Ranking MLB's Most Team-Friendly Contracts Heading into 2024 Season
It's great to get All Star-caliber players in Major League Baseball, but it's even better to sign them to team-friendly, long-term contracts.
With the start of the 2024 season quickly approaching, which contracts appear to be the team-friendliest of all?
In sort of the inverse of the "Worst Contracts" piece from Monday, this ranking is based on a 60/40 split of how team-friendly the player's salary is in 2024 (the 60 percent) and how well the contract sets the team up for the long run (the 40 percent).
One example of a close call that only scored well in one of those departments is Sonny Gray's new three-year, $75 million deal with the St. Louis Cardinals.
After a fantastic 2023 resulting in a second-place finish for AL Cy Young, Gray's $10 million salary in 2024 is a preposterous steal. But $25 million in 2025? $35 million in 2026? For a pitcher who is already 34 and openly musing about retirement at last year's All-Star break? The 40 percent of the equation is infinitely more questionable than the 60 percent.
Elsewhere, San Diego's Ha-Seong Kim is one of 12 players worth at least 5.0 bWAR in each of the past two seasons, making his $7 million 2024 salary look like one of the best discounts in MLB. However, he's 100 percent declining the $7 million mutual option for 2025, giving him a great big nothing for the 40 percent criteria.
One final note: Players on rookie deals or arbitration-eligible for 2025 are not included. If we did include them, the entire top 10 would be guys like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson getting paid a fraction of what they're actually worth until having enough service time to get real money.
Players are ranked in ascending order of how much the fans of the other four teams in the division feel like highway robbery is being committed with that contract.
Honorable Mentions
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Fernando Tatis Jr., San Diego Padres
$11 million salary in 2024; 10 years, $306 million after 2024
Basically a more drawn-out version of the Sonny Gray contract mentioned above. Tatis' $11 million salary in the upcoming season is maybe 25 percent of what he's actually worth right now. But when he's making $216 million over the final six years of this deal, it's probably going to get painful.
Kodai Senga, New York Mets
$14 million salary in 2024; 3 years, $42 million after 2024
Great value here based on Senga's performance as an MLB rookie in 2023. However, if he logs at least 233.2 innings over the next two seasons, he will have the ability to opt out of the final two years of the deal during the 2025-26 offseason. And any time there's a player option involved, the deal becomes much less team-friendly in a hurry.
Logan Webb, San Francisco Giants
$8 million salary in 2024; 4 years, $82 million after 2024
After back-to-back years of Webb receiving Cy Young votes, the five-year extension he signed early in the 2023 campaign is looking great. He likely would have gotten more than $8 million this season in arbitration, more than $12 million next season in arbitration and a good bit more than $23.3 million in free agency if his next two years are anything like the last three. Had we made this a top 11, Webb gets that last spot.
Julio Rodríguez, Seattle Mariners
$10 million salary in 2024; 5 years, $90 million for 2025-29, followed by options with all sorts of possible escalators
If we temporarily ignore the 2030 and beyond option/escalator-heavy portion of this deal, it is a seven-year, $119.3 million contract, which averages out to a $17 million annual value. Without question, Rodríguez is worth that and then some. End the contract there and he's easily top-five on this list.
But with his top-10 finishes in the AL MVP vote in each of the past two years, the price of that club option is already up to eight years, $240 million. If he wins AL MVP this year (or any of the next five years) it goes up to $280 million. It could even spike to 10 years, $350 million with enough MVP recognition in the next half-decade.
And because he gets more expensive the better he plays between now and 2028, the latter stages of this deal don't feel so team-friendly.
That said, if he wins two AL MVPs in the next five years (or places top-five three more times), if Seattle decides the $350 million club option is too rich for its blood and Rodríguez declines the five-year, $90 million player option to hit free agency, at least it will have been one hell of a run. It sure could make for an awkward 2029 season, though, as Seattle has to decide on the 2030 club option before '29 begins.
10. Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers
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2024 Salary: $2 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 19 years, $698 million ($2 million annually through 2033 with $680 million deferred to 2034-43)
2023 Stats: .304/.412/.654, 44 HR, 95 RBI, 20 SB; 132.0 IP, 3.14 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, 11.4 K/9, AL MVP
At a certain point, the decision to defer more than 97 percent of Shohei Ohtani's 10-year, $700 million contract is going to hurt the Dodgers.
It might be four years from now, seven years from now or perhaps not until he has played a decade for the Dodgers and the bill comes due.
But it most definitely isn't now.
Yes, the $2 million salary is more than a little misleading. It's $70M per year played, and it's $46.1M per year from a luxury-tax payroll perspective.
In other words, it is effectively a 10-year, $461M deal, which the Dodgers have elected to pay on an extremely unconventional timeline.
From that perspective, it's a bargain.
Prior to the elbow injury that will keep Ohtani from pitching in 2024, there was speculation he could get at least $60M a year on a 10-year deal—without deferring any of it. And the Dodgers got him for basically 75 percent of that amount.
If he never makes it back to the mound but continues to mash at an MVP level for the duration of the contract, Ohtani will still be worth every penny. But assuming he does pitch again in 2025, L.A. could get incredible value on this massive deal. If the Dodgers win multiple World Series in the next decade, it will make paying for Ohtani after the fact much less onerous.
9. Bryan Reynolds, Pittsburgh Pirates
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2024 Salary: $10 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 7 years, $106 million (includes club option for 2031)
2023 Stats: .263/.330/.460, 24 HR, 84 RBI, 12 SB
When every last one of us in the MLB media spent some portion of the 2022-23 offseason speculating on when and where Bryan Reynolds might get traded, suffice it to say we had no idea he'd be willing to stay in Pittsburgh on a long-term deal with a guaranteed average salary of just $13.3M.
Even the notoriously stingy Pirates couldn't possibly turn that one down.
Since the beginning of 2021, Reynolds is one of just 14 players with at least 75 home runs, 20 stolen bases and a .275 batting average. The other 13 are: Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Paul Goldschmidt, Juan Soto, Manny Machado, José Ramírez, Kyle Tucker, Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr., Jose Altuve, Nick Castellanos and Trea Turner.
Aside from Reynolds, Tucker making $12M in his next-to-last season of arbitration and Acuña playing on the most team-friendly long-term deal in decades, all of those players are making at least $20M per year on their current deals.
Why did Reynolds take such a discount compared to those stars? When he was only one year removed from a 2021 campaign in which he hit .302 with a .912 OPS and received NL MVP votes?
Goodness only knows.
Reynolds is already 29 as of a few days ago and wasn't going to hit free agency until after the 2025 season. Perhaps he was worried that the market for an almost 31-year-old outfielder wouldn't be enough to command a $15-plus million salary on a long-term contract.
It sure seems like he sold himself short, though, because this is a great deal for Pittsburgh.
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8. J.P. Crawford, Seattle Mariners
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2024 Salary: $10 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 2 years, $21 million
2023 Stats: .266/.380/.438, 19 HR, 65 RBI, 16th in AL MVP voting
The going rate for a top-tier shortstop these days is north of $25 million. That's what Carlos Correa, Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts and Dansby Swanson all signed for last offseason, while Corey Seager and Francisco Lindor are both making more than $32M per year on the long-term deals they signed in 2021.
Is J.P. Crawford an elite shortstop? Probably not quite.
But is he at least half as good as the elite shortstops? Absolutely.
From 2021 to 2023, Bogaerts accumulated 15.3 bWAR, Turner was worth 14.7 bWAR, Lindor landed at 14.6 bWAR, Seager stacked up a 14.4 bWAR, Correa amounted to 14.1 bWAR and Swanson ended up at 12.5 bWAR.
Meanwhile, Crawford is getting paid like he's 40 percent as good as those guys with an 11.6 bWAR that is 81 percent as good as the average of the six elite shortstops.
(Even if you prefer FanGraphs WAR, Crawford is at 10.2, which is 69 percent of the 14.88 average from the six elite shortstops.)
Crawford didn't even play well in 2022, either. At least not compared to how impressive he was in 2023, more than doubling his previous career high for home runs in a season while also leading the AL in walks drawn. If he continues to perform at that level, Seattle is practically printing money with this contract.
7. Hunter Greene, Cincinnati Reds
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2024 Salary: $3 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 5 years, $69 million (includes club option in 2029; does not include possible escalators for Cy Young votes and All-Star selections)
2023 Stats: 112.0 IP, 4.82 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, 12.2 K/9
Hunter Greene is one of only two pitchers to make this list. (Unless you want to count Shohei Ohtani as a pitcher.)
If Sandy Alcantara were going to pitch at all in 2024, that would be a different story. Even with him missing the upcoming season, that's still a great contract for Miami. Logan Webb was also a strong candidate. And Kodai Senga would've made the cut if he didn't have an opt-out available after next season.
The moral of the story, though, is that when teams buy guys out of their arbitration-eligible years with long-term extensions, it's a position player far more often than it's a pitcher. So the Reds kind of broke from tradition in giving a then-23-year-old flamethrower a six-year deal last spring.
Why not, though?
From the moment Cincinnati took Greene second overall in the 2017 draft, he was consistently regarded as a top-100 prospect—this despite missing the entire 2019 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery and the entire 2020 season when minor league baseball was wiped out by COVID. And it was clear from his run through 2022 that Greene had the goods to strike out an awful lot of MLB hitters and could be elite if able to cut down on the home runs allowed.
Best-case scenario with this contract? The Reds get an annual Cy Young candidate for the next half-decade at a little over $10M per year. Good luck finding a bona fide Cy Young candidate for less than three times that price in free agency.
Worst-case scenario? It stings a good bit in 2027 ($15M) and 2028 ($16M) when his salary balloons, but it's never going to be a payroll-crippling contract.
Can't imagine it will be much longer before more teams start putting together contracts like this for their up-and-coming potential aces.
6. Luis Robert Jr., Chicago White Sox
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2024 Salary: $12.5 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 3 years, $55 million (includes club options in 2026 and 2027)
2023 Stats: .264/.315/.542, 38 HR, 80 RBI, 20 SB, Silver Slugger, 12th in AL MVP voting
With Luis Robert Jr.'s contract, the greatest value years have already come and gone.
The escalating, six-year, $50 million deal signed before he played a game in the majors started at $1.5M for 2020, then $3.5M, $6M and $9.5M, meaning Chicago got 12.5 bWAR for the low, low price of $20.5M.
Even now with Robert annually making eight figures, though, it remains an excellent deal for the White Sox—to possibly trade away to expedite their rebuild.
The 26-year-old center fielder just had the best season of his career, mashing 38 home runs and stealing 20 bases. Robert did strike out considerably more in 2023 than the previous two years, but if that's the price for a .542 slugging percentage and a healthy 145 games played, so be it.
Fun fact: Robert was one of three players last season with at least 35 home runs and at least 15 stolen bases.
The others?
AL MVP Ohtani and NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr.
So, yeah, $12.5M for next season and an average of $16.8M for the next four years is quite the bargain.
5. Andrés Giménez, Cleveland Guardians
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2024 Salary: $5 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 6 years, $117 million (includes club option in 2030)
2023 Stats: .251/.314/.399, 15 HR, 62 RBI, 30 SB, Gold Glove
Cleveland has a bunch of solid candidates for this list.
José Ramírez having five years for $105 million left on his deal is sensational value for one of the best third basemen out there. Myles Straw isn't much of a hitter, but his speed on the basepaths and his glove in center are easily worthy of that five-year, $25M contract. And Emmanuel Clase's five-year, $20M contract makes him probably the most underpaid closer in the business.
But they kind of pale in comparison to Andrés Giménez's seven-year, $106.5M contract.
I suppose Mookie Betts is now the most valuable second baseman in baseball. But over the past two seasons, FanGraphs suggests only Jose Altuve (10.6 WAR) and Marcus Semien (10.3 WAR) have been worth more than Giménez (9.9 WAR) among second basemen.
[Baseball Reference has Giménez at 12.7 WAR over the past two seasons, compared to Altuve's 7.9 WAR and Semien's 13.1 WAR. And, no, I have no clue why the sites differ so drastically on the value of those three marquee 2B.]
While Semien is making $25M per year and Altuve is about to play the final season of his seven-year deal with a $23.4M AAV, Giménez's average salary is $15.2M—and he's especially a bargain this year at just $5M.
It's plausible he hasn't reached his peak yet, either. He just turned 25 this past September, and the age-28 season is typically/anecdotally when baseball players plateau.
4. Yordan Álvarez, Houston Astros
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2024 Salary: $10 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 4 years, $93 million
2023 Stats: .293/.407/.583, 31 HR, 97 RBI, 13th in AL MVP voting
Let's pretend we're living in an alternate timeline where Houston did not sign Yordan Álvarez to a six-year, $115 million extension in the summer of 2022, instead choosing to just let it ride until he hits free agency.
What would he actually be making these days?
Aaron Judge is a reasonable comp, right?
The fellow former AL Rookie of the Year who destroys baseballs on the regular waited out his arbitration-eligible years to sign a massive contract in free agency. And in his final three years before free agency, Judge made $8.5 million*, $10.1M and $19M, for a combined total of $37.6M.
What did/will Houston pay Álvarez in buying him out of his three years of arbitration eligibility? A nearly identical $37 million.
And, to be clear, Judge was a bargain in those years of arbitration eligibility, as is Alvarez at that price.
But where Judge's salary spiked to $40 million once he became a free agent, Houston locked in Álvarez for three extra years at $26 million a pop, which is where this contract could really be a bargain.
If Teoscar Hernández got a one-year, $23.5 million contract earlier this month after a second consecutive good-not-great season, Álvarez's 1.006 OPS over the past two seasons has to be worth at least $35 million, probably even $40 million per year in free agency.
*The $8.5 million deal in 2020 actually turned into $3.15 million because of the prorated contracts in the shortened season.
3. Ke'Bryan Hayes, Pittsburgh Pirates
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2024 Salary: $7 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 6 years, $49 million (includes club option in 2030)
2023 Stats: .271/.309/.453, 15 HR, 61 RBI, 10 SB, Gold Glove
What's strange about Ke'Bryan Hayes' eight-year, $70 million contract is that after he made $10M in each of the first two seasons, his average salary for the next six years is only $7.6M.
Long-term deals usually balloon as they age, but this one deflated.
Better yet for Pittsburgh, Hayes is better now than when he initially signed the deal.
Hayes hit more home runs in 124 games played in 2023 (15) than he did in 232 games played between 2021-22 combined (13). He also won a Gold Glove for his work at the hot corner in 2023—though the metrics say his defense was even better in 2022 than '23. (He can partially thank Nolan Arenado's down year on defense for that trophy.)
Per Baseball Reference, Hayes had a 2.3-bWAR season in 2021, signed his extension right at the start of the 2022 campaign and has been worth at least 4.0 bWAR in each of the past two years.
And $7.6M per year for six more years of what has become a 4.0 bWAR-per-year player is highway robbery by the Pirates.
You know what you're supposed to get for $7.6M per year?
Erick Fedde, who had a 5.41 career ERA in the majors before one great year in KBO.
Or Isiah Kiner-Falefa, fresh off a replacement-level final season with the Yankees.
But Pittsburgh is spending that amount on a Gold Glover and borderline All-Star who just turned 27 and (at least from an age perspective) should be doggone good for the remainder of the deal.
2. Corbin Carroll, Arizona Diamondbacks
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2024 Salary: $3 million
Contract for 2025 and Beyond: 7 years, $125 million (includes club option in 2031)
2023 Stats: .285/.362/.506, 25 HR, 76 RBI, 54 SB, NL ROY, 5th in NL MVP voting
There are also a couple of escalators on this contract, in which Corbin Carroll would receive $5 million for winning MVP in any of 2028, 2029 or 2030, or $2.5 million for a top-five finish in any of those years. That plus the 2031 option year puts this eight-year, $111 million contract at a maximum of nine years, $154 million.
Even after removing his 2023 salary and focusing on what's left on the deal, it's a minimum of $15M and a maximum of $18.5M on a per-year basis. Remarkable value for Arizona on a long-term deal with the reigning NL Rookie of the Year who had 25 home runs and 54 stolen bases in 2023.
At any rate, had they waited until this March to try to extend him as opposed to getting it done last March, there's no chance Carroll gets less than $24M per year, right?
Maybe it doesn't quite match the 12-year, up to $470M contract that Julio Rodríguez signed while he was well on his way to being named AL Rookie of the Year two seasons ago, but it would have to rival the 14-year, $340 million deal Fernando Tatis Jr. got after 143 career games played.
Instead, the Diamondbacks locked up Carroll on a Acuña Jr.-type of team-friendly deal that enhances Arizona's ability to continue to build a contender around him for years to come.
Speaking of Acuña...
1. So. Many. Atlanta. Contracts.
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Ronald Acuña Jr.: $17 million salary in 2024; 5 years, $85 million total (includes club option in 2028)
Ozzie Albies: $7 million salary in 2024; 4 years, $28 million total (includes club option in 2027)
Orlando Arcia: $2 million salary in 2024; 3 years, $6 million total (includes club option in 2026)
Michael Harris II: $5 million salary in 2024; 9 years, $97 million total (includes club options in 2031 and 2032)
Spencer Strider: $1 million salary in 2024; 6 years, $91 million total (includes club option in 2029)
This list is ridiculous, and it isn't even a comprehensive one.
Sean Murphy's six-year, $73 million deal is great. Matt Olson and Austin Riley each getting $22 million per year for the next six (or more) years is a discount compared to what they would've fetched on the open market. Even the multi-year deals with relievers Reynaldo López, Aaron Bummer, Joe Jiménez and Pierce Johnson are reasonably priced and have the bullpen set up to be great for a while.
Atlanta GM Alex Anthopoulos is a wizard with these contracts, and the five listed above are simply unfair to the rest of the National League.
At this point, Acuña is effectively starting a five-year, $85M deal. If the 26-year-old reigning NL MVP had been a free agent this winter, he easily gets something on par with the 12-year, $426.5 million contract Mike Trout signed five years ago, right? Maybe even $500 million? He's getting less than half of what he's worth on an annual basis.
Same goes for Albies and Arcia, with Atlanta outrageously spending just $9M per year for its starting middle infield for the next three seasons. Those guys aren't as valuable as Texas' Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, but there's no way the Rangers' $61 million-a-year duo is nearly seven times better than Atlanta's $9 million-a-year duo, as the price tags suggest.
But $1M for Strider? For the second consecutive year?
Utter insanity.
Yes, that's probably around what Strider would have gotten in the final two pre-arbitration years of his rookie deal. Case in point: Tampa Bay's Shane McClanahan made a combined total of $1.8M in his final two years before reaching arbitration eligibility. Atlanta is probably actually going to spend more over the course of the six-year deal than it would have by simply not signing the extension.
However, there's just something mind blowing about seeing $1M twice as a salary on a six-year deal.
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