The free-agent season might have been sluggish once again, but the extension season is smoking hot. With ESPN's Jeff Passan reporting that the Boston Red Sox have agreed to a five-year extension with ace lefty Chris Sale -- worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $145 million -- yet another established star has decided to forgo the possibility of future free-agent riches.
According the extension tracker at MLB Trade Rumors, 20 players have now agreed to extensions since the end of last season. Let's break them into groups:
The "so good we've seen enough" group: Eloy Jimenez, White Sox; Brandon Lowe, Rays. Both are rookies -- Jimenez has yet to make his major league debut -- but both have impressed their organizations so much they bought out the entirety of each player's controllable years. For the players, it gets them cash sooner and allows them to forgo the relative uncertainty of arbitration in favor of income certainty. Both deals reportedly include a couple of team option years beyond the six-year term of the extension.
The "you don't need no stinking arbitration" group: Jorge Polanco, Twins; Jose Martinez, Cardinals; Miles Mikolas, Cardinals; Jose Leclerc, Rangers; Alex Bregman, Astros; Blake Snell, Rays; Whit Merrifield, Royals; Max Kepler, Twins; Luis Severino, Yankees; Aaron Nola, Phillies; Raisel Iglesias, Reds. These players have performed so well during their pre-arbitration seasons their clubs decided to commit to them through their arbitration years and, in most cases, beyond. (Martinez's case is a little different.)
The "free agency, what is it good for?" group: Aaron Hicks, Yankees; Nolan Arenado, Rockies. Rather than taking their first crack at free agency after the 2019 season, Hicks and Arenado signed on for seven more seasons with their current organizations.
The "if it ain't broke don't fix it" group: Paul Goldschmidt, Cardinals; Mike Trout, Angels; Carlos Carrasco, Indians; Chris Sale, Red Sox. A quartet of star-level performers coming off early-career extensions, all of whom decided the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of Free Agency Street. Goldschmidt, of course, made his commitment to the Cardinals before he has even made his regular-season debut for the club.
The future free-agent lists are losing luster fast. Based on the ratings I compiled for my position tiers series, nine of the top 30 players in baseball have signed extensions since the end of last season -- five of them this week alone.
(Note: These lists don't include the extension-of-an-extension Clayton Kershaw agreed to with the Dodgers after the season. Kershaw would make it 10 of the top 30.)
In that context, here are five questions that leap to mind about Boston's commitment to Sale.
1. Doesn't this feel more risky than the other extensions that have been signed?
Yes, it does feel that way. For one thing, Sale is unique among the group of extension-signers. Six of the 20 have been starting pitchers, including Sale, Carrasco, Nola, Severino, Snell and Mikolas. However, Sale is one of just two of the starters signing for five years (Snell is the other). He has about one more year of big-league service time than Carrasco and more than twice as much as any of the others. The total value of his extension is more than twice as high as any of the other starters.
The $29 million average annual value on the extension isn't quite blue-light-special money, but when you're talking about one of the 10 best players in baseball, it's simply the going rate. The Red Sox are one of baseball's Vanderbilts and if Sale keeps being Sale, they won't flinch while signing those paychecks. However, there is the question of keeping down salary commitments in a luxury-tax world, while keeping in mind you've got possible future mega-payouts coming to players like J.D. Martinez, Xander Bogaerts and, Boston hopes, Mookie Betts. Locking up Sale doesn't preclude these things, as long as he's producing the wins he's being paid to produce. But what if he doesn't? Then the win-now Red Sox will have to pay for someone who does.
This concern largely stems from the Sale we saw during the long months between last year's All-Star Game and the World Series, when he closed out Boston's championship in a dominant Game 5 clincher. Sale went on the disabled list on two separate occasions last season because of shoulder inflammation. He threw just 29 regular-season innings after the All-Star break, derailing what likely would have been his first Cy Young season. Once he did return, his velocity was down.
Sale has been very durable through his career, averaging 205 innings per season between 2012 and 2017. However, even before the injury woes last season, Sale had shown a propensity for fading down the stretch. This is reflected in his career 3.78 September ERA, easily his highest of any month. And it's reflected in the 5.76 ERA he sports thus far in his postseason career.
None of this is to say the Red Sox have erred in extending Sale. If they hadn't locked him up, someone else would have after the season, and that team might have been wearing pinstripes. Still, the risk Boston is taking on is a little higher than one would have thought at last year's All-Star break, when Sale was 10-4 with a 2.23 ERA and 188 strikeouts.
2. Wouldn't the Red Sox be in the best position to assess Sale's health risk?
You would think so. Their medical staff is around Sale every day. The coaches and manager Alex Cora have seen him throw all spring. This, more than anything, is why Red Sox fans shouldn't over-worry about the concerns laid out in Question 1. If the team was freaked out about Sale's shoulder, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Sale has been one of the most consistently dominant pitchers of his generation. After breaking into the majors by logging two seasons in the White Sox's bullpen, Sale has since finished sixth or higher in AL Cy Young voting seven straight times. He ranks 25th all time in Cy Young shares, even though he has never won the award. His ERA+ has been at least 14 percent better than league average in every season of his career. On top of all that, Sale owns the best rate of strikeouts per nine innings (10.9) of any qualifying pitcher. Ever.
So, yeah, he's pretty good. But more than that, if Sale is healthy, you can count on him being good, more so than just about any other pitcher in the big leagues. Boston obviously believes he's healthy and is likely to remain so. If they're right, there isn't that much risk at all. On the other hand, he's a pitcher with nearly 1,500 big-league innings on him, has a buggy-whip delivery and a thin frame. With pitchers, even the great ones, there's only so much certainty you can count on.
3. What about those other Sox?
I don't know for a fact that Sale would have desired a return to Chicago had he hit free agency after the season. After all, he had a serious problem with those novelty uniforms. I also don't know for a fact that the White Sox would have been willing to spring for him. What I do know is that White Sox fans would have loved to have Sale back.
There is a downside to all of these extensions for teams in rebuilding mode, perhaps more for the White Sox than any of the others. Chicago's soft pursuit of Bryce Harper and hot-and-heavy chase of Manny Machado over the winter made their strategy clear. Tear down, clean up the payroll, develop a talented homegrown core, and augment that core for an impact free agent or two. Well, the impact free agents seem to be vanishing rapidly. Sale is just the latest.
4. What does this do for Sale's Boston legacy?
It could mean a lot. Sale finished his White Sox tenure in sixth place by bWAR among lefty pitchers, a list topped by Wilbur Wood, Billy Pierce and Mark Buehrle. He has since put up a combined 12.8 bWAR during his two seasons with the Red Sox. That's already enough to put him in 10th place among Boston's lefties. The only BoSox southpaws to exceed Sale's 6.9 bWAR last season have been Lefty Grove, Babe Ruth, Dutch Leonard and Mel Parnell.
Now, it would be asking a lot to expect Sale to maintain the 6.4-bWAR-per-season pace of his first two seasons with Boston. But if he did, or comes close, he would draw close to Grove on the leaderboard and would be able to stake claim to being the greatest lefty in Red Sox history. That would not be a bad legacy. Of course, to a certain extent, Sale's Boston legacy was secured late last October, when he struck out Justin Turner, Enrique Hernandez and Machado, in order, to close out the World Series.
5. How long will Dave Dombrowski be around?
You've got to love Dombrowski and his scorched-earth approach to chasing titles, especially in this era of baseball, when front offices seem to be competing for spending-efficiency titles rather than World Series championships.
His tenure in Boston has echoed much of what he did in Detroit. The Tigers never quite reached the finish line under Dombrowski, but they did go to the postseason five times under him and win a couple of pennants. They also ended up with payrolls that pushed past the $200 million mark and a barren farm system.
Keith Law ranks the Boston system 24th, while Baseball America has the Red Sox system dead last. Boston's payroll last season reached $239.5 million, per Cot's Contracts. This winter was in part marked by Boston's decision to not only forgo pursuit of star-level free agents, but also stay out of the market for quality options for the bullpen, including 2018 Boston closer Craig Kimbrel. Suddenly, the luxury tax is a thing at Fenway Park.
Bogaerts and Rick Porcello can hit free agency after the coming season. Martinez can opt out after this season or next. And the biggie -- Betts -- not only can hit the market after next season, but has already said that he will. With the Sale extension, the Red Sox are already looking at nearly $100 million salary commitments for 2022, before any of these other situations are resolved.
Chances are, even if the 62-year-old Dombrowski decides to move on in a few years, the Red Sox wouldn't be looking at a Detroit-type uphill rebuild. The Red Sox don't really do rebuilds. But at the very least, the focus on the next couple of years is becoming that much sharper in Beantown, because it's hard to say what the landscape will look like a few years down the line.