Freddie Freeman and a brief history of $100 million ballplayers

Freddie Freeman has had exactly one big season in his career. Freddie Freeman is one of the richest players in baseball history.

Those two sentences are more than a little incongruous. Marc Normandin argues here that the Braves acted rationally and in their best interests. It’s hard to argue with any of the specific points he brings up. There’s a dearth of good, young first basemen; the Braves don’t have a lot of position-player help close to the majors. Just as relevant, the Braves aren’t in position to spend like a big-market team. They couldn’t afford to wait and see if Freeman became a star. If he reached free agency as a star, he would have been gone.

Still, Freeman’s 2013 was the first great season of his career. Somehow, he’s also one of the richest players in baseball history.

Presenting those two sentences without context is deceptive. And kind of fun! It’s like a half-truth you’d see in a political attack ad. We’re not here to debate the relative merits of the deal, though. We’re here to see if any other of the $100 million players have been minted so quickly. Is Freeman the only player to get nine figures after just one big season?

Some points of order: Nine figures in the era of MLB.tv and Foxnet Westnorth Sportsnet money isn’t the same as a nine-figure deal in 1999. These are raw, unadjusted dollars. Also, we’re using five wins above replacement as the cutoff for a “big” season because there has to be a cutoff. Might as well use the one on every player’s Baseball-Reference.com page. And we’ll round up, counting 4.5-win seasons as an All-Star-caliber season.

With data from Cot’s Contracts, here’s a list of the nine-figure contracts in baseball history, along with the number of five-win seasons before the start of each:

There is another nine-figure contract that came without a history of All-Star-caliber seasons. Elvis Andrus is still waiting for his first five-win season, although he has another year before his eight-year deal starts. But if Freeman’s $100+ million deal has a lot to do with his speculative value, Andrus’s was the first to break that barrier.

Some notes:

The most important point: The Freeman deal is something of an outlier, and it’s probably going to be something of a trendsetter. It’s all nine-figure deals and ball bearings these days, and teams are going to speculate a little more with the $100 million deals, especially with the under-25 set, because they want to avoid the $200 million deals. When Freeman’s deal is over, he’ll be 31. I would take the bet that he’ll still be valuable then. The Braves have already placed the bet.

What we don’t know is what a $22 million player will look like in 2020. Apart from the biomechanical implants and hovercleats, at least. The Miguel Cabrera deal looked massive six years ago; now it looks quaint. Focusing on the dollar amount for Freeman and comparing it to other nine-figure deals is interesting enough, but it largely misses the point. Other than Andrus, there’s never been a leap of faith quite like this for a player this young. But the leap of faith isn’t that Freeman will get better, rather that he’ll stay productive for a long time.

Most big contracts are a mistake because the team is paying money for what players did in the past. It’s kind of refreshing to see a forward-looking deal, even if it is most certainly a leap of faith like few before it.

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