The first thing we knew was Madison Bumgarner had agreed to a five-year contract extension with the San Francisco Giants. Now, the second thing we know is how much the extension is worth. It's better this way than the other way around, where we find out about the money first, and have no idea what it's for. "What do you mean millions of dollars for Madison Bumgarner?" "Is this some sort of hush money?"
Congratulations to Madison Bumgarner on his 5-year $35 million extension with the Giants!
— SFX Baseball Group (@SFXBaseball) April 16, 2012
If Madison qualifies for arbitration as a Super 2 after 2012, his guarantee increases to $40 million.
— SFX Baseball Group (@SFXBaseball) April 16, 2012
So we don't yet know the whole breakdown, but we get the overall gist. This is the biggest guaranteed contract for a pitcher with less than two years of major-league service in baseball history. You expect there to be record-breaking contracts, on account of inflation. This is another record-breaking contract.
Bumgarner has one year and 127 days of big-league service. That's right around the projected cutoff for Super 2s (which you can read more about here). So the Giants can't yet know whether they've guaranteed $35 million or $40 million. But, of course, that's why the different guarantees are built in. If the Giants knew what was going to happen, we wouldn't even be talking about this.