UTK Short 11/11/22

The Best Offer

Clayton Kershaw has re-signed with the Dodgers, one of a handful of signings, all with their original club, during this 22/23 offseason. The contract details aren’t known yet, but Kershaw wasn’t given a qualifying offer (largely because they were so close on a standard deal), but I spoke with a ranking front office type who is regularly involved in contract negotiations. He suggested there might be a new type of deal coming in an email. It’s slightly edited and paraphrased to maintain his anonymity despite a very idiosyncratic vocabulary:

“If Kershaw is worth 20m to the Dodgers - and he is - he’s off 22 starts the last two years. Give him a $2m base, then a million dollars a start, or a million every six innings. That’s fair value for both sides. That’s fair value for Jacob deGrom, for Justin Verlander, or for Carlos Rodon. Some smart team should be putting that offer on the table for the first of them that signs.”

MLB has some strange rules about bonuses, but there’s ways to structure this that would be legal. I’m not sure any top pitcher would take that low of a floor, but if you start at $10m, this gets very interesting. At that point, somewhere in the $500-$750k per start is more a fair value, or you could go innings and say $3m every fifty innings. That would put Kershaw at a lower spot than he’d get on a normal deal, but would be very good for what Verlander did.

I’m intrigued by the idea, but in a market where deGrom is getting offers north of $40m, I’m not sure how much incentive a player has to share the risk with the team, even with some upside potential.