The problem with extended contracts in baseball
The Major League Baseball offseason is fully underway as some major free agent signings have been made by teams all around the country. Huge names in the sport, including former MVPs such as Houston Astros pitcher Justin Verlander and Chicago Cubs first baseman Cody Bellinger, have signed massive contracts worth millions upon millions of dollars in the past few weeks. However, there is a trend in baseball that we have seen take shape over the last decades that only seems to get worse each year. That issue has to do with teams giving big-name players huge contracts for extended periods of time that almost never pan out. There has been no shortage of those types of signings this offseason, and they each come with their share of issues.
The most anticipated free agent signing of the season came early in the morning on the final day of the Winter Meetings on Wednesday, Dec. 7. That, of course, was the signing of the contract for outfielder Aaron Judge to return to the New York Yankees after a highly discussed bidding war between themselves and the San Francisco Giants. The Yankees ended up bringing Judge back for a whopping $360 million over the course of nine years. Like almost every Yankee fan, I am ecstatic that Judge decided to come back to New York, but am extremely apprehensive about the time frame that he was provided. In nine years Judge will be 39-years-old, certainly past his prime and far beyond the average career span of an average player. Judge is no average player, evidenced by his 62 home runs hit this past season, but nine years is a long time to entrust someone to bring value to a lineup.
The Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres upped the ante even further, giving shortstops Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts eleven-year contracts each worth north of $275 million. The contracts will bring Turner and Bogaerts to their age 40 and 41 seasons in 2033, an even longer window to which very few players reach. The fact that two players were signed to contracts longer than ten years in one offseason is shocking and should bring some worry to the fan bases.
Turner is one of the fastest players in the game and a natural hitter, and will surely take care of a need for the Phillies, who were on the cusp of a World Series championship this past season. He will take the lead of a mediocre middle infield for Philly and will look to bring his perennial 100-runs-batted-in bat to the top of their lineup; however, who knows what Turner’s hitting abilities will look like at 40, much less his speed. The Phillies got themselves a great player for the rest of the decade, but there will be a lot of questions about his output come 2030.
Bogaerts and his signing with the San Diego Padres, on the other hand, are quite interesting. He is, no doubt, one of the best hitting shortstops in baseball. Seeing him destroy the Yankees as a part of the Boston Red Sox over the past nine years has been devastating, and I am happy to see him go. However, his match with the Padres is questionable, as the team already has several established shortstops in Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ha-seong Kim. There have been talks of moving Tatis to the outfield upon his return from suspension, but that still leaves Kim to worry about, who just had a huge breakout season with the team. On top of all of that, he will be 41 by the end of his contract, inevitably making him one of the oldest players in the league. Concerns about his production will surely arise in the coming years as no one can predict how he will perform down the road.
The Yankees, Phillies, and Padres got themselves some of the top players in the sport this year, but who knows where they will be on the totem pole nine, ten, or 11 years from now. As a fan, I of course love when my team gets a big-name player, but can only worry about how these contracts will affect the team years down the road.