This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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"What I think about in a recap like this is the arc of a player’s career. Take Judge, for instance. The Yankees desperately needed Judge’s bat in their lineup for 2023, and the price for having that was a nine-year, $360-million contract. The Yankees knew they bought a declining player, and they hoped that the decline would be slow and they can leverage the early years by winning with Judge. If it’s a nine-year contract on the page, you’re hoping for five good seasons before time comes for Judge. If it’s an 11-year contract for Turner or Bogaerts, you’re betting the player will hold form and that you can win in those early years. You can’t get superstars on three- and four-year deals, so you sign them for two and three times that long and hope. The value of the contract to the player may be linear, but the value of the contract to the team is front-loaded. "
