Reyes Contract Proposal

Mike Francesca says, apparently, that he thinks he's heard that Jose Reyes would take something along the lines of 6 years, $120 million from the Mets, and that the Mets might make such an offer. The concern that people have about such a deal is that at the end of it Reyes would be 34. To my mind that's not a big deal: the traditional prime is 28-32, which suggests that the first approximately four years of that deal ought to be great for Reyes, and even if he trails off in the last two years of the deal it's plenty of production over those years. But, of course, the main reason people are concerned about committing to Reyes until that kind of age is that they view him as injury-prone. So here's my proposal: why not use some vesting options? They have a bad rep with Mets fans right now due to K-Rod's rather absurd one, but it strikes me that this is exactly the situation vests are designed for.

Let's say we make the contract like this: five guaranteed years at $20 million/year. For the sixth year, also at $20 million, there would be a very reasonable threshold in terms of games played, either over the length of the contract or in the last few years of it. Maybe something like 130 games per year, something that Reyes will easily meet if he is generally healthy but that he might miss if he has another couple of injuries like what he had in '09. If he misses those targets then it would become, let's say, a mutual option. Then, because we're asking Reyes to accept a somewhat less guaranteed situation for the sixth year of the deal, there would be something similar for the seventh year of the deal. Maybe it would be a mutual option, maybe it would be a vesting option with a threshold around 140-150 games in 2017. Either way, unlike the K-Rod option it wouldn't be for an outlandish amount of money. That way, the point really would be that if Reyes demonstrated that he was healthy (which is of course the main concern people have with giving him a long-term deal) then he would get a longer-term deal, but if he wasn't healthy the team wouldn't be on the hook for someone who wouldn't be able to play much. So Reyes has an opportunity for a contract worth nearly $140 million, while the Mets protect themselves from being stuck with an old and decrepit player. Sounds like a win-win, doesn't it?