Quote:
Originally Posted by over the mountain
good job nats for doing the absolute minimum you have to do as a MLB organization (as said above).
unlike football 1st round rookies in the NFL who get paid bucks and start/contribute right away, baseball pays their 1st round rookies pennies b/c half or less of them will see the majors in 2-3 years. i think we you have a legit talent who will be playing in the bigs after a year or two (like weiters n strasburg) you have to pay them alil more.
markakis got a small rookie contract, played well for a year n half, then was hitting .300 with good power in the majors making less than 200k. the Os did the right thing and resigned him but could you imagine being a nick markakis, top 30 player in the bigs and making 200k while far worse players (mora) is making close to 8 mil?
in the case of the strasburgs and weiters (top end talent over 20 yrs old) you pay them more than you would an 18 yr old high school player b/c they are going to be playing the majors alot sooner.
go job nats!
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That's baseball, though. It's not the same thing as football. Teams don't have to pay for performance early because they control players for longer. Once a guy gets called up, he's under your control for 6 years. The last 2 of those he gets arbitration, the other 4, the guy takes what the team offers.
Just a couple of years ago, when Prince was the youngest player to ever hit 50 jacks, he got paid $650,000, it was just this January that he finally got paid and that's only a 2 year contract.
Baseball players have longer careers and make far more money than football players if they're good. While I agree with the general point that if you draft premium talent, you have to pay for premium talent, that's not really the case if you take a guy pretty much where he should go in the draft.