Got it! So buying now, though probably costing more now also, we will actually be paying less in the long term if we lock him up this winter. Leading to more money to spend in later years and so on….

Sort of. Getting him to sign now will most likely not cost the team whole bunch right away. It would most likely be an escalating contract with Felix making roughly 20 to 22 million on average in the last 2-3 years. (Depending upon contract length)

Thank you.

A year from now, Felix will be ~3,500 pitches away from free agency. His chances of massive injury will be half of what they are now.

Less risk equals a higher cost – this is true in every aspect of life. That’s why you pay for insurance. To Felix, signing a contract now would be the baseball equivalent of buying insurance against his arm blowing up in the next two years.

In order to eliminate that risk, he’ll take a reduced price. If you wait a year, you make him bear that risk, so he won’t give you the same discount. So there’s a significant financial incentive for the M’s to lock him up right now. He’s only going to get more expensive as he gets closer to free agency.

That’s why if you want to resign him, you do it this year, not next. If you wait until then, you’re competing with the deep pockets back east.

we want to see Felix get bought out and extended this offseason

Yeah, that was my point–one more lever to drive up his cost to us this offseason.

The way things are going, I’m just happy they didn’t select Jeter.

Or Adam Jones.

Silver lining–if Felix had won, maybe his long term cost would have been even higher?

Well, I believe they include that in arbitration calculations, but if Felix is going to arbitration there probably isn’t a “long term cost” to the Mariners anyway because he’s headed elsewhere when his time here is up; we want to see Felix get bought out and extended this offseason, not in arbitration.

It’s not unusual to see incentives in the form of bonuses for Cy Young awards in pitchers’ contracts, and I expect Felix’ agent would ask for that, so a future Cy Young certainly could make Felix more expensive; but I think the team, and the fans, would consider that a “problem” worth having.

-He didn’t deserve it and Greinke quite clearly did.

-He and his agent don’t get quite as much leverage in extension talks.

-The lack of a relatively meaningless award doesn’t detract from a stellar pitching campaign.

As for the Hot Stove speculation; 99% of anything reported before December is pure speculation at best, the remaining being utter crap, and the things that do end up happening are usually more surprising/interesting anyway.

People want news, writers need stories, nothing is going on yet, it’s as simple as that.