Justin Verlander's Contract With The N.Y. Mets

G

Guitarzan

Poster Extraordinaire
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Posts
7,956
Location
Hotlanta, GA
I understand supply and demand. There is a very limited supply of men that can pitch well enough to win 20 or more games a year in Major League Baseball and win multiple Cy Young Awards (even after major surgery). Those men therefore get paid very highly for what they can do even though it is playing a game because someone else places value on it.

But I am surprised that the prevailing market conditions would result in a pitcher getting paid $43MM per year under a 2 year contract. That is over $2MM per game for the highest number of wins he has ever had in a season.

I infer that the Mets believe that TV revenue, merchandising revenue, and ticket and concession revenue will continue to increase no matter what.

Verlander is married to the buxom Kate Upton.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2022/12/05/justi ... r-contract
 
fleezinator

fleezinator

Tele-Holic
Joined
Apr 4, 2020
Posts
556
Location
Texas
A little bummed he's leaving but at least it wasn't for the Yankees or the Dodgers. Can't blame him for chasing that loot.
 
RoscoeElegante

RoscoeElegante

Poster Extraordinaire
Ad Free Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2015
Posts
5,379
Location
TooFarFromCanada
I've loved baseball since I can remember. I'd rather watch it rain on an abandoned Little League field than sit at the 50-yard line at the Super Bowl, etc., etc.

I too understand supply and demand. I don't want excessive regulations on economies. I get that these athletes have a fragile and brief high-earnings period. Etc., etc.

But these salaries are obscene. Cops and social workers and nurses and research scientists earn shards of pennies compared to people who can throw, hit, catch, run.

I also dislike how so few baseball players show any loyalty to their first/longest-tenure teams these days. $6,000,000 per year in a city that loves you is no good because you can earn a $10,000,000 per year somewhere else? Where are the Ripkens of yesteryear? (Not that the Orioles paid Cal in crab shells, but you get my point.)

If the game weren't so damn beautiful, I'd say a pox on 'em all.
 
Knows3Chords

Knows3Chords

Tele-Afflicted
Joined
Sep 2, 2022
Posts
1,563
Location
Michigan
Manual Slim said:
I'm pretty sure the Mets are paying him extra for that.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's a package deal.

I do understand that guys like Verlander are breathing rarified air, but I just can't image where the money keeps coming from on these big sports contracts.
 
Joe M

Joe M

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 16, 2003
Posts
3,997
Location
Michigan
For one fleeting moment, some of us here in Michigan thought he might want to finish his career here, where he started. Guess money is way more important than sentiment....:(
 
Milspec

Milspec

Poster Extraordinaire
Joined
Feb 15, 2016
Posts
8,535
Location
Nebraska
A franchise that wins the World Series walks away with about $35 million just from that series. Add in all the ticket sales, tv deals, merchandise, etc. over the course of the season and you can see why Justin's contract was an acceptable expense to the owner.

It is still a gamble, but Verlander is a great pitcher. Sparky Anderson used to describe the difference between a good pitcher and a great pitcher. A good pitcher can beat you when his stuff is good that night. A great pitcher can find a way to beat you when their stuff isn't very good that night. Verlander is a smart pitcher who can beat you when he is having a good night or not.
 
G

Guitarzan

Poster Extraordinaire
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Posts
7,956
Location
Hotlanta, GA
RoscoeElegante said:
But these salaries are obscene. Cops and social workers and nurses and research scientists earn shards of pennies compared to people who can throw, hit, catch, run.
Click to expand...

Cops and other govt. employees and everything on which a govt. spends money is an expense. Further, there is no shortage.

There is a limited supply of nurses and outright shortages in some places, and they get paid pretty well. They probably have more negotiating power now than ever.

The better comparison is the feast vs. famine among professional baseball players in the minor leagues and the major leagues. The compensation and perquisites for virtually all players in the minor league systems are meager compared to those in the major league. Even within the major league teams, there is a large variation in compensation from the lowest paid 5 players and the 5 players that are the highest paid.

I have spoken at length with guys that rode the buses in the minor league systems for years for a chance to make it to the show. Their pay and quality of life sucked in the minors and they never had a big payoff. Then the end comes, reality sets in, and they have to work mind numbing jobs in the real world. They start working in the real world considerably behind the curve in terms of professional experience and skill due to foregoing real world experience while playing minor league baseball.

I know a number of guys that played football in the NFL that came out of it with very little as well.
 
Milspec

Milspec

Poster Extraordinaire
Joined
Feb 15, 2016
Posts
8,535
Location
Nebraska
Guitarzan said:
Cops and other govt. employees and everything on which a govt. spends money is an expense. Further, there is no shortage.

There is a limited supply of nurses and outright shortages in some places, and they get paid pretty well. They probably have more negotiating power now than ever.

The better comparison is the feast vs. famine among professional baseball players in the minor leagues and the major leagues. The compensation and perquisites for virtually all players in the minor league systems are meager compared to those in the major league. Even within the major league teams, there is a large variation in compensation from the lowest paid 5 players and the 5 players that are the highest paid.

I have spoken at length with guys that rode the buses in the minor league systems for years for a chance to make it to the show. Their pay and quality of life sucked in the minors and they never had a big payoff. Then the end comes, reality sets in, and they have to work mind numbing jobs in the real world. They start working in the real world considerably behind the curve in terms of professional experience and skill due to foregoing real world experience while playing minor league baseball.

I know a number of guys that played football in the NFL that came out of it with very little as well.
Click to expand...
I do as well. A defensive lineman for both the Raiders and the Chiefs ended up working corrections with me after his career ended. He had very little of his NFL salary left and was now working for less than $10 / hr. with a bad back and terrible knees. He was about 6'7" and it turns out that when lineman end their careers, few of them have any curvature to their spine...just flat.

It is all relative though. At that same corrections job, we had a new crop of officers come through that I was asked to guide around for a week. There were 5 of them and I took the opportunity to get a quick bio from each. The first 4 were mostly fresh off the farm or after dropping out of college, but the 5th one was a shock.

That 5th officer, who was hired to work the night shift at a prison in the middle of nowhere, was the former Minister of Health for Ethiopia!!! Not kidding, my jaw about hit the floor when he showed me his credentials. He earned a medical degree in the US and did his residency at a highly regarded hospital in New England prior to ending up in Ethiopia by marriage and becoming the Minister of Health!!

I asked him why the hell he took this job? He told me that he could live better in the US on an officer's pay than he could in Ethiopia and that if he wanted to return to medicine, it would take years of school to get back up to speed and he had no desire to do it.

Money is all relative.
 
KC

KC

Poster Extraordinaire
Joined
Mar 16, 2003
Posts
5,177
Location
Missoula, Montana
Minority opinion: why should we care? It's just money. Tom Cruise makes that kind of money appearing (mainly) in terrible movies. Mariah Carey makes bank every Christmas, and sometimes in-between. Baseball players are incredibly good at something that's incredibly hard to do, and the .001% who make it get paid. Or do you think the owners should just keep all the money?
 
G

Guitarzan

Poster Extraordinaire
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Posts
7,956
Location
Hotlanta, GA
Red Ryder said:
No one is worth that kind of money especially athletes.
Click to expand...

There is no reason to argue with supply and demand. If someone pays them that kind of money, it because they determined it is worth it. We may not agree, but we are not the ones that decide whether to pay it or not.
 
RoscoeElegante

RoscoeElegante

Poster Extraordinaire
Ad Free Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2015
Posts
5,379
Location
TooFarFromCanada
KC said:
Minority opinion: why should we care? It's just money. Tom Cruise makes that kind of money appearing (mainly) in terrible movies. Mariah Carey makes bank every Christmas, and sometimes in-between. Baseball players are incredibly good at something that's incredibly hard to do, and the .001% who make it get paid. Or do you think the owners should just keep all the money?
Click to expand...
Well, we're not supposed to argue here. So I'll just provide this:
https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-an-either-or-fallacy.htm

My point is that a few people earning mountains of money for relatively insignificant skills and achievements while others who do much more humanity-helping things often must scrape by is seriously absurd and unjust. (And that trying to regulate this would be its own can of mess, so onward it all rolls.)

Also: I sure hope that the Red Sox & Cubs get their respective acts together. Fenway and Wrigley are even better celebrations of baseball's inherent beauty when their resident teams are decent.
 
Bucster752

Bucster752

Tele-Meister
Joined
Nov 5, 2022
Posts
140
Location
Texas
Sadly, the concept of loyalty does not exist in major league sports. With the money he made on his Houston contract (not to mention the years he spent in Detroit) you'd think his millions would be more than enough to see him through his retirement years. As an outsider I certainly lack his perspective on this issue, but really......how much money does one need? So the Mets got him for what.....$43M a year? Seems to me the $40M Houston had offered was more than enough to stay with a team that helped him win a Cy Young and two World Series. Greed trumps loyalty every time. That's sad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.




New Posts

Top