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What Tatis' megadeal means for Padres, Soto, superstar shortstops

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The San Diego Padres put the finishing touches on a transformative offseason when they reportedly inked superstar shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. to a 14-year, $340-million extension on Wednesday.

The deal is set to kick in immediately in the 2021 campaign, buying out Tatis' final year of pre-arbitration, three seasons of arb eligibility, and a full decade of free agency. By the time the contract expires, he'll be 36 years old.

Where it ranks

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The Padres made what would be an astounding investment in any player, let alone one who's played just 143 career games. Only Mike Trout - 12 years, $426.5 million prior to the 2019 season - and Mookie Betts - a 12-year, $365-million commitment from the Los Angeles Dodgers that kicked in last year - have signed contracts with more guaranteed money.

Let's take a look at what each player accomplished when they signed their extension:

Player GP AVG/OBP/SLG WAR MVP ASG
Trout 1065 .307/.416/.573 64.6 2 7
Betts 794 .301/.374/.519 37.3 1 4
Tatis 143 .301/.374/.582 6.5 0 0

The most noteworthy aspect is Tatis' lack of playing time and accolades. He added a Silver Slugger award this year and would have made an All-Star appearance had the game not been canceled, but he doesn't have the track record that Trout and Betts did.

However, if we look at Tatis' WAR per 162 games (7.4), he's actually not that far from Betts' 7.6 - Trout is posting an otherworldly 9.8 WAR per 162. Perhaps more impressively, though, Tatis is doing this from the onset of his career as a 21-year-old. Through Betts' first two seasons, spanning a total of 197 games, he posted a grand total of 6.6 WAR. Tatis will stroll past that mark in the first week of the 2021 regular season and be a year younger than Betts was at the time.

Where do pre-arb deals go from here?

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Tatis' deal feels like the exception, not the rule. It's an astronomical amount of money compared to previous contracts signed by Tim Anderson (six years, $25 million) or Christian Yelich (seven years, $50 million), but there are still some parallels to be drawn to recent extensions.

Perhaps the easiest comparison is Alex Bregman, who signed a five-year, $100-million pre-arb deal prior to the 2019 season after an All-Star campaign and fifth-place finish in MVP voting. Bregman could hit free agency following the 2024 season and land a 10-year, $240-million deal - essentially matching Tatis in career earnings - but it's simply unheard of for a team to give a player this level of economic certainty this early in his career.

Ronald Acuna Jr. signed an eight-year, $100-million extension with the Atlanta Braves in 2019. That deal looked bad for Acuna at the time and looks even worse in hindsight when comparing it to Tatis'.

For a while, pre-arb extensions appeared to be the new market inefficiency. Teams will continue to try to lock up their players before they hit free agency, and shorter extensions for players with no service time like the ones the Chicago White Sox gave Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert will continue. But the bar for superstars with established MLB resumes - like Bregman and Acuna - has been lifted exponentially.

What this means for Soto

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The most prominent pre-arb superstar is now Washington Nationals slugger Juan Soto.

Soto and Tatis are difficult to compare. The former is a below-average defender in left field - arguably the least important defensive position in the sport - and the latter is at least above-average at the most premium position. Tatis mixes speed with slugging; Soto provides very little base-stealing but is perhaps the most disciplined hitter in baseball.

Though Tatis seems poised to be a star for a very long time, the wear and tear of playing shortstop every day will take its toll. His positional value is high as long as he's able to play this way, but his longevity could suffer.

Soto's production at the plate will likely be unaffected by manning a demanding defensive position, and even less so if the National League adopts the designated-hitting role in the next collective bargaining agreement and he's moved from the outfield.

Ultimately, Soto should be looking to top this deal. Whether the Nationals - or any team for that matter - are willing to pay him that much, though, remains to be seen.

What this means for other shortstops

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The upcoming class of free-agent shortstops - led by Trevor Story, Francisco Lindor, Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, Marcus Semien, and Javier Baez - is set to dominate headlines next winter. Now any of them could look for the same deal Tatis just landed.

Though the Padres are paying only for Tatis' prime years (ages 22 through 35), they also bought out four seasons during which he had little say - if any - in his earnings. In 2021, Tatis was renewable at or near the league minimum, and he would have been eligible for arbitration from 2022 to 2024. The Padres' leverage made the deal less expensive than if Tatis was on the open market right now.

For free agents like Story, Lindor, Seager, and Correa, teams won't hold that leverage. So while those shortstops are closing in on their 30th birthdays, there's no incentive for them to take any sort of discount.

In all likelihood, they were all already chasing something closer to Betts' contract. Tatis' deal just galvanizes their cases a little more and perhaps complicates the New York Mets' position after they traded for Lindor earlier this winter and will likely attempt to lock him up to a long-term extension.

The new way to contend

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The Padres now have two of the seven richest contracts in MLB history on their payroll between Tatis and Manny Machado. It's an incredible indication of the health of the sport and the wealth of its owners that a team located in San Diego can have two $300-million contracts on its books.

Contending is a fickle thing in any sport, but the Padres have chosen to spend the money to give themselves a chance for the next decade. They paid Yu Darvish's salary because the Chicago Cubs didn't want to, and took on the richer portion of Blake Snell's pre-arb extension because the Tampa Bay Rays cried poor after a World Series appearance.

There seem to be two models now forming in baseball: The Padres are leading the charge toward building a superteam, while others like the Cubs and Boston Red Sox won a championship and immediately pivoted to a fire sale. Any team can tank, but the outliers in MLB right now are choosing to invest in their club for the long term.

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