Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon isn’t making any plans to leave Denver, as Blackmon told reporters (including Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post) that he is going to exercise the player options on his contract for both 2022 and 2023. An official decision about Blackmon’s 2022 plans will come soon after the World Series, and Blackmon doesn’t have to make a decision on his 2023 option until after next season, should he change his mind in the next 12 months.
In exercising his 2022 option, Blackmon will earn $21MM next season, and there wasn’t much doubt he would choose to prefer that big guaranteed payday over a visit to the free agent market. Blackmon entered Game 162 hitting .269/.349/.409 with 13 home runs over 581 plate appearances, his least-productive full season by OPS (.759), OPS+ (95) and wRC+ (94) since becoming a regular with Colorado in 2013.
At age 35 and coming off that lackluster platform season, there wasn’t much chance Blackmon could find anything on the open market that would top the minimum $31MM in guaranteed money he has coming his way in 2022-23. Blackmon’s original extension with the Rockies has already earned him $63MM, and after the $21MM salary for 2022, he stands to make at least $10MM via the 2023 player option. That 2023 figure could end up being worth as much as $18MM should Blackmon hit various escalators based on plate appearances and MVP votes.
The Rockies inked Blackmon to that extension in April 2018, keeping Blackmon in the fold before his scheduled trip to free agency in the 2018-19 offseason. Over the extension’s three guaranteed years, Blackmon has contributed a .295/.357/.489 slash line and 51 homers over 1462 PA, but most of that damage came in 2019.
His decline over the last two seasons doesn’t bode well for Colorado’s chances of getting an acceptable return on that $21MM investment for next year. Blackmon’s hard-contact numbers have dropped, and opposing teams have been heavily deploying shifts to neutralize the left-handed hitting Blackmon over the last two seasons.
You gotta love how every sports writer in the world gets to announce your present salary & your future prospects for your family. Yeah, I know they’re public figures, but when does it become intrusive?
Get ready for all the posts that say he’s a public figure & we should know what he makes. How about all the posts that follow, you can declare your salaries?
Huh? You are new to following sports, clearly.
Clearly I have over 64 years of watching baseball. Your point, if you have one, isn’t clear
So, what’s your present day salary, are you getting a raise? If you think it’s ok to reveal that, let us know.
Why do you think salaries are so personal? Do you value your self-worth based on how much money you make or something?
If you think salaries are not personal, why don’t you reveal yours? As for myself I’m retired & on a fixed income. It’s hard to value yourself when you don’t work.
Cey do you remember his battery mate? Decker (catcher).
I don’t have a salary as my job is commission based, but I average around $11,000 a month. What did this prove?
Bud black?
@ Steve, I think it likely proves that you work hard.
No. I get Curly’s point on this one at least a little bit. It is a little unbalanced. The vast majority of teams don’t announce how much profit the owner pulls in but they do announce what they pay every individual player. This is kind of a natural result though. Reporters have to report anything they hear that people will find interesting. That is their job and the onus is not on them at all to keep anything private. Quite the opposite. The owners pay the players salaries though so they know what they paid them. The players don’t pay the owners anything directly so they typically don’t have a clue. To answer your question Curly, it’s not the players announcing their salaries. It’s the people paying them. There are a couple different hints at what owners make though. MLB does reveal how much all the owners revenue is as a whole. It’s about $10 billion a season. Subtract the cost of running the business and divide by 30 to give you the average profit of each owner. There’s also teams like the Atlanta Braves or in the NFL the Green Bay Packers who are publicly owned. Your allowed to find out exactly what they make every year. For instance, Freddie Freeman was paid over $20 million last season from the Braves who lost over $20 million. That was the Covid year though. The real reason all these salaries started getting released was because of players complains in the first place. I think it may have started with Koufax. The players were saying “Just give us $250k a year to play baseball and everything will be okay. We will stop complaining. Koufax was easily worth more than that but the owners said no because they knew as soon as they did it would never end. Eventually the owners broke down and paid them but started releasing salaries to prove their point. Now they are paying players $35-45 million a year on long term guaranteed contracts and the players are still saying it’s not enough. The owners release the figures to protect themselves from people who would believe they are paying next to nothing based on what the players association says. They knew this would happen because it always does in pretty much every business. The reporters are just doing their job and reporting what people want to read. They would do it for owners as well but owners rarely pull a “salary” and if they do it is frequently small and for no real reason. In a way they do report what the owners have though because they report the value of their assets. It confuses some people because they don’t often realize that an owners net worth is derived from the value of owning the team at market value. They think they have that kind of money laying around to spend but they don’t. They only would if they sold the team. Then it wouldn’t matter anymore because they wouldn’t control the team’s payroll. Once the players unionized and started (and have always kept) demanding more money publicly, this was the deal they made. If they want to tell everyone they should get paid more money than everyone has to know how much money they actually do make. At least the players only have their salaries reported though. The owners have to live with the fact that every single person can know what they actually have in the bank. If they have a bad year, everyone finds out about it. If the players blow all their money in a foolish endeavor, no one finds out unless they tell them. Salary is far less private than net worth.
Not reading that, but love the username.
@steve. I didn’t read it either but I’m guessing it’s a guy that went by Bravesfan something that used to write a book every comment.
The Mets Missed – the Braves are are owned by a huge corporation, much the same as the Dodgers were by Fox. Corporations have reporting responsibilities which is why you know. But not because they are publicly owned, like the Packers are.
And how much any team actually makes is complex. For example it is my understanding that the corporation who owns the Braves was involved in building development around the stadium (I could be wrong). The income generated by those entities may or may not be reported.
Yeah. You’re right about the Packers. They are actually literally the only team I have ever heard of that is owned publicly by their government. I think it’s the actual city of Green Bay. With the Braves I meant more like a public owned company as in anyone in the public can buy stock in them and be partial silent owner in the company that owns the team. I didn’t know the Dodgers were owned by a publicly traded company as well. Are you sure? I’m pretty sure I’ve read on this site that the Braves are the only team that is forces to release that info in MLB because they are the only publicly traded company. Wouldn’t the Dodgers have to release that info like the Braves if they were publicly traded? Maybe the Dodgers are owned by a corporation but not a publicly traded corporation. That would make them privately owned and they wouldn’t be forced to release any financial info.
Oh. I didn’t see you said the “Dodgers WERE owned.” I get it. It’s not released for the Dodgers now because they are back to private ownership. Yeah, you’re right about Braves ownership. The are owned by a publicly traded corporation based out of Colorado called Liberty Media. They own a lot of things. They own F1 Racing for sure. The way they bought the Braves was unusual to say the least. Liberty is a huge media company that happened to own a bunch of stock in AOL/TIME/Warner who were the Braves previous owners after buying the team from Ted Turner. Turner sold the team to them because he also owned a lot of stock there and needed the money after losing a ton during the recession. Apparently he lost billions. When AOLTW put the Braves on the market back when baseball teams were hemmoraging cash Liberty Media offered to swap all the stock they owned back for the Braves because the stock was falling at the time and Liberty preferred to have an “asset.” They ended up doing it because of taxes. Since AOLTW was only getting stock and no cash while Liberty was only trading stock and no cash neither party had to pay any taxes on the deal. There was a big concern at the time Liberty would just turn around and sell the team as if they were only purchasing it to avoid paying taxes. They said they believed the Braves would be profitable and wouldn’t sell the team. MLB forced Liberty to sign a contract stating they would not sell the team for at least 5 years. There’s actually a rule in baseball now that corporations can only buy teams from other corporations which means the Braves will forever be the last MLB team to be owned by a corporation since there no longer are any other ones. Anyway, Liberty actually kept their word and never sold the team. They didn’t slash payroll either. They actually raised it to a franchise high $160+ million. They also made pretty solid front office hires. I was very skeptical at first but I have actually been pretty happy with their ownership. They are very hands off and let Alex Anthopolous run the show. They are also really very open about their finances compared to other teams. They will tell you exactly how much revenue the Braves specifically have each year not just the company as a whole. I can’t remember if they list cost too though. They usually have around $300 million in Braves revenue each year with the exception of last year. During the Covid year I believe it came out that the Braves lost somewhere over $20 million. I can’t remember what specific number it is. They put out that kind of info for all their assets for stock holders and potential stockholders so it’s very public information compared to all the other MLB teams.
The day somebody gives me a contract for $21 mil, you will be the first one I tell.
Your wife won’t appreciate that
Yeah, but your’s will
Dude, my wife is out of the picture
She will be when CATS44 steals her with that sweet $21 mil.
I don’t think you understand, she is out of the picture
Too bad, maybe she could’ve helped keep you from making ridiculous comments on this site
That’s not necessary. You can tell by Curly’s comment that you should let it go.
It is in bad taste for Curly to bring someone’s wife into the convo like that when he is going to play that card. Its cowardly and he needs to be called out for it.
Thanks for being insensitive
I’m a coward thanks to you
Whose wife did I bring into this? You’ll say anything for a couple of thumbs up.
Dimwit Curly you brought the wife of CATS44 into the discussion. Steve is correct.
Seriously. It’s like telling someone you hope their dog gets run over and then when they say the same you go “actually my dog was just run over last week!”
But I’ve noticed this seems to be a theme with some people.
It becomes intrusive when they look at your tax return according to our former President. ♂️
Do you use the symbol of Mars to let us know you’re male or an idiot?
I doubt Blackmon has any shame about his salary being public
Myself, I’m waiting for my 2 grand a month from Uncle Bernie. You can tell everybody.
Won’t happen. Now that the fat guy is out of office the GOP suddenly cares about the debt they created lol.
Definition of a no-brainer for Charlie. Hey, I like the guy, but that deal was a mess from the get-go. Sadly, not the only one for the Rox.
All things considered, the Rockies’ season wasn’t the unmitigated disaster people like me predicted. It’s looking like they’ll finish 75-87, just four games behind the all-world Padres. Bud Black is a good manager who gets his guys to play hard. He’s certainly better than anyone the Padres have had since A.J. Preller let him go.
In defense of my predictions: I told a certain Mets fan on here that the Mets would finish somewhere around their usual 77-85. Guess what their final record is?
Bud always seems to garner respect-I’d hire him, if I owned an mlb team
Excellent pitching guy. I’d love to see him work out of a ballpark that plays more fair for pitchers.
Cey Hey, just wanted to say I appreciate your takes. I’m not a Dodgers fan, but respect your insight on them. It carries objectivity, even though it’s the team you follow. I trust the comments much more than the sarcastic posts by many.
Blackmon is very overpaid, but we are talking about Colorado.
Blackmon would be a fool if he doesn’t pick up his options. No one else in baseball will pay him that kind of money—not anymore.
At least it’s not for 7-8 years like some of these other contracts out there.
There’s nothing wrong with long-term contracts. Stop worrying about what other people make.
Stop worrying about what other people worry about.
Public forum.
The Rockies have no plan or leadership. They are just floating and stopping at every bump in the road wasting energy getting back to floating nowhere on no time schedule.
No leadership as opposed to who, the Padres?
Very true. They could go all-in like the Padres and even if they fail with flying colors, at least they tried. Or they could be like the Pirates and not even try, but at least you know what youre in for.
Instead the Rockies sign/resign a couple players, get the fans’ hopes up, then don’t do anything, then they sell, but they even screw that part up. Just a disaster
Trying but not being smart about it isn’t really trying, which is what the Padres have done (again). That is the essence of getting fans’ hopes up and not delivering. There is no guarantee the Padres will be better than the Rockies in 2022. They are also a mess and a long way from contending, even with Machado and Tatis. It’s no different than when the Rockies had Arenado, Story, Blackmon, and LeMahieu. A few star players but mediocre everywhere else.
With the Pirates, at least they now have the right guy in Cherington calling the starts. It will take a while but at least they have a plan. That puts them in better shape than both the Padres and Rockies.
I think everyone has respect for and high expectations of Cherington
Duh.
No surprise here. This is the only way Blackmon will get guarenteed money next season
SHOCKING!
Sarcasm alert!
I’m sure Blackman will say he was vastly underpaid the first 6 years of team control and this is the mechanism to balance that out…..and he’d be right! Baseball’s pay structure and format for team control are hopelessly out of step with the way teams are abusing their control ( let alone the minor leagues) and this next CBA will be either something more equitable or there will be a very long work stoppage,.
The Players “Union” also stupidly agreed to not significantly modifying this format last time around and got their lunch eaten by the owners. This is why long term CBAs have a downside if the landscape shifts quickly or if the structure is set up wrong. The NBA figured this out after handing the original Carmelo ( fat, score only slow overrated SF) Big Dog Glenn Robinson more guaranteed money on Day 1 than Michael Jordan made his first 8 years in the league…
Baseball needs to figure it out ASAP.
Wise move.
I mean, although he had a fine year, it’s subpar to his standard. So this is a smart move on him.
Tempest in a teapot, Curly (who clearly from available research was not the most intelligent Stooge at any moment in their combined lives).
Many salaries are public record. Millions of US salaries are posted online, including state, federal.pretty much any municipality worker. Teachers.
Certain salaries are routinely posted by law as a public record. Others are revealed for varied reasons (actors, vendors, shortstops).
We take most positions knowing if what we make will be revealed to the general public in regular notices, or to anyone inquiring. We can take the job or not with that understanding.
If a player wants their salary kept secret, their only option is not to be a player. That’s how MLB and their employees/unions set it up.
As one can read in Ball Four, that was not the case in the olden days and it frustrated certain players. Teams lied to them constantly about what teammates and other players were making. Different now across the employment spectrum.
Your mindset, Curly, is Old School. Past generations held much more tightly onto privacy concerns (such as one’s income). It simply wasn’t a polite topic for public discourse. It is now.
I said something to this effect last night but i guess it got flagged. Basically, if my salary affects the sports tier portion of your cable bill or the amount you pay to go to a venue that was likely funded 100% by taxpayers, then there is an obligation to make the salary public.
Wouldn’t pay him the minimum good for him screwing this organization how they screw the players.
Would the Rockies probably prefer to NOT pay him that salary? Sure. But compared to some of these longer deals for old guys, Blackmon is still a good if not great player. This is no Chris Davis situation.