Report: Giancarlo Stanton Could Opt-Out After 2019 Season

As it has been reported for the past 48 plus hours, the Miami Marlins and superstar right fielder Giancarlo Stanton are closing in on a record-breaking contract. According to Jon Heyman the two sides are closing in on a 13-year deal for $325 million. The contract is likely to include a no trade clause and an opt-out clause. While the deal is expected to be closed soon, Joe Frisaro warns that nothing is imminent.

Late last night Chris Cotillo of MLB Daily Dish reported that he heard the player opt-out option for Giancarlo could come after the 2019 season, which would make him a free agent at the age of 30.

Sources indicate that the opt-out clause is expected to kick in after the 2019 season, when Stanton is 30 years old.The news of a pending agreement comes after weeks of public negotiations between the team and Stanton, who finished second in this year’s NL MVP voting. The deal will be the largest in baseball history in terms of monetary value, beating out the Yankees’ ten-year, $275 million extension with Alex Rodriguez in 2007. Stanton will earn $25 million in average annual value throughout the deal, which is expected to be backloaded due to the outfielder’s status as an arbitration-eligible player.

While I was just using the assumption of a $25 million per year scenario, I mentioned the possibility of this being a 5-year deal with an 8-year player option on Twitter yesterday afternoon:

With Cotillo mentioning this could be a heavily backloaded deal, I played with the financial aspects of the deal and came out to a figure of what could be just a 5-year $85-$110 million investment for the Marlins. In the $85 million scenario, Stanton would make the following for an AAV:

• 2015: $13M
• 2016: $15M
• 2017: $17M
• 2018: $19M
• 2019: $21M

This kind of scenario would essentially leave Stanton an 8-year player option worth $240 million. He’d likely make more than that on the open market, as a 30-year old. So even in the most backloaded scenario I could think of, Stanton would likely opt-out after year 5.

If this does turn out to be the case, this could be an excellent deal for the Marlins, based on the value they’d receive from Stanton over the next 5 years. They’d have to pony up and pay Stanton regardless after year 5, but it could and should be even more than he’s already signed for.

Cotillo also mentioned the rest of the Marlins off-season plans in the same article.

With Stanton close to agreement on a long-term extension, the Marlins will likely turn their attention to locking up young stars like Christian Yelich, Adeiny Hechavarria and Jose Fernandez, though reports have indicated that the chances of Fernandez signing a long-term deal are close to nil. The Marlins are also expected to be buyers in this year’s free agent and trade markets, and are reportedly targeting veteran starting pitching.

We already knew about the extensions for the other players, including Yelich and Fernandez. We also knew that an extension with Fernandez would be unlikely, as he has Scott Boras as his agent.

The interesting part here is that Cotillo expects the Marlins to be buyers on the free agent market. While I doubt the Marlins will be paying the big-time free agents, they could be going after the middle-tier free agents. That would likely mean a slight bump up from the projected $60 million payroll that’s been floated out there so far.