The Ten-Year Contract

Dave Winfield/New York Yankees

Dave Winfield’s was the first contract to set the stage for huge paydays in baseball.  His 1981 free agent deal with the New York Yankees was for ten years, $23 million.  That $23 million in 1981 equals about $60 million in 2012.  Still, this contract was a far cry from what we would see in the future, but it certainly paved the way for big-time deals.

Winfield was very productive with the Padres and he continued that production with the Yankees, but let’s look at the Yankees’ average wins for the ten years prior to the deal and the eight years after (Winfield was traded to the Angels in the middle of his ninth year with the Yankees, and I am excluding the 1981 shortened season because it will skew the numbers):

Before – 90.2

After – 84.3

It would be very difficult to say the Yankees struggles after signing Winfield were a result of his addition.  He was an All-Star in eight straight years, he hit 205 home runs with the Yankees, and he was worth 25.6 WAR.  There weren’t many better options in the outfield than Winfield at the time, so this was a contract that probably didn’t hurt the Yankees too bad.  The fact that the Yankees held on to him for nine years, and only traded him after a slow start to the 1990 season means this is probably the best example of a ten-year contract working out.

Alex Rodriguez/Texas Rangers

It would be 20 years after Winfield singed his ten-year deal that we would see another one.  In 2001, the Texas Rangers made their franchise’s second ten-year contract offer, this time to Alex Rodriguez.  Alex Rodriguez was perhaps the best player in the game at the time.  He hit .309/.374/.561 in his seven years with the Mariners.  He was closing in on 200 home runs.  He was good, and the Rangers needed a boost.  So they gave him a ten-year, $249 million contract.  The deal was the biggest ever offered in baseball by far.  It made Alex Rodriguez just the first player to earn $21 million, $25 million, and $27 million in a single season (his contract was structured to increase his pay each year).

How did the contract work out in terms of wins and losses?  The Rangers ended up trading Rodriguez to the Yankees in 2004, so we’ll look at the average wins for the Rangers in the previous ten years and the average wins in the three years that Rodriguez was there:

Before – 79.5

After – 72

The signing definitely did not help the Rangers win more games.  In fact, the contract was so over-the-top, the Rangers struggled to sign other players they needed.  It finally got to the point where the Rangers had no choice but to trade Rodriguez and absorb a huge chunk of his contract.  When they traded Rodriguez to the Yankees, the Rangers agreed to pay $67 million of the remaining $179 million on Rodriguez’s deal.  This left the club in financial ruin and eventually bankrupt.

If Winfield’s contract is the best example of a ten-year deal working out, Rodriguez’s is the best example of such a deal not working.