The big news of the last 24 hours in baseball was word Colorado is set to extend the contract of Troy Tulowitzki, who was already under contract through 2013 with an option for 2014, for six more years, meaning that, when completed, they have him signed for the next decade at a total cost of somewhere north of $150 million.
When the Phillies extended Ryan Howard for five years beyond the end of his last contract, it became the gold standard for bad extensions in the high end of the market: Philadelphia took an unathletic player at the wrong end of the defensive spectrum and extended him well into his 30s even though he'd already started to show signs of decline. While Tulowitzki receives a much longer extension, he's a plus defender at a critical, hard-to-fill position and should hold his value most of the way through this deal. Even Todd Helton's 10-year deal -- which would have ended after 2011, and has ended miserably for the Rockies -- doesn't give us an apples-to-apples comparison because Helton lacked Tulowitzki's fielding and positional value.
So is there a downside? Well, yeah.
