Colorado Rockies: Will they look to lock up Arenado long term?

Currently, he is under team control through the end of the 2019 season. The Rockies and Arenado agreed to a two-year deal back in January. Arenado earned $11.75MM in 2017 and will earn $17.75MM in 2018. Arenado will be arbitration-eligible one last time after this deal is up, and he could become a free agent after the 2019 season. So, there is some time to figure out a new deal. However, it’s never too early to start talking numbers…or even if the Rockies are going to go long term with Arenado.

Before get into the will he/won’t he and will they/won’t they, we need to try to roughly estimate what kind of contract Nolan Arenado is going to pull. The main determining factors (without any context to the teams and their needs) here is fair market value and how the league perceives Arenado’s performance. Let’s start with a baseline number. Now, obviously, this is probably Scott Boras out here driving up the market for his players, but USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweeted this out a little over a week ago:

So, what does J.D. Martinez‘s free agency now, have to do with Nolan Arenado? According to Baseball-Reference.com, Nolan Arenado and J.D. Martinez have a similarity score of 923.6 out of 1000. Similarity score is just a methodology of comparing players, factoring in a number of offensive and defensive metrics. No player is more similar to Arenado than Martinez.

Whether you buy into this methodology or not, even a quick side by side comparison shows that they have very similar career numbers offensively. So, we know as a baseline starting point determined by market, Nolan Arenado would be worth the 7 Year, $210 million contract.