{"id":548858,"date":"2026-02-01T09:19:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T09:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/548858\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T09:19:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T09:19:34","slug":"jose-ramirezs-extension-may-not-give-guardians-previously-thought-flexibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/548858\/","title":{"rendered":"Jose Ramirez’s Extension May Not Give Guardians Previously Thought Flexibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deferred money has been a hotly debated topic across baseball ever since the Los Angeles Dodgers deferred a large sum of Shohei Ohtani\u2019s lengthy contract and used a similar strategy with other free agents.<\/p>\n

Now, the Cleveland Guardians<\/a> are dipping their toes into the deferral game with Jose Ramirez\u2019s new contract extension with the organization.\u00a0Of J-Ram\u2019s $175 million contract, $70 million of it is reportedly deferred.<\/p>\n

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At first, this appears like a great deal for the team. The organization can push some of the money down the road, which should give them more room to upgrade the roster in the short term.<\/p>\n

Right?<\/p>\n

Well, it doesn\u2019t sound like that\u2019s exactly how it works. When Chris Antonetti was asked about the deferred payments, the Guardians executive downplayed Cleveland actually receiving signfgant finally flexibility for the immediate future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, again, I think it’s important to remember that Jose is going to receive all of that money. And the Major League Baseball rules require that we fund that deferred compensation at the time, really, it’s earned. So there is some savings, but it’s not that material in terms of how we can reallocate that elsewhere,\u201d explained Antonetti.<\/p>\n

\"Aug<\/p>\n

Aug 19, 2025; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Cleveland Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

The deferred money didn\u2019t appear to be a necessity for Ramirez either; he was only concerned about finishing his career in Cleveland, and the delayed payments were a means to an end of doing that.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat type of terms come from the negotiations. That’s not something I was handling that comes more from the ownership and the front office and my agent,\u201d Ramirez said through his interprutor Auggie River.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the reassurance was to be able to complete my career here, and that’s how they finally got in an agreement. But for me, it was more about having the certainty to play the remainder of my career here.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, even though Antonetti said the deferred money may give the Guardians some savings, it doesn\u2019t sound like Cleveland will be able to sign a top-tier free agent because of Ramirez having deferred payments on his new deal.<\/p>\n

Guardians Roundtable also offers a fan community and message board. We\u2019d love to have you join us to talk all things Guardians. Click the \u201cJoin\u201d button at the top of the page to join our community for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deferred money has been a hotly debated topic across baseball ever since the Los Angeles Dodgers deferred a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[22,5,18762,135,51,2565,69941,72396,538,865,72397,57,4,1257],"class_list":["post-548858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-baseball","tag-chris-antonetti","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-deferred-compensation","tag-deferred-payments","tag-guardians","tag-jose-ramirez","tag-lengthy-contract","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-shohei"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115994635646893815","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}