There was a bit of a stir during the holiday week when Tatsuya Imai put pen to paper and agreed to a deal with the Houston Astros. The deal that he signed contained multiple opt-out clauses in it, one after each season to be exact. It’s interesting that the opt-outs exist since that type of provision is starting to become more and more common with free agents of his magnitude. Juan Soto, the player that received the largest guarantee in MLB history, is able to opt out of his contract following the 2029
season, so long as the Mets don’t increase his salary an extra $4 million per season. Shohei Ohtani has interesting opt-out clause in his deal where he can move on if the team’s current POBO or co-owner are no longer with the team.
So, we can safely say that opt-outs are becoming fairly standard with teams across the game, except for one. During this offseason, Preston Mattingly, the Phillies’ general manager, went on a podcast to discuss the team’s stance on free agents and whether or not they offer opt-out clauses in their proposals to potential free agents.
This is interesting in that we have a team executive blatantly stating that the team does not offer opt-out clauses when discussing free agent deals.
“When you talk about specific free agents … especially the reliever market, it feels like it moves really quickly … and I think a lot of the teams have guys evaluated the same. And like you mentioned, they have them at that one-year pact, or maybe it’s two, and I think you try and separate yourself in different ways. I think you can talk about potentially doing opt-outs. That’s something that the Philadelphia Phillies don’t do, so we’re kind of up front with that with guys.”
The real question is why. Why doesn’t the team look to offer this type of incentive in contract proposals when courting someone to come to the Phillies?
Obviously that is something that the team only is privy to. Speculation can run rampant as to why they might have this policy (they want players to commit, etc.), but doing so doesn’t really help. However, it’s probably a policy they should start to be a bit more flexible on.
One of the strategies that the team has used in their recent run of playoff appearances is using financial might to buy players that their player development system is not producing. It’s not something that is new to team building as plenty of other teams have enacted this type of roster building, but for the Phillies, there has to be some kind of flexibility. In the past, the usage of opt-outs as a way to get someone to agree to a deal was not what was done. In the age of free agency, things were fairly straightforward – you picked a team, signed a deal and remained on that team until either your deal ran out or you were traded. Opt-outs have changed the calculus. Now, players can either chase more money from a different team or they can extract more money from their current employer to remain in place. It’s benefitted the player when used effectively.
Of course, some team probably don’t mind being locked in to a deal long term when the performance of the player wouldn’t match the compensation expected, but I digress.
With the Phillies effectively saying that they will not allow these types of clauses in their deals, they are asking for a commitment from the player that he may not want to make. So far, they have been lucky in that the players that they have targeted have had a desire to remain with one single team long term and not re-enter the free agency market, but we don’t know if this has prevented them from being able to sign other free agents. Unless there is a specific player that were to come out and say the team did offer an opt-out, they just chose to go somewhere else, we can assume that they have not offered that type of clause. Mattingly’s statement backs this hypothesis up. So, if this is going to continue, they’re likely to keep losing out on free agents that they have interest in, particularly those that are coming over from Japan.
Now, this doesn’t look to be a prerequisite from these players. Kazuma Okamoto did not receive an opt-out clause in his deal with Toronto, so that sends that idea out the window. Yet free agents from Japan aren’t the only ones requesting opt-out clauses be included in their deals. It’s something that many free agents want, so it’s become something of a sign of the times. By not offering them, the Phillies are behind those times.
Listen, it’s probable that the statement Mattingly made wasn’t exactly a blanket statement. It’s possible he was referring (however thinly veiled it may have been) to a specific player when he was talking about the clauses and that the team has in fact offered them at some point. However, if it is true, if the team does not include the opt-out clauses in free agent offers this year or in the future, they’re going to miss out on good players being available to them. For a team that likes to spend like they do in free agency, that’s a problem that they should begin to remedy.
