Bonilla_mets

 

(Source: Faniq.com) 

There has been a lot of local sports talk about contracts this week with Ryan Howard, Jayson Werth, and Kevin Kolb.

So it is fitting that this gem of a dealfor ex-Met Bobby Bonilla made news again this week. For some unknown reason the Mets decided to defer a final payment of $5.9M he was due when they released him in January of 2000 after his second stint with the team in 1999. Instead, they agreed to pay him 25 equal payments of approximately $1.19M every July from 2011 to 2035. 


I'm no financial whiz and I know this figure is calculated with compound interest and I suppose some really smart people could invest nearly $6M in 2000 and end up making enough money to make a profit on this deal. Maybe even legally. But this is the Mets we are talking about. The GM at the time of this deal was Steve Phillips, so he may have had other things weighing on his mind when he agreed to this deal. And whoever negotiated that deal for Bonilla (maybe this guy?) did some great work.

That $5.9M is going to end up costing the Mets a total of about $28.6M when it is paid up in 2035, which is almost as rich as the total of his original record-breaking contract with the Mets in 1992. Well done.