Eric Hosmer is the future, if not the present, and it&#x92;s not too early to start thinking about how to make this last as long as possible.</p><p>Because right now, Hosmer is a 21-year-old rookie who had to borrow a suit for his first big-league road trip, but unless virtually the entire baseball industry is wrong, he will soon be one of the game&#x92;s brightest stars.</p><p>Five games into his big-league career and he&#x92;s already batting third and drawing comparisons to Joey Votto and Adrian Gonzalez. That&#x92;s all great. It&#x92;s the lines to Johnny Damon and Carlos Beltran that make Royals fans nervous, and the ones that are worth addressing this week.</p><p>In other words, the Royals should offer Hosmer a long-term and lucrative contract right now.</p><p>If Hosmer is even 90 percent of the player that scouts and executives with the Royals and throughout baseball believe, he&#x92;ll be worth the risk.</p><p>The closest model around which to build a potential contract extension is the one Evan Longoria signed six games after his big-league debut with the Rays in 2008. Longoria got a $17.5 million guarantee over six years and a possible $44.5 million over nine years.</p><p>Longoria&#x92;s deal is now laughably club friendly &#x97; he finished sixth in MVP voting last year and is bought out through age 30 for an average of less than $5 million per season &#x97; and one of the main reasons Tampa Bay can be optimistic about reloading.</p><p>Hosmer&#x92;s agent is Scott Boras, who would no doubt invoke the seven-year, $80 million deal he negotiated for Rockies outfielder Carlos Gonzalez in January. Gonzalez&#x92;s deal came after he finished third in the NL MVP voting in his first full season, and covers three free-agent years.</p><p>Using the general structure of Longoria&#x92;s deal and pushing the money closer to Gonzalez&#x92;s, the Royals could give a $25 million guarantee over six years and a possible $65 million over nine seasons to cover two free-agent years and still be on the good side of risk-reward.</p><p>From Hosmer&#x92;s perspective, it would assure him an enormous fortune and still allow him to go for a nine-figure free-agent contract after the 2019 season, when he will have just turned 30.</p><p>Even with indications that he&#x92;s been conservative with his $6 million signing bonus from three years ago, this is guaranteed generations-changing money for the son of a firefighter.</p><p>There is so much to like about this from the Royals&#x92; perspective. They get cost-certainty on what is currently the franchise&#x92;s most valuable commodity, and perhaps more important, reinforce the message to fans that this is a new way of doing business.</p><p>It&#x92;s been easy to miss that in recent years the Royals have had three young players worth long-term deals &#x97; Joakim Soria, Zack Greinke and Billy Butler &#x97; and signed each to stay beyond their scheduled free-agency.</p><p>Hosmer would be the toughest sale because of his agent, but the Gonzalez deal shows that Boras is now willing to bless long-term contracts that buy out a client&#x92;s free-agent years, something that wasn&#x92;t necessarily the case when the Royals felt compelled to trade away Beltran and Damon.</p><p>There are no certainties, of course. The Titanic sank, and Stephen Strasburg got hurt. Much is made of the Royals&#x92; deep connection to Atlanta, so it&#x92;s worth remembering that of the 18 rookies who made up the so-called &#x93;Baby Braves&#x94; that won a 14th consecutive NL East title in 2005, only one has made an All-Star team.</p><p>Indications are that the Royals would prefer to wait. They didn&#x92;t sign Greinke or Butler until the last offseason they thought possible, but Hosmer is different. Greinke comes with well-chronicled baggage that had some wondering about his extension, and Butler, while a remarkably advanced hitter, is a one-dimensional player best suited for DH.</p><p>Hosmer is mature, stays in terrific shape and has no red flags in his personality or background. He hits to all fields against all pitchers, hits with power, runs well and will probably win a Gold Glove someday. There may be a reason he will fail in the big leagues, but nobody has seen it yet.</p><p>The Royals are off to a promising start this season, with every indication of bigger things on the way. They&#x92;ve made it clear that the goal is to win consistently over a long period of time, not just a short window, and to do that they&#x92;ll need high-end talent for longer than baseball&#x92;s six-year mandate.</p><p>It&#x92;s entirely possible that Boras and Hosmer won&#x92;t agree.</p><p>But the Royals can&#x92;t know unless they ask.