Vladimir Guerrero Jr is about to become fantastically rich by virtue of his ability to play baseball. Some might argue that the signing bonus he received at the tender age of 16, when he agree to join the Blue Jays on a $3.9 million deal.
But after earning Super Two status — meaning Vlad Jr ranked among the top young players in terms of service time among those with between two and three years of big league service time — Guerrero gets four passes through the existing arbitration process, as compared to the standard three years of arb reward. And after earning close to the league minimum for his first seasons in the big leagues, he’s now in line for a serious raise.
MLB Trade Rumours produces an annual projection of the rewards all arbitration-eligible players can expect, reverse engineered by Matt Swartz after studying/compiling years of results, using “an algorithm to project arbitration salaries that looks at the player’s playing time, position, role, and performance statistics while accounting for inflation.”
It’s a pretty reliable and accurate estimation of what each player expects to be worth. Of course, most players don’t go to an arbitration hearing, they agree to terms on a contract that is within a good faith negotiation of the established “worth.”
For Vlad Jr, that number is a shade under $8 million. That’s a tidy raise reflective of a blockbuster season. As it turns out, hitting 48 home runs with a .311 averaged and 1.002 OPS is good for business. The arb system is very far from perfect but it does reward great seasons as designed.
The topic of how much it will cost to keep Vlad Jr a Blue Jay is going to start in earnest this weekend and it’s unlikely to slow for the better part of four years. An excellent and charismatic player who is also homegrown and still quite young is often the type of player teams go out of their way to keep in one jersey for their entire career. With a rough estimation of what his arbitration years will cost the team, we can start to think about what a longer term contract might look like.
Just spitballing, without any sort of formal projection system or crystal ball with insight into how Guerrero might perform in future, this feels in the ballpark for expected salaries in the coming years.
Arb 1 - $8M
Arb 2 - $12M
Arb 3 - $15M
Arb 4 - $19M
For context, Nolan Arenado earned $5 million in his first arb year, then signed a two-year deal worth a shade under $30M for his second and third years (roughly broken out at 12/18.) His final year of arb saw him sign a one-year, $26M deal with Colorado a month or so before inking a massive, eight-year extension worth more than $260 million1.
Arenado put up video game numbers playing Colorado and plays third base, perhaps giving him an edge over what Vlad Jr might earn. For another perspective, Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers set a record with his $11.5 million salary in his first year of arbitration, coming after winning the 2019 NL MVP and hitting .305/.406/.629 with 47 home runs and playing good center field. His follow-up season was not of the same calibre but his pay packet for 2021 was still an eye-popping $16 million in his second season of arb eligibility.
Even with the conservative estimate I listed above, Vlad Jr would earn more than $55 million before hitting free agency. Another season like the 7 WAR effort he just concluded would adjust his trajectory upwards further still, pushing him towards Arenado’s stratosphere of $60 million or more. Even if he falls off, as Bellinger has done, the salaries will continue to rise as a function of the arb structure. That one incredible season ensure Bellinger has already earned $27M after two passes through arbitration. Even the status quo for 2022 gives him more than $43M earned with another kick at the can. And that comes with one average and then one very bad season taking up space alongside his MVP campaign.
What does that mean for us, or the stated purpose of this space? Not too much. Paying great players historic sums of money is a privilege, one that comes after the players on your chosen team perform at high levels and provide fans with hours of entertainment-shaped sports feelings. If your players are setting records with their salary rewards, consider it a win and go on with your day.
If it will cost $60M just to get Vlad Jr to free agency, which he will hit at age-26 and likely command another $30M per annum after that, it’s going to take a lot of Rogers’ telecom bucks in addition to Guerrero wanting to go along with the whole arrangement. For the club, it’s a worthy investment, obviously, but also one that the bean counters will not enter into lightly.
It’s no secret to Guerrero or any of his inner circle but this is the type of financial windfall within reach, one depending on a lot of factors but not least of which remains his commitment to physical fitness. That a healthier, fitter Vlad Jr was able to unlock the monster within makes it hard to go back to the old ways and let the concentration drop. Unless you think the idea of being “very very wealthy with more than $12M in lifetime earnings before turning 23” is enough to dissuade someone from pursuing wealth that exceeds that by a factor of 30.
All of the above also speaks to the unfairness of baseball’s labour practices as a whole. Sticker shock notwithstanding, Vlad Jr’s future earnings remain within a very limited band and his options to change employers —should that be his desire—are incredibly limited. While fans may dream of one day seeing a plakata-based statue outside the stadium one day, Guerrero is more than within his rights to pursue a dream of playing anywhere they offer big league baseball at a pay rate he deems in-line with his abilities and accomplishments.
Counting someone else’s money is always going to get awkward. Baseball’s economic system is ready for overhaul and the current labour situation between the players and the league suggests the tidal shift might be close at hand. But for those of us hoping to see Guerrero carry on the family tradition of ambling out of a Rogers Centre dugout as the last man out at the start of an inning and then the last man in at the end of a frame into his thirties2, figuring out the dollars to make it work is a labour of love.
And the Rockies traded him less than a year later yikes
A story I told on a recent podcast. I can’t remember which episode.