Hunt and Peck

Marcell Ozuna contract rumors - A Hunt and Peck

Let’s warm up that stove.

By lil_scooter93 Oct 24, 2019, 1:00pm EDT

League Championship Series - St Louis Cardinals v Washington Nationals - Game Three

The World Series is not over yet, but it will be soon. When it ends, players with expiring contracts will become free agents and can be approached by any team. The offseason will officially begin.

A soon-to-be free agent of note on the Cardinals is outfielder Marcell Ozuna. We have discussed his current situation a bit already. Now we have some speculation to go along with our thoughts:

According to Dominican sports journalist @Adanlesther OF Marcell Ozuna could get a 160M$/7 years contract. Reds, White Sox, Marlins, Blue Jays, Cardinals, Royals, Athletics and Mariners on pursuit as of now.@z101digital @ZDeportes https://t.co/UtUPe8lcRJ
— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) October 21, 2019

I cannot find anything about Adan Lesther*:

*When I actually spell “Dominican” correctly I do find something, but the something I found are all articles related to the above tweet

Héctor Gómez as far as I can tell, though, is a former major leaguer from the Dominican Republic, so I will take his word for it. Either way, let’s treat the tweet like it is complete speculation. Would a $160 million, seven years deal be something teams would be willing to offer? Is it something Ozuna would even accept?

I find the easiest way to approach this is to look at other contracts — feel out the market in a sense. In 2017 a 31-year-old Dexter Fowler agreed to a five-year $82.5 million deal with the Cardinals. Marcell Ozuna will turn 29 in a few weeks, so he is a bit younger than Fowler and has been a better player over his career. The comparison is not perfect.

Another contract that might be worth comparing is the one Carlos Beltrán inked with the Mets in 2005 when he was 28 years old. There are some issues with this comparison; Beltrán was a much better player and the era was different, but just hang in there because I think this might be fun. Beltrán signed the most expensive contract in Mets history at seven years for $119 million. I punched that into an inflation calculator and in today’s dollars that contract would be worth...

$156 million.

See? Wasn’t that reveal worth all sticking around? No? Okay fine, I will wrap this up. My point is, according to this rumor Ozuna is looking for or being looked at for or there is speculation about him getting a Carlos Beltrán/Mets contract but Beltán at a year younger had about nine more Fangraphs wins to his name. When I look at it that way, I just cannot imagine it happening. It is a weird time for free agency, though, and this comparison is far from prefect. Who knows what will happen...