Kyler Murray

The Athletics were hit with the news today that top 2018 draft choice Kyler Murray intends to pursue a career in the NFL. While that seemed to all but resolve the question of which sport he’d pursue, the Oakland organization may not be ready to concede the matter.

According to a report from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription link), the A’s still intend to engage with Murray’s camp as his NFL draft journey begins. As Rosenthal notes, the club still can beat any offer that a football team makes, at least in theory, by dangling a guaranteed MLB contract on top of the MLB draft bonus money that Murray presently stands to sacrifice.

Though the Heisman Trophy winner is now going to turn his full attention to football, his draft prospects remain up in the air. It’s certainly possible Murray will end up being taken lower than some pundits expect. Regardless where he goes, his earnings will be capped by the NFL draft slotting system, so the Oakland org will at least have a chance to submit a final, higher bid.

Realistically, there’s sure to be a limit as to how much cash the A’s will put up to keep Murray off the gridiron. The team clearly values his future, particularly since there’s no compensation for losing him, but Murray is also a long way from being a big league contributor. There’s risk in any prospect, but he’s seen a particularly boom-or-bust player given his relative lack of polish on the diamond.

It’ll certainly be fascinating, for a variety of reasons, to see how high the Oakland organization will ultimately bid for Murray, if it does indeed attempt to woo him back. Perhaps he won’t even entertain another baseball offer if he receives a good enough opportunity with the right NFL franchise. For the time being, there’s still some uncertainty to the matter — at least, that is, from the A’s perspective.

8:30pm: Murray and his camp haven’t made any salary demands in talks with the Athletics, Slusser reports (Twitter link).

5:35pm: Kyler Murray has until tomorrow to declare his eligibility for the NFL Draft, and a contingent from the A’s front office (including Billy Beane and David Forst) is meeting with the two-sport star and his camp today to try and convince him to remain in the Athletics’ farm system rather than pursue a pro football career.  The situation could result in a unique resolution between the two sides and the league itself, as ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan is reporting (Twitter links) that if the A’s and Murray can agree to a Major League contract that would guarantee Murray more money for sticking with baseball, Major League Baseball wouldn’t object.

As Passan explains in follow-up tweets, league rules prevent a team from signing a drafted player to an MLB contract straight out of the draft.  In Murray’s case, he has already signed a minor league deal last summer, which included a $4.6MM bonus as the ninth overall selection in the 2018 draft.  Since Murray is already technically under contract, no league rules would be broken if Oakland was to sign him to a Major League contract now and add him to its 40-man roster.  As Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times notes (Twitter link), Major League Baseball wouldn’t believe that Murray and the A’s were in violation of the draft pool system with this new contract unless the league felt such a handshake agreement for more money was made last summer, before Murray was originally signed.

The eye-popping news comes in the wake of reports from earlier today from WFAA’s Mike Leslie, who heard from a source that Murray wanted $15MM in new money to forego the NFL for the Athletics.  While Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle hears that the $15MM figure is “too high,” she notes that the A’s and Murray’s representatives from the Boras Corporation “are working on trying something creative to accommodate” a new agreement.

Since being drafted by the A’s last summer, Murray’s star has risen following a season that saw the quarterback win the Heisman Trophy and lead Oklahoma to a slot in the College Football Playoff.  Slusser and Henry Schulman of the Chronicle reported earlier this week that Murray was now leaning towards declaring for the NFL Draft, as he’d gain more money beyond $4.66MM (which would be given back to the A’s) as a potential first-round pick, and Murray could potentially be on an NFL field as soon as September, rather than facing at least a few seasons in the minors before cracking the Athletics’ Major League roster.

Perhaps with a nod to Murray’s higher profile, Major League Baseball sent some marketing executives to today’s meeting between Murray and the A’s front office, MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi reports.  As Passan put it, the league’s willingness to permit a Major League contract this early in Murray’s pro baseball career is indicative of how “special a situation” MLB considers Murray’s case to be, as “Murray in MLB would be a coup.”

It stands to reason that other teams could raise objections to a new Murray contract, though the circumstances are unique enough that it isn’t likely to lead to a future flurry of teams trying to find loopholes around the draft pool system.  One rival general manager tells The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that “Everyone knows this isn’t circumvention….I actually hope the A’s can get it done. It would be good for the game for Murray to play baseball.”

The other interesting wrinkle about a new contract is that it would tweak Murray’s timeline to the majors.  If Murray is placed on the 40-man roster, 2019 would become his first option year, so he’d be out of options following the 2022 season.  That leaves the A’s with less time to access Murray’s prospect potential, though the club clearly sees that as a preferred scenario to losing Murray (and wasting a first-round pick) entirely should he opt for the NFL.

JAN. 13: Athletics executive vice president Billy Beane is among those meeting with Murray today in hopes of convincing him to choose baseball over football, Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweets. General manager David Forst is also on hand, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who adds a decision isn’t expected to come Sunday.

JAN. 9: The Athletics are expecting Kyler Murray, the No. 9 overall pick in last year’s MLB draft but also the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback for Oklahoma, to declare for the NFL draft this Sunday, Susan Slusser and Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle report.

Entering the draft doesn’t necessarily mean that Murray will forgo his commitment to the Athletics, but Slusser and Schulman report that one source indicated to them that Murray is indeed leaning toward selecting football as his profession rather than baseball. Should Murray go that route rather than pursuing his career as an outfielder in the Athletics organization, the A’s would get his $4.66MM signing bonus back, but they wouldn’t receive a compensatory selection in the 2019 draft. That reality, as noted by Baseball America’s Teddy Cahill at the time (Twitter link), made the selection of Murray one of the riskier draft picks in recent memory.

While many onlookers note that Major League Baseball’s guaranteed salary structure should be more enticing to Murray (or any player), that’s somewhat of a presumptuous argument. At present, the only thing guaranteed to Murray in his baseball career is that $4.66MM bonus. That’s obviously a life-changing sum of money, but Murray’s next notable payday in baseball would be nowhere in sight. He’d need to play for next to nothing for at least two seasons in the minors as he worked his way toward the Majors, then spend at least his first three seasons making roughly the league minimum before even reaching arbitration — barring an early career extension (which the A’s haven’t handed out recently and which Murray’s agent, Scott Boras, typically avoids).

Even an optimistic and aggressive timeline for Murray reaching arbitration would put him at least a half-decade away from realizing his first significant post-draft payday in baseball, and it’s far from a guarantee that he’d ever be the type of player to command significant arbitration salaries or a significant multi-year contract in free agency.

Conversely, the No. 32 overall selection in last year’s NFL draft, Lamar Jackson, signed a four-year, $9,471,648 contract with the Ravens and quickly ascended to the starter’s role in Baltimore. Certainly, there are more than pure financial considerations at play, but assuming he’s a first-round selection in the NFL draft, Murray can look at Jackson’s near-$9.5MM guarantee as a rough baseline for what he’d be promised. (In reality, it’d be slightly higher, as draft bonuses in the NFL increase incrementally each year just as they do in baseball.) As for fans hoping to see this generation’s version of Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders, the report from Slusser and Schulman flatly indicates that there’s “no possibility” of Murray playing both sports.

If Murray does ultimately choose the NFL over MLB, the Athletics would still retain his baseball rights in the event that he ever chose a change in career path (as was the case with the Rockies and Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, though the Yankees now control Wilson’s rights following a 2017 trade). But, it’d be a discouraging blow for the A’s, who surely envisioned the sizable commitment they made to Murray as having a legitimate chance of persuading him to pursue a baseball career.

Recent top Athletics draft pick Kyler Murray is most famous for his role as a standout quarterback at the University of Oklahoma, but he already inked a $4.66MM deal to join the Oakland organization over the summer. Some whispers have circulated that Murray could be enticed by the NFL draft, where he might also be a first-round talent, but agent Scott Boras largely shot down that idea in a chat today with Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle.

If Boras was not quite fully committing, he nevertheless did not leave much wiggle room for his client. “Kyler has every intention of fulfilling his agreement with the A’s,” said Boras, who adds that Murray “will be in Spring Training with the A’s” (as Fancred’s Jon Heyman indicated earlier this week, on Twitter).

That’s good news for the Oakland organization, which surprised many by taking Murray ninth overall. There is no questioning his immense athletic ability, of course, but the collegiate star is much more accomplished and polished on the gridiron — if only due to the fact that he has focused his attention to that higher-profile collegiate pursuit.

Notably, as Slusser explains, the A’s have a lot to lose if Murray changes his mind. While the club would get its money back, it wouldn’t receive a compensatory pick as occurs in situations where no agreement is consummated in the first place. As part of the initial deal with Murray, the Athletics organization agreed to allow him to finish out his career at OU.

Murray himself had raised a few eyebrows with recent comments in which he seemingly indicated there was still an opening for a football future. Certainly, his draft stock has risen after an immense season for the Sooners, though it still seems unlikely he’d be considered at the very top of the draft class due to his short stature. Regardless, Boras suggests that Murray’s words shouldn’t be parsed too closely. After all, he is being pressed with attention as he nears a potential Heisman Trophy.