What would a Jerry Dipoto contract extension look like?

Three seasons down and Jerry Dipoto is still the general manager of the Angels. Congrats! In fact, he’s finally coming off a season in which his job security wasn’t called into question at any point. Heck, he even had his 2015 contract option picked up. That’s real progress! If he keeps this up, he might even get himself an extension. But what would a Jerry Dipoto contract extension even look like?

What a Jerry Dipoto contract extension looks like probably depends on who you ask.

If you ask Arte Moreno, he thus far seems to think that giving him an extension one-year at a time is sufficient. Dipoto, by most accounts, had a very good year as a GM in 2014 and his reward from Uncle Arte was having his 2015 contract option picked up. He got the special privilege of being a lame duck GM for the second year in a row. Apparently Moreno has decided that long-term contracts and job security is for the birds… unless your name is Mike Scioscia… or Albert Pujols… or Josh Hamilton… or, well, you get the idea. Jerry still has another option on his contract for the 2016 season that Arte can pick up well into the 2015 season so that Dipoto can live the lame duck dream for a third consecutive season.

If you ask Mike Scioscia, who might well be the guy that needs to be asked because while he was was supposed to lose some control within the organization, he remains the guy with the big, fat, long-term contract. He and Dipoto infamously butted heads during Jerry’s first two years with the organization and both of supposedly had their jobs on the line after the 2013 campaign. If Scioscia remains the guy that Moreno has his wagon hitched to, then maybe Dipoto only exists as the Angels GM at the pleasure of Scioscia. That hardly seems like a situation where Dipoto would ever get much of an extension at all even if he and Scioscia are “on the same page” as they so often claim.

If you ask the consensus of the baseball world, any extension for Dipoto would take him through the 2018 season. The teams to most recently extend their incumbent general managers are the Rangers who, after the 2015 season, locked up Jon Daniels through 2018 and the Pittsburgh Pirates who, before the 2015 season, extended Neal Huntington through the 2018 season. Then again, Daniels and Huntington have more proven track records than Dipoto, so four years of guaranteed contract might not quite be where Jerry is at yet. Perhaps Dipoto is more similar to Dayton Moore when he got his extension after the 2013 season. Like Moore, Dipoto struggled a bit out the gate before finally having one year of tangible success. That earned Dayton two additional years of extension on his existing deal which ended after 2014.

If you ask someone who thinks that Dipoto is still on the wobbly chair, you don’t want to commit too much to him. The Reds found themselves in a similar position with Walt Jocketty, whose contract was about to expire. Cincinnati threw him a two-year deal, enough of a commitment to make him a non-lame duck but also short enough so that they could pull the ripcord at any point without much skin off their back.

If you ask me, a Jerry Dipoto contract extension that ends after 2017 just seems poetic. If you look at the current pay structure of the Angels, the end of the 2018 season will be a watershed moment for the franchise. Josh Hamilton’s contract will come to an after that season and C.J. Wilson‘s will have expired the year before. It will also be the last season before Mike Trout starts earning the highest annual salary in baseball (as of right now). In other words, that is the ideal time to make a front office change, if the need should arise. Any new GM will be getting a chance to start with a fairly clean slate, not having to deal with any burdens inherited from his predecessor aside from the never-ending Pujols contract. As for Dipoto, he at least gets to see all his signings, whether he made them willingly or not, through to the end.

If you ask someone who is more concerned about the money, well, you’re out of luck. Nobody really has a firm grasp on what GMs make, salary-wise. In 2010, Ken Rosenthal reported that no GMs really made more than $3 million per year. That payscale has probably changed a bit since as evidenced by Andrew Friedman getting five years, $35 million to be president of baseball operations for the Dodgers, but maybe that is an outlier based on him taking a higher position and the Dodgers’ willingness to overpay for everything.

If you ask someone who wants a firm conclusion to this question, they are going to be sorely disappointed. Industry trends suggest that a Jerry Dipoto contract extension will probably take the form of him getting three more guaranteed years after this current one. That would likely be Moreno exercising the 2016 option and then adding on two more years with a raise over whatever Dipoto is currently making. But that assumes Arte will just follow the trends. If he were doing that, Dipoto would probably have his extension already or at least have had his 2016 option picked up by now. But we don’t know what Moreno will do, what he really thinks of Dipoto or who in the organization really has his ear.

So what is the final answer here? What would a Jerry Dipoto contract extension look like? I think we can safely say that it looks a lot like this:

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