Jose Altuve signs a long-term contract with the Astros

That can be resolved when he's a little closer to the majors.

 

He's a major league player and at 3 million per year it's a good deal. He's still younger than Springer is and has 3 years of experience so if he improves it will be a great bargain.

 

I wouldn't think so. He's still 2-3 years away. By then, Altuve will be whatever it is that he is.

 

Altuve has 1244 PA which is basically 2 full seasons, his career WAR is only 2.6, you expect to get a least a yearly 2 from your starter.

He is not a league average Glove, all the metrics agree he is a bad defensive player. He has also been a subpar offensive player this year, and he has to maintain some pretty solid offensive numbers to justify his bad defense.

Like i stated earlier it's a pretty low risk contract and he is young so it could end up being a steal of a contract, I'm just not that optimistic.

 

I'm with you.

He's looked pretty bad for a while. Very different from earlier in the season where he hit every thing in the strike zone.

.601 OPS since May 1st.

 

Main thing that is helping my confidence is that Luhnow locked him up when he didn't have to, and he hasn't been locking anybody up. Talented hit guys with low plate discipline are just bound to struggle at some point and have to make some adjustments. Altuve started out well and didn't have to change much, but now he's going through it. I guess Luhnow figured now is a good time to gamble on getting a discount on his future

 

I think the main question we should consider, and I'll preface this by saying I don't have the answer to it, is if this contract creates value. To see if it creates value overall, we'd have to forecast how much it'll cost year by year if we were to go through the arbitration process. Then that will help determine if those 2 years, which are club options, are truly an asset or not. And I'm sure that Luhnow and co. performed this analysis. The first 4 years are for a total of $12.5M. My complete guess is that is possibly 2-3M more than what he'd get through arbitration (obviously arbitration is based on performance, so we'd be projecting a little here). Those are just my guesses really, I'd love for someone more educated than I to project what his salaries would have been if they just went year by year with him.

Regardless, the overall principle should still stand, as I see those 2 club options as greatly outweighing any potential overpaying cost of the first 4 years. The 2 clubs options are for $6M and $6.5M respectively, and that can end up being well below the market rate for an average to (hopefully) an above average 2B. All this, of course, will be determined by his actual play the next few years. Worst case scenario is that he doesn't improve his play, and we have a sunk cost of a 4 year, $12.5M contract (sure seems that this contract would have been one of the lower ones just a few years ago!), while the best case scenario is that he develops and improves his game, and completely outplays his contract, and by a long shot. But I hope the club options will be huge assets, and I can see this contract actually increasing his trade value in the future. No doubt interested teams will like having that flexibility.

 

He's not gambling. Altuve, and any other young player, are "locked up" no matter what.

The only question is how much they're going to make in each of the arbitration years. Some young guys peak right around that time... leading to huge raises via arbitration. Some guys stink, leading to them continuing to make the minimum.

If anything, this is a prohibitive move in order to try to save money in the future... banking that Altuve will continue to improve, and be at least a young above-average 2B by the time his arb. years hit (for which at that time, he'll be a bargain at 6.5 mil/year).

 

It is actually is a bit of a gamble, because he frankly hasn't established himself as any more than a fringe major leaguer. If he keeps playing at his current level he would probably only command 4-7 million dollars in his 3 arbitration years combined. He would have made the league minimum in 2014.

Now were talking a few million dollars, which is chump change at this level. But it's a small risk. Unless he improves quite a bit there's no way he commands 6 mill a year in FA.

The Astros are basically banking on Altuve developing some plate discipline and being able to maintain close to a .300 average. Which is possible, i just don't think likely.

 

altuve is worth more than that deal< nice job

 

sooooo, he's not *gambling*; he's *banking*. gotcha.

 

No, he isnt gambling OR banking... simply investing and approximating

 

3 million dollars a year is not very much for a baseball player, but if he doesn't improve his walk rate or power I don't think he can be your starting 2B.

 

He'll be about 26 when the contract will be up and we'll have team options. We should know by then what type of player he'll be.

 

That, and at 3 million a year, it is better to make sure we have the option to extend and retain rather than risk losing him. He may be down right now, but 3 million on a player of his potential is a good risk to take.