The A’s have signed a number of extensions over the past two seasons. Brent Rooker, Lawrence Butler, Jacob Wilson and Tyler Soderstrom are all locked in as long-term lineup pieces in advance of the 2028 move to Las Vegas. The A’s have also opened extension conversations with Nick Kurtz and Shea Langeliers.
The latter two players would be the most difficult to extend. Langeliers is into his arbitration window. Kurtz is coming off an otherworldly rookie season and would require the A’s to shatter their franchise record contract (Soderstrom’s $82MM guarantee).
Joel Sherman of The New York Post reported last month that the A’s made Kurtz an official offer. Details of the proposal weren’t known at the time. The Post’s Jon Heyman wrote last night that the offer was well into nine figures, adding that it’s believed to have landed in the $130MM range. Kurtz evidently declined and Heyman characterizes an extension as a long shot.
[Related: What Would It Cost The A’s To Continue Their Extension Run?]
Despite being called up in late April, Kurtz earned a full year of service time with last season’s Rookie of the Year win. The A’s have him under club control through 2030. He’s two years away from his first major salary jump via arbitration. However, Kurtz should already be well positioned financially. The A’s paid him a $7MM signing bonus as the fourth overall pick in 2024. He also made almost $1.3MM last offseason via the pre-arbitration bonus pool, which rewards the best performers who have yet to accrue the service time to qualify for arbitration.
There have been five nine-figure extensions for players with less than two years of MLB service. The guarantees on those deals range from Corbin Carroll’s $111MM to $210MM for Julio Rodríguez — though the latter’s contract was loaded with escalators and options that could take it close to half a billion dollars in certain situations. The other players to get to nine figures within their first two years as a big leaguer were Wander Franco ($182MM), Jackson Merrill ($135MM) and Roman Anthony ($130MM).
Kurtz would be unique among that group as a first baseman. Rodríguez, Merrill and Franco all played up-the-middle positions. Anthony and Carroll are primarily corner players but are superior athletes and provide more defensive and baserunning value. The biggest extension for a pre-arbitration first baseman is Anthony Rizzo’s $41MM deal from more than a decade ago. That’s useless as a comparison point for Kurtz, so he’s a difficult player to value.
There’s little doubt Kurtz will continue to mash. He hit .290/.383/.619 with 36 home runs over his first 489 plate appearances. His exit velocities are near the top of the league. Although it comes with a fair amount of whiffs, Kurtz has the kind of rare power that should allow him to be an offensive force even if he’s striking out 30% of the time.
It’s not all that surprising if an offer in the $130MM range wouldn’t get it done. Anthony landed that amount of money less than two months into his MLB career and without a full year of service, which put him a year further away from free agency. Anthony was the superior prospect, but Kurtz’s camp could point to the service time difference and the bigger body of work at the MLB level. It’s also notable that Kurtz is represented by an agency (Excel Sports Management) that has almost no history of pre-arbitration extensions.
At the same time, it’s hardly a lowball offer on the team’s part. They were evidently willing to make Kurtz the highest-paid player in franchise history by a wide margin while valuing him similarly to other young superstar hitters despite the lack of positional value.
Kurtz simply has a lot of leverage if he’s inclined to bet on himself remaining a top 10 hitter in MLB. The upside of going year by year could resemble the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. path of racking up arbitration earnings and setting himself up for a monster deal at or near free agency. Kurtz is on track to hit the open market at 28. Guerrero’s $500MM extension with the Blue Jays begins this year, his age-27 season. Anything close to that kind of money would very likely price Kurtz out of the A’s range someday, but the team has plenty of time before concerning itself with that possibility.
