The Tampa Bay Rays, which has emerged as a strong team in the American Professional Baseball Major League (MLB) with a ‘low-cost, high-efficiency’ stance, agreed to another long-term contract.
On the 29th (Korean time), MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, announced that Tampa Bay had signed a three-year contract 메이저사이트 with infielder Yandi Dias (32) for a total of 24 million dollars, or about 29.6 billion won in our money.
Dias, who made his big league debut with the Cleveland Indians (now the Guardians) in 2017, will qualify as a free agent (FA) after the 2024 season ends.
Players who have played three to six years full-time in the major leagues can apply for salary adjustments before becoming free agents.
With this long-term contract, Tampa Bay will be able to hold Dias for three years without salary adjustments and free agent contracts.
Dias, who is familiar to domestic Major League fans by playing as first baseman for Platoon (a player appointed according to pitcher type) in Tampa Bay with Choi Ji-man (32), had the best season last year.
He played in 137 games with a batting average of 0.296, 9 home runs, and 57 runs batted in, and with an OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) of 0.824, he ranked 20th in American League Most Valuable Player (MVP) voting.
After the end of last season, Tampa Bay sent Choi Ji-man, who had one year left before obtaining FA qualification, to the Pittsburgh Pirates in a trade, and Dias, who had two years left, signed a long-term contract.
Tampa Bay, a so-called ‘small market’ with a small market size, continues to advance to the postseason for the last 4 consecutive seasons.
In 2020, he failed to win after facing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, and last year lost the Wild Card Series to Cleveland.
Tampa Bay, which has been running the team by putting players with relatively low ransoms in front of them and then trading them when the ransom price of the players goes up, is aggressively grabbing key resources through ‘low-cost long-term contracts’ this winter.
Tampa Bay signed long-term contracts with Dias, left-hander starter Jeffrey Springs (4 years, $31 million) and right-hander bullpen Pete Fairbanks (3 years, $12 million) this week alone.
“Our goal is to win the World Series,” said Tampa Bay general manager Peter Bendix, expressing his willingness to continue investing by saying, “We will not take the current team with many talented players for granted.”