Kris Bryant, Mike Trout and MLB's Top 10 Most Cringy Contracts of 2025
Nine years ago, Kris Bryant was named NL MVP while Mike Trout won the second of his three AL MVPs.
These days, though, those oft-injured, well-compensated 33-year-olds are much closer to LVPs on their cringy contracts.
Only players with at least $80 million remaining on their contract (as of the start of this season) are eligible for consideration here. Beyond that criterion, cringe ranking is rooted in how unlikely it is the player will be worth anything close to what's left on the contract—based on both the first half of this season as well as injury history and level of performance in recent years.
You might be wondering why $80 million, instead of something like $75 million or $100 million? Well, setting the minimum at $80 million mercifully allows us to avoid talking about Anthony Rendon ($77.6 million) in this type of article for a change, while still leaving the likes of Anthony Santander and Bryan Reynolds among the list of options.
(We're not including Stephen Strasburg, Gerrit Cole or Corbin Burnes here, even though all three pitchers are still owed at least $100 million and will not pitch again this season. Strasburg is retired and falls into the same "I just cannot bear to drag that contract through the mud again" category as Rendon, while we still have hope Cole and Burnes will be worth their salaries once they recover from their Tommy Johns.)
10. Aaron Nola, Philadelphia Phillies
1 of 10
2025 Stats: 49.2 IP, 6.16 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, 9.4 K/9, 0.0 bWAR
Still Owed: $148M through 2030
From 2017-24, no pitcher was more consistently available than Aaron Nola. He and Patrick Corbin tied for the most games started during that eight-year stretch with 235 apiece, but Nola led everyone in innings pitched at 1,432.2 with a solid 3.62 ERA.
But was it too much wear and tear?
Now 32 years old, Nola lasted nine starts before landing on the IL with an ankle injury, allowing at least four earned runs in five of those starts. And as he was working his way back to the mound, his stay on the shelf was extended considerably by an MRI that revealed a stress fracture in his rib cage.
Perhaps that's why the velocity was down at least 1.0 mph compared to last year on all five pitches in his repertoire?
Or is the rib injury new, unrelated to the velocity dip and a whole new ball of wax to worry about moving forward?
Nola has enough of a positive track record at this point that we almost have to assume he'll get his career-worst ERA, FIP and WHIP under control to some extent when he returns, whenever that may be.
In those first nine starts, though, neither his knuckle-curve nor his four-seamer were anything close to the lethal offerings they used to be, and he's only one-and-a-half years into a hefty seven-year deal.
9. Jose Altuve, Houston Astros
2 of 10
2025 Stats: .261/.320/.410, 12 HR, 34 RBI, 6 SB, -0.4 bWAR
Still Owed: $125M through 2029
Credit where it's due, Jose Altuve has been a heck of a lot more valuable as of late than that pathetic WAR would have you believe.
From May 22 through June 18, he had a 1.036 OPS and 162-game paces of 54 home runs and 135 RBI. Good luck finding anyone to complain about that type of production.
Eight weeks into the season, though?
When Altuve had a .629 OPS for the year and just one home run over a stretch of 37 games?
While Alex Bregman was mashing his way to AL MVP consideration, playing for a team other than the Astros for the first time in his career?
Oh yeah, you better believe there were people questioning Houston's decision to reinvest heavily in what is now a 35-year-old Altuve while letting Bregman (who turned 31 basically on Opening Day) walk for what will be a fourth-round draft pick.
That rough start to 2025 came on the heels of a 2024 campaign that already definitively was not one of Altuve's best, posting a sub-.800 OPS in a non-pandemic-truncated season for the first time in more than a decade. That made those first 49 games feel like less of a slow start and more a rapid continuation of the Father Time-mandated decline.
But Altuve's renaissance began right as Bregman was hitting the shelf, and the Astros have a somewhat comfortable lead in the AL West even with Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Christian Walker all providing a negative WAR for the year, making this contract about one percent as cringy as it was a little over a month ago.
8. Blake Snell, Los Angeles Dodgers
3 of 10
2025 Stats: 9.0 IP, 2.00 ERA, -0.2 bWAR
Still owed: $182M through 2046
At an AAV of $36.4 million, Blake Snell is presently the third highest-salaried pitcher in baseball, trailing only Zack Wheeler ($42 million) and Jacob deGrom ($37 million).
But while Wheeler and deGrom are both very much on their way to the All-Star Game, Snell remains on the IL, his return from shoulder inflammation not exactly imminent after nearly three months on the shelf.
Of course, with Snell, time on the IL just comes with the territory. He has won the Cy Young twice in his 10 seasons, but this is going to be the eighth year that he falls well short of logging enough innings to qualify for the ERA title.
And in those previous non-Cy Young years, it wasn't just limited innings that kept the 32-year-old from the ERA crown. He was worth at least some wins above replacement in each of those seven years, but he had a cumulative 3.74 ERA—a borderline unfathomably high mark for either Wheeler or deGrom, even in their mid-to-late 30s.
In other words, it was always unlikely Snell would live up to the "top three pitcher" hype over the duration of this contract, but making just two appearances through nearly 10 percent of the deal has been brutal.
Maybe he comes back and dominates in the second half like he did last year with San Francisco, but it hasn't been the start to this marriage that the Dodgers had in mind, to say the least.
7. Bryan Reynolds, Pittsburgh Pirates
4 of 10
2025 Stats: .235/.303/.386, 9 HR, 44 RBI, -0.2 bWAR
Still Owed: $89.5M through 2030
For a lot of franchises, one player making $15 million per year for six years isn't a huge deal. The Dodgers have seven players on nine-figure contracts. The Yankees, Phillies, Padres, Giants and Blue Jays each have six players on deals of at least $90 million.
In Pittsburgh, though, this Bryan Reynolds contract hits differently, especially if he doesn't start hitting better.
You have to go back to 2013 to find the last time the Pirates had a player making more than $15.4 million in a season, and even that was a mirage, with the Yankees retaining $8.5 million of A.J. Burnett's $16.5 million salary that season.
They opened both 2024 and 2025 with an $86.4 million payroll, so a $15 million salary is one-sixth of what they're willing to spend these days, already spoken for the next half-decade.
Granted, it didn't feel problematic until this season, as Reynolds had at least 24 home runs and a .790 OPS in each of the previous four years.
Nevertheless, the 30-year-old outfielder has been simultaneously one of the most expensive and one of the least productive players on the roster, his sub-standard play perhaps the biggest reason Pittsburgh has one of the lowest-scoring offenses in baseball this season.
One would hope Reynolds' contract—as well as Mitch Keller's five-year, $77 million deal—wouldn't deter the Pirates from trying to ink Paul Skenes to a long-term extension before it truly becomes impossible for them to make that happen.
However, if this contract in any way prevents Pittsburgh from securing Skenes for the long haul, it might be the most cringeworthy of them all.
6. Willy Adames, San Francisco Giants
5 of 10
2025 Stats: .211/.295/.342, 9 HR, 35 RBI, 0.2 bWAR
Still Owed: $182M through 2031
At least with Willy Adames, there's still reasonable hope it was just a rough first few months on a new deal.
Both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference put the 29-year-old's wins above replacement from 2019-24 at just north of 20, slightly better than Pete Alonso. And with nearly as many home runs in his last 20 games as he had in his first 65, it's already looking like another late arrival for a player who traditionally has fared much better in the second half than the first.
Still, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who is feeling fantastic about what was the biggest contract in Giants' history until they traded for the rest of Rafael Devers' deal.
When the signing was announced, the immediate concern was Oracle Park might nerf Adames impact as a slugger, as his expected HR count in San Francisco from 2021-24 (88) paled in comparison to his actual total of 112.
However, he has been struggling indiscriminately, both home and away. What had been a .444 career slugging percentage has turned into a .355 mark at home and a .329 mark away thus far.
So, at least Oracle hasn't been the problem? That's kind of good news, right?
5. Anthony Santander, Toronto Blue Jays
6 of 10
2025 Stats: .179/.273/.304, 6 HR, 18 RBI, -0.9 bWAR
Still Owed: $92.5M through 2029
From 2020-24, Anthony Santander hit 134 home runs and slugged .476. He ranked top 20 in the majors in the former and top 40 in the latter, and he hit free agency fresh off a 44 HR campaign.
If you happen to find that slugger out roaming the streets or something, please return him to Canada, eh? Because among the 223 players with at least 200 plate appearances this season, his .304 slugging percentage ranks 212th.
Since the 30-year-old is "only" making $18.5 million per year, it's difficult to justify putting him any higher than this. Everyone in our top four is scheduled to make more through 2028 than Santander will make in a contract that runs through 2029.
However, against the backdrop of him being the one fish Toronto finally caught in free agency after almost reeling in so many of the gigantic names who hit the market in recent years, his atrocious start with the Blue Jays has been borderline cruel and unusual punishment to that fanbase.
At least they locked up Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for what figures to be the rest of his career, and at least the team has managed to exceed expectations, presently in position for the playoffs in spite of Santander's terrible debut year. That takes away a lot of the sting here.
Still, what a disappointing first half of his first season, even without accounting for the fact that he has been on the IL for a month with shoulder inflammation. Perhaps he'll remember how to hit when he returns.
4. Carlos Correa, Minnesota Twins
7 of 10
2025 Stats: .261/.302/.394, 7 HR, 28 RBI, 0.2 bWAR
Still Owed: $133.3M through 2028, with vesting options that could push it to $203.3M through 2032
With most of these painful contracts, there was no particularly good reason to assume the deal would age like a fine milk.
With Carlos Correa, however, the Twins can't say there weren't any warning signs.
Both the San Francisco Giants (13 years, $350M) and the New York Mets (12 years, $315M) tried to give the 30-year-old a colossal contract, only to both back out of the deal when they got a look at his medical records and reportedly had long-term concerns about the right leg he had surgically repaired in 2014.
The Mets tried to renegotiate to half of the original deal (6 years, $157.5M), but it was no match for when the Twins—who had him on their roster the previous season and should have known his medical records as well as anyone—swooped in and offered him six years and a guaranteed $200 million, with the possibility of $70 million more on the back end of the deal.
Correa posted a near-career-worst .711 OPS in the first year of the deal, though he did at least hit .409 in Minnesota's six postseason games.
The following year, he missed 76 games with a litany of injuries, but he did have a drastically improved .905 OPS for the 86 games that he was healthy.
So far this season, minimal games missed, but also minimal production with a sub-.700 OPS. And for whatever reason, they structured the deal in such a way that this year is his biggest hit against the payroll at $37.3 million, making him the sixth-highest paid player in baseball in 2025.
After two-and-a-half years of the deal, though, he still hasn't provided the Twins with as much bWAR (5.1) as he did in 2022 alone (5.3), and it always was the latter years of any sort of long-term deal that teams were worried about with Correa.
It's already a cringy contract, and there's fear it could get rapidly worse—fear that could maybe be contributing to the Pohlad family's inability to sell the team this past offseason?
3. Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels
8 of 10
2025 Stats: .230/.342/.434, 12 HR, 30 RBI, 0.4 bWAR
Still Owed: $222.6M through 2030
For the first few years of Mike Trout's now annual relationship with the IL, at least he was still awesome when he was available.
In what amounted to almost a full season's worth of games played (155) between 2021 and 2022, the three-time AL MVP amassed 48 home runs, 98 RBI, a 1.020 OPS and 8.0 bWAR.
After 11 consecutive years slugging at least .550 and OPSing at least .939, however, the wear and tear has bypassed a tipping point for the former generational superstar who is still due a preposterous sum of money.
Trout missed 80 games in 2023, all but 29 games last year and already spent one month on the IL this season. As such, he just last Sunday played in his 162nd game since the beginning of 2023, posting a .246/.349/.489 triple slash with 40 home runs and a 4.4 bWAR.
Not bad numbers by any means, but not typical Trout-ian numbers by any means, either—Kyle Schwarber-like slugging, but with Anthony Rendon-like health.
The 33-year-old has yet to play the field since his return in late May, and at this point, it's possible he never will again, if only to reduce the number of opportunities to get injured.
If that gets him back to a point of playing in more games per season than he misses over the remaining five-and-a-half years on his contract, he should at least provide some ROI. But the thought of Trout remaining one of the 10 highest-salaried players through 2030 has grown cringier with each passing season.
2. Xander Bogaerts, San Diego Padres
9 of 10
2025 Stats: .244/.322/.339, 4 HR, 29 RBI, 13 SB, 0.7 bWAR
Still Owed: $229M through 2033
If the Padres were anywhere near the end of paying Xander Bogaerts around $25 million per year, his modest production wouldn't feel as painful. At any rate, Trevor Story has provided almost the exact same value with a nearly identical salary this season, but he has escaped the "terrible contracts" ire with just two-and-a-half years left on his deal.
But Bogaerts isn't even a quarter of the way through his 11-year contract, and it's already looking like the Padres bought a wildly expensive lemon.
In each of his final five seasons with the Red Sox, the 32-year-old had an OPS+ of 128 or better and earned some votes for AL MVP.
After a worse-but-respectable 117 OPS+ in his first season in San Diego, though, Bogaerts put up a 92 last season and is down even further to an 85 this year. And that's even after a recent hot stretch that included a four-hit game against the Dodgers.
At this point, his glove might be more valuable than his bat, and he probably wouldn't even be one of the three finalists for NL SS Gold Glove if those ballots were due today.
And these were supposed to be the years when his production made up for the inevitable decline later down the road, signed through a season in which he'll turn 41 right around the final game played.
If Bogaerts can't even post a .700 OPS in his early 30s, it's terrifying to think about what his hitting will look like in the early 2030s.
1. Kris Bryant, Colorado Rockies
10 of 10
2025 Stats: six hits in 11 games played
Still Owed: $108M through 2028
This past Thursday marked the official midpoint of what has been one of the worst contracts of all time.
Barely one year after the historically disastrous Nolan Arenado trade and just a few months after losing Trevor Story for nothing more than a compensatory draft pick, the decision to give 30-year-old Kris Bryant $182 million was a colossal head-scratcher from the moment it was announced.
And halfway through the deal, Bryant has been worth negative-1.6 bWAR, appearing in 170 out of a possible 567 games (less than 30 percent) for a team that has gone 206-361, narrowly edging out both the White Sox and the Athletics for most losses since the beginning of 2022—and at least those other two teams properly embraced tanking at some point during that stretch.
It's a shame that lumbar degenerative disc disease has reduced the 2015 NL Rookie of the Year and 2016 NL MVP to less than a shell of what he once was. However, at this point, Bryant's presence on the payroll (and constant absence from the lineup) is little more than an expensive reminder of the Rockies' ongoing failures as a franchise.
