When you look at the big contracts that have been given to top players in the free agent market, there’s one thing that’s quite striking: teams aren’t afraid to give players long contracts, pacts that will bring them until they are in their forties.
I know that teams often pay for the first years of the pact and not for the last, but still: Justin Verlander (who was already 40 years old), Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts and Aaron Judge all signed such contracts.
In the case of Judge, who signed a nine-year pact that will end a few months before his 40th birthday, it was with his lifelong team, the Yankees, that he decided to get along long term. The $360 million offer he had on the table suited him, even though the Giants and Padres offered him more money.
The Padres, they would have offered him $ 400 million, but we did not know exactly for how many years. However, according to what Jon Heyman reports, the Padres’ offer would have been for 14 years.
Note, however, that the offer was never formally submitted to Judge. It was worked on and I imagine it was discussed with the player, but in fact, Judge was never able to sign. And anyway, MLB probably wouldn’t have let it pass.
In fact, according to Heyman, MLB would have been afraid of the implications of such an offer on the luxury tax, which teams have to pay based on the guys’ annual salary. With such an offer, Judge’s salary would have been less than $30 million a year, unlike the $40 million he will receive annually with the Yankees.
This means that in terms of the luxury tax, the Padres would have saved nearly $10 million per year by giving such a pact to Judge. And that’s where MLB potentially would have had a problem.
That said, contracts of this kind have been signed in recent years and MLB has never intervened. I wonder why she would have done that in this case, quite honestly.
Nevertheless, Judge could have signed a pact with the Padres which would have ensured that he would have received a very good annual salary until he was 44 years old. However, he returned to where he belonged, in the Bronx, and that’s perfect.
