Having lost out to the Los Angeles Dodgers so many times, the Toronto Blue Jays apparently decided to just take a page out of their book.
The recent deal they signed with outfielder Anthony Santander? It is MAAAAAASSIVELY deferred.
Per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic on X, Santanderโs five-year, $92.5 million deal is actually worth just $68.6 million in present-day value thanks to a whopping $61.75 million in deferrals(!). So rather than getting close to a $20 million AAV deal, Santander actually got only about $13.7 million AAV. Even with the draft pick compensation factored in, and even granting that his skill set is mostly limited to hitting a ton of dingers, that is an absolute bargain.
It’s also just a tremendous difference from what was originally reported, much like all the recent Dodgers deals. Like I’ve been saying for a long time now, the incentives on this stuff are all wrong: the team doesn’t have a strong incentive to tell the player (and the world) that they’re actually getting a lot less money, the agent potentially doesn’t have a strong incentive to tell the world that he didn’t actually land his client a monster contract, and you just have to hope that the player has other savvy advisors around him to help do the complex math on the deferrals and tax implications.
But, the reality is, if the player is willing to accept huge deferrals in order to get some “headline” number, then teams are just doing the smart thing by continuing to go this route.
This situation reminds me of how NFL contracts are announced at some massive number, everyone reacts, and then the “guaranteed” money – you know, the part that actually matters – comes out later.