Braves extend Acuña with 8 year deal

The deal probably breaks down roughly as follows:

2019 (21): $560k (pre-arb 2, no signing bonus reported)
2020 (22): $1M (pre-arb 3)
2021 (23): $5M (arb 1)
2022 (24): $9M (arb 2)
2023 (25): $13M (arb 3)
2024 (26): $17M (arb 4)
2025 (27): $23M (FA 1)
2026 (28): $23M (FA 2)
2027 (29): $17M option, $10M buyout (FA 3)
2028 (30): $17M option, $10M buyout (FA 4)

I can't believe Acuna gave up 2 option years at the end of this deal, but it's great news for the Braves.

Acuna may now be the most valuable asset in all of MLB.

Well if the rebuild doesn't work out at least the Braves have a valuable trade piece now. I'm sure he is worth 5 or 6 top 50 prospects now.
 
A little more insight on just how bad the 2 option years are for Acuna...

Trick Flair
3:18 So what the best extension so far?
Steve Adams
3:21 For the team or the player? I can't believe Acuna basically gave up the first decade of his career for a max of $124MM. Jeff and I were talking about this ... Eloy can earn $85MM total on his deal and only gave up one FA season. Acuna gave up three more and only got a max of an additional $39MM? For a player of his caliber, that's brutal.

The $100MM guarantee is a nice, shiny round number, but he'd be a $30MM+ player in fre agency right now -- and who knows where the market will be by the time he'd have actually reached that level. $35MM could be the new norm for star free agents in their prime. Maybe more. They gave up so much control to get to that symbolic $100MM deal. It's a great contract for the Braves.


Alex Anthopoulos
3:23 Did Acuña left money on the table with this deal?
Steve Adams
3:26 I mean, every player leaves some money on the table when they take an extension multiple years from free agency, but man alive did Acuna ever. As a 26-year-old free agent you're looking at Harper/Trout/Betts scenarios -- maybe more if the market has advanced at that point. Even waiting a year they could have gotten so much more.

I mean, at a certain point, you can shrug, look at this from a human perspective and say, "Can't blame a 21-year-old kid for taking $100MM guaranteed..." but that contract is going to look like an all-out heist for the Braves in a few years.
 
A little more insight on just how bad the 2 option years are for Acuna...

Trick Flair
3:18 So what the best extension so far?
Steve Adams
3:21 For the team or the player? I can't believe Acuna basically gave up the first decade of his career for a max of $124MM. Jeff and I were talking about this ... Eloy can earn $85MM total on his deal and only gave up one FA season. Acuna gave up three more and only got a max of an additional $39MM? For a player of his caliber, that's brutal.

The $100MM guarantee is a nice, shiny round number, but he'd be a $30MM+ player in fre agency right now -- and who knows where the market will be by the time he'd have actually reached that level. $35MM could be the new norm for star free agents in their prime. Maybe more. They gave up so much control to get to that symbolic $100MM deal. It's a great contract for the Braves.

Saw a tweet that summed it up perfectly.

Can make the case it's a terrible deal for Acuna, and set himself up for life with this deal. But can never fault a player for getting guaranteed money now.
 
Saw a tweet that summed it up perfectly.

Can make the case it's a terrible deal for Acuna, and set himself up for life with this deal. But can never fault a player for getting guaranteed money now.

Yeah, I suppose it's better to call it a great deal for the Braves rather than a terrible deal for Acuna.

Dude is still absolutely filthy rich, so it's hard to call it a mistake.
 
Saw a tweet that summed it up perfectly.

Can make the case it's a terrible deal for Acuna, and set himself up for life with this deal. But can never fault a player for getting guaranteed money now.

If I was Acuna, I'd honestly take that deal every time. Put yourself in his shoes. You're making good money now but if you get in a car wreck and shatter your leg or blow out your knee really bad and never play again, how long before that money runs out? If you take the $100 million, you're set for life! You can change the lives of everyone in your entire family.

It wouldn't even be a hard decision to me. The difference between earning $100 million in my career and $200 million wouldn't be that much to my lifestyle. I'd gladly sacrifice that to eliminate the possibility that something could happen that drops my career earnings to less than a million.
 
If I was Acuna, I'd honestly take that deal every time. Put yourself in his shoes. You're making good money now but if you get in a car wreck and shatter your leg or blow out your knee really bad and never play again, how long before that money runs out? If you take the $100 million, you're set for life! You can change the lives of everyone in your entire family.

It wouldn't even be a hard decision to me. The difference between earning $100 million in my career and $200 million wouldn't be that much to my lifestyle. I'd gladly sacrifice that to eliminate the possibility that something could happen that drops my career earnings to less than a million.

If I'm Acuna I take 8/90 and hit the FA market at age 28 looking to make $35M per year over 8+ years. If I'm Acuna's agent that's the route I strongly push him towards.

It appears Acuna and his agent gave up quite a bit of future earning potential just to get the guarantee to the magical $100M mark, and the Braves did well to extract a lot of value in exchange for going there.
 
Maria is thankful!

m5zjd.png
 
Worst case semi-realistic scenario for this deal is Acuna becomes Heyward and he's not really worth it the last few years of this deal. Best case semi-realistic scenario is he's Bryce Harper, and we're saving an obscene amount of money on him. There is no negative to this deal really. Unless he full on Francoeurs but I don't consider that likely as Acuna has a sweet swing, unlike Francouer who looked like he was pulling weeds everytime he swung.
 
Given how team-friendly the Acuna deal is, I wouldn't be surprised to see another 2-3 years tacked onto Freeman's deal at (or close to) his current salary. Does that push him a little further than some folks prefer to go? Sure, but it would line up perfectly with Goldschmidt's extension from St. Louis - taking Freddie through to roughly the same age.

I would not pay Freeman 22 million to play in his early 30s. I'd see if he wants to extend like a 4/60 or something like that. Perhaps with some performance bonuses, but he's a big man, big men tend to age roughly, and he's already had some injury issues in his younger years he's likely to have them as he ages. But I think he could take the route of sticking around for sub market prices because he enjoys the organization.
 
Seriously though, I thought this was another (late) April Fools joke. AA should be arrested for this steal, is there anyway this deal can be vetoed by MLB? It just sounds too good to be true. Someone pinch me and let me know I am not asleep and dreaming! There is no downside to this deal for the Braves but I wonder why Ronnie jumped on it so fast?
 
Breakdown

Acuna will earn $1MM in both 2019 and 2020, $5MM in 2021, $15MM in 2022 and $17MM annually from 2023-26

$17 million options in 2027 and 2028 with a $10 million buyout.

So it is 8 years $90 million...the $100 million is only with the buyout...that's why it's 10 years $124 million
 
Breakdown

Acuna will earn $1MM in both 2019 and 2020, $5MM in 2021, $15MM in 2022 and $17MM annually from 2023-26

$17 million options in 2027 and 2028 with a $10 million buyout.

So it is 8 years $90 million...the $100 million is only with the buyout...that's why it's 10 years $124 million

Well, good for Acuna...great for Braves and Braves fans
 
I would not pay Freeman 22 million to play in his early 30s. I'd see if he wants to extend like a 4/60 or something like that. Perhaps with some performance bonuses, but he's a big man, big men tend to age roughly, and he's already had some injury issues in his younger years he's likely to have them as he ages. But I think he could take the route of sticking around for sub market prices because he enjoys the organization.

Freeman was always going to be a Brave for his entire career if it was left up to him but it is 100% guaranteed that he will be now.
 
Well, good for Acuna...great for Braves and Braves fans

Yeah...really, really team friendly deal. If he put up the same numbers this season as last and waited until the off season he probably could have gotten at least 50% more and probably more than that.
 
If I'm Acuna I take 8/90 and hit the FA market at age 28 looking to make $35M per year over 8+ years. If I'm Acuna's agent that's the route I strongly push him towards.

It appears Acuna and his agent gave up quite a bit of future earning potential just to get the guarantee to the magical $100M mark, and the Braves did well to extract a lot of value in exchange for going there.

It's not good for the union and salaries. It's fine for Acuna.

The difference between 100 million and 150 million won't mean anything to him in lifestyle. He has the protection of guaranteed money.

This is will be sold as him being all in with the Braves. I bet he makes all of that money up on sponsorship etc. The Braves will market the hell out of him and he will make a ton of money off of the field.

The incentives tilt so far in the way of the club. The club is around for forever. Players have a finite window to make money. Players can get hurt or stink. 100 Million to a person and 100 million to the braves and/or liberty media will never be the same thing.

In the NBA folks do this all of the time. They take the first big deal and stay with the club and then the second deal the look for titles or more money,etc.
 
Back
Top