Bryce Harper. Mike Trout. Manny Machado. Nolan Arenado.
These four earned a grand total of $122,025,000 in 2019. I repeat, $122,025,000.
The Tampa Bay Rays’ total payroll is $63,143,722 and the Oakland Athletics’ payroll is $92,894,531 –– $156,038,253 combined.
What’s the difference between these four players and the Rays and the A’s? These four players did not make the postseason. In fact, Bryce Harper was the only one of these players who came close, and the Phillies still placed eight games back of the second wild card seed.
This begs the question: Are these multi-million dollar long term contracts worth it? After all, these are the top four paid players in baseball. Shouldn’t they be yielding the best results if they are getting paid the most?
Let’s look at the slash lines.
Bryce Harper:
.260/.372/.510 with 35 home runs. He was not an All-Star.
Mike Trout:
.291/.438/.645 with 45 home runs. He was an All-Star.
Manny Machado:
.256/.334/.462 32 home runs. He was not an All-Star.
Nolan Arenado:
.315/.379/.583 with 41 home runs. He was an All-Star.
I understand that one player cannot single-handedly win games. However, if a team is paying a player hundreds of millions of dollars over the duration of eight-plus seasons, shouldn’t that player at least make it to the All-Star Game?
Big contracts only hurt teams. Look at the Boston Red Sox. They have the highest payroll in the MLB and they finished 19 games out of first place and 12 games back of the wild card. If a team has the talent and the ability to pay players, these players need to make it into the postseason.
However, it is extremely difficult for a player having as large a contract as these four to make it far or into the postseason. One player can’t carry a team. Trout can hit as many home runs as he wants, but it won’t fix an average starting pitching ERA over five.
Mike Trout is unarguably the best player in modern baseball. He deserves the contract that he was given. But don’t you think he wants a ring? He can’t get there with the team surrounding him because the Angels can’t pay anyone else to help him get there.
It says something when the four highest-paid players in the game miss the playoffs. You can’t buy wins. The Nationals made the postseason a year after dumping Bryce Harper, following a season where they missed the playoffs with him. The Dodgers are the favorites to make the World Series a year after Manny Machado helped them lose it.
The Rockies let D.J. LeMaheiu and Adam Ottavino walk to the Yankees for nothing except salary relief in order to pay Arenado. The Yankees would be at a disservice to not credit these two for their success in the regular season, and so far in October as well.
The Angels simply haven’t been able to get their act together with the players they do have. They also dealt with a massive loss in Tyler Skaggs earlier in the season that topped their list of grievances that made this team miss the playoffs.
Just because a player is paid doesn’t mean he’ll get to end the season popping bottles with a shiny new ring on his finger.
