Anthony Rizzo Is Setting Himself Up For A Payday

When the free agent market shifted on him and first baseman Anthony Rizzo saw that he would not be getting the type of contract he wanted this offseason, Rizzo made a shift of his own.

Originally hoping for a deal in the neighborhood of five years, Rizzo ended up signing a two-year, $32 million contract to stay with the Yankees. Traded to New York last July, Rizzo made a point to include an opt-out after the 2022 season.

Why? At least partly because he is hoping that Major League Baseball bans the shift after this year. Rizzo, and many other left-handed hitters, has seen his numbers dip as teams move an infielder into shallow right field to gobble up anything he hits in that direction.

He’s not openly blaming the shift for his performances in 2020 and 2021, but Rizzo would not be the first left-handed batter to share frustration with the shift if he did.

If MLB does ban the shift — they are experimenting with taking it away in two different levels of the minor leagues this year — Rizzo and other left-handed batters would undoubtedly benefit at least to a small degree. For now though, Rizzo is hitting well enough to consider utilizing his opt-out even if the shift stays.

Through the first 19 games of the season, Rizzo has a 1.098 OPS and leads baseball with 8 home runs. It has been since 2019, Rizzo’s age-29 season, that he posted an OPS anywhere near 1.000. He will surely level off a bit as the year goes on, but Rizzo’s performance this April is an encouraging sign if he is looking to re-enter the free agent market this winter.

Before the 2021 trade deadline, Rizzo looked like he might be a lifetime member of the Chicago Cubs. He was the longest tenured member of the team going into last season, and he was crucial part of the rebuild years in the early 2010s and of the 2016 World Series team. There was hope that Rizzo might be able to get the five-year contract he wanted to stay in Chicago — it was rumored that he was offered $60 and $70 million for four and five year deals, respectively — but Rizzo had his sights set on larger numbers than that. And the Cubs beginning to deteriorate didn’t help, either. After getting to the playoffs every year from 2015 to 2018, they failed to reach the postseason in 2019 and then had a quick exit in the 2020 wild card round. The final straw for the Cubs’ championship core was the two-week losing streak last year that took them from first place on June 24 to trading away Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Baez.

Bryant and Baez have since signed long-term contracts elsewhere, effectively and officially ending the era of Cubs baseball that included the first World Series appearance since 1945 and first title since 1908.

There remains a small chance that Rizzo could consider a reunion if he opts out this offseason. He was the de facto face of the franchise at Wrigley Field for a decade, after all, and he still speaks fondly of his time in Chicago. But as he told Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein, he is getting comfortable in New York too.

Rizzo will turn 33 this August, so it’s unlikely that he will be able to get the long-term contract he has hoped for in recent years. Fair or not, that ship has probably sailed. Rizzo signed a very team-friendly deal to stay with the Cubs back in 2014, and at the end of that contract he was supposed to give him the opportunity to cash in.

But instead, the free agent market shifted as Rizzo was playing out that original seven-year contract. The pinnacle of that shift likely came in 2019, when top-tier free agents like Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel remained unsigned until June. Unfortunately for players like Rizzo, that evolution in teams’ approach to free agency left them without a chance to sign the kinds of deals they had spent years looking forward to.

The reality for guys like Rizzo now is that they have to adjust to the new way free agency works. If he continues to perform at the level that he has so far this season, then Rizzo will be in good position to test what he can get as a free agent in the winter. He likely will not get the number of years that he has hoped for in the past, but his per-year earnings could go up. Right now, the Yankees are paying him $16 million a year, but a power-hitting lefty who can still provide sure-handed defense at first base would be worth a lot more to many teams around the league. And if the defensive shift really is banished after this season, then Rizzo’s ability to keep hitting like he has through these first 19 games only improves.