Alex Bregman joined Mike Trout on Monday with a large team extension. Trout gets $432 million for 12 years, meaning he’ll be with the Angels for the rest of his career. The Astros lock up Bregman’s prime with a $100 million, five year deal.

These deals, along with the Manny Machado and Bryce Harper deals, give us an idea of the difference between a free agent contract and a team extension.

I estimate Trout will generate 75 WAR during the next 12 seasons. That’s based on a three-year average of 8.8 WAR per year. I assign that for the next three seasons, while Trout is in his prime. That number is then lowered 10% for each season after that. With that calculation, Trout is receiving about $5.7 million per expected WAR.

Bregman comes in at four WAR per season. He gets that for the next four seasons, then down 10% for a total of 19.6 expected WAR. So he is getting paid about $5.1 million per expected WAR.

So we value an expected WAR for an elite team controlled player at $5.4 million. The Machado and Harper deals indicate the value of an expected WAR for an elite free agent at $10.5 million. So a player who signs with his current team is leaving $5 million per expected WAR on the table.

So players are willing to give up almost half of their value for security. Given the huge amounts of money involved, the trade-off is understandable. If the MLBPA wants this to change, they need to lower the number of years to free agency down. If Bregman were a free agent now, he would likely have received another $100 million. That needs to change.