Price of Leapfrog Keeps Going Up

Item: The Boston Red Sox and pitcher Pedro Martinez reached agreement on a record six-year, $75-million contract that can climb to $92.5 million over seven years.

Question: Is big brother watching?

Will Ramon Martinez be thinking in similar terms when his $15-million deal with the Dodgers expires after an option year in 1999?

“Let’s hope Ramon pitches well enough that he puts himself in that position,” said Fred Claire, the Dodgers’ executive vice president.

The Dodgers, of course, hope that the oldest of the three Martinez brothers can pitch, period.

Coming back from his partial rotator cuff tear of last summer, Martinez has been throwing at the club’s training facility in the Dominican Republic.

“I talked to Ramon the other day, and he’s very positive, very excited about the way he feels,” Claire said.

“As honest as he is, if there was a concern this would be the time he’d want to address it because he’s under contract for the next two years.”

Pedro could be under contract until 2005, when he’ll be 34 and prime for another contract.

Baseball sources say the first option year, or the seventh year overall, carries a stunning salary of $17.5 million.

The average annual value of the six years is $12.5 million, eclipsing the $11.5 million of Greg Maddux’s previous record. Maddux had won the Cy Young Award in four of the five years before ‘97, when Martinez won his first.

“Outer space,” said Claire, thinking about $75 million.

“You put the numbers on the board, and whether it’s a pitcher or position player, baseball immediately wants to play a game of leapfrog and put a new number up. I don’t know where it ends.”

Leapfrog? Well, the Red Sox are still faced with re-signing Mo Vaughn, who was insisting on topping Sammy Sosa’s $10.62-million average salary and now may be thinking in terms of teammate Martinez’s $12.5 million.

“Pedro Martinez is a superb pitcher, and they’re lucky to have him,” said Vaughn’s agent, Tom Reich. “However, it would be disingenuous to say that [Martinez’s contract] won’t affect the Mo Vaughn negotiations, because it will.”

The Red Sox are looking at $22 million to $25 million a year for two players, and that’s before arbitration-eligible John Valentin and a multiyear deal for rookie of the year Nomar Garciaparra.

This is a club operated by John Harrington, a member of baseball’s power elite, chairman of several of the most influential committees and a proponent, during the long labor dispute, of a salary cap. Now Harrington seems to be sending mixed signals to his allegedly troubled industry. If Boston can make it work given the limited resources of cozy Fenway Park, how valid are the industry’s widespread claims of losses?

“Every club has to make its own decisions,” Claire said.

Perhaps, but in a game of leapfrog, every decision affects every other club, which is why Claire knows he is in tough as he contemplates an extension for Mike Piazza, who will make $7.5 million in 1998 and is a candidate for $13 million or more in 1999--and why not?

If Pedro Martinez, who pitches every fifth day, has 67 major league wins and is coming off the first big season of his career, can make $12.5 million a year, what do you pay a 29-year-old catcher whose statistics overshadow any catcher in history?

DRAFT REPLAY

Amid speculation that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays were thinking of making Dodger first baseman Eric Karros the first player selected in the expansion draft, it now surfaces that the Devil Rays received word from the Karros camp that he was adamantly against changing leagues and moving to the East Coast.

The Devil Rays were told Karros would exercise his rights as a player traded with a multiyear contract and demand a trade after his first year in Tampa Bay. The Devil Rays, in that case, would have had to trade him or allow Karros to leave as a free agent. The risk for Karros in becoming a free agent at that point was that the two years and $10 million he would have had left on his contract would have been voided.

“Money is not a major issue for me,” Karros said in reflection. “If I don’t play another day, I’m OK financially. Whether I was or wasn’t going to be drafted by Tampa Bay, I don’t know, but I’ve made it clear that my focus and desire is to remain in Los Angeles. I mean, that’s why I signed a four-year contract with the Dodgers. I want the opportunity to win, and I think I have a good chance of that here.”

The Devil Rays, aware of his thinking, backed off Karros and made Florida Marlin pitcher Tony Saunders their first choice. The Arizona Diamondbacks selected Dodger outfielder Karim Garcia on the first round, and Karros was then protected for subsequent rounds.

VERY SHEIK

Recent stories in The Times regarded claims by John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp., that the company has a right to share in the ownership of the Dodgers if the purchase by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is approved. Now a member of baseball’s ownership committee says the recent $400-million purchase of 5% of News Corp. by Saudi Arabian investor Prince al-Waleed bin Talal is intriguing enough that the committee will try to learn if Prince al-Waleed would have any influence on the Dodger operation.

“These are the type issues that the committee is responsible for investigating,” said the member, who insisted that the process is on track, that a vote is likely during a Jan. 13-15 owners’ meeting in Phoenix and that he expects Murdoch to be approved despite pockets of concern among owners in both leagues. Some of that concern was heightened by the revelation of Denver billionaire Malone’s possible involvement as a Murdoch partner, uniting two media conglomerates.

THINK ORANGE AND BLACK

Orel Hershiser as a Giant?

It may have been more difficult to fathom if Hershiser had gone directly from Los Angeles to San Francisco and hadn’t first spent three years in Cleveland.

In a conference call after his free-agent signing by the Giants, Hershiser said he would have signed with the Giants in 1995, that they offered a better contract than the Indians, but because of miscommunication with a Giant official--”no one’s fault,” he insisted--the offer wasn’t conveyed to him until after he had reached agreement with the Indians. At that point, he said, he felt an ethical responsibility to honor the Cleveland commitment.

Now? Hershiser said he chose the Giants over several teams, including the Baltimore Orioles (who subsequently signed Doug Drabek), because of his family’s long affection for San Francisco and because of the heart the Giants demonstrated in winning the National League West title in ’97.

Giant officials believe Hershiser also was intent on returning to the National League, where his finesse approach at 39 may fit better than in the power-laden, designated hitter American League, although in his three years in Cleveland Hershiser won more games (45) than Randy Johnson (43), Roger Clemens (41), Andy Benes (39), Kevin Appier (38), David Cone (37), Wilson Alvarez (36), and Darryl Kile (35).

The Indians, however, never considered re-signing Hershiser despite the priority they placed on improving their rotation. They subsequently signed Dwight Gooden as a free agent and acquired potential starters Ben McDonald and Steve Karsay in trades with the Milwaukee Brewers and Oakland Athletics.

“The big fear is that a club doesn’t want to have you when the music stops,” Hershiser said. “It’s sort of like age discrimination. You have the stats to produce X amount of dollars in the market, but then they look at your age, and it’s like guys like me are always swimming against the tide.”

San Francisco offered one year with an option, and Hershiser, who was 20-9 against the Giants as a Dodger, including 9-4 in the former Candlestick Park, said, “If Giant fans compiled a hate list, Tom Lasorda would be at the top and I’d be next, but we’ve had too many good experiences in San Francisco [to be dissuaded from signing by taunts and jeers from the past].”

And being on the other side of the rivalry, he added, should produce “spice and excitement at a point in my career when you’re always looking for that added stimulus.”

With the Dodgers and Giants, you never have to look far. Giant second baseman Jeff Kent reflected on the winter developments and said:

“The Dodgers haven’t done anything other than lose Otis Nixon and Greg Gagne and sign Jose [Vizcaino, the former Giant shortstop]. That’s a personal loss for me because we’ve been together for four years, but I certainly don’t think they’ve improved very much.”