5:08pm: Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com has the breakdown (on Twitter). Buchholz will earn $3.5MM in 2012, $5.5MM in 2013, $7.7MM in 2014, and $12MM in 2015. The two club options are worth $13MM and $13.5MM respectively.
3:45pm: The Red Sox announced that they have signed Clay Buchholz to a four-year contract extension in a press release. The deal is worth $29.945MM with a pair of club options, making it comparable to the contract signed by teammate Jon Lester a few years ago. Ben Nicholson-Smith looked at Buchholz as an extension candidate back in September.
Boston bought out all three of Buchholz's arbitration-eligible years plus one year of free agency with the contract. The club options cover two more free agent years, and the Red Sox saved approximately $1.6MM against the luxury tax by announcing the deal after the season started. Yovani Gallardo and Ricky Romero are two other young pitchers that have signed similar contracts in recent years.
Buchholz, 26, broke out in a big way last season, pitching to a 2.33 ERA with 6.2 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9 in 173 2/3 innings (28 starts). He earned his first All-Star Game nod and finished sixth in the Cy Young Award voting thanks to the second lowest ERA in the AL. Fielding independent pitching metrics say he wasn't quite that good as that ERA indicates, but a 3.61 FIP is certainly impressive on its own.
Lester's deal has proven to be a tremendous bargain for Boston so far, which is the level of success the Sox hope to achieve with Buchholz's deal. Boston now has five starting pitchers under contract through 2012 and four under contract through 2013.
Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports originally reported the agreement (Twitter links) while Gordon Edes of ESPN Boston (on Twitter) and WEEI.com's Rob Bradford and Alex Speier added details.
his performance yesterday was the deciding factor.
doubt that
Does this buy out any free agent years?
Ah, scratch that. Just saw the update.
you mean to say that the red sox liked what they saw in an outing in which he gave up five runs, four earned, in 3.2 innings with 2 strike outs against 3 walks and allowing a homerun for his second loss and an ERA over 7? that outing was their deciding factor in extending him? I have a different theory. I think that his 2010 season was the deciding factor in extending him.
I thought he meant it was the deciding factor for Buchholz agreeing to that deal. Either way they’re unlikely to have been the reason
Why is it people like you are unable to detect sarcasm?
Are people like you really so dense that you can’t detect clear sarcasm?
Sigh…
Sarcasm on the internet only is caught 50 % of the time everytime by the average user.
do the first baseman next
I’m sure its already done
How long are we going to keep saying that?
it’s interesting that they didn’t get a club option like they did in lester’s contract. iirc theo had said it was policy to at least get a free agent year and a club option, and buchholz had said he would do a deal like lester’s
I’d be shocked if there was not at least one team option and probably two. Look at the extensions signed by Lester, Pedroia and Youkilis. All of them have one year club options, though according to Cot’s, Lester’s option year is voided if he finishes first or second in the Cy Young voting.
It’s only voided if he finishes 1st or 2nd in Cy Young voting AND he’s traded. He should be in Boston through the option years regardless of how many Cy Young votes he gets.
Barring any career altering/ending injury of course.
GordonEdes Gordon Edes
Sox will be announcing extension for Buchholz for around 4 years/$30m, with two club options, industry source says.
THat just came across twitter
much better
I’m a little surprised this deal was done, big risk for both sides. Buchholz has great stuff, he could be in line for a big payday. On the other hand, his K rate has dropped to Jamie Moyer levels and he doesn’t have much hope for success if that continues.
buchholz’s first full season featured a 6.65 K/9
lester’s first full season featured a 6.50 K/9
even with that low figure last year, buchholz got (and gets) more swinging strikes than josh beckett ever has in boston (that includes 2007-2009). he has the stuff; the K’s will come. it doesn’t seem like it because he threw that no-no way back when, but this is actually only buchholz second full season in the bigs
Pretty sure the rotation has given up more homers than strikeouts so far, but there is no way Buchholz doesn’t get a lot better that what he has been so far this season easily vindicating this deal.
Perhaps he does increase it, I definitely expect that. I was just pointing out the risk involved.
Ugh, I hate Theo’s jedi mind tricks during negotiations. HOW the hell does he get such talent to sign these deals?!
By getting the players agent to make an offer and accepting it? It’s nice for them to sign him, but it’s not something that any GM couldn’t do.
I disagree. Other GMs/leadership teams could probably evaluate talent and project which player will be a star/superstar, but they couldn’t sign Lester to his deal, or Pedroia to his deal, or Youk, or now Buch.
Arbitration deals always look good. Not that Youkilis and Lester aren’t great players, but there are very few young all-starts that refuse to sign a long term deal. Papelbon, Fielder, maybe Lincecum? He deserves more credit for drafting these guys than signing them.
Not sure where that jedi magic was when he payed Crawford like 40 mil more than the Angels or when he gave Lackey 5 years when nobody else would go over 4.
That was free agency. You HAVE to go to exorbitant amounts to secure top talent in free agency. Extensions, it seems Theo has a more accurate perception of a player’s potential than the player himself. These agents need to get a clue.
I don’t see what’s wrong with an arbitration guy getting some job security. It’s usually the players decision, not the agents. Arbitration deals are almost always based on precedent, you can almost predict exactly what guys will get. There’s little in the way of shrewd negotiating tactic by any GM on a deal like this.
Edit: Look at the Gio Gonzalez extension candidate thing, I bet you they are right within 5 million if the A’s do end up signing him.
also, if they don’t sign lackey last year and beckett goes down with the injury in 2010 as he did, who do they turn to? sure, they didn’t end up making the playoffs anyway, but lackey was a big reason they even had a chance
despite beckett, the team’s starter WAR was second in the AL last year. if lackey does four five years what he did last season (not an extremely high bar), he will have produced 20 WAR — well worth the contract
and i am speaking as a guy who really didn’t like the lackey signing at the time
I think every single player that doesn’t have 4 years of service understands that they are NOT getting their market values worth. They are trading fair market value for security. Every GM understands that when they sign a mega star to a free agent deal that they will, at some point, be paying way above market value for those last couple of years.
I don’t think any of those issues are lost on anyone.
“Arbitration deals always look good”
yup! easy game
-w. jocketty
srsly tho, not sure what you’re driving at. even if we assume young players happily sign these kinds of deals (not true), he deserves credit for correctly appraising the guys he offered them to. youkilis, pedroia, and lester have been tremendous bargains. which young player did he sign to a long-term deal to that didn’t turn out to be a stud?
free agency signings are very obviously a different story. but if you wanted to knock theo, crawford and lackey aren’t the guys you point to. lugo and renteria are your main men when tearing down mr. epstein
Every time a 0-6 player signs a deal, the GM gets all kinds of praise. I just don’t think it’s as impressive as most people think. Like I said, there are very few examples of young all-stars that refuse to sign a long term deal.
It’s Theo, Mr Epstein if you’re nasty. 🙂
It’s been mentioned here many times that the Angels were gonna give Crawford the same deal he signed with Boston for. People conveniently love to make up these urban legends that just aren’t true!
I think just about ever team has done the same thing with their non-Boras youngster.
Realistically, it’s agood deal. But it’s not a GREAT deal because they onlybought out 1 free agent year. And I do say this with alldue respect. Theo did the right thing.I think thekey isto find out howmuch the option years are worth.
Yanks really haven’t had any in-house talent worth extending beyond Hughes and Gardner who have yet to prove themselves worthy of an extension yet. They didit with Cano and they passed on doing it with Wang.
With the two club options it’s really 3 free agent years.
Yeah, Theo’s 142 million dollar investment in Crawford is already working out lovely. I agree he is decent at giving extensions to homegrown guys, but why did he splurge on unnecessary free agents? Last year the Red Sox were hyped and ended up in 3rd place. This year they have won 1 game soo far.
You do realize that all of that is based on what amounts to the smallest sample size you could possibly use, right? There’s a pretty good chance that Crawford doesn’t hit like this for the rest of his contract and the Sox aren’t likely to go 1-7 the rest of the way.
yea, man. cards are looking smart for not extending pujols too, ya know? guy clearly sucks now
Really Red Sox? Kid could end up a one season wonder.
Or he could be well worth the money, even if last season was an outlier he could easily surpass 7.5 mil of value with a 3.25-3.5 ERA with a whip close to the 1.203 he had last season.
That’s usually the case with these types of deals. It was the same with Lester, Gallardo, and Romero too. If it turns out like Lester’s deal they look like geniuses; if he ends up a bust they don’t pick up the options and it’s only one year beyond arbitration anyway.
You must be mistaking Buchholz for someone like Aaron Hill!
except Aaron Hill’s deal doesn’t represent his big 2009 year. He signed his deal before his monster season.
This extension was a foregone conclusion. If the Sox were 5-3 right now and Buchholz was 1-1 there would be NOTHING but praise for this deal…
Awesome! I’m happy to know Clay will stay in Boston for at least one more year.
How many notebooks Buchholz could buy with the money that he will make?
To go from being the human trade chip to a long term deal has to feel good for him. As said before, now they just need to lock up a certain 1B.
“foaifnosdifnaseofjweaopfnswof”
That’s all I can understand when some people start spouting off sabermetrics.
The guy had a 2.33 ERA and was a key reason that the Red Sox even sniffed 85+ wins last year despite injuries and underproduction from Beckett and Lackey. That, and they’ve traded away a lot of young pitchers in the past few years. They needed to at least keep he and Lester around for awhile since they have so much money and years locked into the aforementioned duo of J.B and J.L