Most baseball fans know by now, that July 1st is known as Bobby Bonilla Day. As in the day in which the New York Mets pay a guy that hasn’t played professional baseball since 2001 $1.19 million dollars, and will continue to do so every single July 1st until 2035. It’s one of the numerous reasons people love to clown on the Mets, and one that literally has no expiration for 15 more years, and it’s ironically celebrated by all in baseball geek circles, because for some reason we’re fascinated by money that people who have no direct impact on our lives make.
And because all this shit is in concrete writing, in spite of the shortened 2020 season where all active players are going to be taking giant hits in their salaries due to prorated numbers, Bonilla will still receive his full $1.19M, and as I mentioned in a post not long ago, shitheads who didn’t officially retire like David Wright and Prince Fielder will still be making multi-millions from their teams, with the former, also being the Mets, because the Mets really love pissing away money.
Also I learned something new about Bobby Bonilla this year, which is how he somehow inexplicably has another deferred money deal with another team, being the Baltimore Orioles, where in addition to the $1.19M he gets from the Mets, he also receives a cool $500K from the O’s every single year between 2004 and 2029.
I sure hope Bonilla still sends Dennis Gilbert, his former agent, a nice gift basket every single year.
But this Bobby Bonilla Day, I also learned that there’s a future Bobby Bonilla waiting in the wings, as someone sitting on a mega contract with a ton of deferred money waiting at the tail end of it, that he’ll be entitled to regardless of how out of baseball he’ll likely be by then.
Christian Yelich, outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers, signed a 7-year deal with the Brew Crew earlier in the year, worth $188.5 million dollars. Just that line alone says he’s going to be making a ton of dough throughout the remainder of his career, but that also doesn’t include the two option years at the end of it worth another $46M, which means he’s effectively capable of making $228M after 2029.
However, it’s not these nine years in which he has anything in common with Bobby Bonilla, it’s what happens afterward. Buried in the legalese of the base numbers of the contract, $28M of his contract is deferred, and will be paid to him in yearly installments starting in 2031, when Yelich will be 39 years old, and probably out of baseball by then.
Regardless of if he’s in baseball or not come 2031, Christian Yelich will make at least $2.3M a year from the Brewers for the next 12 years, with the installments ending in 2042, when he’ll be over 50 years old by then.
In all fairness, it’s not nearly as egregious as Bobby Bonilla’s deferred money, because the Mets deferred $5.9M, and somehow will pay nearly $30M after factoring in an agreed upon interest rate. At most, Yelich might make like $1.5M in interest, because it doesn’t appear that his agent understands inflation and interest like Dennis Gilbert did.
The payout date every year starting in 2031? July 1st. Bobby Bonilla Day. At least for four years, in which it then becomes Christian Yelich Day.
Despite my tone of ridicule, I’m actually a fan of Christian Yelich. I’m glad to see that he’ll be making tons of money from the Brewers. He appeared on my radar way back when I found out about this kid mashing 450 ft. homers for the minor league Marlins in Jacksonville, so I figured he had a lot of potential for when he finally made it to the big leagues. And when the Marlins went on their every-decade fire sale, I had drooled over the possibility that the Braves would try and get Yelich, but that didn’t happen because the Braves are cheap and never make a fan’s dreams come true, and so he ended up on the Brewers where he immediately became an MVP and took a shitty franchise like the Brewers deep into the playoffs in his first year.
All in all, this really boils down to the fact that Major League Baseball is idiotic and out of control when it comes to player salaries. The NFL and NBA have salary caps for a reason, and baseball’s equivalent known as the “luxury tax threshold” certainly isn’t detrimental enough for any team to feel remotely scared to not violate it.
It’s not like the country in which all this baseball is being played isn’t in economic straits or anything. But can’t hate on guys like Bonilla and Yelich, for capitalizing on a system that doesn’t protect itself from shit like this happening, but the fact remains, everyone in MLB just makes too much fucking money.
