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

It doesn’t take a veteran of a MLB front office to tell you that Arenado provides a ton of value offensively and defensively. It’s an extremely difficult combination of talent to match at 26 years of age. In fact, he’s at a Hall of Fame pace offensively, being the first third baseman in history with at least 35 home runs and 130 RBIs in three straight seasons.

Now, his home and road splits are where the discounts will come into play. The closest I could possibly think of in this recent market to compare him to was Robinson Cano in terms of production, from offensive and defensive standpoints. However, Robinson Cano was 5 years older than Arenado when he signed his 10 year, $240 million contract.

So, with past production, talent, age and market value in mind, I think we can safely settle on a 10 year, $275 million contract…at the very least. There has been a lot of speculation that Arenado could command a $300 million contract. It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility to see a major market team offer up a contract of that size for Arenado’s services.

One has to believe the biggest question that needs to be answered in this discussion is pretty simple; Will the Rockies shell out the money? If I can whip up the rough estimate above, then it’s safe to assume that the Rockies have a pretty good idea of what Arenado is going to be worth, as well. While there has been no reports of contract talks as of yet, Rockies know that, despite Arenado dropping Scott Boras as an agents a few years back, there won’t be any home town discounts either. The reality is that the Rockies have some signed some very large contracts relative to the market of the time…but that $27.5million dollars (at a bare minimum) contract is a large pill for a middle market team to swallow.