Phillies sign Scott Kingery, who has with zero MLB experience, to 6 year extension

[jerichoholicninja]

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/03/phillies-sign-scott-kingery-to-long-term-deal.html

 

2:14pm: The Phillies have signed second base prospect Scott Kingery to a six-year contract through the 2023 campaign, according to a team announcement. It’s worth roughly $24MM in guarantees, Jon Heyman of FanRag tweets. The pact also features club options for the 2024, ’25 and ’26 seasons, meaning it could cancel out three of Kingery’s free-agent years. Those options are worth $13MM, $14MM and $15MM, Jerry Crasnick of ESPN reports. Kingery is a client of PSI Sports Management.

 

2:51pm: The contract includes a $1.5MM signing bonus, per Gelb, who also has the yearly breakdown. Kingery will earn $750K this year, $1.25MM in 2019, $1.5MM in 2020, $4MM in 2021, $6MM in 2022 and $8MM in 2023. Additionally, there’s a $1MM buyout with the options.

 

Unless there are some major changes to the CBA, this will become more and more common you would think. I see zero downside for Philly. If he totally flops the last two years are kind of a hit for dead money at $6M and $8M but probably not that bad considering what money should be worth 3 years from now. Even he's just replacement level this isn't that bad of a deal. For the player, Scott has set himself up for the rest of his life already. And he could hit free agency between 29 and 32 which is still young enough to get another sizeable deal. My favorite comment on the MLBTradeRumors article sums it up for me: "it could either be an incredible steal, a very good long-term deal, or very slight inconvenience."

[topper09er]

This guy already has more guaranteed money than Jonathan Lucroy has made in his entire career of putting up almost 20 WAR

[ewitkows]

Didn't Houston do this with Singleton a couple of years ago?

[monkeyman343434]

I think the big thing here is, are they going to use him as a bench player (they've told him he made the 25 man roster), or if he's going to be starting full time at 2B. If he's starting at 2B, I wonder what the price of Hernandez would be. Would still really like him to be a Brewer.

[Eye Black]

Didn't Houston do this with Singleton a couple of years ago?

Jon Singleton is the only other player that had zero days of service time when signing a contract extension. This MLB.com Article has a summary of the contract extensions signed with the least amount of service time including Ryan Braun’s initial contract: Revisiting the earliest MLB contract extensions

[adambr2]

Imagine if Hiura has another great 2018 season in the minors and we gave him this deal at this time next season. Would you do it? It would be highly comparable to this.

 

I agree this may be start to become more common. It's great for the team and a wonderful thing for Kingery to secure his financial future.

[JosephC]

I don't see him knocking Hernandez out of the second base spot. The Phillies are saying Kingery can play any of the infield and outfield spots. During his minor league career Kingery has over 2600 innings as a second baseman, 33 as a third baseman and 18 as a shortstop and no time in the outfield (although the Phillies were playing him there in the spring). I'd guess they start him off as a utility player. IMO third baseman Maikel Franco is probably the guy on the hot seat. He slugged 24 home runs last year but he's gone from a .280/.343/.497/.840 in 2015 to a .255/.306/.427/.733 in 2016 to a .230/.281/.409/.690 last year. Tough to stick in a lineup with a .281 OBP. If he doesn't rebound then it's pretty likely Kingery see the bulk of time at third base.

[bill hAll Star]

There have been other attempts to do this. I recall George Springer getting an offer before he came up.

 

I don't think it'll be too much more common because you'll have to find the right player to find it or you'll have to offer an unreasonable amount.

 

A few guys like Kingery or Singleton may value the financial security, but a lot of guys like Acuna will just take the $600k/year for 2-3 years and hit arbitration in an attempt to get the $300+ million contract as quickly as possible. Of course they could bust or just get $50 million, but in most cases, these guys would be smart to take the risk.

 

Kingery has made a huge leap in the past year in the minors so it's hard to really pin his projected majors path, but I don't see it happening often because you've got your Acunas that will not take a deal like this unless it is massive (a risk the team likely won't make) or you'll have lesser prospects like a Brett Phillips for example that the team will be perfectly fine just not offering something like this and playing out the arbitration process (or at least play a few years before offering).

 

Kingery and Singleton are the sweet spot that get deals like this. Both guys could (in Singleton's case 'could've') be all stars or superstars, but they're most likely just "pretty good" and are happy with the security.

[monty57]

I think more teams will offer early contract extensions, but the value will be dependent on the quality of the player, and whether or not they sign will be on the individual player. "No MLB experience" contracts should only be offered to special players, but early contracts could go to anyone you think could help the team in some capacity at what you perceive to be a discount price for the life of the deal.

 

I love these deals for the team, if I knew a player who was offered this deal, I'd probably recommend he take it, but I completely understand players who decline the offer to try to get more money.

[Greenleaf1]

Deals like this are win-win for all involved in my opinion.

 

The team has relatively low risk (they can hide that money over the years if Kingery tanks and decline the options) and potentially very high reward (either through value of the player or value of having a cheap controlled player to trade later on if the team is rebuilding).

 

Kingery is potentially giving up a lot of money but it's going to be years before he sees any of it, and just so much can go wrong between then and now. Baseball is hard and top prospects don't always make it, or he could just get injured.

 

I think this is a better deal for the Phillies than for Kingery, but I still think the guaranteed financial security of this deal would be really hard to pass up unless you're just an absolute superstar. With Kingery's relatively short history of high level production in the minors, I think this was a good deal for him to take.