Professional athlete problems

Newsweek: Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder reveals having a very specific no-trade clause; refusing to go to the Yankees, Mets, Blue Jays, Dodgers, Giants or Padres

Call me naïve, but I’ve always had the belief that it’s probably in our best interests to not put our employability at any sort of disadvantage, by doing things like putting in legal writing, refusal to go work for specific employers.  I have a wife and kids, and when the day is over, my obligations is to provide and support and I don’t really think I’m above any particular task or duty in order to accomplish such. 

Sure, there are lots of things I’d rather not do, or places or companies that I’d probably hope to have a superior alternative to, but when push comes to shove, I’ll shovel shit eight hours a day if it meant being able to provide for my family, and do my best to be the absolute best at it.

Then again, I am not a professional athlete, paid exorbitant amounts of money to play sports originating from children’s games.  I have not lost touch with poverty, living paycheck to paycheck, and the constant vigilance of every penny spent.

I am not Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder, Bryan Reynolds, who for whatever reason is very adamant about not wanting to play for a specific list of teams, effectively implying to 1/5 of Major League Baseball that he’d rather be unemployed than play for any of them.  Which to someone like me, is mind-blowing that any player would have no-trade clauses in the first place, because unless they’re true MVP-caliber talent (which Reynolds is not), they’re not going to be endearing themselves to organizations by being inflexible.

What the internet is fascinated by is the list of teams; typically lots of guys who have had no-trade clauses in the past, they typically tend to list off teams generally perceived negatively by the masses; be it that they’re cheap teams, not good teams, in smaller markets, or any combination of the above.  After all, professional athletes play to win, to make money, enjoy their lives, or, any combination of the above.

But the teams Reynolds listed: the Yankees, Mets, Blue Jays, Dodgers, Giants and Padres – very few of the negatives really apply to them, and very much of the positives do.  Currently, all of them are either division leaders or are very much in the postseason picture, and they’re all squads based out of major New York and California markets or Toronto.  All of these teams are very liberal with their spending and all have budgets north of the median MLB payroll.

The immediate joke was that Bryan Reynolds has no actual desire to win, or be a part of a championship squad, seeing as how he plays for the perpetually middling Pittsburgh Pirates, and seems to only refuse to go to squads known for contending.  And the funniest thing is that when called out for such, by once-peers, Reynolds has gone out of his way to defend himself on the internet, validating the idea that he does in fact pay attention to the internet and what others might be saying about him, thus making him owned, but that’s beside the point.

Nerds on the internet were quick to point out that the list of teams Reynolds refuses accept trades to, correlates with high income tax rates, which New York and California do have, and Toronto being in Canada, is subject to massive taxation, which I guess does suck for an American paying Canadian taxes and getting no benefits for it.

However, Bryan Reynolds is a professional athlete, making professional athlete money, netting $12.25M this season and will continue to make more, over the next five years, as he signed an eight-year, $108M deal back in 2023.  Yes, it sucks to know that 40-50% of your income is immediately lost to Uncle Sam, but when the day is over, he’s still pulling in $6M+ a year after that motherfucker takes his pound of flesh.  

It’s hard to feel much empathy for any professional athlete making millions of dollars to play children’s games, and it’s extra puzzling how stingy it would be if income taxes really were the reason why he would block a trade to six of the upper tier of MLB franchises, where he would not only continue to make the contractually obligated millions he’s owed, but he could improve his general brand and parlay it into higher earning opportunities in stronger markets.

What’s funny to me however, is the fact that I don’t know if it’s ignorance or maybe he only does want to play for non-contending losers, but the Oakland Las Vegas Sacramento The A’s are not on his list.  The Dodgers, Padres and Giants being on it makes it sound like he’s avoiding California, but for the next three years, the A’s are still in the state, playing in a very fitting minor league ballpark, considering how the franchise is operated, and it would be hilarious if Bryan Reynolds were to get shipped out there, and his no-trade clause wouldn’t be able to prevent it from happening.  He would then be subject to California’s 13.3% income tax rate, and he’d be playing in a minor league ballpark, for a glorified minor league franchise.

Furthermore, I knew nothing about the guy before finding out about this story, but it’s interesting to deduce his journey through his statistics alone.  He debuted in 2019, had three well above average seasons with one injury-marred flop in the middle, but impressive enough to make the Pirates offer him a huge nine-figure deal to buy out his arbitration seasons and secure him for the next eight.  And in classic, got-the-bag player performance, he has two okay seasons but aren’t even close to the heights he reached in his 6.0 bWAR 2021 season, but apparently the man has fallen off a cliff in this 2025 season, already worth a horrendous -0.7 bWAR at the time I’m writing this.

He’s still going to be due nearly $75M over the next six seasons, and considering the downward trend he’s headed now, it’ll probably be the last big money he’s going to make in his career, so I suppose he should be trying his best to avoid getting shipped off to somewhere where nearly half of it is going to be assimilated by the IRS.

Either way, my final word on Bryan Reynolds is that man be dumb, blacklisting some of the richest and contending teams in the league.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with being in it just to make money, but me personally, anyone who doesn’t want to win while getting rich is missing something, and I’d rather them get the fuck out and make way for someone who wants everything including the bag.

When the Pirates do inevitably move him, because he still fits the mold of a good trade chip, I hope he gets shipped off to The A’s, Rockies, White Sox, Marlins or some other shitty mid franchise who have no desire to win.  To which, at this point in time, the Braves would actually be a club that might work with him, but here’s hoping that doesn’t happen, because I sure as fuck don’t want a dork like him.

The 2025 MLB All-Dead Money Team, starring Stephen Strasburg

When I was putting together my annual Bobby Bonilla Day post, I noticed just how much retained/dead money salaries existed in the MLB ecosystem.  At first, I was going to add it onto the Bobby Bonilla Day post, but as I was typing away, I realized that it had some legs to stand on its own, so I decided to ultimately break it off and let it fly and artificially inflate my post count that doesn’t matter to anyone else on the planet but me.

So as kind of an addendum to the Bobby Bonilla Day post, the topic this post is retained salaries, which I like to simply consider, dead money.

While combing through salary information, I noticed almost as frequent amounts of cases of retained/dead money on most teams, and this is different from deferred money because these payment obligations are not predetermined and agreed upon so much as they’re salaries that teams agree to be responsible for in exchange for these talents to be cut and free up the roster space.

That being said, there were 24 players spanning 18 teams who are getting paid despite in most cases, not being on a Major League roster, or even actively playing at all.  Combing through the names and cases, there are typically two primary camps of retained/dead money: young prospects who clearly have savvy agents who managed to get them guaranteed salary numbers, but they proved to not be ready for the Major Leagues yet, got demoted or cut, but the team was still on the hook.  Or, there are veterans with substantial money, that in most cases, fell off a cliff, got injured, and the team preferred to cut them and eat the salary just to free up the roster spot.

Naturally, 24 players is almost a roster, so here we go again – the 2024 All-Retained, All-Dead Money Starting Lineup that actually has a catcher:

Pos. Name Salary Team Retired?
C Matt Thaiss † $100K CHW/LAA Active
1B Eric Hosmer † $17.9K BOS/SDP 2023
2B Isiah Kiner-Falefa $1.2 PIT Active
3B Nolan Arenado † $5.0M COL Active
SS Wander Franco $16.5 TBR 2023
OF Mitch Haniger $14.5M SEA Active
OF Cody Bellinger $2.5M CHC Active
OF Aaron Hicks $10.7M NYY 2024
DH Jose Abreu † $19.5M HOU 2024
SP Stephen Strasburg $35.0M WAS 2022
SP Nestor Cortes $2.0M NYY Active
RP Ryan Pressley $5.5M HOU Active
RP Taylor Rogers $6.0M SFG Active
Reserves
INF Andres Giminez $1.0M TOR Active
OF Jorge Soler $1.9M SFG Active

†denotes player receiving multiple paychecks

So as you might be able to see, there’s an absurd roster to be constructed from the dead money alone, and further illustrates the egregious amounts of financial waste that exists in the constructs of Major League Baseball, as well as professional sports itself.  Sure, nobody should be obligated to work for free, and I too believe in the idea of past services rendered pay, when players are generally paupers on their minors to majors journey, if they even make it, but there are some dudes who simply don’t need the money and should probably feel ashamed to be accepting it.

Of course, I’m mostly referring to pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who is going to be making $35M from the Washington Nationals (bringing their total sunk cost amount to $60M).  Yes, the man carried the team to a World Series in 2019, and at that point, had already cleared $80M in career earnings.  Since then, he has suffered constant injuries and can no longer play baseball, but somehow the Nats are still on the hook for his retained salary until 2027, in which he will start making deferred payments from them instead.  At this time he has tripled his career earnings, and by the time the Nationals are done being handcuffed to him, he will nearly have quadrupled.

Wander Franco is a unique case, because his salary is probably going to be refunded to the Rays on account of his sexual deviancy scandal which has him out of baseball outright currently, but he still shows up on their books for the time being.

Matt Thaiss is a guy I’ve never heard of in my life, which added to my surprise at seeing him appear twice in retained lists, for both the Angels and the White Sox.  He’s a journeyman catcher who really isn’t good, but as documented, catching is the thankless position, so he seems to have always managed to have a job.  But his agent clearly seemed to be clever enough to ensure that he still got a paycheck, and although both teams are only on the hook for $50K a piece, which is pennies to a Major League squad, $100K to play baseball is still the dream, and why Thaiss makes a roster at all.

As far as dead money goes, there’s about $146,789,000 of it on the books of these 18 teams.  That would rank 16th in MLB payrolls, higher than 14 other teams.

Which brings me to one final observation before I begin to wrap all this up: six teams managed to have absolutely no deferred money obligations, nor did they have any dead money retained salaries.  The A’s, the Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Royals, the Miami Marlins, the Texas Rangers, and of course, the Atlanta Braves.

People accuse me of being pessimistic and curmudgeon about the Braves and their perception that they don’t spend money, but it all comes from actual evidence.  The team is so risk-averse and absolutely unwilling to compete when it comes to any transaction that requires them to open their wallets.  There’s zero creativity when it comes to paying people, and as a result they lose out on every free agent that could possibly help them, and it’s laugh-worthy whenever the Braves’ name is mentioned an interested party in any available free agent.

As much as baseball nerds love to debate and typically applaud teams for smart spending, as it’s demonstrating more and more these days, sometimes you have to spend some money in order to get results.  Everyone may hate the Dodgers for committing a billion dollars to their roster, but there’s little reason to believe that they’re not going to cruise to the playoffs this year, and every foreseeable year afterward.  And when their payments start to come due in the 2030’s, they’re no guarantee to turn into the 2010s Phillies, because they have smart, creative people in their free agent that aren’t afraid to find alternative ways in order to remain competitive.

The six teams that have no debts whatsoever, I don’t really see that as much of a good thing as much as I see six franchises that are cowards when it comes to spending money, and more interested in finding the perfect balance of maintaining a baseball club while padding the pockets of investors.  The challenge as fans is to able to sift through the context, and find out how much teams feed us bullshit, versus how much they’re actually willing to invest.

Anyway, much like Bobby Bonilla Day, when it comes to retained salaries, there’s a tremendous amount of waste here as well.  I don’t know if I will do this one on an annual basis, because I found that writing about this topic dregs up more angst and venom towards the Braves than any Braves fan really should have towards the team they’re actually fans of.

Perhaps if they haven’t been underperforming as much as their roster’s potential could be great, I wouldn’t feel this way, but we’ll see where we land this time next season.

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2025 MLB All-Deferred Money Team

It’s that time of the year again, where Bobby Bonilla collects two big* paychecks from the New York Mets and Baltimore Orioles for playing baseball despite the fact that he’s 62 years old today and hasn’t played baseball since 2001; and I trot out this annual post to put on blast just how stupid and egregious that baseball salaries continuously escalate.

*$1,193,248 from the Mets and $500,000 from the O’s; paltry in the grand spectrum of MLB salaries, but still tremendously more than what successful doctors, teachers and actual essential personnel in the real working world make

It’s funny this year, because of the Dodgers’ absolute bonkers spending spree, and spamming of salary deferral, the whole concept of deferring salaries has come under a massively public microscope.  Most old nerdy fans like me know it’s all well within the rules and that any team in the league can employ it, and as I’ve documented, many have throughout the years, but nobody has really done it to the effect of the Dodgers have over the last offseason, promising out over a billion dollars to several players that will be paid out mostly between the years of 2030 through like, the end of the human race, at the rate we’re going.

But even in spite of the Dodgers’ deferral spree they went on this year, in the grand spectrum of the 2025 season, the Dodgers are but just a mere blip on the radar in the master list of deferrals, as well as dead money throughout the league.  Granted, this will change dramatically in the 2030’s, when Bobby Bonilla’s contract finally ends, and the Dodgers’ deferrals start to kick in and I’ll probably have to change the name of these posts from “Bobby Bonilla Day” to “the Dodgers present,” but until then, there’s still a lot of life in this little exercise continuing to be named after Bobby Bo.

Anyway, on with the show.

In the 2025 season, there are 24 players making deferred monies, according to Spotrac, spread between 14 teams.  Compared to last year, this is one less player and one less team, primarily on account of Ken Griffey Jr. finally coming off the Cincinnati Reds’ books despite not having played since 2010.  I made a joke last year that it was perfect that it was 25 players, since rosters (used to be) are 25-man rosters (with a 26th injured reserve spot).

However, in spite of the one fewer player and one fewer team, these 24 players are making an estimated $83.156M, which is a higher payroll than three teams’ total payrolls: the Chicago White Sox, Miami Marlins of course, the Oakland the Sacramento The A’s.  Barely avoiding the embarrassment of being outspent by a roster of deferred salaries are the Tampa Bay Rays and Pittsburgh Pirates.

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Baseball players’ lives are clearly so excruciatingly hard

The Athletic (paywall’d): MLB players complain about how hard their lives are because they have to work all summers

Honestly, I didn’t intend on actually reading the article, because the quotes in a teaser post were all I really needed to get all hot and triggered and ready to lay blast onto a bunch of overpaid professional athlete man-babies.  But I clicked the link in order to get the URL to link to, and must’ve gotten lucky or something because the paywall didn’t come up before I could copy the whole article, paste it into a document and actually read it after all because fuck paywalls.

But the TL;DR of the whole thing was apparently an anonymous (of course) poll went out to all MLB players and apparently the query of what the biggest misconception about the lifestyles of baseball players was a hot button topic, because it spawned this entire snowball rolling downhill to where it became an article, and snarky broggers like me use it as fodder to air out my own grievances with the wealthy complaining about first-world problems.

More than 130 anonymous (of course) players basically were quoted with some absolutely asinine and tone-deaf lines about how hard their lives are, despite the fact that the league minimum this season is $760K.  And almost every one of these quotes is easily rebuttable and can chalk up to the fact that some privileged millionaire is complaining about things that most anyone that wasn’t a professional athlete would gladly switch places with in order to just get a taste of.

And for the sake of my own amusement, I’m going to take guesses and switch in names of all these anonymous baseball players, because frankly it’s probably not that difficult or too far off to identify who’s been saying some of these idiotic quotes.

Our life is awesome, but it’s not as easy as people think it is,” one National League pitcher Zack Wheeler of the Phillies said. “I don’t know if fans realize that when we say we spend more time with our teammates than our families, we’re not exaggerating. It’s not even close. That’s why I say if you want to be a good dad, a good husband, it’s not easy.”

As both a husband and a dad, I’ll admit there are times in which I’ve felt the want for some general freedom from any sort of attachments.  From what I’ve gathered from all sorts of professional athlete autobiographies I’ve read in my life, I’m sure a lot of pro athletes on the daily probably aren’t complaining about the general nature of getting to be alone and unattached when they’re on the road for 3-4 months of a season. 

Frankly, I bet the underlying message between Wheeler’s remarks is the fact that it’s hard for him to be a husband and dad when he’s home, because he’s all used to being among bros and the team and struggles to turn it off when he’s actually home.  And if that’s the case, that’s more a matter of his maturity and priorities than it is baseball being hard

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Cute, but not accurate

OutKick: Tampa Bay Rays have their first rain delay in the franchise’s history, commemorative ponchos handed out to all 17 of their fans in attendance

I haven’t written much about baseball this season, but then again, I don’t really feel like I’ve written that much over the last few weeks but I digress.  But because a hurricane obliterated Tropicana Field, the dump of a venue that housed the Tampa Bay Rays, the team had been forced to play the entirety of their home games in the 2025 season, at of all places, the Yankees’ Spring Training facilities, Steinbrenner Field.

That being said, seeing as how the Trop was an indoor ballpark, and Steinbrenner Field is very much outdoor, it’s actually kind of amazing that it’s taken this long for the weather to come into play in Florida of all places, and the Rays to deal with a rain delay.  But for all intents and purposes, the franchise has declared it as the first rain delay in Rays history, and to commemorate the tongue-in-cheek occasion, all 17 fans in attendance were given commemorative ponchos, which is actually kind of cool and definitely clutch because rain at pretty much any other ballpark in the country is an instant cash-grab for the venues to be able to hawk overpriced trashbags and umbrellas on the bad luck of those not prepared for potential rain.

However, I’m going to piss on this little parade and go all well actually, because not only was this not the first time a Rays game has been delayed on account of the rain, I can actually say that I was there when it had happened.

It was in 2009, when I was still freelancing, and was having kind of a chill summer vacation on account of being in between assignments and coasting off of a giant payday I made from a project I had completed earlier in the year.  I had money, I had time, I had my Delta flight benefits, and I didn’t want to let the entire summer go by without capitalizing on my advantages at being able to tackle some baseball parks on my quest to visit all 30.

I got to Tampa Bay and basically went straight to the Trop since I didn’t have any time to tourist around like I normally like to do on my baseball trips.  I lucked into a paper World Series of a pitching matchup between Roy Halladay, then with the Blue Jays, and David Price, when he was still the man in St. Pete’s.  Long story short, the game went about six innings of a matchup as good as it was on paper, but unbeknownst to me, the skies had opened up and it was absolutely pouring outside the ceiling of the dome above me.

And then suddenly, there was an announcement over the PA system, and security started going onto the field, and players started coming off of it.  Apparently, on account of the weather, there was a power outage somewhere in the Trop, and despite the fact that nobody could tell where it was, the ballpark felt it prudent to stop the game until the technical difficulties could be resolved.

Despite the fact that the baseball game was being played indoors, the rain had affected something mechanically in the venue, and the venue chose to halt the game in order to fix it.  And there we have it, a rain delay – at an indoor park.

I have no idea if this was the first time that such had happened, but I’m going to assume probably not.  But the point remains is that just because rain isn’t pouring all over the players and fans doesn’t mean that a rain delay couldn’t not happen.  Perhaps if the Rays commemorated something not named the first-ever rain delay, it would be more accurate, but as cheeky as this little “celebration” was, it was very much not accurate.

I know this for fact, because I was there when it happened before, almost 15 years ago.  Shit, Jerome.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Asians just try harder

VNEX: Vietnamese student secures fully-funded PhD scholarships from three different continents

So the sheer volume of schools isn’t going to clear the 155~ mark previously set earlier this #SZN, and no idea what the dollar amount is going to be exactly, probably not clearing $6M cumulatively.  But if there’s one flex that this kid, and I use that term loosely considering he’s a 22-year old undergrad already, can make is that he pulled full rides from schools in three separate continents, from Asia, Australia as well as the United States.

Obviously context matters, and sure he didn’t get acceptances from North Dakota A&M or Idaho Tech, but some of the offers that he turned down were from Nanyang Technical University in Singapore and the University of Sydney in Australia, both of them ranked among the world’s top 20 universities.

Here’s the kicker, and the primary reason why I’m making this post work in #TRYHARDSZN2025: the school he ultimately did end up picking to pursue his PhD at is none other than Virginia Tech. 

That’s right, boy genius from Vietnam going to be a Hokie.  He won’t help the football team or the basketball team suck any less than they have over the span of the last decade, but I’ll take a Hokie W in quidditch much less getting some super boy genius from another country.

But seriously, he definitely does fall into the category of #TRYHARDing, because the boy wanted to improve his station in life, and he understood that education was his best means to do so, and instead of staying in Hanoi, he had bigger aspirations and goals, and worked his ass off in order to achieve them.  Wasted little time at flicking those applications out overseas, and clearly his resume and credentials speak for themselves, if all sorts of colleges are coming out and offering full rides.

All the same, in the grand spectrum of the #SZN, it’s impressive that can flex multiple continents for amassing college acceptances, but he’s also 4-5 years older than most of the teen #TRYHARDs I’m putting him up against.  It’s like when Japanese players out of 5-6 years of NPB go to MLB and are considered rookies, against true untested prospects fresh out of high school and the minor leagues, shit just doesn’t really match up.

But I’m still pleased to read of his overall story, and to know that he’ll be going to Virginia Tech, and hopefully raising their stock in something, even if it’s not athletics.  I support all Hokie success, wherever it may come from.

Man, it’s great to have baseball back

Ain’t nothing to bring us back to the joys of baseball being back in season than a team trotting out a position player to pitch in a blowout game.  On Opening Day.  Against the Chicago White Sox, fresh off of their historic record-setting 121-loss season.

I know the Braves dropped their season opener out in San Diego, but the Padres are actually a good team, and the Braves could just as easily come back to Atlanta 6-1 or 1-6 seeing as how they have the Padres and Dodgers back-to-back to start the year.

But the Angels, a team whom in spite of having lost Shohei Ohtani, still have Mike Trout finally healthy on the team, and should be better than the Chicago White Sox whom really made no attempt to compete, once again.

It’s going to be a long season for both these teams.  And it’s going to be a long season for the Braves too, because 162 games a season plus potential playoffs means a whole lot of fuckin baseball!

Really though, despite the fact that I have no real intention of watching, well, any games, I’m feeling optimistic about the Braves this season.  As long as they can remain healthy, then I think they have the chance to be a noticeably better squad this year than the one prior where they limped into the playoffs and were bounced unceremoniously.  Despite my general dissatisfaction with their typical Braves-ey lack of movement in the offseason, I do like the acquisition of Jurickson Profar, and although they’re no blockbusters, I like them getting guys like Craig Kimbrel and Alex Verdugo for depth.

Either way, short of some comical fuckups and occurrences, I wouldn’t expect much baseball talk in the brog.  I find that I’m most happiest when I’m not really paying attention to the game these days beyond a cursory glance from time to time.  I still love it, I just have so no time in my life to dedicate to it as I once did, and feel that it’s expendable in the grand spectrum of my day to day.

I still hear about the high level points without any effort, and when the day is over, it’s the dumb silly stuff like position players pitching and other goofy anomalies that I tend to enjoy writing about.

Happy Opening Day!