These multi-year deals to young players can be tough to evaluate, since it's tough to guess at what a player would make in arbitration. But I have been able to find one deal very comparable to Francis's.
Last winter, Dan Haren signed an extension with the A's... 4 years, $12.65 million, plus a club option for 2010 at $6.75 million. Exactly the same as what we did with Francis, locking him up through his arbitration years with a cheap option for what would be his first FA year. The dollars involved, once we adjust for inflation, are pretty comparable (salaries are increasing by an average of 10% per year); if anything, Francis is coming a little cheaper than Haren did.
And it's even better than that, because Francis looks like a better pitcher now than Haren did a year ago. Francis' ERC projection for next year is 3.85; Haren projected at 4.03 going into '06, and projects at 3.95 for '07.
Obviously, the worth of this comparison hinges on the assumption that the Haren deal was a good one (or at least a neutral one) for the A's. But I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption. The Francis deal looks very good indeed.
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