FanPost

Christian Yelich Extension?

Kyle's article today got me thinking about Yelich's future in Milwaukee, specifically at we could possibly do to keep him a little longer, and it led me to a slightly out of the box thought.

What if the Brewers offered to decline Yelich's team option? Next year during the season when he's still on his last official year of his contract with an option on top, you start having extension talks that center around declining his option and offering to pay a lot more the following year in order to keep him for future years, sort of like teams occasionally do with buying out arbitration. They could decline paying him only $15mil for that following season and instead pay him much closer to his market value, but maybe the AAV could be a bit lower over the length of the contract while still giving him the same number of years he's looking for.

Example: (not a speculation of what he will actually sign for, just random numbers thrown out there assuming contracts will continue to get larger)

Would he rather sign for 6 years at $40mil after the Brewers retain his option ($255mil total over 7 years)?

Or sign a 7 year deal with Milwaukee for $36mil if they decline his option ($252mil over 7 years) and get paid a year sooner?

Would he be willing to maybe go a year shorter than he would look for in free agency and give himself a shot at one more contract if he didn't have the option attached? Josh Donaldson just got a 4 year deal at age 34, teams might be willing to shell out a multi-year contract for a former MVP going into free agency at 35 or 36 so he could get another payday at the end of this deal instead of it possibly being the last of his career. Or would be be willing to take an even slightly smaller AAV like $35mil because he's starting to get his larger salary a season sooner?

That $4mil difference in AAV obviously isn't that big in the grand scheme of things, but we all know how the Brewers love to squeeze as many dollars out of a contract as they can (non-tendering and resigning players like Claudio as an example). He would still command a massive percentage of the Brewers payroll, maybe making that percentage a little smaller will soften the blow enough for the FO to handle.

And, if he determines he doesn't want to do this and wants to hit free agency, you pick up his option and explore trade options in his final year, similar to what the Brewers will likely be doing anyway. This just seems like the kind of out of the box (but still pretty close to the box) thing a franchise like Milwaukee might take a look at.