One of the best things I ever felt I implemented into my brog was the On This Day plug-in, which lets me look back to the date in all prior years in which there was a post, and read, cringe and laugh at myself for all the bullshit I’ve spewed throughout the years. Occasionally, I’ll come across a post that I’ve written in the past, and think to myself, man, how much things have changed, or man, how fucking wrong was I about that?
Regardless, it serves to be potential inspiration for things to write about that aren’t the depressing-ass news of every single day in the world and it’s not that I’m so narcissistic that I source the inspiration for my writing to myself as much as sometimes I just don’t want to look at local or national news, because it’s all just so demoralizing, for humanity.
So, back in 2016, I wrote this diatribe about how the Washington Nationals were probably embarking on the path to becoming the New York Mets, because they were repeatedly exercising the contract strategy of deferring salary to way later in the future in order to maintain financial flexibility in the present, which is exactly one of the reasons on how the New York Mets became the laughing stock of baseball, because they deferred payment of $5.9 million dollars for one year of Bobby Bonilla, and somehow turned it into 25 annual installments of $1.3 million dollars, which it doesn’t take a math whiz to realize is vastly more than $5.9M cumulatively.
Back then, the Nationals had signed star pitcher Stephen Strasburg to a seven-year, $175 million dollar contract to stay with the team, where in the fine text of the deal was that the Nationals would pay him a large portion of his salary many years after the deal was done, to which baseball nerds love to ridicule deferred money, because they years in which they are paying are often times years in which the actual player themselves are somewhere else, or not even actually in baseball anymore, so effectively paying for nothing.
The thing is, the Nationals also had other players on similar deals, namely pitchers Max Scherzer and Rafael Soriano; and the thing that I had decided to zero in on was this window of time between 2024 and 2028, in which the Nationals would be on the hook for deferred payments to guys that will most likely no longer be on the Nationals, or even playing in Major League Baseball. It would be a five-year window in which the Nationals would be paying a total of $127 million dollars to literally, no actual players.
Obviously, this is a giant epic fail, and we should all laugh at the Washington Nationals right??
However, here’s the thing, and why I look back at this, and think how silly I was: in 2019, the Nationals won the World Series. Both Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer had good years, and pitched effectively in the playoffs. As far as the notion goes of franchise pays star talent exorbitant amounts of money with the hopes of winning championships, both Strasburg and Scherzer had effectively delivered on their contractual investments, and brought a World Series title to D.C.
I know there are tons of baseball nerds who somehow care about the financial operations of their favorite teams, who might argue that “just” one championship might not be worth the probably around $400 million that the Nationals have invested into employing two pitchers, but I’m hard pressed to believe that if they were to ask any casual sports fan in D.C. their opinions, most would probably be content to know that they’ve witnessed the Nationals as champions, at all, in their lifetimes.
I’ve long passed my phase as a smarmy baseball statistician who pored over all the numbers obsessively for internet validation. I still understand them and understand a lot of the scuttlebutt of baseball debating, but I just don’t care, nearly as much as once did. Currently, I sit on the opinion that when a sports team signs a player to a mega deal, they are effectively paying for however many of number of years, chances at championships; and that the only true measure to whether a deal is a bust or not is a combination of their production throughout the life of the contract as well as the simple yes or no question on whether or not they won any championships.
Like Bryce Harper’s mega deal with the Phillies, as much as I want to be LOL Phillies bad deal for signing a guy for 13 years and $375 million dollars, I have to withhold judgment; because if the Phillies win a World Series in that 13-year window, and Harper isn’t playing like a bum in doing it, then I have to ask was it really that bad of a deal? The championship(s) say no.
Anyway, it’s important to me that I’m capable of demonstrating the passage of time and the effects on opinions and thoughts that are very much possible throughout it. I once wanted to take passive-aggressive shots and ridicule a team that is a rival to the Braves, for spending egregious amounts of money, but the reality is that they have won a World Series in the last two decades, while the Braves are still trying to win with Monopoly money while the last decade’s worth of champions have collectively spent close to a go-zillion dollars in player salaries.
I’d gladly see the Braves take the wrath of the internet’s nerdiest baseball fans’ ridicule for 8-10 years if it meant that my daughters and I could see just one World Series victory within that time. Because when the day is over, the shit Braves corporate have to deal with doesn’t affect my life one iota, but a commemorative championship hat and banner are forever.
