Right. It’s always about the ego. So egomaniacal the way he saw that future in Crochet after a season in which he was a mere Cy Young runner-up.
Most teams are doing this now. Milwaukee has taken it a step further and signing players to extensions and then actually not promoting them to MLB right away (Pratt, Lara for example).
This is how teams are operating. Even missing on a few can still payoff if you just hit on one. If Anthony really reaches his ceiling, his contract could have exceeded his current one plus Campbell’s plus Bello’s. Easily, since he could have been a free agent by 27 and that total is only about $240mill. If you doubt this, ask yourself how much Tampa is kicking themselves for not extending Junior Caminero. I can promise you that’s not happening now.
I know fans prefer to wait until a player has proven something (and exactly what was Crochet supposed to still prove?), but if you wait too long, players (and their agents) can drastically revise their own worth. (See Caminero, Junior above.) Or worse, other teams with warped valuation methods can really screw you over, like the “Well we couldn’t sign Trea Turner so let’s just drive that same truckload of money over to the Bogaerts household instead” method…