The Los Angeles Dodgers officially announced on Thursday that they have signed free agent outfielder A.J. Pollock to a four-year contract. The deal is expected to be worth around $55 million with incentives and escalators built in.
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman is known to hand out some creative contracts, and this is another one as options can have the deal end up being three, four or five years. The average annual value of the contract is believed to be $12 million, which matters for luxury tax purposes.
Pollock is a player the Dodgers are very familiar with considering he spent his entire seven-year Major League career in the National League West with the rival Arizona Diamondbacks.
He has dealt with a multitude of injuries in his career, including a broken elbow, broken thumb and strained groin. The Dodgers obviously feel that he is not injury-prone though if they were willing to commit to him for four years.
When healthy, Pollock has been a quality player. In 113 games in 2018, he hit .257/.316/.484 with 21 home runs, 65 RBI and 13 stolen bases in 15 attempts.
He has a career .805 on-base plus slugging percentage, and the last time he had a fully healthy season in 2015, he slashed .315/.367/.498 with 20 home runs, 76 RBI and 39 stolen bases in 157 games.
Pollock also won a Gold Glove playing center field in 2015, and is known to be one of the best defensive outfielders in the game. Whether he stays at that position or slides over to one of the corners in favor of Cody Bellinger remains to be seen, although Bellinger’s versatility would allow him to play one of the corners.
Considering Pollock was given a qualifying offer by the Diamondbacks, the Dodgers forfeit a 2019 draft pick and $500,000 in international signing money by signing him. The Dodgers received a draft pick when Yasmani Grandal signed with the Milwaukee Brewers, so this essentially cancels that out.
