Brendan Rodgers broke camp with the Astros after signing a minor league contract in February. The deal comes with a $2MM base salary, but it’s apparently not fully guaranteed. Chandler Rome of The Athletic reports that Rodgers agreed to an advance consent clause: one which allows a team to release a veteran player within the first 45 days of the regular season and get out from under the remainder of the contract.
Most of the time, a player’s base salary will become fully guaranteed once the team selects their minor league deal. Players who have over five years of service time, as Rodgers does, also generally have the right to refuse any optional assignments to the minors. However, the collective bargaining agreement permits teams and players who have five-plus service years to agree to the advance consent provision — giving the team extra flexibility for a month and a half to determine whether they want to keep that player. Teams cannot use the advance consent clause to release players because of injury, but they can do so for any other reason within the first 45 days.
It’s obviously not an ideal situation for the player. It’s nevertheless fairly common for teams to seek advance consent clauses for veterans who sign late in the offseason and have little leverage. Ken Rosenthal and Patrick Mooney of The Athletic wrote in early March that some clubs were seeking advance consent provisions in negotiations with the handful of starting pitchers (e.g. Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson) who had remained unsigned into Spring Training, for instance.
Rodgers was non-tendered by the Rockies and found himself limited to minor league offers in the final week of February. He didn’t have a great Spring Training, hitting .233/.250/.349 without a home run in 44 plate appearances. Rodgers would have been able to opt out of his minor league deal at the end of camp if the Astros didn’t call him up. They did so but evidently worked in the clause to give themselves the flexibility to get out of the deal if he didn’t perform well early in the season. They also built in the ability to option him to Triple-A, though Ari Alexander of KPRC 2 reported last month that Rodgers can opt out on May 1 and/or June 1 if he’s not on the 26-man active roster.
While a $2MM base salary isn’t much by MLB standards, the Astros are up against a luxury tax line they’ve had little interest in crossing. RosterResource estimates their CBT number around $238MM, about $3MM below the base threshold. That includes Rodgers’ $2MM salary. Money added via in-season waiver claims or trades would count towards the CBT calculation. That puts more emphasis on even relatively light investments that the front office makes. That’s presumably part of the reason they made Ben Gamel’s $1MM base salary conditional on him making the team out of Spring Training (which he did not do).
The clause puts more pressure on Rodgers to perform well in the early going. He has started five of the first seven games at second base. (Primary left fielder Jose Altuve and utilityman Mauricio Dubón have each made one start apiece at the keystone.) A three-hit game on Thursday pushed Rodgers to 5-16 (.313) on the year. He has drawn a pair of walks while striking out four times. An RBI double off Louie Varland today was his first extra-base hit of the season. The former third overall pick hit .267/.314/.407 with 13 homers through 539 plate appearances for the Rockies last year.
The Braves should have put some kind of clause like this into the Profar contract!
45 days or you are out!
They aren’t paying him while suspended, plus his contract clearly shows the Braves weren’t the only bidder for his services.
Off to a decent start. Unless he completely craters over the next month i doubt the release him
What day is trash day asking for a friend
Your private gated community should have a website to be tell you.Away from the people you “defend”
That’s a lot of contract information for a $2 million deal, for a AAAA player.
Not only do they see if Rodgers can perform, but it gives them time to see if Brice Matthews is ready for a call up.
Brice will not be ready. Has a lot to work on with his hit tool & swing/miss concerns. A little surprised he started off the year in AAA as opposed to AA…I’m rooting for him, but it just seems like at this point that he’s probably a couple years away.
Predicting performance is an extremely risky business. I applaud the Astros for shrewdness, but at the same time feel bad Rodgers had to settle for this after years of being a competent major leaguer.
Unless he’s downright terrible, he’ll get a mil elsewhere.
Have to admit I was a little surprised to see that Rodgers got a $5.5 million signing bonus and has tucked away $13.6 million in total money before this season even started. Not bad for a guy who’s bumped along replacement level for most of his career. Given his spotty production over the years, I can understand why the Astros were unwilling to commit to $2 million guaranteed for this season.
That said, the Astros need somebody to play second if they’re gonna stash Altuve in left field for most of the season. The alternatives to Rodgers aren’t particularly inspiring.
What is Cam for third capabilities. Could move him to 3b and Paredes to 2B. Use Dezenzo in RF. If do not keep him. I know that was talked about. But how long do they keep Cam up here. He was ticketed for Corpus but his spring they decided to keep but has not busted out. But guess will see if things change by end of April. I mean even McCullers could be back. But not sure what he is doing in minors. Plus another perhaps lost season for Rock a bye baby Garcia
I understand that baseball is a business, but the contract is such a small amount relative to the overall payroll. He’s making less than 1% of the budget. It’s shrewd and I guess Dana Brown thinks it’s necessary.
One of the weird quirks in baseball is that front offices will overpay premium talent and take on bad contracts, but squeeze these guys on the fringes of the roster as hard as possible.
Regardless, he’s playing well and the fans appreciate what he’s doing.