That said, let’s see what happened here.
I’ll post the table at the end, but the three players with Mutual Options were as follows:
Des Moines starter Adam Barber opted to stay with the team, and the team agreed, which executed his $2.5 million deal for 2059. I can’t argue to hard one way or the other here. At 33, Barber might have been able to get more, but if he did it would probably be in years rather than dollars.
Bikini outfielder Gilberto Falchonelli opted out of a $5 million dollar year, and is now asking for $23 million spread over three years. At 38 and fragile I’m guessing he won’t get that, but given FA mania, he could. He had quite a nice year, though. Nice enough that I can report Bikini would have executed their side of the option. Which means Falchonelli probably made a good choice.
And finally, Long Beach RP Siu-chung Zhan opted out of his $3.1 million year and is not asking for $24M over 4 years. Zhan was a very effective reliever in three years at Long Beach, thrown about 90 innings a year and posting some quite spiffy numbers in the process. I’m not convinced he’s going to get $6M a year for that kind of time span, but the decision to leave was probably wise.
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So here we have one deal that seemed to work out fine enough (Barber) and two that support the idea that the player/mutual option hurt the teams who gave them I can’t speak for Lane in Long Beach, but in Falchonelli’s case I have absolutely no regrets. He didn’t play in my long-term plans, of course. At 39 next year, he’s a development and injury danger, so I wouldn’t plan to lean on him for real expectations at all. Of course, while I didn’t expect to keep him, bit would have been happy to do so. Losing him means I need to find another corner outfielder, but I’ve got considerably more money and flexibility this year than I had last, so that’s a problem that should really be able to be solved without much issue.
Of course, the game has a mind of its own…so what do I know?
Anyway, here’s the table for these three cases.
| Team | Pos | Name | Age | Type | 2058 | 2059 | 2060 | Player | Team | Asking> | 2059 | 2060 | 2061 | 2062 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DM | RP | Adam Barber | 33 | P/T | $2.5m(O) | $2.5m(T) | $2.5m(T) | Opt in | Keep | |||||
| BIK | CF | Gilberto Falchonelli | 38 | P/T | $6.0m(O) | $5.0m(T) | Opt out | $8.000 | $8.000 | $7.000 | ||||
| LBC | RP | Siu-chung Zhan | 31 | P/T | $3.1m(O) | $3.1m(T) | Opt out | $6.000 | $6.000 | $6.000 | $6.000 |