The Strasburg Watch: Day 12

[jdlea]

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!

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.