$325 million

So Giancarlo Stanton has signed for $325 million for 13 years. I understand that if someone is willing to pay this kind of money the guy has a right to take it. But there is something out of whack here. A person making $250 thousand a year, an excellent salary, would have to work 40 years to make $10 million. I guess I think back to the early 60's when Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, two legitimate Hall of Famers, were being paid $100,000 a year. I know that was a lot of money in the 60's. But it doesn't come close to a salary like Stanton's is today.People could accept that players like Mays and Mantle were special talents and should be paid accordingly. I don't remember a lot of people complaining. There is such a thing as excess, and this salary and the ones paid ARod are excessive. There are soldiers and police and firemen and lots of others who make our society work and don't get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Don't get me wrong, I know that they will never get paid that kind of money and that superstar athletes will always get paid more. That's how it works. But its the amount of difference that is wrong. That is where excess comes in.

On the cops, etc... getting paid.. their choice of career... they were not born to do it and commanded by God to do it. Kind of like teachers always whining about their salary even they knew for 4 years in college what they were going to be paid. I actually have zero sympathy with career choices especially when that career will pay them and provide health care for the rest of their lives paid for by the tax payers.

On the Stanton salary that is as much our fault as anything. We buy the tickets, the merchandise, watch it on tv, etc.....
We empower this to happen.

This deal will be fine for the next 5 years or so I imagine but when he hits his 30's and his numbers drop it will be really bad especially since its back loaded. Ask the Angels how the 2 deals they signed are working out for them? Cardinals dodged a huge bullet by Pujols declining there offer. For the most part these deals just do not work and gm's keep handing them out. For his production Cano's is a huge fail unless they win a World Series. Why would anyone want to play for the Marlins after what happened a few years ago. Good luck dumping this one on somebody. Cabrera's will start looking real bad in the next few years. Verlanders is already looking like a fail. Baseball needs a cap in a bad way. Even if it was a high number somewhere between $125-150 million it would be a good thing.

Good luck to the Marlins in ditching THIS contract when their inevitable fire sale returns.

Dave Miedema

I wondered why one of the best HR hitters would want to play in a park that may take away several homers a year.

But I guess $325 million is a good reason. :D

And before anyone says all his HR's are moonshots and the large park won't hurt him........no not all his HR's are moon shots, some actually barely clear the wall and many of his doubles would be HR's in other parks.

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Originally Posted by Roady

On the cops, etc... getting paid.. their choice of career... they were not born to do it and commanded by God to do it. Kind of like teachers always whining about their salary even they knew for 4 years in college what they were going to be paid. I actually have zero sympathy with career choices especially when that career will pay them and provide health care for the rest of their lives paid for by the tax payers.

On the Stanton salary that is as much our fault as anything. We buy the tickets, the merchandise, watch it on tv, etc.....
We empower this to happen.

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100% agree on that! Most of us won't have that luxury. If I had to do it all over again I would have become a fireman, policeman, or teacher.

There are many different ways of looking at this. We hear about some doofus in Possum Trot, Arkansas winning hundreds of millions of dollars in the Powerball, and we think, "Lucky bastard!" Nobody says, "Well, he doesn't deserve that money!" The guy won a lottery; in a way, Stanton did, too, when you consider that a star player of his caliber needs a certain genetic base to build upon...but it goes without question that Stanton has worked a hell of a lot harder for his money - and will continue to do so for years to come - than the guy who slapped down his two dollars at the Quickee-Mart for a lottery ticket.

As for the teacher/firefighter/cop argument - if you picked any hundred random young people off the street and gave them the necessary training, education and opportunity, you could potentially end up with eighty-five teachers, a dozen cops and firefighters, and three who were not able to cut it at any of those professions. Take those same hundred kids - even limit it to males - and try teaching and training them to be pro Baseball players. You might get a couple who make it to low-A ball.

One more thing - major Hollywood stars. The A-list actors can command salaries in the $10-15 million dollar range, for reciting words and running around in front of a camera for two or three months, while being pampered and stroked and treated like a minor god, and we think that's normal.