Ranking MLB's Most Team-Friendly Contracts Heading into 2024 Season | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

Fernando Tatis Jr., San Diego Padres
$11 million salary in 2024; 10 years, $306 million after 2024

Basically a more drawn-out version of the Sonny Gray contract mentioned above. Tatis' $11 million salary in the upcoming season is maybe 25 percent of what he's actually worth right now. But when he's making $216 million over the final six years of this deal, it's probably going to get painful.

Kodai Senga, New York Mets
$14 million salary in 2024; 3 years, $42 million after 2024

Great value here based on Senga's performance as an MLB rookie in 2023. However, if he logs at least 233.2 innings over the next two seasons, he will have the ability to opt out of the final two years of the deal during the 2025-26 offseason. And any time there's a player option involved, the deal becomes much less team-friendly in a hurry.

Logan Webb, San Francisco Giants
$8 million salary in 2024; 4 years, $82 million after 2024

After back-to-back years of Webb receiving Cy Young votes, the five-year extension he signed early in the 2023 campaign is looking great. He likely would have gotten more than $8 million this season in arbitration, more than $12 million next season in arbitration and a good bit more than $23.3 million in free agency if his next two years are anything like the last three. Had we made this a top 11, Webb gets that last spot.

Julio Rodríguez, Seattle Mariners
$10 million salary in 2024; 5 years, $90 million for 2025-29, followed by options with all sorts of possible escalators

If we temporarily ignore the 2030 and beyond option/escalator-heavy portion of this deal, it is a seven-year, $119.3 million contract, which averages out to a $17 million annual value. Without question, Rodríguez is worth that and then some. End the contract there and he's easily top-five on this list.

But with his top-10 finishes in the AL MVP vote in each of the past two years, the price of that club option is already up to eight years, $240 million. If he wins AL MVP this year (or any of the next five years) it goes up to $280 million. It could even spike to 10 years, $350 million with enough MVP recognition in the next half-decade.

And because he gets more expensive the better he plays between now and 2028, the latter stages of this deal don't feel so team-friendly.

That said, if he wins two AL MVPs in the next five years (or places top-five three more times), if Seattle decides the $350 million club option is too rich for its blood and Rodríguez declines the five-year, $90 million player option to hit free agency, at least it will have been one hell of a run. It sure could make for an awkward 2029 season, though, as Seattle has to decide on the 2030 club option before '29 begins.