OK, here is a completely wild contract idea that I’m sure no one’s thinking about and would never be offered. But tell me whether do you think this doesn’t make sense, and then tell me why not.
Offer Bregman 6/180. Front-load it to be 40 in each of the first two years, and 25 in each of the last four. Give him a player option after the first year, and give us a team option after the second year. If Bregman declines the option after year one and the Tigers exercise the option after year two, the last four years become guaranteed.
This gives Bregman a super high salary for this season, and if he slays, he can opt out and try his luck on the market again. We will have gotten a tremendous season, and we can keep our current prospects in the wings to try again in 2026.
If Bregman does poorly enough to not exercise his player option, he could come back for another year, and if he slays, we can then pick up the rest of the contract guaranteed, and if he doesn’t, we can let him go. It would have to be basically an All-Star season in year two for us to pick it up. Then I feel like we could get close to pretty good value from him for his remaining years here at the price of 4/100. I doubt he’s going to have a Javy drop off because his skill set is much more solid than Javy’s was when he came here.
This won’t happen, of course, but tell me why this won’t work.