The Angels have agreed to a three-year contract extension with right fielder Kole Calhoun, per a club announcement, covering the 2017 through 2019 seasons. Importantly, the deal includes an option for 2020, which means that the team will pick up an added season of control while buying out all of Calhoun’s remaining arbitration eligibility.
Calhoun will be guaranteed $26MM in the agreement, while the option is valued at $14MM, per Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register (via Twitter). He will be paid annual salaries of $6MM in 2017, $8.5MM in 2018, and $10.5MM in 2019, per SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo (via Twitter). There’s also a $1MM buyout on the option year.
The deal represents a bit of a surprise given its structure. The sides had already agreed upon a $6.35MM arbitration salary for the coming season after Calhoun earned $3.4MM in 2016 as a Super Two. While arb-only agreements do occur from time to time, it’s not often that a mid-arbitration, high-quality regular gives up the rights to a free-agent eligible season just to lock in two more seasons of guarantees over arb-eligible years.
While it’s important to note that Calhoun’s future free-agent earnings were limited somewhat by his age — he’d have hit the market in advance of his age-32 season — this still looks to be a rather notable bargain for the Halos. There’s relatively little risk in the deal, given Calhoun’s track record and relative youth (he just turned 29). And promising just under $20MM for his final two arb years likely represents a discount on what he’d have earned through arbitration — barring a total fall-off in play. Adding a reasonably priced free-agent season, without taking on any lengthy commitment, provides a lot of value to the organization.
Though he was never hyped as a prospect, the former eighth-round draft pick has done nothing but perform as a professional. Calhoun showed plenty of promise during his first extended stay in the majors, back in 2013, and hasn’t looked back since. In over 2,000 trips to the big league plate, he carries a .266/.328/.436 batting line with 69 home runs. With solid glovework and baserunning added into the mix, he has steadily checked in with between 3 and 4 wins above replacement annually, making him one of the Angels’ best players.
With this move, the Angels have two-thirds of their outfield under control through 2020 at very appealing rates, given the quality of the players involved. That’s also the last season of the organization’s six-year deal with star center fielder Mike Trout. For a club that is attempting to remain highly competitive while managing some significant salaries, not all of which have gone according to plan, these extensions both represent strong values.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Nice!
Love it
He’s so underrated
One of the most underrated players today imo
Yes!! He is very underrated. He deserved to be extended, too. He is a great defender with hidden power in his bat, speed, and a great attitude on the field. I’m exited that I get to still see him and Trout beside each other in the outfield for 3 more years or possibly even more.
Not as confusing as the Solarte extension. At least Calhoun gets 2 extra guaranteed years. Plus, $14 mil for his first FA year isn’t too bad.
How is Kole Calhoun underrated? lol
But regardless, getting him for an extra year at 14M is a solid deal, especially when guys like Ian Desmond are costing 14M a year
People say all LA has is trout and a declining Pujols but Calhoun is really good at all aspects of the game
Over the next five years, I’d rather have Calhoun than Pujols.
Definitely
In 2017 alone, I’d rather have KC over Pujols. If the MLB was able to structure contracts like the NFL… Pujols play, plus the money owed to him on his contract, would equal CUT!!!
IS THIS SERIOUSLY THE SAME JDGoat THAT I ALWAYS ARGUE WITH ON OTHER RUMORS???? YAY YOU AGREE WITH ME!!! IM SO HAPPY!!! WELCOME TO THE TEAM, MAN!! Are you an Angels fan???
Well I just state facts lol.
Facts, (opinions to every thing I say haha) same thing, right? lol. Lets just not fight anymore, OK? Cool with you, cool with me. So… are you an angels fan? Literally, who knew, the same JDGoat that I fought with about Bautista this morning… lol what a coincidence?
Concur JDGoat, KC is the 2nd best player on this team in my opinion.
YES! I love this guy! He is so underrated and deserves this contract. Such a good guy and great player. He was an all star quality player in 2015 and possibly 2016. I was always scared
whenever a rumor mentioned calhoun getting traded. Thank you Halos! 2017 is our year to
shock the world! Go angels!!! The big question now is if the angels have the money or want to spend it on wieters. I hope they do. GOOD LUCK CAL!
HaloFan4Ever27, you are aware this extension makes him that much more valuable on the trade market?
That wouldn’t make any sense to extend him for 3 more years and then trade him away. The reason the angels extended Cal is because they need him. With a good rotation in 2018, or 2019 and a great lineup. Look out Haloshane your least favorite team might do well in the future. Please go… And by the way if halo fans are the least educated in the game… wouldn’t you supposedly fall into that category.
HaloFan4ever27, you might wanna reread my post. I did not say they will trade KC away. On the business side of baseball, it make KC that much more valuable to other teams. Why? Because KC is a very fine player that plays great defense, and is locked up/controlled with a very reasonable contract. Understand, this will bring value to the Angels “IF” at some point they look to trade KC in the near future.
Go away brixton!! Halos fans are having a party about Calhoun woohoo!
He’s a salty philly sports fans because his teams are trash and Wentz sucks
all angels fans: like if you think the halos are going to make the playoffs (including wild card) dislike if you think not. I truly think that they are going to make it and shock all the MLBTR angels haters (haloshane).
Please tell me this is not the way MLBTradeRumors is going to go…
Ok its not. Sorry, Dook-man. (sniff) I feel so defeated
Show a little respect. its Dr. Dookie
OMG sorry Dr. Dookie. so sorry.
As an Angels fan they will not
With both the Rangers getting better and Astros appearing to go for it all this year, I really don’t see it happening. Trout and Calhoun are a great start to a team, but the Angels did worse last year than the White Sox and they decided to blow it all up. There’s little help coming from the farm, too. Good signing of Calhoun, but don’t think the Angels stand a chance in the west.
The only Angels starting pitcher that was healthy the whole year from the start was jered weaver. I don’t think the white sox had that problem
Ha, pretty funny that he was the only one healthy. 🙂
How exactly did the Rangers get better? They’ve been 13th in the AL in ERA the last two seasons and had only a plus-8 run differential in 2016. They have little to nothing behind Hamels and Darvish in their rotation. The Astros have so many question marks on their pitching staff on their own. No one in the AL West has what one would call a really ‘good’ rotation. That division is likely going to be settled with 88 wins with a lot of back and forth going on between division rivals.
your dreaming …lol
The Red Baron strikes again!
Yes he does!
I think they will make the wild card and finish behind the astros for 2nd in the AL west.
Who are you talking about finishing second? Rangers I assume?
Not sure why everyone thinks the Rangers are going to be so good this year. Yeah, maybe it’s not the Angels finishing second, but it would be the Mariners over the Rangers then.
The rangers happened to lose Ian Desmod, Prince Fielder, Derek Holland, and Mitch Moreland. They were key along with other players in helping the rangers make the playoffs in the last 2 years.
I’ll take the Mariners over both the Rangers and Angels currently. That said, I’d be somewhat surprised to see a Wild Card team come from the AL West next year.
I think the AL west is arguably the best AL division. 4 of 5 teams in the AL west are in the top 13 teams and 3 of 5 in the top 10 in projections so I will be really surprised if there isn’t an AL west team in the Wild Card this year.
Well I think that’s part of the problem. There’s so much parity in the AL West that it will be more difficult for those teams to win more games than teams in other divisions since they’re facing more competitive teams more often. The AL Central is easily the worst division in the AL so it wouldn’t surprise me if either the Tigers or Royals picked up a WC spot along with the Jays
Plus we have a young simmons, who is finally showing some progress in his offense, he hit around 280. last year! We also have a young rotation that everyone is doubting now, but these guys like shoe, skaggs, richards, and heany (when he comes off of tommy john) are gonna be great! Our defense is one of the best in the AL, I’m guessing 2nd or 3rd, lol i don’t have insiders to buster oleny top 10 espn articles. This team has lots of hope. We need to fix the farm system and we are set.
With Hamilton off the books next season and potentially Pujols if he retires for medically related reasons (I think that may take an additional year of not playing to take effect), we will have a solid core with tons of money to spend on a much more promising free agent class. So to all those people out there that say the Angels won’t contend this year without serious luck, that may be true, but look out for 2018/19.
lol there’s no way Pujols walks away from the rest of his contract
He has a guaranteed front office position with the team as part of the contract he singed. If it’s truly for medical reasons, why force yourself to play at a lower level? He’d still be making a lot of money, just not on the field.
Not to mention if he does the Angels could agree to one of those ridiculous pay out schemes (like Bobby Bonilla) that take 30 or so years of lower pay with interest to pay him the rest of his contract.
I don’t know… He’s a really good guy and if he were to retire soon he wouldn’t let the angels pay him. I hate how every talks about how he is terrible now. Do you call 31 homers in 2016 and 40 in 2015 terrible? He batted 268. this year! Thats about 20 points higher and 9 homers more than Bryce harper in 2016! 119 RBIs is pretty terrible too right? This guy may be declining but he still has plenty of gas left in the tank.
That’s some serious alcoholic hoping mixed into the cool aid. If he retires due to medical reasons that’s what insurance is for if he is physically unable to play. So they’d be responsible for the difference. But he’s not retiring anytime soon. The debate has never been whether he sucks. The problem with Pujols is the hideous back side of the contract. He might get cut one day or DFAd but he’s not filing for retirement. The onus is on the Angels not Pujols
I am sure he is a great guy, but why in the world would he turn down money that is owed to him? He earned and the Angels agreed to pay it to him, knowing full well how old he was going to be at the end.
Not trying to be difficult, but could you see ARod filing for retirement? I think it’s a little presumptuous to say either way what he would do, but I have to believe that if he was not getting playing time/felt it was not in his best interest medically to play he would simply retire. Sure, the Angels will owe him the rest of his money, but as a part of the front office he could see how 30 million a year is hindering his club. I think he would work around this with the team.
A-Rod never filed for retirement. You can retire without filing. Once you file you don’t get paid. Pujols owes nothing to the FO or the Angels. Whether he thinks about it or not he will be under intense pressure from the PA to not file.
I hate how people say he isn’t good as he is more than on the field he makes an example of how to be professional on and off the field for the other players in the club house
I was saying how he means a lot to this team not just on field but off the field as well
You see guys who have nothing left to offer MLB teams (Carl Crawford) and still under contract. I understand he was cut. But the point is with a guaranteed contract why would or should anyone not give their best to be medically cleared? Once he hits 40, years old, all he has to do is put on a jersey and collect a paycheck
There’s wear and tear on your body. He has plantar fasciatis, and that is something he is going to live with the rest of his life. Why potentially risk something else to your body? I understand this is baseball, but you can’t stop and pretend like people aren’t retiring sooner for that reason (like in football). He has already made a ton of money, and he will continue to do so as part of the staff for the Angels. Is playing an extra 3 years for 90 million extra worth suffering from more diseases that will debilitate him for the rest of his life?
I’m not saying there is a right or wrong answer here, but you have to see this option as legitimate. Money does not mean everything to everyone, especially ones that are already loaded rich.
Does anyone know what the angels ranked defensively on espn top 10 defenses, I don’t have insiders.
Go to FanGraphs. Angels OF has the highest projected WAR in MLB. I don’t know the defensive projections yet but as of right now they are very solid up the middle (C through CF) both defensively and offensively, the latter of which is a major plus.
Like it. Surplus value if they have to blow it up.
Wow. This looks like a Homer Angels blog in here.
Yes it is. All angels fans coming together to party about some exiting news today!
Haha. Well that’s one exciting party you have here.
Yes it is lol. Join the party!!!
Exiting news? Like the Angels exiting from the shadow of the Dodgers?
Angels 2017 World Series champs! Trump will make the Angels great again!!!
Ooookkkaaayyyy???? I like the World Series thing but I don’t know what to think about the Trump thing lol
lmao…thats funny
You know what would have been fun?
2011-16?
C Iannetta
1B Trumbo
2B Kendrick
3B Beltre
SS Aybar
LF Grichuk
CF Trout
RF Calhoun
DH Napoli
and 400m worth of Tanaka, Grienke and who knows
Good thing they saved that 10m back in 2010-11 offseason letting Beltre go to Texas
Why did Trumbo and Napoli and Kendricks? have to go?? lol
Oh boy that Napoli Vernon wells trade. They got a pretty good piece for Kendrick once healthy. Trumbo figured it out Seattle with Edgar can’t really expect the same result in Ana. Just imagine if they could have hit on one or two of their 3 1st round picks/2 comp picks in 2010.
Napoli got traded because Scioscia did not care for him…. Napoli had to big of a personality to be an Angel. Have a personality on this Angel team and it’s adios! Party at Napoli’s anyone!?
I met Napoli at a bar along with Lackey, Weaver, and Shields. Napoli was the least sociable of the four. Shields was actually the one who had a lot of personality and was all over the place. Lol
Goat Hill Tavern?
Question: How much pitching depth do the Angels have with this lineup? By suggesting they have Iannetta, you’re still giving up Tyler Chatwood. Keeping Trumbo means you don’t bring in young starters in Santiago and Skaggs. By 2014, even with Greinke you’re still left without any impactful pitching coming through their system. They’d still have a thin farm system. And the Beltre contract would still eat up a good chunk since they’d have to outbid the $18MM in AAV he got from the Rangers. So you’d basically have very close to another Pujols contract, although with half the years. Personally I would’ve rather had Morales back in this lineup, giving them one more lefty power bat. You could say that packaging Napoli would be the way to go to get young starting pitching. And then there’s the bullpen, which has been the Angels’ biggest in-game problem over the past 7 years.
One of the few good players on the Angels. Good extension.
I wouldn’t say ONE of the few….(simmons, escobar, cron, bedrosian, maybin, and others….) but yes. great extension.
…Richards, Heany, Shoemaker, Skaggs and that centerfield, oh yeah, Trout.
AND OTHERS…… I didn’t want it to be a major article about all the good players on the Angels. And he said one of the good ones and I already knew that trout was the greatest player to ever play on earth but I thought that Rocketride was mentioning him so I didn’t put him in. I knew that everyone You and I mentioned was good. I didn’t want to mention trout twice. Trout is amazing and thats just it.
Great deal for the Halos. Keeps a key player around until 2020 and makes him affordable in the event that we have to fire sale.
In terms of bad trades, bad signings, and lopsided new/current player contracts …. it was ever a hit and miss contest amongst all the MLB teams, the Angels will easily win it with the most KOs in every season…
love this guy
While Billy doesn’t make “splashy” moves, as the he media will say, I am very pleased with the job he’s done so far. I truly think we are a starter away, barring a Richards return.
Go Big Red, I would’ve hated to lose him. But am I the only one who thinks the Angels got the best of this ?
Yeah I think the Angels got the better deal in this
I think Eppler is starting to sail this boat in the right direction. May take some time, but we’ll get there. Nice job Billy.
This is so hilarious! Angel fans are so excited about this. How about they focus on improving their farm system because they are not winning anything! Trade your talent ASAP and rebuild! You’re not even a contender.
Facts are facts…. I’m an Angel fan, but I will also tell it how it is. Angel fans are without a doubt some of the least educated when it comes to the game of baseball. As long as they have Mike Trout on the team, being over 20 games out of 1st is okay with them.
I know there are a lot of Angel fans who get it, but they won’t admit that trading Trout sooner than later would be the best decision. The name on the back of the jersey should never mean more than the team.
Doyers suck. Kick rocks bud
Why would you want to rebuild with Albert Pujols’s contract ? I get both sides of trading trout but it’s not happening at least not right now
Oh, so you ARE considering yourself an angels fan. Huh, I never thought you were one because you kind of hate every move the Angels do. But sure, you’re an Angels fan. Ok I’ll play along.
Check the FG projected standings — they are better than you think but then again. Doyer fan and myopia…
Wow this is quite a party! It’s reading threads like this that make me excited to be a baseball fan in 2017. Winter is long. We count down the days from the end of the season to the Winter Meetings, and keep on counting until grown men show up to Florida or Arizona to play catch with one another and we watch with fascination. If there’s anything that will always keep me youthful, it’s baseball.
There is so much hope in 2017, so many fan bases hopeful that their team can and will be competitive down the stretch this season, especially in the American League. The Indians and Red Sox are early favorites. The Astros, Blue Jays, Rangers, Mariners, Tigers, Orioles, Royals and Yankees all have the chance to be right there. If healthy, the Angels and Rays could easily bounce back to where they were in 2015. Hell even the Twins won 83 games in 2015! While that may have been fluky, they have a lot of young talent on the major league roster to watch. The White Sox are starting their turbo boosted rebuild and already have exciting youth beginning to fill their major league roster. That only leaves the poor A’s, but even they have tried to make some moves to try and improve this year.
Sorry for the optimistic rant of sunshine and rainbows, but my heart misses real baseball, and I’m so excited for the fresh new 2017 season to begin!
I think Kole Calhoun’s new contract has a bonus of unlimited pine tar for free! LOL I mean is it just me or does it look like the guy is covered in pine tar. On his helmet, hat, bat glove shirt and his pants. I love his hair though.
Top 3 name in the game today, not as cool as Oil Can Boyd but not too shabby