Baseball got the saddest of possible news this week: Mike Trout, who in 2019 was on his way to going down as one of the greatest players in the game’s history when he agreed to a record 12-year, $426.5 million extension with the Angels, is hurt again. Major hurt again. This time a torn meniscus in his knee that is likely going to sideline him for at least 3-4 months.
This will mark the fifth straight year since signing that record extension that Trout will miss a substantial part of the season, with injuries to his calf, back and hand, after playing at least 157 games in each of his seasons from 2013-2016. In other words, if ever there was a surer bet to make good on an expensive 10-year contract into his late 30s, it was Trout.
But as we all now know, painfully too well, these contracts of nine or more years never work out, and now it is the Yankees, facing a showdown with Scott Boras on Juan Soto at the end of the year, looking at Trout and coming to grips with having to saddle themselves with an even bigger record-breaking contract, very likely involving $100 million or more wasted money at the end.
Right now Soto, at 25, looks like as sure a bet as Trout did at 27 when he signed his extension: He’s played 150 or more games in each of his full seasons since his rookie year in 2018, consistently had more walks than strikeouts, three times led the league in OBP and if the voting was held right now he’s the likely American League MVP. On the other hand, he’s not the defensive player Trout was. Nor does he have Trout’s speed, and likely will be mostly a DH by the time he’s 30.
In the last couple of years, the baseball owners and their more analytically-inclined GMs have shied away from contracts of more than five years, especially for free agents from other teams, and it will be interesting to see what kind of bidding war Boras can conjure up for Soto, especially if Steve Cohen elects to make Pete Alonso his top priority this offseason. The fact is, there is only one team in baseball that needs to sign Soto and that’s the Yankees.
So it probably won’t make much difference for Hal Steinbrenner to review the four most expensive contracts in baseball history after Trout’s, especially since two of them are his. But it’s a good guess the other owners have taken notice.
No. 2 is Bryce Harper (13 year, $330 million) who so far has been worth every penny of it for the Phillies, leading them to the postseason in each of the last two years and winning National League MVP honors in 2021. But a bum shoulder has already forced Harper to switch to first base and it cannot be ignored that, at 31, he still has seven more years and a total of $170 million left on the contract.
No. 3 Giancarlo Stanton (13 year, $325 million) is Hal’s guy (thanks to the misguided 2017 trade with Derek Jeter and the Marlins) who missed nearly 100 games with injuries in 2022-23 and hit .191 last year. Don’t remind Hal he’s got Stanton for three more years after this one for a total of $86 million.
No. 4 Manny Machado (11 year, $350 million) has been a huge disappointment for the Padres after finishing second in the NL MVP voting in 2022. They were counting on him to lead them to the postseason last year. Instead he was mediocre and they finished out of the money. This year he’s so far been even more mediocre (.250/.306/.403, 5 HR) and he’s got nine more years on the contract to age 41 and a total of $270 million.
But the all-time winner for stupidity remains Alex Rodriguez’s 10-year, $275 million contract by the Yankees. Remember how A-Rod had opted out of what was already the richest contract in baseball history (10 year, $252 million) in 2007 and instead of celebrating their good fortune, the Yankees took him back and gave him a raise, maintaining at the time they could recoup a lot of that money by marketing him as the “clean” all-time home run champion as he pursued Barry Bonds record. We all know how that worked out.
Certainly Hal knows the risks of these contracts of upwards of $300 million. In December 2022, he tried hard to hold the line at eight years for Aaron Judge because of his history of injuries but in the end gave him a ninth to keep him from going to the Giants. At the time, the Yankee brass privately conceded they’d be fortunate to get 5-6 years of MVP-caliber productivity from Judge.
So far into the contract, Judge missed nearly 60 games last year with a foot injury and was hitting .200 going into the weekend this year.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
It says a lot about the character of Jose Abreu that after a standout major league career, as well as being a respected team leader, he agreed to a possibly unprecedented demotion last week to the Astros’ spring training complex. The 37-year-old Abreu, in the second year of a $58.5 million contract, is off to an awful start, .099 with just one extra base hit, but could have insisted to be kept on the Astros roster to work out his hitting difficulties in the majors. But as Astros GM Dana Brown said: “Jose Abreu is an outstanding human being. He is unselfish and he’s a teammate’s guy.” … The Nationals last week placed Joey Gallo on the injured list with a shoulder sprain, but you have to wonder if he’ll ever be back. Gallo is hitting .122 with a .311 slugging pct., and leading the majors with 43 strikeouts. It’s a continuation for one of the worst hitters in major league history. In 10 seasons with five different clubs, Gallo has a .195 average with 1,233 strikeouts in 2,720 at bats. All that’s kept in the majors is his 201 home runs. … It’s nice to see the Babe Ruth museum in Baltimore making a comeback after so many years of irrelevancy, starting with the revival of the prestigious Babe Ruth Sultan of Swat crown that was first awarded in 1956 to Mickey Mantle by the Maryland Professional Baseball Players Association at their annual banquet, but ceased being presented in 1998. Last week at Orioles Park, the award was revived and presented to the Yankees’ Aaron Judge by Joe DiBlasi, the corporate consultant for the museum. “We chose Judge for very natural reasons related to the Babe,” DiBlasi said, “breaking Roger Maris’ record. According to DiBlasi, there are plans underway to revive the Baltimore winter baseball banquet as well in conjunction with the Babe Ruth Museum which is housed at 216 Emery St. in Baltimore, the Babe’s birthplace, and the Sultan of Swat award is now going back to being a regular thing.
