Braves sign Andrelton Simmons to 7-year, $58 million extension

One easy candidate for first-guessing is the way that Heyward’s two-year extension closes out his arbitration years but stops short of delaying his free agency. A defensive standout in right field who four years into his major league career has alternated solid offensive campaigns with anemic showings that were frayed by injuries. Just 24, he’s still in the prime of his career and even if his hitting level settles somewhere between his 2010 (.277/.393/.456) and 2012 (.269/.335/.479) and he never has the kind of MVP-level offensive season predicted for him as a prospect, when you combine that kind of hitting with a standout glove you have a seriously valuable player who the team may come to regret not reserving for their future use. (Of course, with all of these extensions of late, it’s fair to wonder if the Braves settled for two years because it’s all they could get Heyward and his considerable talent to agree to.)

Nothing stops the Braves from signing Heyward to another extension any time between now and the expiration of his deal, but what they risk is that he has another strong season or two or even takes a step forward and then will require a serious premium to keep. Given that Freeman’s relative lack of power might mean that he’s just a mid-range run-producer in a typical season (read: one in which he does not hit .319), Kimbrel might not be able to maintain his current level of dominance (very few relief pitchers do), Teheran is relatively unproven, and Simmons almost certainly cannot maintain this high level of defense, Heyward may prove to have been the real keeper in the bunch.

Defense is as important as anything in baseball, but figuring out just how much it’s worth has been difficult. It’s much more vague in that the ways to measure defense, successful or otherwise, are nowhere near as consistent or reliable as figuring out the effectiveness of hitting or pitching. There is a market standard for pitchers of a certain caliber, and batters who can hit 30 homers while drawing walks, but a top-shelf defender, especially if that’s their primary positive attribute, might see their pay all over the map.

Braun agreed to an eight-year, $45 million deal with Milwaukee in mid-May of 2008, buying out all of his arbitration years and then some. In his rookie 2007, Braun batted .324/.370/.634 with 34 homers and 66 extra-base hits overall in just 113 games, and then followed that up with nine more homers and a .549 slugging in his first 39 games of 2008. Until Simmons agreed to his extension on Thursday, Braun’s deal was the record for a player with just over a year of service time under his belt. With Braun, it’s easy to see why the Brewers would fall over themselves to sign him to an extension. He was just 24 years old, so they could lock him up through his peak years before he ever got to them. He had hit, to that point, .314/.356/.611 with 43 homers and 90 extra-base hits in 151 career games. Obviously, if the player is willing to sign on long-term for a reasonable contract, you come to terms when they are capable producing that.