16. Matt Olson, Oakland Athletics
2021 salary: $5 million.
2021 value: $13.493 million.
Difference: $8.493 million.
Olson is the kind of guy a small-market team like the A’s needs to feature every season in order to be successful. Which makes it kind of ironic that in Olson’s best season, Oakland’s playoff run came up short.
First base is very much a big-money position. The average salary of a regular Major League first baseman in 2021 was about $7.42 million. Only third basemen, right fielders and DHs made more on average, and not much more.
Among the 30 regular first basemen, Olson ranked a middlin’ 13th in paycheck. Yet at 153 he was third in OPS+, and at 5.8 he was also third in WAR. Among the guys who did not measure up to Olson’s 2021 are a few fellows you’ve heard of: Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, Jose Abreu, Yuli Gurriel and Pete Alonso.
This was so much Olson’s best year that one wonders whether it is possible for him to approach it again. He had career bests in home runs (39), RBIs (111), average (.271), on base (/371), and walks (88).
Given Oakland’s perennially tight budget situation, Olson’s salary negotiations will be especially fun to watch. Assuming arbitration survives into next season in something approaching its present form, Olson will be a second year arbitration candidate.
The A’s have generally tried to avoid arbitration if at all possible – not a single A’s player has gone to a hearing since 2019. But whether Billy Beane and David Forst can reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with Olson after the kind of season he had may be a challenge of another magnitude.
That may also make him a likely trade candidate. Are you listening, Yankees?