Jon Singleton pays the cost of doing business

Jon Singleton has never stepped into a big league batters box. The only time he dug in against big league pitching was during Spring Training, save the odd rehab start here are there. And yet, the Houston Astros just signed Singleton to a five-year contract with three options tacked on the end, guaranteeing himself $10 million and an instant trip to the Show.

This deal is the first of its kind, the first time a team earned more than a nibble after casting its line into these murky waters in search of a bargain. Despite the (presumed) urgings of agents and future union brothers, Singleton bucked the trend and took a deal ensuring financial security now in exchange for potential lost earnings in the future.

The Astros risk relatively little in terms of dollars and development. They get to bring Singleton up to the big leagues now and have a very good chance of benefiting greatly if he proves he can hit. On the field, their other options are first are underwhelming at best, so they stand to get better on the field.

If Singleton is bad, they risked a few dollars to gain a lot. Even a poor big player stands to earn close to the $10MM should he survive all the way through the arbitration ringer. Although, if he’s so bad that he isn’t a big leaguer or truly requires another trip to AAA, he’ll earn big league checks while doing so.

One successful deal like this one pays for many other failed experiments, all but assuring this goes down as a big win for the Astro. They stand to benefit greatly even if Jon Singleton is little more than an average big league first baseman. There’s significant value in average, though the distance between Singleton’s minor league numbers and big league average is significant.

The marginal surplus value favors the Astros and the guaranteed bucks help Singleton, but this remains an uncomfortable and/or unseemly precedent for baseball. Do the fans benefit? If he was ready to play in April, Astros fans suffered through the worst first base combo in baseball for the first two months of the season until the financial pieces fit together just so. If he’s good and cheap and it frees up money down the road, fans won’t remember two months at the beginning of a lost season.

The carrot teams dangle is a significant one, and it throws even more cold water on the idea of players receiving “seasoning” in the minor leagues. The Astros know if Singleton’s ready for the big leagues. They have to believe they know the player well enough to understand how this will affect his development as a person, and what that means for his play on the field.

Because no player ever signed a deal like this before stepping foot on a big league field, it is easy to blow up the significance of this contract. Are the Astros really flipping convention on its head with this contract? While other teams (like the small market Pirates) keep their prospects in the minors until the can be absolutely certain of avoiding the Super Two pitfalls, the Astros are trying to get the best players to the show as quickly as possible.

As Astros GM Jeff Luhnow explained this spring, the Astros stated goals are clear. For their prospects, “by the time they get to Houston, they're going to have an expectation to win.” It’s never so cut and dried. Especially for a rebuilding team like Astros, this is just cost of doing business.

Another piece of the Next Good Astros team is in place. After a hot month of May, the tide is slowly turning in Houston - a calculated turn with an eye to the bottom line as much as the box score once again.