The Texas Rangers followed up a bit of an embarrassing loss on national television Sunday night by making a huge splash off the field when they reportedly came to an agreement with shortstop Elvis Andrus for a long-term contract extension, avoiding free agency with their young star following the 2014 season.
Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports was the first person to report the deal, and now many others have piggy-backed on the report of the deal that is for eight years and worth $120 million that will take Andrus' term with the Rangers to 10 years worth $131 million — a bargain for what is arguably the top shortstop in the game, and a 24-year-old one at that.
The most surprising part of this is that Andrus is a client of Scott Boras, widely known as the "baseball antichrist," as a villian to baseball fans thanks to his tendency to push clients to go after the biggest deal and rarely stay with their original team when free agency comes.
Now Andrus can be added to a small list that includes Angels pitcher Jered Weaver, who gave the Angels a major discount last year when signing an extension before hitting free agency. Now Andrus is doing the same.
The Rangers had said recently that they planned to make one more run at Andrus before being resigned to the fact that they might have to trade him following this season to get some return and not let him just hit free agency and get nothing in return like they did with guys like C.J. Wilson and Josh Hamilton.
That one last run at Andrus has apparently paid off.
We'll discuss later what this move means for the future of the club — Jurickson Profar and Ian Kinsler — but it can only be good.
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Or maybe this is all just an elaborate April Fools prank by Rosenthal & Co., in which case he'll be the most hated person in DFW.
