Tag: bonilla

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the MLB All-Deferred Money Team 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again, where Bobby Bonilla collects a paycheck of $1,193,248 from the New York Mets (as well as a cool $500K from the Baltimore Orioles), despite the fact that he hasn’t played a game of Major League Baseball since 2001. 

As easy as it would be to simply clown on the Mets for locking themselves up into such a legendarily bad arrangement (among other things), the game has changed, and deferring money has become a pretty commonplace strategy employed by all sorts of teams who utilize it to circumvent salary constraints, avoiding the luxury tax threshold, or simply to offer up more money than should be necessary to greedy free agents.

After all, fewer things exemplify the white man’s business world than promising money so far down the line that it’s realistically possible that the people writing up the offers could actually have died of old age when it comes time for the terms of payment to come into play.

That being said, in the 2024 MLB season, there are 25 players making deferred money according to Spotrac records, from 15 different teams.  This is three more players and three more teams employing the buy now-pay later method than the year before.  Which also is a convenient number, because that’s basically a 25-man roster without a 26th injured reserve player.

Cumulatively, they are making $78.3M, which is a higher than the Oakland A’s (shocker) total payroll of $63.3M.  The Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles upped their payroll this year, so they wouldn’t be outspent by squad of non-players for a second year in a row.  But as far as cumulative 26-man roster values, $78.3M is high enough to eclipse literally a third of Major League Baseball, costing more than what the White Sox, Marlins, Nationals, Reds, Pirates, Rays, Indians Guardians, Rockies, Brewers and A’s are spending on their daily rosters.

The Washington Nationals once again take the crown for highest amount of deferred money at $18.5M.  This is heavily weighted by the annual $15M chunks they owe SP Max Scherzer between now until 2028, so it doesn’t look like the Nats are going to be relinquishing this crown, at least until the Dodgers begin making their annual payments for Shohei Ohtani’s deferred salary.

By the way, $18.5M is more than what NL MVP Ronald Acuña, Jr. is making this year, but the Nats will be getting zero home runs and zero stolen bases for their spend.

The Nationals may be one of the most frequent users of deferred money, but they’re no longer alone in this tactic of gaming the payroll system.  The Orioles, Cardinals and Brewers each had three players making deferred monies this season, and there are teams like the Phillies, Dodgers and Padres are waiting in the wings that will have their own Bonillas in the future as well.

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Jimbo Fisher: The Bobby Bonilla of College Football

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first heard the rumblings that Texas A&M was planning to axe Jimbo Fisher, I didn’t think much of it.  Just that it must really suck to be Jimbo Fisher and having to hear through the grapevine that your termination was basically coming, and that you just have to sit there waiting for the shoe to drop.  Even more so than the fact that at the time, Texas A&M, while not having a great season, were still 6-4, bowl eligible and in the grand spectrum of the sport, at least more than likely going to have yet another winning season.

Frankly, I’m surprised that Texas A&M is doing such, because Jimbo, in spite of not having won a National Championship for the school, is still a rare breed of good coach, who has been to the top of the mountain before, when he won a natty with Florida State, and for all intents and purposes knows what he’s doing.  The interesting thing is that ATM* hasn’t exactly been a cellar dweller under Jimbo Fisher, which is usually one of the first pre-requisites for firing a coach; under Jimbo, ATM has gone 45-25, and won 9, 8, 9, 8 games before a five-win season a year ago, and as it stands right now, the Aggies probably will finish with seven this year.  But two unsatisfactory years is basically bad luck, injuries, a miss on a recruit or two, but really nothing a fairly successful football program like ATM should worry about.

*what I like to call Texas A&M because their logo’s letter order is literally, “ATM” and it’s also a metaphor to the cash cow that college football is

What it really boils down to is the fact that ATM has higher expectations than much of the rest of CFB, and are tired of hanging out in the middle of the pack and want to make a change for the sake of making change.  The thing is, there’s a vastly higher chance that ATM is going to go through some really dismal years over the next few, possibly miss some bowls (and the payouts that come with participation), and probably would have been better off in terms of wins and losses if they stuck with Jimbo.

But the bigger story is the fact that in firing Jimbo Fisher, ATM is still on the hook for around $77 million dollars of contracted salary, and despite the fact that he won’t be driving the reigns for the program, are very much responsible for paying every single cent.  Unsurprisingly, this is the highest payout in CFB history, and if there’s one thing that never seems to change with my interests, is stories about sports having too much fucking money and doing a whole lot of dumb shit with it.

Long story short, from what I’ve seen, it appears that ATM is taking a page out of MLB and going on an installment plan in order to help spread out the money they owe Jimbo, instead of just plunking down $77M, slapping him on the ass and bidding him adieu.  So until 2031, it looks like ATM will be paying $7.27M every single year to not be coaching ATM.  He gets a lump sum of $19.4 immediately for some reason, I don’t care to know the granular details, but basically starting in 2024 and over the next eight years, he’ll be getting a cool $7.27M for doing absolutely nothing,

This is of course, a similar situation to Bobby Bonilla, the baseball player whose agent somehow transformed $5.9M into nearly $30M, spread out over 25 years, except the fact that it doesn’t appear that Jimbo’s agent negotiated any variables for inflation or interest.  But who’s to say that within the next eight years, ATM gets sick of how much cash they’re literally throwing away, and renegotiate something that does encroach more similarly to Bobby Bo territory, but that’ll be another post for if it ever occurs.

But given the sheer dollar amount and the breakdown of daily intake, Jimbo Fisher is not only the Bobby Bonilla of CFB, he’s actually making out way bigger than Bobby Bonilla ever did.  $77M is greater than $30M, and whereas Bobby Bo is basically making $3k a day for existing, Jimbo Fisher will be making roughly $28k every single day until the end of 2031, merely for existing.

Chalk this up as another reason why sports are so (ironically) great, and just how much needless money is dumped into these industries to where programs can literally set millions and millions of dollars on fire and suffer absolutely no consequences in the process.  Whereas I couldn’t have given any lesser number of shits about Texas A&M in the past, just due to this failure of a scenario, I kind of feel like I need to root against them, and whomever is Jimbo’s successor, just so I can imagine a guy I gave no turds about in the past, laughing in front of a television while the Aggies get rolled around in the basement of the SEC for years to come.