The Major League Baseball offseason has seen a lot of action, with several high-profile players switching teams through trades or free agency.
The offseason got off to a hot start with the biggest free agent, Juan Soto of the New York Yankees, signing a deal with the New York Mets worth $765 million over 15 years.
Soto’s deal became the biggest contract in MLB history, passing Shohei Ohtani’s deal from the previous offseason.
Ohtani’s deal included most of the money being deferred over many years, and MLB player Bobby Bonilla had an honest admission about his famous deferred contract.
“It was done so quietly. Nobody knew I was putting the money away. To be quite honest with you, I don’t know how it got done,” Bonilla said.
On the podcast, Bobby Bonilla Day tells the story of how his contract came together. https://t.co/K33FlXQXMt pic.twitter.com/hsoOq2xxbC
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) January 31, 2025
Bonilla mentioned that he didn’t really consider the contract being deferred since he was in the midst of his playing career and concentrating on the game.
The basics of Bonilla’s contract included the Mets taking $5.9 million owed to Bonilla in 1999 and paying it out in installments later on from the years 2011-2035.
With the amount of talk about deferred contracts in today’s game, Bonilla could potentially be the first deferred contract in MLB history.
Bonilla entered the league in 1986 with the Chicago White Sox and played for eight different teams over his 16-year career.
Bonilla’s career stats include playing 2,113 games, in which he batted .279, hit 287 home runs, had 1,173 RBIs, and had an OPS of .829.
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