Max Scherzer is making more money than reported yesterday:
Max Scherzer will become the highest-paid righthanded pitcher in major-league history after agreeing to a $210 million, seven-year contract with the Washington Nationals that includes a record $50 million signing bonus.
I had pegged his value at between $201 million and $205 million. Given that there was believed to be another team interested, I’m not surprised it went above that value.
Its interesting that the 34 yo Kevin Browns 1999 deal for 7/105 was worth more adjusting for MLB payroll inflation of 5%. Boras was Browns agent too, In fact, the 2 largest contracts were from 2001 with Manny and Arod whose total value in todays dollars was well over 300 million
Salaries for elite players have really not been keeping pace with payroll and revenue growth inflation. Maybe the owners are just being smarter or the MLBPA claim of collusion in 2003 was true
I don’t understand why we adjust every stat in the book, some of them very imperfectly, but don’t adjust salaries and payroll which are the easiest to adjust accurately