Yeah, it’s pretty much the basis of almost everyone’s employment.  More to the point, though, is that it’s the basis of everyone’s UNemployment - or lack thereof.  Probably the main objective of mutual options is to contractually establish a salary rate for a given year or year in the future, thereby (supposedly) avoiding market fluctuations.

Doesn’t Time Wakefield have a perpetual mutual option? Which is basically saying he can choose to retire or the team can choose to keep him at the same salary every year. Which could happen even if it was just a team option, I imagine.

If Wakefield is a bad example, I have definitely heard of mutual options for players in the past, and they certainly never made sense.

Craig,

You are correct that the terms are fixed, and the real reason that is so important is because the marginal transaction costs are thus essentially zero. That, in turn, makes the option that much more likely to be executed by both parties.

Another wrinkle of the mutual option is that the team usually has to pay a certain amount as a buyout if they decline the option.  I thikn this is the way that Jon Garland’s contract is structured, where his buyout is bigger if the team declines the option than if Garland declines the option.

How is .297/.322/.357 “solid?”  An OPS of .679 is, uh, not at all good.

For the money he’s making, yeah, I’d call that disastrous.

Pierre is at almost 2 WAR for this season after being completely useless last season (.1 WAR) while that doesn’t make him worth his full salary, the difference is not as bad as it seems off-hand. OPS is not a great measure of overall value since it does not account for any defensive contributions or baserunning. Pierre is not a great player by any means, but he has more value than people here seem to think. He is a decent 4th outfielder, pinch runner and defensive replacement for Manny, all things a contending team needs. The real concern is his slipping defensive ability. If he fields like he has most of his career his contact is a slight overpay, if he fields like he has most of his time in LA he is a liability. I think it would be wrong to completely slam Coletti for that move right now. It wasn’t a stroke of brilliance, but except for his dreadful ‘08 season the dodgers are getting close to market value on that contract. For a team with Loney, Kemp, Either, Kershaw and Billingsley all on team friendly deals, the slight loss of value on Pierre isn’t a disaster thus far.