As reported yesterday by multiple accounts the Milwaukee Brewers are negotiating a contract extension for M.V.P and Pete Davidson Look-A-Like Christian Yelich.
I just think that’s super funny. They don’t really look a lot a like, but maybe cousins where ones a millionare baseball player and the other is a cynical comedian. There’s a show there somewhere.
Yelich is expected to sign a $200 million dollar extension that will keep him with the small market* Brewers through 2028. I know the instant reaction here is murky, but I wanted to walk through both sides of the argument.
I heard on the radio that certain parties thought this was bad for the Brewers, a team that is in the same market space as the Pittsburgh Pirates. I understand the concern to “overpay” a guy on a team that might struggle for cash, but $200 milly in a world where arguably less valuable guys IMO (Harper, Machado) are talking upwards of 350+, 200 sounds like a steal.
I love the extension, especially considering the market size. You are basically saying to that teams fans that you are willing to spend when needed and although that purchase doesn’t exactly correlate to a pennant run, you now get to see one of the best players in baseball play for another 8-9 seasons.
I’m also a big fan of just paying guys what they’re worth at the right time, and I fully believe that another team could have offered Yelich more on the open market, barring arbitration or some other weird baseball rule that I just flat out don’t care about.
This deal also proves to me that you can keep talent around if you’re willing to give them the treatment they deserve. We discuss this a lot in the NFL realm around quarterbacks. When is too much money too much, especially in a cap sport? In baseball, we could be tossing around the 450+ milly mark soon, something that is just absolutly absurd. I think this deal to me at least proves that not every single contract has to surpass the next, and I think as sports fans we have to accept that this is the correct mentality.
Before I completely shit on the Pirates for not spending I will say that I don’t believe we have had a talent to pay like Yelich in a long, long time. And when Cutch deserved his extension, we did pay up. This deal DOES prove to me that the Pirates are flat out scamming the entire city once again. If a guy like Yelich can believe in a small market and take a “pay cut” (IMO) there’s no real reason the Pirates should have been so open to trade some of the talent we have seen through the years.
*The Pirates are a pyramid scheme without the promise of becoming rich.
thoughtsfromthebench.com 