The Royals locked up Alex Gordon for four years.

The agreement overrides a previous one-year agreement. Gordon will now make $6 million this season instead of $4.775 million. His salary rises to $9 million in 2013, $10 million and 2014 and $12.5 million in 2015.

“Obviously, this is long anticipated,” general manager Dayton Moore said. “It’s something that we had a strong desire to get done. There was a spirit to work together to make this happen.”

That works out to a $37.5 million deal. The Royals buy out his first two years of free agency, and keep him through his age 31 season. They’ll get all of his prime, and can then let him go before he declines too much.

FanGraphs rates Alex Gordon as worth $31 million in 2011. That season was an outlier compared to the rest of his career, and it did happen at age 27, often the high water mark for a player. If he comes close to his 2011 level in any of the next four years, he’ll pretty much pay for his contract with that season.