Ray's extend Archer to 6yr deal

[Justinlstn]

Per Rosenthal. 6 yrs 25mil with club option for 2020 and 2021. What a great move

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/4/2/5573712/chris-archer-rays-6-year-extension

[MurphDogg]

I don't really understand why this was reported as a 6 year extension. It includes this season, which is already underway. So only the option years are years that he would have been eligible for free agency. Great deal by Archer to lock down this much guaranteed money, new record for a player with as little service time as he had. These deals make a lot more sense for pitchers than for hitters due to the increased possibility of missing seasons due to injury.

[xian4]

Looks like a great deal for the Rays, $25 million for TOR starter for six years.

[SurhoffRules]

Well, I'm a little surprised. There is some risk here for the Rays.

Last season Archer's BB/9 fell to 2.7 in 128 innings. His minor league BB/9 was 5.0 in 8 seasons. Even the year before was 4.0 and 4.4 in the MLB and MiLb respectively.

I'm not saying he's not a good arm, but outside of last year he's been super walk prone. I guess an AAV of 4.1 for a top to mid rotation starter is a nice value, but they could've gone year to year. Unless he's really figured it that is. There's a non zero chance his walk rate regresses and his performance is just plain average. Anyway, I'm sure they weighed the risk. It would be nice to see them miss on one of these early lock ups, for our sake that is.

[MurphDogg]

Looks like a great deal for the Rays, $25 million for TOR starter for six years.

Well like I said it is really a 5 year deal for $25 million. And one of those years he could make the minimum. They are buying out his four arbitration years for $24.5 million (nearly two full seasons in advance).

About the most he could have gotten as a Super 2 (barring a Cy Young Award) is $5 million. Buster Posey got $8 million coming off of two MVP seasons, but $5 million seems to be the non-Posey max. There is actually a great comp in-house for this deal, and that is David Price. Price earned 4.35 million in 2012 as a super two and then won 20 games, a Cy Youmg, and racked up 6.9 WAR and quickly became too expensive for the Rays. If Archer does that, obviously he is a steal for the Rays.

The more likely outcome is that Archer continues to be a very good pitcher and would go from 4.5 million as a Super 2 to something like 6-9-12 over his remaining arbitration years. The Rays then have 20 million dollars over two years of options, which could give them plenty of surplus value. But there is always the possibility that he could blow out his arm on his next start. I like this deal for the Rays, but this is the first deal I have seen for a player under one year of service time where I really liked it for the player as well.