There were a lot of question marks. A lot of rumors. A lot of "should they" or "shouldn't they". But in the end, the front office did. While the celebration was still on-going from Portland's 5-game series victory over Bikini in the Doubleday Series, the front office announced that it had reached a contract extension agreement with all-star second baseman Rich Dares.
"There was a lot of back and forth and examining things" stated assistant general manager Sandy Mounds. "You look at his numbers this year and say to yourself how can you not extend Dares. But the counter is you look at his past performance and wonder how you'd even consider giving him a lengthy contract extension. In the end, we sat down as an organization and looked at everything in front of us. We have a short window right now to ride some veterans for a push for a title. Dares has been a key figure this year and we see no reason why we couldn't expect the same next year. So with that said, we felt we had to keep Dares to try and take advantage of our current opportunity.
It's been well documented that Dares is having a career year. A year that he's never had before. He hit .351/.409/.523 this season with a 5.7 WAR and is likely to win the Frick League's Silver Slugger Award at 2B this season. The fans in favor of the move will point all of these figures out. The naysayers to the decision will be those that point to his 7 seasons of negative WAR play and wonder why the team would take such a risk.
"The thing about this deal is we'll just have to wait and see which side is right" added Mounds. "If Dares gives us a couple more seasons of play like this year, we'll be the big winners in the end. At 5.7 WAR, this deal is a team favorable deal. Obviously if he plays to those bad years, then he's robbing us blind."
The extension is a gamble, but perhaps not a huge one. Dares is guaranteed $8.5 million and $9.5 million the next two seasons. A raise from his bargain deal of just $2 million this season. He can then opt-out of the deal after that and forfeit two more guaranteed years of $9.5 million each. The final 2 years of the deal, Portland controls. Years 5 and 6 are team options that would pay Dares $9.5 million each as well. All together, it's a 6 year deal worth $56 million. The final 2 years have $2.5 million buyout clauses.
