2020 salary terms still need to be hammered out. But what about what’s owed to players beyond that point? The near-term economic picture remains questionable at best. That’ll make teams all the more cautious with guaranteed future salaries.
Every organization has some amount of future cash committed to players, all of it done before the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe. There are several different ways to look at salaries; for instance, for purposes of calculating the luxury tax, the average annual value is the touchstone, with up-front bonuses spread over the life of the deal. For this exercise, we’ll focus on actual cash outlays that still have yet to be paid.
We’ll run through every team, with a big assist from the Cot’s Baseball Contracts database. Next up is the Mets:
*Reflects signing bonus and salary deferrals in Jacob deGrom contract; contract includes partially deferred 2024 club option but deGrom can opt out after 2022
*Reflects remaining obligations to Robinson Cano retained by Mariners
*Reflects deferrals in Jeurys Familia contract
*Includes minimum value ($6MM) of variable-rate vesting/player option in Dellin Betances contract (Betances to receive $3MM buyout if he declines)
*Includes buyouts of club option over Wilson Ramos
*Includes player option of Brad Brach
*Does not include any money still owed Bobby Bonilla!
(click to expand/view detail list)
Thats a lot of money
Don’t forget the Bobby Bonilla payments of $1.19MM a year until 2035!
And they still have to pay Bret Saberhagen $250,000 a year until 2029.
They might as well see if he can still pinch hit at this point
Every team does deferments the Braves are still paying Bruce Sutter
Not every team. Padres don’t have any deferred payments
Griffey’s still getting 3x that, and Johan gets his last 5mil from the Mets this year. Bonilla’s not even the biggest check the Mets will write this year.
Alot of other have done and are doing the same with these ridiculous contracts
The Cano trade was a disaster from day one and will sink us all.
It wasnt a good trade for sure although if diaz was lights out last year as he was in 2018 we wouldnt be too bummed out.
I think the cano trade will pay dividends in what he can do for rosario.
LOL… I hope that you feel different about that now.
Glad to see the bullet point for Bonilla. That was the first thing I thought about when I clicked the article.
If this were a normal NY team they’d have ton of payroll flexibility but since the Wilpons spend like the royals they have a lot of future money on the books
Tired of this flawed narrative. Because teams like the Royals, A’s and Rays can clearly afford to take on 20M in salary for a guy like Cano. Extend a cy young pitcher in his prime, pay an OF 30M to hang out at his ranch, but the Mets are still so cheap.
They are always a top 10 in payroll, it’s not like they don’t spend. How they spend it has been an issue. If they spent like the Yankees, would they be as good as the yankees? Yeah probably but so would most teams. Conversely, would the Yankees be as good as the Mets if they spent like the Mets? Of course not.
This isn’t true, correlation is not causation, the Yankees won last year in spit of so much money sitting on the bench. We also can’t say they papered over the problems with money because that’s not true either, they filled the holes with rookies and fliers and minor league signings. The fact is that the Yankees are an extraordinarily run organization with massive financial might, the Met’s could be too but they seem immune to it.
The Yankees would be waaay better than the Mets if they had equal payrolls. The Yanks are just well run. The Mets make terrible decisions so spending doesn’t help as much as it should. Much of the Yankees spending is tied up in Stanton, maybe still Ellsbury, and not helping much. Anyway, if the Rays spent like the Mets they’d be better than both of them.
Yeah if the Rays spent like the Mets they’d probably win the WS every year. It’s a moot point but if the yankees would have had to get down to the Mets payroll this past offseason, they likely aren’t a playoff team. Even in the AL, where there’s barely as many playoff caliber teams as there are playoff spots. Too many contracts that couldn’t be moved in full, if at all, to get down to the Mets payroll.
Mets are also still paying Johan Santana.
A team that spends a lot, but smartly, is the Dodgers. Now hopefully teams stop cheating and Dave Roberts finally knows how to manage a pitching staff.