Later today, the Arizona Diamondbacks are expected to announce that they signed Justin Upton to a 6 year contract extension worth just more than $50 million. I’m not sure what “just more” means, but let’s assume it means $1 or $2 million. After all, making assumptions is a lot more fun than waiting for the official announcement. So let’s see, that’s nearly $9 million per season for the next 6 years. Since Upton started in 2007, this deal essentially buys out his remaining arbitration seasons as well as his first two free agent seasons.
I have to say, I love this deal for the Diamondbacks. For both sides, really, but let’s set aside for a moment the fact that a 22 year old kid just got a gi-normous pay raise; that was going to happen anyway. So let’s just look at this from the team’s perspective: How much money would Justin Upton make in arbitration? Well that’s hard to say, but basing this on recent comps and assuming that Justin Upton continues to put up numbers similar to 2009 (My guess is we look back on his 2009 season as the shitty one), he’d probably get anywhere from $30 to $35 million even before he hit free agency. And from there, we’re looking at $15 million per season.
So essentially this deal does two things for the Diamondbacks:
- It [potentially] saves them a boatload of money over the course of 6 years.
- It allows them to avoid arbitration [which everybody hates] on a player who’s already fucking awesome at baseball and who should continue to improve as he gets older.
This is a solid organizational move. Like the exact opposite of something the Royals would do.
A+

Earlier today the NY Mets 







