Thursday, December 19, 2013

Feldman's deal is front-loaded

We've been talking about this for a long time: Why don't teams front-load contracts? You pay for the performance you're going to get immediately, and if it doesn't work out quite as you had hoped, said player can be traded with an easier contract to take on. I know we talked about it with the Crawfish Boxes on the Astros Boxes Podcast.

Well, that's what the Astros have done with Scott Feldman's contract, according to Evan Drellich.


Scott Feldman’s three-year, $30 million deal is weighted slightly toward the start of the deal.

So the Astros have a little less than $10m to spend. Where does that leave the Astros with Shin-Soo Choo?


I think it’s natural that when a player is still out there of his caliber that a lot of teams are going to be associated with it, but beyond that, I don’t comment on particular players. He’s a good player and he’s going to have interest from a lot of clubs. 

We also learn:
*Jesus Guzman can either platoon with Wallace at 1B, or Wallace can play 3B or Guzman can play in the OF.
*Singleton is probably going to be a mid-season call-up.
*Colorado's Collin McHugh will be developed as a starter.