Shea D. Agent: So listen, Pedro, ever since last year’s labor agreement, the market’s starting to run out on high-priced pitchers in baseball. Your $15 million contract for next year is the second-highest in baseball, but you could be left high and dry after this season. The Red Sox could send you on your way with just a $2.5 million buyout and a "Thanks for everything" handshake!

Pedro: Yeah, but the team could very well pick up my option for the 2004 season, and then I’d have another $17.5 million!

Agent: Yeah, sure, but what if you get hurt again sometime this season? The Sox might get cold feet about laying out such big money on damaged goods.

Pedro: So what are my options?

Agent: Just tell the team that you want it to give you an early guarantee that the club will pick up your $17.5 million option for 2004. Give them until, say, the end of spring training. Then take a hard line and say that if they don’t pick it up by then, that you’ll play out the remainder of your contract and leave after it. It’s genius. Look, the fans in Boston love you, and will support you in whatever you do. They don’t want to see you go, and will side with you. Otherwise, it’ll be another Fisk, another Clemens, another Mo. All those guys left town without the Sox getting anything. The team cannot let that happen again, especially from a public-relations standpoint. You’ve just got to stick by your guns and make them believe that you won’t negotiate with them further if they don’t pick up that option.

Pedro: What if they call my bluff? I’ll never make $17.5 million next year anywhere else! I may be forfeiting that cash with this kind of stand!

Agent: Believe me, the voice of the fans — the outrage — will make the team pay. They want you to retire as a member of the Red Sox, and they certainly don’t want you to end up like the Rocket, finishing his career with a ring in New York. They won’t call your bluff. They’ll pay you, and probably extend your contract on top of that. So you’re home-free, amigo.

The above conversation is speculative, and for the most part fictional, but who’s to say a similar discussion did not take place? How else would Sox ace Pedro Martinez have arrived at his hard line regarding his contract status?

Here are the basics. In November 1997, then–Sox GM Dan Duquette completed a remarkable trade, sending (supposedly) promising pitcher Carl Pavano and minor-league up-and-comer Tony Armas Jr. to the Montreal Expos in return for defending National League Cy Young award winner Pedro Martinez. Martinez, due to become a free agent at the end of ’98, did not seem ecstatic about the trade at his initial press conference in Boston, but a month later he was all smiles when the team announced his six-year, $75 million contract. At the time, the deal set a fiscal standard for pitchers, and many teams around the league condemned the Red Sox for raising the bar and giving so much money to a non-everyday player. Martinez paid immediate dividends for the Sox, though, going 19-7 in 1998 and leading the team into the playoffs for the first time in three seasons. A year later, the lanky ace soared to the top of the AL pitching rankings, compiling a 23-4 record and a 2.07 ERA, winning his second Cy Young award. Along the way, he led the league with 313 strikeouts and heroically nailed down the game-five clincher in the AL playoffs against Cleveland. He won his third trophy a year later with an 18-6 mark, but injuries took their toll the next year, limiting him to just 18 games overall and a 7-3 record. While off-season questions loomed about his future last winter, Martinez employed a strengthening regimen that allowed him to get through the 2002 campaign without one visit to the disabled list, and he logged a 20-4 mark to finish second to Oakland’s Barry Zito in the Cy Young voting.

That is where we stand now. While Pedro did miss some time last summer to a hip injury, he has not been subjected to repeated questions about the sore pitching shoulder that cut short his 2001 season, and his off-season program has again brought him to camp in self-proclaimed top-notch condition.

This season, Martinez will earn a solid $15 million for pitching for the Red Sox, and according to the contract he signed four years ago, the club can wait until this November to determine whether it wants to pick up his $17.5 million contract for next year. If it doesn’t, he will immediately become a highly prized free agent, and even if the Red Sox do pick up the option for 2004, his existing contract will run out at the end of that season, and he will, for the first time, be able to auction his services to the highest bidder on the open market.

Problem is, Pedro is figuratively putting a gun to the Sox management’s head in asking for that 2004 commitment now. Not in November, when the contract says the decision must come due. Now — or at least by the end of March, when the stakes are pulled up in Fort Myers and the sights are set for opening day in Tampa Bay.

On Saturday, when he met the media in his spring-training debut, Pedro reiterated his stance regarding his contract situation, and actually said this: "With the state of pitching these days, I think [a one-year $17.5 million contract] is a bargain, don’t you think?"

A bargain? This season, Roger Clemens will make $10 million, as will teammate Mike Mussina. Kevin Brown, a free-agent bust for the Dodgers, will make $15 million, like Pedro. Greg Maddux, perhaps the most consistent pitcher in the majors, just resolved his arbitration case with the Atlanta Braves for a one-year, $14.75 million deal, and he’s won four Cys, has 13 Gold Gloves, and has won 15 games or more for 15 straight seasons. Randy Johnson, who has won five Cy Youngs — including the last four in the National League — will make $12 million this season, and Diamondbacks teammate Curt Schilling will make $10 million. All of the aforementioned guys have led their teams to World Series titles. Pedro has not as of yet led a team for which he has played into the World Series.

In addition, Martinez is 31 years old, but carries just over 180 pounds on his five-foot-11 frame, which means his career will most likely not be as durable as that of hulks like Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, and Clemens, all of whom pitched into their 40s. Martinez’s body has shown that it’s susceptible to breakdown, and when you’re talking about a guy who pitches just once every five or six days (and doesn’t even bat), any injury can be costly for a team paying a weekly salary of $288,461. With the heat that Pedro throws, he is putting great stress on his body with each fling of a 92-mph fastball, and his history of shoulder woes shows that his career could ultimately be measured in months rather than years.

In the grand scheme of things, nobody is worth $15 million annually to play a kid’s game, but for market value and results, the Red Sox probably feel that they are getting their money’s worth out of their six-year deal with Martinez. Nonetheless, the market has changed ever since a players’ work stoppage was averted last August. Everyday players will no longer be seeing $20 million contracts, and pitchers will no longer be seeing $12–$15 million deals if franchises are to survive. That’s why the prospect of okaying a $17.5 million option a full year ahead of the onset of said season is frightening to the Sox brass, particularly because a season- or career-ending arm injury this summer would still leave the team responsible for paying that huge sum next year, whether Pedro pitches or not.

Martinez believes it’s a matter of "trust," and that if the team is happy with the results of his prior five years in a Sox uniform, it should invest "early" in his future here. The way he is demanding the option pick-up, though, sounds faintly like a form of extortion. "If they don’t pick up my 2004 contract by the end of spring training, then I will definitely leave Boston at the end of the 2004 season."

And where would he go? What team could annually afford the $17.5 million–plus life that Pedro has become accustomed to? Only one that I can imagine, and if you need help figuring it out, here’s a hint: "Asteroids do not concern me, Admiral. I want that ship, not excuses."

Young Theo Epstein is now facing his first real challenge as Sox GM, and he has the following options: 1) bite the bullet, pick up the option, and let Pedro get his way, all the while risking a career-ending injury and with the looming prospect of Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, and Jason Varitek all reaching free agency at the end of 2004; 2) call Pedro’s bluff and wait until November, assuming that Martinez doesn’t really want to leave Boston, and cannot afford to at that; under those terms the Sox would still have their ace — albeit disgruntled — locked up for two full seasons, with plenty of cash left over to pay their potential free agents when Pedro leaves; or 3) sit down with Pedro now and rework the contract, perhaps as a four-year, $50 million deal that would give Martinez some long-term security and not break the Sox’ bank in the upcoming seasons.

Whatever happens, we need to avoid the truly hateful prospect of the Yanks giving out gold watches to departing retirees Clemens, David Wells, and Andy Pettitte at the end of the 2004 season, and then opening their purse strings to the next best thing that will return them to the pinnacle of major-league baseball after a four-year absence.

Riiing!

Pedro: Hello?

George (a/k/a Darth): Luke, er, Pedro, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy!

After the post-Boston successes of the Babe, Sparky, Boggs, and the Rocket in the Bronx, the sight of Pedro in pinstripes could ultimately be the most menacing of phantoms.

Sporting Eye will return to BostonPhoenix.com on Monday, February 24. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com