THE 240-GAME RULE: Why Potential Isn't Enough to Justify an MLB Extension

There is a difference between believing in a young player and betting tens -- or even hundreds -- of millions of dollars that you are right about him. That distinction matters. Especially for mid-to-low market teams like the Pirates (Paul Skenes) and the Royals (Jac Caglionone).

When it comes to handing out long-term extensions to young MLB players, I have a rule:

The 240-Game Rule.

Why 240? Because talent gets you noticed, adjustments keep you here.

This is approximately a season and a half of Major League Baseball -- and it's a round number unlike 246...

In my view, that's about the minimum amount of time necessary to begin answering the most important question an organization should ask before making a massive financial commitment:

Has this player proven that he can not only succeed in Major League Baseball, but succeed after Major League Baseball adjusts to him?

That's a very different question.

My 240-Game Rule

The criteria is pretty straightforward, and it still leaves room for a GM or President of Baseball Operations to use their gut in evaluation.

1. A player must play a minimum of 240 games at the MLB level.

2. He must perform at an elite—or close-to-elite—level for approximately 240 games.

That distinction is important. Simply appearing in 240 games isn't enough.

If it takes a player 350 MLB games to accumulate 240 games of high-level performance, so be it.

3. No player who has not demonstrated sustained performance over at least 162 games should even be considered for a massive long-term extension.

And most importantly:

4. I want to see what happens after the league adjusts to him.

That's the entire point.

Major League Baseball Adjusts Back

Baseball is a game of constant adjustment, and that is especially true for a young hitter trying to establish himself in the major leagues. When a talented player first arrives, he may have success almost immediately. He’s doing damage, driving the baseball, and showing everyone exactly why he was considered one of the organization’s top young players.

But Major League Baseball doesn’t stand still.

With every plate appearance, opposing teams are collecting information. The scouting reports become more detailed, pitchers begin to understand where a hitter can hurt them—and, more importantly, where they can attack him. They learn which pitches he’ll chase, where there might be holes in his swing, whether he can handle velocity at the top of the zone or recognize breaking balls that finish outside it. They discover whether they can crowd him inside, expand the strike zone when they get ahead, or use certain pitch sequences to keep him from getting to the pitches he handles best.

Little by little, the league builds a book on him.

And eventually, pitchers stop attacking the young hitter the way they did when he first arrived. They make their adjustment.

That’s when the evaluation really begins. What does the hitter do about it?

That's where I want another half-season.

To me, the first 162 games answer one question:

Can you play at a high level in Major League Baseball? That's an important hurdle, but it isn't the only one. Because somewhere during those 162 games, the league is studying you. Pitchers are adjusting their approach, advance scouts are identifying tendencies, and opposing teams are becoming increasingly familiar with the things you do well—and the things you don't.

That's why I want the next 78 games.

Those games begin answering a much more important question:

Can you stay at a high level once the league knows who you are?

By then, you're no longer the new guy. There aren't many secrets left. Teams have accumulated hundreds of plate appearances worth of information. They've seen how you react when you're attacked with velocity, how disciplined you are against breaking pitches, where you chase, where you do damage and where you can be exposed. The league has had an opportunity to develop a plan for getting you out.

Now I want to see your response.

Can you recognize what pitchers have changed? Can you tighten the strike zone? Can you make the mechanical or approach adjustments necessary to counter what they're doing? And perhaps most importantly, can you continue producing when pitchers aren't giving you the pitches that helped make you successful in the first place?

That's what those additional 78 games are about.

• The first 162 tell me you can do it.

• The next 78 begin telling me you can keep doing it.

  
  

And when we're talking about a franchise-altering commitment --$100 million, $150 million, perhaps considerably more -- that distinction matters to me. I'm not interested in handing out that kind of money because a player had one great season, one spectacular stretch, or because I believe pitchers haven't completely figured out how to attack him yet. I'm willing to risk paying more later in exchange for having more information now.

Give the league time to find the holes. Give opposing pitchers time to exploit them. Give the player time to experience failure and adversity.

Then show me that he can adjust back.

If he's still producing at an elite or near-elite level after all of that, now I'm not simply betting on potential anymore.

I'm betting on evidence.

That's why, for me, 162 games isn't quite enough.

I want 240.

I want to see what happens after they do.

Which Brings Me to Jac Caglianone

Let me make something clear:

I really like Jac Caglianone.

The power is enormous. The ceiling is enormous. And if everything comes together, he has a legitimate chance to become exactly what Kansas City desperately needs:

An elite offensive complement to Bobby Witt Jr.

That's the dream. And I mean it. I already own Cags rookie card signed as well as a signed picture. I am a big fan.

Witt is already the centerpiece of the franchise. If Caglianone develops into a legitimate middle-of-the-order force alongside him, Kansas City suddenly has the foundation of an offense that can be built around for years. And Caglianone continues giving us glimpses of exactly why that possibility is so exciting.

On August 8, he went 4-for-4 against the Cubs with two home runs and two doubles. All four balls were hit at least 104.9 mph, including two over 111 mph. That's ridiculous power.

That's the kind of night that makes you start dreaming about what Witt and Caglianone could look like together for the next decade. But dreaming about it and guaranteeing massive money because of it are two different things. And this is exactly where my 240-game rule comes into play.

Using the statistical snapshot I've been evaluating:

Caglianone	MLB Games	OPS	OPS+
Career sample	171	.706	95
High-level stretch	109	.800	125

The second line is extremely encouraging. A 125 OPS+ means offensive production approximately 25 percent better than league average after adjusting for the factors incorporated into OPS+. That's the player Kansas City hopes it has.

But here's the problem:

109 games isn't 240 games. It isn't even 162. And when we expand the lens to his entire 171-game MLB sample in this snapshot, we're looking at a .706 OPS and a 95 OPS+.

For perspective, I generally use roughly a .725 OPS as my baseline for an acceptable everyday MLB hitter.

So while Caglianone has shown us a 109-game stretch in which he looks like a potentially outstanding offensive player, he has not yet shown me enough to conclude that this is permanently who he is.

That isn't criticism, it is patience, it is fiscal responsbility. And there is an important historical reason for it.

Remember Ke'Bryan Hayes

If you want to understand why I don't like enormous commitments based on limited MLB samples, go back to Pittsburgh and Ke'Bryan Hayes.

Hayes arrived in 2020 and looked like an absolute superstar.

Not a good prospect.

Not a promising young player.

Hayes was going to be a superstar.

• In his first 24 MLB games, Hayes hit: .376/.442/.682

• That's a 1.124 OPS and a 201 OPS+.

Let's look at it again... Twenty-four games equaled five home runs, seven doubles, and two triples. He showed elite defense at third base. Only twenty-three years old. If you watched him, you could easily convince yourself: "That's our guy."

Then came 2021.

Hayes battled injuries and played 96 games.

• His offensive production dropped to: .257/.316/.373

• His OPS fell from 1.124 to .689.

• His OPS+ fell from 201 to 87.

Suddenly, the picture wasn't nearly as clear. After those two seasons, Hayes had played only 120 Major League games. His cumulative numbers still looked respectable:

.280/.340/.432 — .772 OPS, 109 OPS+. And Pittsburgh believed enough in the player, his defense and his future to make its bet.

In April 2022, the Pirates signed Hayes to an eight-year, $70 million extension, at the time the largest contract in franchise history.

But here's the number that interests me: 120 games.

Hayes hadn't even played one full MLB season's worth of games. Forget my 240-game threshold. He hadn't reached 162. And Pittsburgh made the commitment anyway.

What Happened Next?

The offensive breakout never became what those first 24 games suggested it might.

In 2022, Hayes played 136 games and hit:

.244/.314/.345 — .659 OPS

He did rebound offensively in 2023, producing a .762 OPS, while continuing to provide tremendous defensive value. But the offensive consistency never materialized.

In 2024, over 96 games: .233/.283/.290 — .573 OPS.

By 2025, Hayes was eventually traded from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati. At the time of the trade, he had only two home runs through 100 games and a .569 OPS.

None of this means Ke'Bryan Hayes became a useless baseball player. Far from it. He became an exceptional defensive third baseman and eventually a multiple Gold Glove winner. But that's not the point. The point is that Pittsburgh made a long-term evaluation of a hitter before it had enough MLB evidence to know what kind of hitter it actually had.

Those first 24 games screamed superstar. The next 96 suggested something considerably different. And after 120 total games, Pittsburgh made the bet.

My rule would have told them to wait - and that would have given them more financial flexibility.

That's Why I Would Wait on Caglianone

Jac Caglianone may eventually make this entire argument look foolish.

And quite frankly, I hope he does.

If you're a Royals fan (as I am), the best possible outcome is that five years from now we're looking back at this conversation while Caglianone is coming off another 35- or 40-home-run season, entrenched in the middle of the Kansas City lineup, and wondering why the Royals didn't lock him up when they had the chance to do it for considerably less money.

That's the dream—and it's not particularly difficult to envision. The upside with Caglianone is obvious. You don't have to squint very hard to see it. The raw power is extraordinary, particularly from the left side, and there simply aren't many players capable of impacting a baseball the way he can. When he gets a pitch he can drive and squares it up, the ball comes off his bat differently. It's the kind of power that changes games, changes lineups and forces opposing pitchers to think differently about how they navigate the hitters around him. Now imagine that version of Caglianone hitting alongside Bobby Witt Jr. for the next several years.

That's where this gets exciting.

Witt is already the centerpiece of the franchise, the kind of player every organization hopes to draft, develop and build around. If Caglianone becomes the hitter his talent suggests he can become, Kansas City could have something extremely difficult to find: two legitimate impact bats entering their primes together, one from the right side and one from the left, capable of anchoring the middle of the Royals lineup for years.

That's exactly the kind of player an organization should want to keep. But keeping a player and overpaying a player.

But here's where I separate wanting to keep the player from being ready to make the investment. Because I'm not questioning Caglianone's ceiling. I'm questioning whether we've seen enough Major League Baseball to know how likely he is to reach it, and, just as importantly, sustain it.

There is a natural temptation with talented young players to start paying for what we believe they're going to become. We see the exit velocities, the home runs and those stretches when everything comes together, and our minds naturally start projecting forward. We stop evaluating the player standing in front of us and begin evaluating the player we imagine he'll be at 25, 26 or 27 years old.

Sometimes we're right. Sometimes that young slugger really does become the 40-home-run cornerstone we envisioned. But more often than not, he doesn't. And when you're talking about a massive long-term extension, that's an enormously expensive distinction to take that hamstrings teams not in New York or Los Angeles.

That's why I don't want to pay Caglianone today based primarily on the best possible version of Jac Caglianone tomorrow. I want to pay him based on what he has demonstrated over a long enough period of Major League Baseball that I can have reasonable confidence in what I'm buying.

And right now, I think we've learned something very important about him:

Caglianone has demonstrated that he can be an elite offensive player.

We've seen stretches of it. We've seen the enormous power. We've seen what happens when everything clicks, and we've seen enough to understand why people are so excited about what he could become. But that's different from demonstrating that he is an elite Major League hitter.

That requires time.

It requires sustained production. It requires pitchers adjusting to him, finding the holes and changing the way they attack him. It requires Caglianone going through stretches when the league isn't cooperating, when pitchers stop throwing the pitches he wants to hit and when the weaknesses in his approach are being attacked night after night.

And then I want to see what happens next. Does he adjust? Does he continue producing? Does the 125 OPS+ version of Caglianone become the norm rather than simply the best stretch of his young career?

If the answer is yes, Kansas City may eventually have to write a much bigger check than it would today.

I'm okay with that, and I bet so are the Royals. Every team needs a "Face of the Franchise." The Royals have that in Bobby Witt, Jr. But they also need a solid supporting cast. They might have that in Caglionone, or Pasquantine, or Maikel, or all 3. But a solid supporting cast can be interchangeable to some degree. And since there is a price associated with certainty, just as there is a price associated with risk, risk must be managed responsibly. It is fiscally irresponsible to pay for a player who has demonstrated that he has the ability to be an elite Major League player because it may save money 5 years down the road, then have him be an average everyday player. Do not guarantee the fortune when the player cannot guarantee the outcome.

Maybe Caglianone reaches 240 games, keeps crushing baseballs, makes the league's adjustments irrelevant, and forces the Royals to pay him substantially more.

Wonderful. Write the check. 10 years, $300 million. If he is a 30 home run, .800 OPS guy year in and year out, he is worth it. Because at that point, Kansas City wouldn't simply be investing in what Jac Caglianone might become; they are investing in the guy he has become that promises long-term production at a certain level.

They'd be investing in what he has proven himself to be.

And when we're talking about the kind of money required to keep a potential superstar alongside Bobby Witt Jr. for the long haul, those are two very different things.

The Counterargument: Waiting Costs Money

There is, of course, another side to this argument, and it's a legitimate one. If you're going to wait until a young player has accumulated 240 games, gone through the league's adjustments, adjusted back, and established himself as an elite Major League player, there's a very good chance you're going to have to pay considerably more to keep him.

I understand that.

In fact, that's the entire tradeoff.

The reason teams pursue early extensions in the first place is that they're trying to buy tomorrow's superstar at today's price. The organization is essentially saying, We believe we know what this player is going to become before everyone else does, and we're willing to assume the risk of being wrong.

The player is making a calculation of his own. He may be giving up the possibility of a much larger payday down the road, but in exchange he's receiving something incredibly valuable right now: financial security. Instead of betting on staying healthy, continuing to perform and eventually reaching arbitration or free agency as a star, he can guarantee himself generational wealth today.

Both sides give something up. Both sides get something in return.

And sometimes those early extensions work out spectacularly well for the organization. A team identifies a young star before his value fully explodes, guarantees him life-changing money and ends up controlling some of the best years of his career at a fraction of what those seasons eventually would have cost on the open market.

That's the home run every front office is chasing. But there's another possibility.

The player doesn't continue on the trajectory everyone expected. The league adjusts. A weakness becomes more difficult to overcome than anticipated. The offensive production levels off. Injuries intervene. Suddenly the organization isn't celebrating the bargain it secured—it is carrying years of guaranteed money for a player who never became what it was paying him to become.

That's the part of the equation that matters most to me.

I'm willing to accept that my 240-game rule may occasionally cost me money. If the player proves himself to be exactly what I thought he might become, then yes, I'm probably going to have to write a larger check than I could have written a year earlier.

I'm comfortable with that, because it will save more money than it will waste. And it will produce more wins than losses.

Because what am I really purchasing with that additional money? Information.

I'm buying another season of evidence. I'm buying hundreds of additional plate appearances. I'm buying the opportunity to see how the player handles adversity, how opposing teams adjust to him and, most importantly, whether he can adjust back. I'm buying a clearer understanding of the player I'm considering tying a significant portion of my payroll to for the next six, eight or ten years.

That information has value. That information is gold.

So perhaps I miss the opportunity to sign a future superstar for $80 million and eventually have to pay him $130 million instead. So be it. Because that guy is going to help me win games, and the other guy is going to keep me from winning games.

If those additional games give me substantially greater confidence that I'm committing $130 million to the right player, I'll live with paying the premium.

Because when we're talking about enormous long-term guarantees, my objective isn't simply to look back five years later and say that I negotiated the cheapest contract.

I don't need to win the contract.

I need to be right about the player.

And there is a very important difference between the two.

162 Tells Me You Can Do It.

240 Gives Me The Confidence That You Might Be Able to Keep Doing It.

That's ultimately the philosophy behind my rule.

Prospects are projections.

Rookies are incomplete evaluations.

Hot stretches are evidence.

Full seasons are much stronger evidence.

But what I'm really looking for is the counter-adjustment.

Give me the player for 162 games.

Let Major League Baseball collect the information.

Let opposing advance scouts find the weaknesses.

Let pitchers change how they attack him.

Then give me another half-season.

Show me the adjustment to the adjustment.

If after approximately 240 games we're still looking at an elite or near-elite hitter?

Now you've got my attention. Now we're not projecting greatness based primarily on tools. We're buying a demonstrated Major League track record. And if Jac Caglianone reaches that point while producing something resembling that 125 OPS+ stretch?

Then we can talk about the extension and no one will be mad about it.

Until then, I'm perfectly comfortable watching him develop alongside Bobby Witt Jr., enjoying every 110-mph missile he launches into the seats and hoping that Kansas City has found its next great offensive star. Because believing that Jac Caglianone can become an elite player is easy. The 240-game rule exists to answer the much more expensive question:

Has he proven that he is one?