Altuve gets a big payday
Five-year contract extension reportedly worth $151 million for All-Star second baseman
TAMPA, Fla. — The Astros and star second baseman José Altuve have agreed to the major points in a new contract that, barring a trade, would keep Altuvé with the team through the 2024 season, when he will turn 34, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
MLB.com first reported the nearly consummated deal on Friday. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that the new contract will begin in 2020 and is for five years, $151 million.
An Astros spokesperson said the team would have no comment on the report. Neither Altuve nor general manager Jeff Luhnow traveled with the team for Friday
evening’s spring training game against the Yankees.
A $30 million average would not only make Altuve the highest-paid Astros player of alltime, and it would be more than the entire team roster was paid in Altuve’s first full major league season (2012), a year the Astros lost 107 games.
Since his debut in mid-summer of 2011, Altuve has blossomed into a superstar, having finished 13th, 10th and third in MVP voting before winning the American League honor last season in a rout, as the Astros won 101 games and claimed their first World Series title with a win over the Dodgers.
Altuve led the league in hitting last season and joined Hall
of Famer Jeff Bagwell as the only players in franchise history to win an MVP.
Secures ‘franchise player’
Altuve, who often has expressed a desire to play his entire career with the Astros, is a five-time All-Star and has won the AL batting title in three of the past four years.
Luhnow says Altuve’s numbers indicate he is a “franchise player.” The Astros originally signed the Venezuela native for just $15,000, in 2007, when he was 16 years old.
Altuve has been a huge bargain for the club, with a 2017 salary of only $4.5 million — the 247th–highest in MLB, according to a sportrac.com database, and 253rd in one by USA Today.
The Astros hold options on Altuve for this season at $6 million and 2019 at $6.5 million, when he could finally become a free agent.
In July of 2013, the Astros and Altuve agreed to an extension that kept him from becoming arbitration-eligible in 2015.
Without that contract, Altuve would have been able to go through arbitration from 2015-17, and he would have become a free agent following last year’s MVP season.
No pressure for new deal
Altuve has said that one of the reasons he believes he has played so well in recent years was the financial security afforded him by signing that extension, which meant he didn’t feel the pressure to play for a new deal.
That said, Altuve, who is the first player in MLB history to lead a league in hits in four consecutive seasons, has outplayed that contract by a significant margin.
When presenting Altuve the award named in his honor last October, Hank Aaron said, “There are not many people I’d pay to go see, but I’d pay to go see this young man play.”