‘Baseball is dying?’ Oft-injured ex-Yankees pitcher’s contract refutes narrative, insider says

Even though four of baseball’s marquee free agents — Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Matt Chapman, Cody Bellinger — remain unsigned weeks before spring training, teams have spent more than $2.5 billion on about 97 other free agents, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

But the deals given out by the Los Angeles Dodgers to premier free agents Shohei Ohtani ($700 million) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($325 million) are only pieces to MLB’s power puzzle. Perhaps more illustrative of baseball’s healthy place are the contracts paid to lower/mid-tier players.

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One recent example came to mind for ESPN MLB insider Buster Olney on the “Baseball Tonight” podcast.

“If anybody is saying that baseball is dying, look at James Paxton’s contract,” Olney said Wednesday. “This is someone who’s 35 years old, right? It’s been five years since he’s thrown 100 innings in any season. Last year, he had a 4.50 ERA with the Boston Red Sox. He allowed 18 home runs in 96 innings.

Paxton, while armed with a mid-90s fastball from the left side, has never been a model of durability, and his two-year tenure with the New York Yankees played out like the rest of his career. He threw 150 2/3 innings with a 3.82 ERA in 2019 and then pitched 20 1/3 innings in 2020 because of injuries. In fact, including 2023 with the Red Sox, Paxton has thrown a total of 117 2/3 innings since 2019.

“For the most part in the last five years, James Paxton has either been hurt or not very good,” Olney said. “He got $12 million to pitch in the back end of the Dodgers rotation. That money — they’re not just doling it out as charity. The sport right now is absolutely rich in money.”

Now, who’s willing to spend it is another story, but we digress.

During the 2022 season, MLB team values increased on average by 12% — to $2.32 billion, per Forbes, with revenue at an all-time high of $10.3 billion. It would surprise nobody to see larger numbers in 2023, especially as MLB implemented rule changes such as the pitch clock to much success.

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