If baseball were different, how different would it be?

And if this thought haunted dreams, well stick around and see what Ben and Meg have to say

philosophically and pedantically, it's effectively wild. Effectively Wild.

Effectively Wild!

Hello and welcome to episode 2307 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs.

Hello, Meg.

Hello.

We talked last time about Latimer Guerrero's $500 million extension with the Blue Jays.

We did not know one detail, and it's a fairly big detail, and it's the signing bonus.

Oh, yeah.

We knew that there was one. I mentioned that there was a

signing bonus, but the terms of it had not been reported. And now it turns out that most of the

$500 million deal is signing bonus. It's like, why don't they build the whole plane out of the black

box? Why don't they just make the whole contract out of signing bonus? That is

almost what they've done here. So it's a $325 million signing bonus. And then he gets the remaining

175 mil in salary. So I'll quote from Ken Rosenthal here, the Jays will pay out 65% of Guerrero's contract in signing bonus.

Both the signing bonus and salary will be distributed in varying annual amounts over the 14-year

term of the deal. Baseball CBA does not restrict the amount a team can include in a signing bonus,

much as it doesn't restrict the amount of deferrals.

The bonus, however, is included in the calculation of a player's average annual value

for luxury tax purposes, including salary.

...