Alex Black

To celebrate Shohei Ohtani's record breaking contract + deferred salary, I decided to post a little preview in to Dodgers fans future, as there are a plethora of 40+ yr old players who have since retired still being paid.

The most famous deferred money recipient among the baseball lore would be Bobby Bonilla, who had a career of around 16 years. He is a 6 time all star which is nothing to scoff at, and overall had an above average career, posting an 162 game average of .279/.358/.472, which is the standard for todays players.

But this is not why he is talked about to this day. When the Mets released Bobby Bonilla from his contract in 1999, they bought out the remaining 5.9 million and deferred the payment. From 2011 until 2035, Bobby Bonilla will have received a total of 30 million dollars from the New York Mets, giving him a higher annual salary than some of todays younger players. The Mets ownership were heavily involved with Bernie Madoff at the time, and likely used that money with him to receive a high dividend. Madoff would be arrested in 2009, and the Mets would fall to ruin in the 2010s.

Ken Griffey Jr., Manny Ramirez, Jim Edmonds, Bret Saberhagen, Todd Helton, Matt Holliday, Japanese legend Ichiro Suzuki, and Bronson Arroyo are all retired and had great careers, some of them HOFers. They deserved the check they got, and in the 80's and 90's the market was a lot more fathomable, as most of these are <5 million, but nonetheless, these players have all been retired for 10+ years, and are being paid big bucks by teams that are all currently rebuilding or just bad: Cincinatti, Boston, St. Louis, New York Mets, Colorado, Seattle (coincidence?)

There will always be good players that deserve good money, but can we at least think about things a little bit?

Max Scherzer signed a 7 year, 210 million dollar contract with the Washington Nationals in 2015, deferring 105 million from 2022-2028. Not only is he still being paid 15 million a year by Washington, he signed a 3 year, 130 million dollar contract with the New York Mets in 2021, was traded to Texas in 2023, and now Washington AND New York have a deferred Scherzer contract on their payroll. He was injured 7 times since 2017 and is also injured for the first half of the 2024 season.

This next one baffles me because it happened almost simultaneously to Scherzer, as these two won the 2019 World Series together. Stephen Strasburg essentially killed his career to win the World Series, giving it everything he had. An elbow injury in 2022 would end his career. He would sign a 7 year, 175 million dollar contract extension in 2016, one year after Scherzer's, with opt outs, extending it yet again in 2019 for 7 years, 245 million dollars, a move that would devastate the Nationals not 2 years later. Injures plagued him from 2018-2020, missing most of the shortened pandemic season, but it would be a neck injury in 2021 and a rib injury a week after his return/debut in June of 2022 that would take him out for almost 2 seasons. In March of 2023, the beginning of the season, Strasburg would suffer nerve damage and be unable to continue his career, formally retiring in August of 2023. 80 million of his contract is deferred from 2027-2029, allotting him 26 million annually.

The Nationals fucking suck right now, btw.

This next one is too hard to tell, as Francisco Lindor has been good, is good, and could potentially be good for the majority of his 10 year, 341 million dollar contract (2022-2031), as he was still relatively young when he signed at age 28, unlike the previous 2 who were well into their 30s. His contract defers 5 million annually from 2032-2041.

He will be a Mets mainstay by the end of his career.

Speaking of Mets mainstay... I mean “end of his career”, Jacob Degrom... the GOAT on the field, but he's usually off the field. Jacob Degrom is the human double-down. The 5th turn of Russian Roulette. From 2014-2019, Jacob Degrom was THE top pitcher. He would body Ohtani every year if they were in the same timeline. In May 2021, however, he got injured. Then later in that year he got injured for the rest of the season. Then next season he was injured for 4 months. Every time he wasn't injured, he was the #1 guy. So how do you go about paying him? He is an 100 million dollar man on the field. But how much can u burn on him being off the field? The deep pocketed Texas Rangers had cash to burn, as they spent 500 mil the year before signing Degrom for 5 years, 185 million with a club option in the 6th year and a full no trade clause. All this at age THIRTY FIVE, and he got injured this year. Has to get a second Tommy John surgery which is a 14 month rehab. 40 million dollar rehab assignment. But they won the World Series so it was worth it right?

Deferring salaries can be a good financial move, or it can quickly turn out to be the stuffing everything in the closet and waiting for it to turn up again later. The economy of sports is completely different now than it was in the 80's. There's money everywhere now. Money to be made, Money to be spent... and Money to be lost. Burned. BTW, of the retired players being paid that I mentioned earlier, Cincinatti, Boston, St. Louis, New York Mets, Colorado, Seattle, only one of those teams would win the World Series, Boston, who won it twice in '04 and '07 with Manny Ramirez. So no, I don't think it works out for most people, and I think that the Dodgers signing Ohtani for that much was as much a marketing move as it was a professional one. They don't care if he performs for the entirety of his contract, he IS the attraction. Ohtani is very much once in a lifetime because he is so much more than a baseball player or a good baseball player, he is a generation of fans waiting to happen. He will shift an entire point of view on baseball, and make alot of dough doing it.

by Your friend and comrade