By: Mike Carter
Sometimes when I sit down to write, I feel like the blinking cursor is laughing at me because I don’t know what to commit to the blank sheet of paper.
The truth is it is far more difficult for me to write in winter than it is in spring. The gloomy weather here, with the heavy gray skies and constant moisture is depressing. We go days without seeing the sun here in winter, and I really feel that impact upon both my mood and my ability to sustain focus.
So here I am, on another dreary January afternoon, looking out the back window, realizing that we are less than thirty days away from my favorite four words of all time: pitchers and catchers report.
In the meantime, let’s recap some things here to get you ready for the coming month of news and notes.
The following are the top ten contracts given out this winter. Ok, I included eleven because the last two on the list were so close:
Aaron Judge: 9 years, $360 million to sign with the New York Yankees.
Rafael Devers: 11 years, $331 million to sign with the Boston Red Sox
Trea Turner: 11 years, $300 million to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies
Xander Bogaerts: 11 years, $280 million to sign with the San Diego Padres
Carlos Correa: 6 years, $200 million to sign with the Minnesota Twins
Jacob deGrom: 5 years, $185 million to sign with the Texas Rangers
Dansby Swanson: 7 years, $177 million to sign with the Chicago Cubs
Brandon Nimmo: 8 years, $162 million to sign with the New York Mets
Edwin Diaz: 5 years, $102 million to sign with the New York Mets
Willson Contreras: 5 years, $87.5 million to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals
Justin Verlander: 2 years, $86.6 million to sign with the New York Mets
For these eleven players, teams spent a combine $2.19 billion for 80 years of team control. Many fans have been overly critical of the years and the money spent on these players. For example, Judge’s contract will pay him until he’s 40 years old. Turner will be 40, and Bogaerts 41. You get the point. The game appears to be financially well; reports suggest that MLB took in $10.8 billion in 2022. Yes, your read that correctly: $10.8 billion.
But here’s a point to consider as well. Don’t ever fault the players for getting their money when there are many owners willing to pay the salary. Think about how spreading out the amount of the contract over a longer term of years actually helps the team continue (hopefully) to be competitive. If you consider the AAV of the contracts, $25 million per year isn’t out of line with current salaries. Sure a long term contract has inherent risk, but teams are paying to win now, and will worry about the potentially bad contract when the player is older. And by that time, with continually escalating salaries, maybe paying those prices won’t raise eyebrows like it did this winter.
I say this recognizing that I am a special education teacher who makes far less than these athletes do, but also realizing that I have worked almost 30 years in my field. Athletes get a fraction of that time for a career, and I never fault them for maxing out their earning potential considering this brevity.
For me, at the end of the day, it’s still about the game. Yes, players and owners are making insane amounts of money. The people who run the game continue to try and make it better, in whatever estimation they think is better: installing pitch clocks, using larger bases, banning the shift in an attempt to ignite offenses. It remains to be seen if these are improvements or not; time will tell. I for one think there is nothing wrong with the actual product on the field and have never minded the so-called length of the game. However, if these changes bring more fans to the game, especially younger fans, it will have been worth it. The famous Greek philosopher posited that change was the only constant in life, and I have lived long enough to know that is true.
I am ready for change. Change in the weather, change in myself, change in the game I love. We will be ramping up practice for the spring season soon and will keep working to help the kids in our stead improve their skills in the game. We never know what is going to happen next in life, so we need to focus more on what is happening right now, directly in front of us, and not what happened even yesterday, or years ago. Or focus on a future that has no guarantee of happening either. So enjoy what is in front of you, today. Baseball is the best game there is, and despite the changes, despite the gigantic sums of money being spent to employ the players, it’s still great and always will be.
Think about the times the game has faced ruin: gambling at the turn of the century, the Black Sox scandal, the Great Depression, World War II, labor strife between owners and players, the steroid scandal. You can name a dozen more issues easily. But at the end of the day, here we are preparing for another season, recalling as Thomas Boswell wrote almost forty years ago, that time begins on Opening Day. Baseball can’t be irreparably harmed by the people involved in it. It’s too good, too perfect to be ruined by such shenanigans and tomfoolery.