Given the rumors surrounding his agent asking for an 8-year deal, I'm curious what the rest of you think. For myself, I'm not sure I'd want Timmy on an 8-year deal. I think my order of preference would be something like the following:

5-year deal.

4-year deal.

6-year deal.

3-year deal.

7-year deal.

2-year deal.

arb for 2 years.

8-year deal.

The reason 8-year deal is last is because Timmy will be age 36. We'd be paying for all his declining years. He just finished his age 27 season, and according to a standard aging curve, will start declining if not next year then the year after. Considering he's had 2 straight years of decline already, locking him up longer than 4-5 years just kinda scares me. Who's the real Timmy? The 7-8 WAR Cy Young, the 6+ WAR career avg, or the 4.4 WAR age 27 Timmy? If the latter is his peak, and he loses 0.5 WAR a year, an 8 year deal would have to have a $12-14MM AAV to make financial sense. He'll likely get something in the $20MM+ AAV, though. That would mean he'd have to bounceback to a 6 WAR season next year, and then decline from there just to break even.

So I pose this to you, McCoven:

Assuming Timmy will get $20MM+ AAV, how many years would you be comfortable signing him for? At what point would you prefer just to go to arb and let him go after his age 29 season?

What if his AAV is $25MM?