The Astros should be offering something similar to Tucker and Whitney (may be with a drug clause!) as what Acuna was offered and Kingery accepted. For Tucker, that would also eliminate the call-up questions.
Honestly, I'm all in on this team being eternally petty about what happened last year during the storm.
As long as the system is set up for top young performers to make double digit annual amounts over the last 3 arbitration years (presuming they are playing up to their potential), there will be a limited acceptance of these sorts of deals. And there’s very few, if any, top rated prospects that doesn’t believe they will get there... but there’s always circumstances (family needs money now, injury concerns) that may convince a young player to take the early payday.
I dunno. The offers to guys with < 1 year of service time have been creeping upward and are getting to a reasonable percentage of what a top player could make if everything broke right. $24m for all 6 years of team control for a non-elite prospect like Kingery is decent. That almost seems more like cost certainty than getting a bargain for the Phillies. Few players get more than $30m total for their three arb years.
If a really good, but not fully great, George Springer can, then heralded prospects ranked higher than he was are going to believe they can do just as well. Hell, Jason Castro got almost $20 million in his 3 arb years. They can always try and consolidate or buy out arb years as they go. No rule they have to sign something now, unless they really want to be on the opening day roster.
I dunno, everyone has a number. If KTuck could earn upwards of $40mil during his 6 team control years, then getting say 80% of that ($32m) should be an attractive offer.
Unless he believes there's a chance he would be a bust... why would he sign right now for just 80% of what he could possibly get if he merely meets expectations? Its funny because I took the opposite stance on the Altuve extension (I also thought he'd have a price... while others felt he'd wait to get the most amount possible in FA). If I was a player, the best time to negotiate something would be after year 3.... by that point, you're likely an established MLB player with a track record that shows you on either an upward trend, or you've reached a steady plateau (with a possibility of regression), and you're still a year away from arbitration money. Also, haven't arbitration salaries/settlements gone up linearly every year as revenue grows? An average 5th year player now likely gets more than an average 5th year player 10 years ago, despite the same system being in place.... which favors waiting to sign an extension.
How do we get Rendon and shift our IF to accomdate him? AB to SS, move CC? Rendon has no heartbeat and is another Brantley type hitter with more power
Option 1: trade Correa for SP/RP, Bregman to SS. Option 2: trade Tucker for SP/RP, Bregman to RF. Option 3: trade Diaz for RP, Gurriel to utility role, Rendon to 1B. Me personally, if they are going to try to improve the offense, catcher seems like the only realistic way to do it. That means either finding the money to sign Grandal or figuring out a way to trade for Posey. The offense choked in the playoffs this year but the lineup is still absolutely stacked. Hopefully Tucker and Alvarez will level up by the time the playoffs roll around again.
