Ranking MLB's 10 Worst Contracts on the Books for 2026 Season
Major League Baseball is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and even the Pittsburgh Pirates are reportedly one of the most profitable teams in the league. It's hard to look at a landscape like this and begrudge money that isn't being well-spent.
Hard, but not impossible. And now as much as ever, the worst contracts in MLB today really do stick out like so many sore thumbs.
We're going to rank the 10 worst of the worst going into the 2026 season, which required laying down some ground rules. To qualify for consideration, a contract had to be:
This otherwise required being realistic about what contracts have bought so far. To wit, as bad as Mike Trout's and Giancarlo Stanton's deals look now, each bought an MVP-winning season early on.
The worst contract in the league is one that has already gone very bad and which still has multiple years and many millions of dollars remaining on it. And that, naturally, is the one we'll be counting down to.
10. RHP Antonio Senzatela, Colorado Rockies
1 of 10
Age: 30
2025 Stats: 30 G (23 GS), 130.0 IP, 192 H (22 HR), 73 K, 47 BB, 6.65 ERA
Contract Status: Year 5 of 5-year, $50.5 million
WAR During Contract: 0.0
The biggest problem with this contract is that it ever existed in the first place.
The Rockies extended Antonio Senzatela in tandem with C.J. Cron in October 2021, when they were coming off an 87-loss season. This was also less than a year after they had traded Nolan Arenado, which seemed to signal a deliberate shift in the direction of rebuilding.
The timing therefore would have been odd even if Senzatela had proved himself as a good pitcher, and it's a stretch to say he had done so at that point. His first five seasons had yielded 7.0 rWAR and a 103 ERA. That isn't so much "guy you build around" as just plain "guy."
In all fairness, the Rockies couldn't have predicted the torrent of injuries that would render him largely unable to pitch between 2022 and 2024. He mostly missed time with a double whammy of a torn ACL and Tommy John surgery, resulting in just 24 appearances.
And yet, the Rockies should have concluded that even a healthy Senzatela would be at risk of an ERA as high as 6.65. He's a high-contact pitcher at Coors Field, which is the baseball equivalent of a sentient bag of chum in shark-infested waters.
9. RF Nick Castellanos, Philadelphia Phillies
2 of 10
Age: 33
2025 Stats: 147 G, 589 PA, 17 HR, 4 SB, .250 AVG, .294 OBP, .400 SLG
Contract Status: Year 5 of 5-year, $100 million
WAR During Contract: 1.3
Let's give Nick Castellanos some grace for a second. He's had good moments as a member of the Phillies, including in the one month where good moments matter most.
Remember when he suddenly began playing like a Gold Glover in the 2022 playoffs? That was cool. And remember that one stretch in the 2023 playoffs when he homered five times in three games? That was cool, too.
Even despite the latter, though, Castellanos only has a .658 OPS to show for 38 playoff games as a Phillie. It's not quite enough to redeem a regular-season run that has been somewhere south of inspired.
He's peaked as a 1.5-WAR player over four seasons, and that was in a 2023 season in which he undercut his 29 homers and 106 RBI with a .311 OBP and -9 Defensive Runs Saved. Per his -90 career mark for the latter, he remains one of the worst fielders ever.
This year was certainly Castellanos' nadir as a Phillie, yet he wasn't self-aware enough to take a demotion to a platoon role in stride. There has been trade buzz surrounding him this winter, but the chances of any team actually wanting the last year of his contract seem slim.
8. RHP Taijuan Walker, Philadelphia Phillies
3 of 10
Age: 33
2025 Stats: 34 G (21 GS), 123.2 IP, 132 H (21 HR), 86 K, 42 BB, 4.08 ERA
Contract Status: Year 4 of 4-year, $72 million
WAR During Contract: 2.4
As bad as the Nick Castellanos investment has been for the Phillies, at least you can rationalize it by pointing to his postseason heroics and steady presence in their lineup.
It suffices to say it's harder to do that with Taijuan Walker's deal.
His "best" season was his Phillies debut in 2023, when his 4.38 ERA and 172.2 innings were more or less what the team was hoping for after he was brought on to provide depth behind Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Ranger Suárez.
Since then, though, he's provided 207.1 innings' worth of replacement-level work.
There are no postseason heroics to cite as a saving grace for Walker's time with the Phillies. He has appeared in one of the 21 playoff games they have played in since his arrival, and it was in mop-up duty in Game 3 of the NLDS this year.
Given the money and the team involved, this is a relatively inoffensive failure of a contract. But it is what it is, and the chances of it taking a successful turn in 2026 aren't especially high.
7. INF/OF Javier Báez, Detroit Tigers
4 of 10
Age: 32
2025 Stats: 126 G, 437 PA, 12 HR, 5 SB, .257 AVG, .282 OBP, .398 SLG
Contract Status: Year 5 of 6-year, $140 million
WAR During Contract: 3.9
To Javier Báez's credit, his contract looks a lot better now than it did a year ago.
He went into 2025 off a dismal season in which he had a .516 OPS and -1.1 rWAR in just 80 games. One couldn't help but wonder if the time had come for the Tigers to simply release him and eat the last three years and $73 million left on his deal.
That they instead chose to turn him into a utility man worked wonders, as he proved surprisingly adept in center field and even returned to the All-Star Game for the first time since 2019.
However, he crashed in the second half, posting a .548 OPS that effectively killed his offensive turnaround. He now has a 75 OPS-plus in four seasons as a Tiger, the worst of any hitter who's taken at least 1,800 plate appearances since 2022.
As such, all Báez may have done in 2025 is delay the inevitable. This still feels like a situation where his release is going to come sooner than his final paycheck as part of this deal.
6. DH Masataka Yoshida, Boston Red Sox
5 of 10
Age: 32
2025 Stats: 55 G, 205 PA, 4 HR, 3 SB, .266 AVG, .307 OBP, .388 SLG
Contract Status: Year 4 of 5-year, $90 million
WAR During Contract: 3.0
The deal that Masataka Yoshida made with the Red Sox in December 2022 seemed to come out of nowhere, and it didn't go over well in the industry.
"We thought he was worth less than half of what they paid," was how one MLB executive summed it up to ESPN's Kiley McDaniel.
Yoshida nonetheless had an interesting enough profile as a contact-first hitter with some power to work with, and it played solidly enough in 2023 for him to place in the AL Rookie of the Year voting after hitting .289.
Yet due to his modest abilities to draw walks, hit for power, run the bases and play defense, he only had 1.4 rWAR that year. He followed with the exact same mark in 2024, and then missed most of this year following shoulder surgery.
Yoshida now exists in an awkward limbo on the Red Sox's roster. There's no room for him in the outfield, and he's not the kind of hitter a team wants to be its designated hitter. But unless they can dump him in a bad contract swap, they're probably stuck paying him $18.6 million for each of the next two years.
5. LF Andrew Benintendi, Chicago White Sox
6 of 10
Age: 31
2025 Stats: 116 G, 470 PA, 20 HR, 1 SB, .240 AVG, .307 OBP, .431 SLG
Contract Status: Year 4 of 5-year, $75 million
WAR During Contract: 0.6
The deal the White Sox did with Andrew Benintendi in January 2023 was the biggest they had ever done in free agency, and it never did make much sense.
The White Sox were coming off a 2022 season in which they were frankly lucky to finish with even an 81-81 record. What they really needed was impact players, whereas Benintendi is the kind of guy you should bring aboard to cross a T in a sentence that is otherwise complete.
He was a good player in 2021 and 2022, but in a limited capacity. He mostly functioned as a singles hitter who played good defense in left field, a non-premium position on the defensive spectrum.
The Benintendi signing therefore stood to be a bust even if he performed as advertised, and he simply hasn't done that. Out of 88 players who have played in at least 400 games since 2023, he's 86th in rWAR.
Granted, the 20 homers Benintendi has hit in each of the last two seasons are a nice touch. But since he's no longer a high-average hitter or good defender, it feels like the WAR version of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
4. RHP Lance McCullers Jr., Houston Astros
7 of 10
Age: 32
2025 Stats: 16 G (13 GS), 55.1 IP, 61 H (10 HR), 61 K, 39 BB, 6.51 ERA
Contract Status: Year 5 of 5-year, $85 million
WAR During Contract: 0.3
This was something of a preemptive move by the Astros. Though Lance McCullers Jr. signed his extension in March 2021, the deal itself did not begin until 2022.
The only time the deal aged well was during the 2021 season, when he made 28 starts and posted a 3.16 ERA with 185 strikeouts over 162.1 innings. Had he reached free agency after that year, he surely would have been in line for a lot more than $85 million.
Pretty much ever since then, though, it's been one setback after another for McCullers. He barely pitched in 2022 because of pain in his elbow caused by a bone spur, and then not at all in 2023 or 2024.
By the time he returned to the mound on May 4 this year, it had been over 915 days since he had last pitched in Game 5 of the 2022 World Series. It would have been nice if his return had been a happy one but, well, you see the numbers.
As of now, McCullers is slated to be part of Houston's bullpen in 2026. But given he was mostly pitching out of the bullpen at the end of 2025, it doesn't seem like a given he'll actually open next season as a starter.
3. RHP Yu Darvish, San Diego Padres
8 of 10
Age: 39
2025 Stats: 15 GS, 72.0 IP, 66 H (14 HR), 68 K, 19 BB, 5.38 ERA
Contract Status: Year 4 of 6-year, $108 million
WAR During Contract: 2.8
Timing is everything. Because while a six-year, $108 million contract for a pitcher of Yu Darvish's caliber is a steal in a vacuum, that's not where it was done in February 2023.
This deal came together ahead of what was going to be his age-36 season, meaning it would last through his age-41 season. It was a shockingly bold bet that a mid-30s pitcher who'd already had Tommy John surgery (2015) and arthroscopic surgery on his elbow (2018) would age gracefully.
He has not. He was a below-average pitcher in 2023, and has made only 31 regular-season appearances across the last two seasons because of various injuries, including an elbow issue this spring that delayed his 2025 debut to July.
And now, Darvish is set to miss all of 2026 recovering from another major surgery on his elbow. If and when he's able to return in 2027, he'll be 40 years old.
He'll technically have two more chances to redeem this contract if he is able to return, and he's too talented to disregard that possibility altogether. For now, though, this contract sure looks like a sunk cost.
2. 3B Anthony Rendon, Los Angeles Angels
9 of 10
Age: 35
2025 Stats: Did not play
Contract Status: Year 7 of 7-year, $245 million
WAR During Contract: 3.9
This contract is here only because it's not officially off the books yet. But it soon will be, as Alden Gonzalez of ESPN reported this week that Anthony Rendon and the Angels are in talks to but out the final year of his contract.
Lest anyone forget, Rendon's contract started as a strong investment. The good vibes were there after he had played a starring role in the Washington Nationals' World Series run in 2019. And even if it was just a 60-game season, he still set a career-best with a .418 on-base percentage in his Angels debut in 2020.
There's just nothing good to say about what has happened since then. Seriously, not one good thing.
Rendon was one of the most unproductive players in baseball between 2021 and 2024, playing in only 205 games because of injuries and posting just 1.7 rWAR in those games.
His willingness to publicly declare his indifference to baseball was certainly tone-deaf, even if his actual message bordered on being admirable. It might have gone over better if he'd made the effort to endear himself to literally anyone, but he chose to never play ball with the media and even fought with a fan at one point.
Rendon sat out the entire 2025 season after undergoing surgery on his left hip. Him actually playing in 2026 had seemed unlikely for a while, so it's hardly a surprise that Gonzalez's report also mentions that Rendon is likely to retire.
1. 1B Kris Bryant, Colorado Rockies
10 of 10
Age: 33
2025 Stats: 11 G, 41 PA, 0 HR, 0 SB, .154 AVG, .195 OBP, .205 SLG
Contract Status: Year 5 of 7-year, $182 million
WAR During Contract: -1.6
Whatever the Rockies were thinking when they signed Kris Bryant in March 2022, it made sense to them and to them alone.
This is yet another deal that didn't fit into a logical throughline after the Nolan Arenado trade, which is to say nothing of what Bryant was at that point. The Rockies paid him like a superstar, while it was clear his prime was over.
After averaging 6.5 rWAR per 162 games between 2015 and 2017, Bryant slipped to 4.0 rWAR per 162 games between 2018 and 2021. The eye test painted an even worse picture, as he seemed to be losing bat speed and no longer athletically capable of hacking it as a primary outfielder.
You have to wonder now if that 2021 season is the moment that Bryant truly burned himself out. He's barely played since then, suiting up for only 170 games as a Rockie and hitting a grand total of 17 home runs. He hit nearly as many just in the first half of the 2021 campaign.
It's not his fault that the Rockies offered him $182 million, and any reasonable person's heart will sink when upon hearing his back is stiff and painful when he wakes up every morning.
It would be a bit of mercy for the Rockies to let Bryant go, either by releasing him or by working out a retirement payment plan. To do otherwise would be to pretend this contract can be saved, and it simply can't.
.jpg?w=600 "Pickens' Trade Ultimatum")