Cleveland Indians: No extension for Lindor or Bauer this season

The Cleveland Indians have been trying to expend superstar Francisco Lindor and starter Trevor Bauer, but it appears neither will sign this season.

According to Paul Hoynes, the Indians were not able to reach an extension with either Lindor or Bauer this spring. Despite their best efforts, the sides remain too far apart and will play on their current contracts for 2018.

A Lindor extension is something that Indians fans have wanted for awhile now, but the agonizing wait is going to have to continue. It’s not necessarily a terrible thing that an extension won’t be reached right now, especially considering the current state of the Tribe’s payroll.

Generally speaking, once the regular season starts, few players sign or even discuss extensions. If they can’t reach one in spring training, they don’t negotiate until after the season ends. The reason being that most players would prefer to just focus on playing at that point and not have negotiations running through their head while they are trying to focus on the field.

The cost of a Lindor extension might rise after this season should he put up more MVP caliber numbers. But it’s still expected that an extension will get done prior to him reaching free agency and I would anticipate it happening before he reaches arbitration next winter.

The Bauer extension talks were a little interesting to me because although he had one of his best seasons last year, he’s still never posted a sub-4.00 ERA in his career. He went to an arbitration hearing with the Cleveland Indians this winter and actually won. Because of the extra salary Bauer got from winning that hearing, the Tribe knew it would raise his chances of winning his next two arbitration cases and his contract would skyrocket.

In order to avoid that scenario and gain some cost certainty over one of their young starters, it makes more sense that they would try to sign him to an extension, locking in his contract over not only these next two years, but likely some free agent years as well.

But Bauer doesn’t appear to want to sign an extension just yet. He knows he can get a lot of money in arbitration and is betting on himself to finally bring that ERA below 4.00 this year. If he can do that, and prove that he’s the bona fide third starter in this rotation, he’s going to make bank.

When will an extension get done?

I would expect the Tribe to try again to extend these two players next offseason. Both Lindor and Bauer will be in line for big pay raises and with over $40 million coming off the books next winter, there should be room to make sure both of them stay with the Cleveland Indians for a very long time.

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Just because they couldn’t reach a deal now, doesn’t mean that it’s never going to happen. Next offseason should be a lot more active for the Cleveland Indians than it was this past winter.