{"id":550550,"date":"2026-03-21T05:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T05:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/550550\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T05:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T05:30:17","slug":"as-made-approximate-130mm-offer-to-nick-kurtz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/550550\/","title":{"rendered":"A’s Made Approximate $130MM Offer To Nick Kurtz"},"content":{"rendered":"

The A\u2019s have signed a number of extensions over the past two seasons.\u00a0Brent Rooker<\/a>,\u00a0Lawrence Butler<\/a>, Jacob Wilson<\/a> and\u00a0Tyler Soderstrom<\/a> are all locked in as long-term lineup pieces in advance of the 2028 move to Las Vegas. The A\u2019s have also opened extension conversations<\/a> with Nick Kurtz<\/a> and\u00a0Shea Langeliers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s to shatter their franchise record contract (Soderstrom\u2019s $82MM guarantee).<\/p>\n

Joel Sherman of The New York Post reported last month that the A\u2019s made Kurtz an official offer<\/a>. Details of the proposal weren\u2019t known at the time. The Post\u2019s Jon Heyman<\/a> wrote last night that the offer was well into nine figures, adding that it\u2019s believed to have landed in the $130MM range. Kurtz evidently declined and Heyman characterizes an extension as a long shot.<\/p>\n

[Related: What Would It Cost The A\u2019s To Continue Their Extension Run?<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Despite being called up in late April, Kurtz earned a full year of service time with last season\u2019s Rookie of the Year win. The A\u2019s have him under club control through 2030. He\u2019s two years away from his first major salary jump via arbitration. However, Kurtz should already be well positioned financially. The A\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0$111MM to $210MM for\u00a0Julio Rodr\u00edguez<\/a> \u2014 though the latter\u2019s 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\u00a0Wander Franco<\/a> ($182MM),\u00a0Jackson Merrill<\/a> ($135MM) and\u00a0Roman Anthony<\/a> ($130MM).<\/p>\n

Kurtz would be unique among that group as a first baseman. Rodr\u00edguez, 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\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0$41MM deal from more than a decade ago. That\u2019s useless as a comparison point for Kurtz, so he\u2019s a difficult player to value.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s 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\u2019s striking out 30% of the time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all that surprising if an offer in the $130MM range wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019s camp could point to the service time difference and the bigger body of work at the MLB level. It\u2019s also notable that Kurtz is represented by an agency (Excel Sports Management) that has almost no history of pre-arbitration extensions.<\/p>\n

At the same time, it\u2019s hardly a lowball offer on the team\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Kurtz simply has a lot of leverage if he\u2019s 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.<\/a> 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\u2019s $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\u2019s range someday, but the team has plenty of time before concerning itself with that possibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The A\u2019s have signed a number of extensions over the past two seasons.\u00a0Brent Rooker,\u00a0Lawrence Butler, Jacob Wilson and\u00a0Tyler…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,4012,82],"class_list":["post-550550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-nick-kurtz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}