The Reds currently hold control over Elly De La Cruz for the next 5 years, the 2029 season. Elly would be 27 when/if he were to hit FA in the fall of 2029.

Here is my plan. Let's say Boras wants Elly to hit FA while still in his prime. The Reds want to show THIS era of Reds baseball will look different for the foreseeable future. We need to commit to a foundation. We need stability.

I offer a 7 year buyout of Elly De La Cruz. Keeping him until his age 29 FA.

I think Elly will command the largest arb salary in MLB history. So you start there. Offer him a 21 million AAV for those arb years

The final contract offer would be a 7 year $125,000,000 deal, keeping him through the 2030 season, two additional years of control, and allows Elly and Boras to still capitalize on a future 10 year mega deal from a contender of that is his liking.

The deal would look something like this. Salary breakdown.

  • 2025 2 million
  • 2026 2 million
  • 2027 21 million
  • 2028 22 million
  • 2028 23 million
  • 2029 25 million
  • 2030 30 million

20 comments

  1. THIS is how I want the Reds to use their surplus of budget in 2025. It also keeps their 2025 and 2026 budget in check.

    And if I were negotiating, I would start with a $115 million 7 year offer, with the understanding in the back of my mind of working towards the $125 million dollar 7 year deal.

  3. Would love to see an Elly contract done, sets the tone for building around him and gets this dude paid

  4. If you know who Elly’s agent is, you know he’s not resigning here. We have him locked down til 2029, then he’s gonna get an insane bag from a New York or LA team after that. We just gotta enjoy him while he’s here.

  5. Let him go to a team that values his time. I don’t want to see another wasted talent in this franchise until we noticeably give a shit about winning.

  6. Boras doesn’t entertain contract offers like this. It will probably be closer to 10/450 and might cost more than that.

  7. Reds best bet to keep him is that the league forces a salary cap on the players union and I don’t see the odds of that being very good.

  9. I think if they did any extension, they need to get something in line with what Tatis did at 14 years $340. I don’t see the point in guaranteeing a bunch of money just to get 2 extra years, and still likely have him walk. If the Reds are making an investment, it needs to be done in order to get most of his career.

    I’d love to extend the dude, but bottom line, in the past couple of years the trend is for young players like Elly not to extend and test free agency. That goes double if they’re Boras clients.

  12. 5 months ago, I made this comment breaking down a possible Elly extension using BWJ’s contract as a comparison: https://www.reddit.com/r/Reds/comments/1ctym8y/reds_i_play_a_lot_of_gta_elly_de_la_cruz_on_why/l4gykxl/

    The tldr was: 8 years, 184.777 million (player opt out), then 4 years, 142,828,280 million flat, then 3 club options at 33, 28, 28.

    **This was before Elly had completed his breakout season**.

    Now, after, you have to readjust your expectations. **I think the minimum number the Reds need to hit in guarantees is likely around 280-300 million dollars in order to buyout any free agent years**.

    Elly now has a 6 fWAR season under his belt. Boras is going to *at least* value him here. With two seasons of pre-arb left and using FG’s arb calculator, we can first figure out how much to buyout the next 5 seasons of team control.

    >Pre-arb: 0.8 x 2 = 1.6m

    >Arb1: 6 WAR x 1.36 = 8.16

    >Arb2: 6 WAR x 2.13 = 12.78

    >Arb3: 6 WAR x 3.59 = 21.54

    Ok, so we have our initial 5 year offer of 44.08 million dollars. Let’s now add years, using 1 fWAR = 8m (which is likely under what Boras values it as, *plus* we’re already “undervaluing” Elly as a 6 fWAR player instead of more). Let’s start by adding 3 years to the contract to get to an 8 year deal, buying out 3 seasons of free agency.

    >6 x 8 x 3 = 144m

    So we’re sitting at 188.08 million before anything else kicks in. You or I would absolutely love Elly at that contract, but we all know that Boras wants to maximize value. He’s going to be telling the Reds to either offer Elly a contract that takes him through his entire career (let’s say until age 36/37) *or* he’s going to want player opt-outs. I hate player opt-outs, so let’s assume we need to add an additional six years to this contract offer.

    >6 x 8 x 6 = 288

    >288 + 188.08 = 476.08

    We’re looking at a 14/476.08 deal to lock down Elly at an AAV of roughly 34 million per year. I don’t think the Reds do that, particularly because that would mean either A.) losing his cheap pre-arb years and accelerating the immediate hit to 34 million a year, or B.) paying upwards of 50m a season for his post-30 years.

    Also, note, *all of these numbers were ran with an assumption of 6 WAR per season*. If Elly has another year like this or exceeds it, the number *only goes up on his side*. He could hypothetically hit free agency at age 28 with multiple 8+ fWAR seasons under his belt, set up for a 600m contract, which is what I’d be arguing if I were Boras and the Reds approached me with a contract offer.

  14. Too bad the Reds’ organization isn’t willing to spend what it takes to put a winning team on the field.

  15. The only chance we have at signing him is to pay him upfront way over his current value. There is no point on negotiating a contract where most of the money is after he is supposed to enter free agency. Elly is going to have to wait 4 more years to get a Yankee or Dodger contract. The only way we can make him stay longer is if we pay him a lot upfront because the Yankees or Dodgers can’t do that.

    Unfortunately for the Reds, the risk of that is too high. We can’t pay $25 million a year for a player who has had 1 1/2 seasons. Theres always a chance of a decline. It’s just best to either trade him in a few seasons or let him walk with a qualifying offer.

    There is a strong argument to trade him soon, possibly if he has another 5+ WAR season because that is when his value is the highest.

  17. Elly is a Red until 2028/9 and at that point the Reds front office staff has to obtain the biggest prospect haul possible.

    A trade of Elly needs to be treated similarly to when the Nats traded Soto to the Padres. The Nats scored some very good pieces in that deal. It can to fruition in 2024 for them where 3 of those prospects made debuts after tearing up the minors.

    Just enjoy the Elly run as long as possible

  18. For the same reason Soto didn’t take a bag from the Nationals years ago; Boras is his agent and he’s banking on his payday to be far higher when he becomes a true FA than it would be now

  20. Don’t do what the brown family is doing to chase the faster you lock him up the cheeper or the better the deal is

Leave a Reply