TAMPA, Fla. -- Credit a newborn baby and a belief in the New York Yankees' long-term future for helping lead outfielder Aaron Hicks into a seven-year contract extension that the team announced Monday. The new deal will keep the center fielder and first-time father under contract through the 2025 season, and includes a club option for the 2026 season. The Yankees did not disclose financial terms, but Hicks will make $70 million over the first seven years, according to ESPN and multiple reports. "Definitely now I don't have to worry about buying diapers," said Hicks, whose son, Aaron Jr., was born last month. Hicks added that the recent birth of his son helped impact the decision to sign the extension now, rather than play through the rest of the year with free agency looming next offseason. "This was a fair deal for both sides," Hicks said. "This is an organization I want to stay with. "The guys in the clubhouse, I want to fight for them. I want to go to war for them." The deal, which will start this year, was first reported by the YES Network. Aaron Hicks: Career Year in 2018 Aaron Hicks is coming off a career year with the Yankees in 2018. He set personal bests in games, home runs, RBIs, runs and WAR. Career high? Games 137 Yes HR 27 Yes RBIs 79 Yes Runs 90 Yes WAR 4.7 Yes -- ESPN Stats & Information Yankees general manager Brian Cashman estimated that he and Hicks' representatives began discussing the extension in December. Within the past few days, the conversations picked up. Cashman's message to Hicks once the deal was complete? "I'm betting on you." "He has more gas in his tank, he has more mountains to climb," Cashman said. "We're excited by a player who came here that wasn't a finished product and had a lot of upside. We engaged him on a lot of levels about the talent that we thought he possessed." A .236 career hitter, Hicks was traded to the Yankees from Minnesota after the 2015 season. After scuffling to a .217 batting average his first season in pinstripes and struggling to stay healthy his second year in the Bronx, Hicks had a career year in 2018. He set career highs in games played (137), homers (27), RBIs (79), runs scored (90) and WAR (4.7). Hicks, 29, tweaked his offseason regimen entering last season; he believes that kept him on the field and had a positive impact on his performance. "I started eating better, started training better," Hicks said. "I felt strong throughout the season, all the way until the end." Last Saturday, Hicks told reporters during the Yankees' spring-training opener at the Red Sox facility in Fort Myers, Florida, that he still wasn't over last year's American League Division Series loss to Boston. He said he'll be feeling the sting of that defeat until the Yankees finally win a World Series. "I want to win a World Series," Hicks said then. "I'm tired of losing. We've come so close, but I'm tired of saying we came close." Hicks echoed those sentiments Monday when he said he believes the Yankees are constructed well enough to contend for championships throughout the entirety of his new contract. Other Yankees feel the same way now that Hicks and the recently re-signed Luis Severino are locked into their long-term future. "[Hicks] is a big part of this team and a big part of our success. ... I always love playing by him," Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge said. "To hear he got seven years, we'll be playing together for a long time." A switch-hitting center fielder, Hicks has emerged as a valuable player for the Yankees, with manager Aaron Boone recently referring to him as "maybe the most underrated player in the game."<doc-sep>Lynne Sladky/Associated Press The New York Yankees and outfielder Aaron Hicks agreed to a seven-year, $70 million contract extension, the club announced on Monday. Jack Curry of YES Network first reported the agreement. Hicks, 29, has spent the last three seasons with the Yankees. He was set to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2019 season. While it's not a surprise the Yankees would want to keep Hicks around, the length of the deal is bound to open some eyes. A seven-year deal will take Hicks well into his mid-30s, and he does not have a huge body of consistent production. He's posted 8.2 wins above replacement over the last two seasons, per FanGraphs, but he only had 2.3 combined his first four MLB seasons. The Yankees sat out the Bryce Harper and Manny Machado markets this offseason but have worked on retaining their current talent. Along with Hicks, the club signed Luis Severino to a four-year, $40 million extension earlier this winter. The Yankees also appear to have their outfield locked up for the foreseeable future. Giancarlo Stanton has an early opt out after the 2020 season, though it seems likely he'll opt into the final seven years of his $325 million contract. Aaron Judge still has not even hit arbitration. "Everything is connected," Brian Cashman said, per James Wagner of the New York Times. "Our payrolls continue to increase, and we're preparing and have been preparing for that as these players that we think are very special continue their journeys." Video Play Button Videos you might like If Hicks continues to perform at 3-4 WAR every season, his contract will be one of the biggest bargains in the sport. Hicks actually had a higher WAR than Bryce Harper in 2018, and Harper could be about to sign the biggest contract in the history of North American sports. That said, seven years is still a long time for a player few would call a foundational building block.<doc-sep>We’ve had a full day to absorb the news that Aaron Hicks has agreed to a long extension with the New York Yankees. It is a seven-year, $70 million deal that kicks in in 2019 and includes an eighth-year option. There isn’t a no-trade clause, but Hicks does get $1 million bonus if he’s traded over the length of the deal. It’s kind of a weird agreement, since you don’t usually see extensions for this long and relatively so little money. Seven guaranteed years means Hicks will be 36 at the end of the contract and will almost certainly no longer be a center fielder. It feels like a longer version of the Brett Gardner extension, with the same end goal - a good center fielder transitioning to the corners as he ages. Hicks has been a lot better than Gardner though, even if you just look at their most recent season before the extension: Hicks is in red, while below Gardner is in yellow: Not only was Aaron a better player in total value - 4.9 fWAR to 3.3 - but his offensive contribution is more sustainable. In my opinion, the most important and reliable aspect of hitting is strike recognition. Quality of contact and such is really important, but if you’re consistently swinging at balls and taking strikes, it’s going to be hard to be a good major league player. To that end, Hicks is legitimately one of the best players in baseball, even better when comparing to his position group. His 3.6% K-BB% puts him in elite company with the likes of Mike Trout and Mookie Betts, and while he’s not as good as either of those two, this does indicate that his offensive performance is probably pretty reliable moving forward. Compare that to Gardner, who’s just not as good all around. Hicks got more money and years than Gardner - $28 million and three years, respectively. His contract also buys out many more seasons of free agency, six to Gardner’s two. Teams nearly always have an incentive to extend young talent, and we’ve talked about that before with respect to Luis Severino’s recent extension. Unlike pitchers, position players have much less incentive to take extensions, since the likelihood of career-threatening injury is much lower. Aaron Judge might decide to wait until free agency since he is much less probable to blow out his UCL and lose a year and a half of his career. The driving factor behind Hicks’ decision to work out an extension, meanwhile, appears to be his own injury history. Again, comparing him to Gardner, with a little larger sample size this time, here’s their respective games played in the four seasons before contract extensions: Despite Gardner having the most significant injury of the two of them - elbow surgery in 2012 - he managed more total games and a higher average per season than Hicks in the run-up to signing an extension. Of course, Hicks hasn’t really had a huge injury with the Yankees, but it’s been a series of small nagging ones. Three weeks on the DL here, a pulled hamstring there, the kind of recurring injuries that could exacerbate over a long career, especially defensively. We already saw Hicks take a step back in the field in 2018: Yadda yadda, defensive stat caveats. But look at the trend where all three major metrics saw Hicks struggle hugely relative to previous performance last year. A lot of this is because he has a great arm but not great routes; as that one tool gets tested less and less, your weakness actually running down balls in the outfield is exposed. Of course, those nagging injuries can be expected to take an even further toll on his defense. That’s why I think Hicks chose the money now rather than bet on himself to be good and healthy in 2019 and target a Lorenzo Cain-type deal in the winter. Hicks is around for a while now, and I like it. He’s a good player and came over in one of the better trades Brian Cashman has ever made. The low cost of the deal offsets the risk of injury and continued defensive decline, but the actual loss in performance three or four years down the road might be a real cause for concern. Last thought I have on this whole thing: I wonder what kind of momentum this creates for other extension candidates? In hockey and to a lesser extent football, you often see groups of players agreeing to team-friendly extensions to maintain a core of talent. The Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings in the NHL did this really effectively, and combined to win five Stanley Cups in six seasons. Being as there’s no real hard cap in baseball, that incentive to bond together for less money doesn’t exist to the same extent, but it does have to create some kind of pressure on the likes of Judge to agree to an extension when he has seen his teammates do the same. We’ll have to wait and see on that front.<doc-sep>TAMPA, Fla. — In the past two weeks, the Yankees have kept their word about locking up their current collection of young talent before they reach free agency: first with a contract extension for the staff ace Luis Severino and then, on Monday, signing a new deal with center fielder Aaron Hicks. The deal, which is for seven years and $70 million, is the largest contract extension for the Yankees (not including re-signing free-agent players) since Derek Jeter’s 10-year, $189 million deal in 2001. “It was a fair deal for both sides,” Hicks said at a news conference before Monday’s spring training game here in Tampa. “This is an organization I want to stay with. I want to be on this team. It has a great future.” [Read more: The Yankees Have a Tantalizing Young Core. Can They Keep It Intact?] Hicks, 29, was scheduled to make $6 million in 2019, his final year before free agency. With his new deal, he will make $8 million this season and then see a raise to nearly $10 million a year for the next six. The deal also includes a $12.5 million team option or a $1 million buyout for the 2026 season.<doc-sep>
The new week kicked off with a bang when it was announced Monday morning that the Yankees and Aaron Hicks agreed to a seven-year, $70 million dollar contract extension. The deal will theoretically keep Hicks in pinstripes through the 2025 season, with a club option for an eighth year in 2026. A day later the dust has settled. You’ve probably seen and read several opinions about the deal, either here or elsewhere. Now, it’s time to hear from you. What do you think of Hicks’ contract extension? To start with a positive look at things, the Yankees now have center field locked up for a while, by someone who’s been really good for the last two years. The only AL CF with more WAR than Hicks in 2018 was... Mike Trout. https://t.co/fYHYqD2fWH — Beyond the Box Score (@BtBScore) February 25, 2019 One things about the deal that could be claimed as a negative is the length. Hicks will be 36 when it expires. Admittedly, that is funny considering a certain player they were linked with this offseason just signed a deal that will end when he’s 36. However, the counter to that is that the AAV works out to $10 million per year, which seems fairly reasonable. Getting a guy who has hit 42 home runs over the last two years, who also plays good defense, for essentially $10 million per year is pretty good. This deal is a bit confusing in regards to what it means in the grand scheme of free agency. It does seem confusing that a guy coming off the seasons he has would be willing to lock up seven years at that price, but who knows what Hicks is thinking. Back on the negative side of things, there are two other main points that people will use to detract this deal. One is Hicks’ injury history. Hicks played in a little more than half the Yankees’ games in 2017, and had a stint on the (then known as) disabled list last year. Last year was also his career high in games played with 137. That comment above also touches on the other thing people worry about. Yes, Hicks’ last two years have been good, but they are the only two good ones he’s had. His first couple years with the Twins and his 2016 in New York were generally below average by a lot of stats and metrics. Two years is a long time, but not enough to completely wipe away the fears that Hicks could regress somewhat. So now it’s time to add your opinion. Vote in the poll and let us know in the comments what you think of the Yankees locking up Aaron Hicks.