to compete for a share of the right-field job. Rounding out the off-season moves was a little-noticed trade: the Rays shipped spare arm Jeff Ridgway to the Braves for two utility infielders, Chase Fontaine and Willy Aybar. Fontaine and Ridgway didn’t pan out. Aybar also seemed destined to fail. In 2007, Aybar had spent three months rehabbing from substance abuse, then broke the hamate bone in his right hand, collectively costing him that entire season. In January 2008, the Rays made the deal to acquire him; a few weeks later, he was arrested on domestic violence charges in the Dominican Republic. Clearly the Rays saw
something
in Aybar—why deal with all that drama otherwise?

To see the utility of the Aybar trade—or any of the other deals—you
needed to take a step back. The on-field results, when Aybar made it onto the field, were impressive. He’d shown a solid bat (.384 on-base percentage in 383 plate appearances) and the versatility to play several positions in his first two seasons with the Dodgers and Braves. Yes, his life and career had gone into a tailspin. But with an asking price of nearly nil, the Rays saw a lot more potential reward than risk in the deal.