Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson isn’t just the reigning American League MVP—he’s also a man who deserves to get paid.
Looking around the league, there are plenty of MLB stars like Donaldson whose current employers should be racing to lock them up.
The 10 big leaguers who make this list are all arbitration eligible, which means they are one to three seasons away from hitting the free-agent front.
What follows are breakdowns for how each of those contract extensions should be structured. Due to a variety of factors—from the age of the given player to his current contract situation to which agent is representing him—some of these proposed extensions are far more realistic than others.
We’ll use MLBTradeRumors.com’s salary arbitration projections for 2016 as a jumping-off point for determining how much each player is worth. The proposed salaries are also based on the deals that free agents have signed this offseason and how the respective players compare to other similar guys on this list.
From David Price to Zack Greinke to Johnny Cueto, this has been the offseason of the opt-out. With that trend in mind, many of these proposed extensions give the players the opportunity to bolt town long before the full deal is up.