The state of the MLB game: What $300 million gets you
By Rick Soisson
Taking a look at the performance of Giancarlo Stanton
It’s slipping into the mists of the history now, but the first $300 million contract, Giancarlo Stanton’s, produced an MVP season. To the eternal annoyance of Yankees fans, those following the player’s current team, Stanton won that award in a Marlins uniform in 2017, his third year under the big deal.
The outfielder also won a Silver Slugger award in 2017. However, aside from a few MVP votes with the Yankees in 2018, when he drove in 100 runs, Stanton has won no Silver Sluggers, no Gold Gloves, and has not finished in the top five in the MVP vote in the four seasons since his MVP year.
Does this amount to six years of $150 million wasted by the Fish and Bombers? I suppose that depends on what you want to see from your highly paid MLB stars. What matters to you? Where your team finishes or what your most expensive star does?
Stanton’s performance suggests that giving 300 million clams to one player will put your team in contention, but you may never get past the league championship series. Stanton’s 2019 Yankees lost to the Astros in the ALCS.
Moreover, if your locker room isn’t in Yankee Stadium, your team may finish no better than second, as Stanton’s 77-85 Marlins did in his MVP season.
However, those baseball fans who live for the big moment must have had some fun in Miami in that season, when Stanton mashed 59 homers and drove in 132 runs, both MLB-leading figures. Likewise, Yankee fans must have been pretty tingly when the slugger lost six baseballs in fair territory and drove in 13 runs in the COVID postseason, even if they were watching on TV.
To put all this another way, Giancarlo Stanton’s experience after signing his blockbuster contract suggests that dishing out tons of cash to even a supremely talented player doesn’t change the fact that baseball is a team sport.
Is there anything discoverable about the seven other players who have thus far played after signing for $300 million or more that undercuts this suggestion?