What would a Jac Caglianone extension look like?

This year has been a very busy time for rookies signing extensions. Some of the biggest prospects have signed shortly after, or even before, being called up to the majors. It might be time for Kansas City to join the crowd, get Jac Caglianone signed up, and snag a couple of extra years of control.

First, let’s look at what the rookies have been signing for to get a feel for how the market is valuing top prospects. I am doing a mix of pure rookies and a few guys who signed after getting some big-league time, so hopefully we can triangulate a little bit.

Things to keep in mind while we go through a bunch of names and numbers: Jac is 23, and his prospect ranking from FanGraphs going into 2025 was 47th. It climbed as high as 18th before he lost prospect status. Those rankings, along with your track record as it develops, are the biggest factors that shape a contract’s size and length. Then it is just a matter of finding a balance of risk and reward for both the team and the player that gives both sides what they want. I will start with the best rookies, but the best comp is in the middle of the write-up.

McGonigle will turn 22 in mid-August, so he signed his extension at the very beginning of his age-21 season. The deal was announced by the Tigers on April 15, when he had amassed career totals of just 18 games played and one home run. He was ranked similarly to Cags at the beginning of 2025—54th per FanGraphs—but the 2026 list had him at fifth, so he had climbed into one of the truly elite prospect spots.

Kevin has mostly played third base this year, with a sprinkling of shortstop as well. He is listed at 5’9” and just 187 pounds. That does not sound like a third baseman, but he has some pop despite being on the smaller side. His deal was for eight years and $150 million, with escalators that could push it to $160 million.

There are no options on the deal, so it runs straight from 2027 through 2034, which means this year was not part of the extension. That gets the Tigers three years of free agency, while McGonigle will be going into his age-30 season when he gets to test the open market. So far, he has been absolutely fantastic for Detroit, posting 4.1 fWAR this season.

Griffin was the consensus #1 prospect in baseball coming into 2026. He was drafted ninth overall in 2024 out of high school, and he had just turned 20 when he signed this extension. This is an unusual player—you just do not see many people at the MLB level before they turn 20. When it does happen, they tend to be the cream of the crop. Juan Soto, Mike Trout, and Ken Griffey Jr. come to mind.

Despite his relative youth, Konnor has held his own as a rookie. He has been almost exactly league average with the bat and just a touch below average defensively at shortstop. He has also been hurt a couple of times and was recently moved to the 60-day IL. His future looks bright, but 2026 is not going to be a banner rookie campaign for the phenom.

His deal was for nine years and $140 million, with $10 million in incentives similar to McGonigle’s. He will still hit free agency at 29 because he is so young. The last year of the deal is 2034, the same as McGonigle’s, because 2026 is included. Both of these deals were very similar and straightforward, especially compared with more complex extensions like Bobby Witt Jr.‘s or Julio Rodríguez’s.

Since JJ Wetherholt’s deal is similar to the first two and just smaller, I am going to move on to someone from a different stratum of prospect world. This is the closest comparable for Caglianone from a prospect ranking status perspective. Colt Emerson was 41st going into 2025 and started this year at 11th, both just a bit ahead of where Jac ranked at the same points. The big differences are that Emerson is younger and had not debuted with the Mariners when he signed this extension.

He has struggled a bit since being called up in the middle of May. He had a phenomenal first couple of weeks, an okay June, and has been in a terrible slump in July, posting a wRC+ of -15. It is hard to get into the negatives for that stat, but when you are hitting .132 with no extra-base hits, it can be done. Defensively, he has been pretty good, though not great.

He just turned 21 on Monday, so he is doing pretty well thus far, assuming he can get out of the slump.

His deal was announced at the end of March by Seattle with a guaranteed $95 million. It is, again, eight years through 2034, but it has more escalators that could add another $35 million or more to the total. It is similar to the first two deals but trimmed down and more incentive-oriented since he is not quite as much of a sure thing as the others. He will also hit free agency at 30.

This is the prevailing theme of these deals: get a guaranteed bag while making sure you hit free agency around or before your 30th birthday. Bobby’s opt-out is after his age-30 season too. This is probably the closest talent comp, with the age difference complicating how Caglianone might want to structure such a deal.

Pratt is nearly 22, so he is ancient compared to his peers so far in this article. He also was not a consensus Top 100 prospect, instead falling more into the bottom-end or honorable-mention tier. Like several others on this list, he signed before making his debut and has since graduated to Milwaukee as their starting shortstop.

Cooper gets on base, has very limited power, and plays good defense. If he had more power, he would be grouped with the other guys. Since he does not, he received a guarantee of $47.5 million through 2033, and the team then has two options at $15 million each for 2034 and 2035.

He got less money and may not reach free agency as soon if things go well. I include him because of Jac’s very rough start, which took some of the shine off and might make a deal structure like this more palatable, with less guaranteed money and more incentives. It will cost more than this to get Caglianone to sign, especially since his draft bonus was $7.5 million versus Pratt’s $1.35 million.

I want to talk about some guys who are not rookies before we move on to Jac, though.

I think we need to discuss Soderstrom, who had a similar pedigree in some ways, though that was shaped by being drafted out of high school rather than college. It then took Tyler a couple of runs at the big leagues before he put it all together last season, posting 3.4 fWAR and a 125 wRC+ over a full 2025 campaign.

He then signed a seven-year extension this January at age 24, which would be very similar to what Jac would be doing if he signed this coming offseason. He is even a first baseman who moved to the outfield. This is a very strong comparison for Jac.

His deal is for seven years and guarantees $86 million. There is a club option for an eighth year that would push that number to $111 million, and there are some escalators that could push it even higher. That option year would be for 2033, Tyler’s age-31 season, and the option is worth $27 million with a $2 million buyout.

To go past age 30, teams have to start paying a bigger premium to buy those years. He would have been out of arbitration before 2031, and Caglianone will not be a free agent until 2032. His deal could look something like this, just shifted slightly because of that one-year difference.

The Athletics signed a very similar deal with Jacob Wilson, though for a smaller dollar amount, just a few weeks after the Soderstrom deal.

PCA is another similarly aged outfielder with a longer and bumpier path in the big leagues so far. This deal was signed before he became the best player in baseball this year, as he currently leads MLB in both fWAR and bWAR. He kind of did that last year too, before falling off a cliff in the second half.

His value comes much more from defense than Cags’, but I still thought it was worth taking a look at.

PCA signed the deal on his 24th birthday, and it did not affect his salary this season, his final pre-arbitration year. Starting next year, he will make $110 million over six years. Like most of these deals, the Cubs are buying two years of free agency, and then it is just a matter of whether there are options beyond that. This one has no options, and it shows how those years become much more expensive to buy out as you get closer to free agency, since he will make $30 million per year.

Would the Royals extend Jac midseason? I do not know, but the way the season is going, they could use a nice distraction. More importantly, is Cags an extension guy, or is he going to “bet on himself” and try to reach free agency as early as possible?

The looming CBA negotiations play into this, with a possible salary cap and other changes that might shift the economic landscape of the game. Again, he already got $7.5 million to sign with the team originally, which is significantly more than most of us will make in our lifetimes. There are a lot of moving parts to these deals.

Since he will be a free agent in 2032 at age 28, going into his age-29 season, it is reasonable to say he might be interested in getting a guaranteed $80-plus million in exchange for giving up a year or two of free agency, but two years is probably the maximum. Also, large first basemen can struggle to get big deals as they age. It took Pete Alonso a couple of trips through free agency to get the deal he wanted, and it was less than he had originally floated.

I am assuming a 29-year-old Jac Caglianone will not be in the outfield, since he already has a 15th-percentile range rating there. The arm does make up for the range a bit.

If I were Jac’s representatives and the Royals wanted two years of free agency, the second one would need to be a player option or a very expensive team option. That being said, the team watched him struggle mightily last season, and though he has performed well in 2026, it has been a bit uneven. April was okay, May was bad, June was great, and now July is back to being bad again.

Do you want to guarantee that much money to a player with known chase issues who is probably going to be a bit streaky? Salvador Perez is—and always has been—that guy, and it has worked out just fine. I think the structure would end up looking something like this.

2027: $1 million salary and a $5 million signing bonus

2033: $32 million team option with a $2 million buyout

That’s a guarantee of $70 million, which is about where I would be comfortable if I were the Royals. He does not get the full Soderstrom amount until he shows more consistency. If the team picks up the option, he gets to $100 million, so the deal still carries nine-figure money.

He looks like he will be worth this, and there is still a lot of upside for the team. I do wonder whether that 40-plus-homer potential makes him wait and avoid signing anything until he shows that elite power over a full season. It all depends on his risk tolerance because $70 million guaranteed is a ridiculous amount of money.

The Royals could also push some of the guaranteed money down a bit more and build in $40 million or $50 million in incentives if Jac would prefer that structure. It is something I assume the team will explore. The math just changes depending on how sure either they or Jac want to be before getting a deal done.

By this time next year, he could be anywhere from not extendable to needing $150-plus million guaranteed, so these negotiations are always a matter of timing.