The Los Angeles Dodgers have made an art of deferred contracts.
The team currently has $1.01 billion in deferred contracts extended to eight players, including $680 million to Shohei Ohtani, and smaller amounts to pitcher Blake Snell, infielder/outfielder Tommy Edman, and reliever Tanner Scott, all of whom signed last offseason with the Dodgers.
“It’s a beautiful thing,” Bobby Bonilla, who boasts one of the most well-known deferred contracts in Major League Baseball, said about the Dodgers deferred deals. “It’s a reminder that I did the right thing by putting the money away.”
Bonilla has the granddaddy of all deferred deals, and July 1 is his biggest day of the year. The date has become synonymous with the former Major League outfielder, who now works for the MLB Players Association, because he will receive his deposit of $1.2 million from the New York Mets, the 15th of 25 payments that will extend annually to 2035.
“It’s bigger than my birthday,” Bonilla said when reached via phone at his home on the west coast of Florida. “People know this date more than they know my birthday. I think it’s very cool. People are just happy that I put the money aside.”
For the record, his birthday is Feb. 23, and he’s 62 years old. Bonilla’s 16-year career ended in 2001, but he’s more famous for his deferred contract than he is for his 287 homers and .279 batting average across eight teams.
Bonilla’s deal, arranged by his then-agent Dennis Gilbert, worked well for the cash-poor former Mets owner Fred Wilpon at the time—but it worked even better for Bonilla, who will ultimately earn about five times the $5.9 million cash value of what was left on the contract because of an 8% interest rate. Bonilla collected his first dividends from the plan in 2011, and he’s scheduled to earn precisely $1,193,248.20 from the Mets each year until he’s 72 years old.
Bonilla, who was born and raised in the Bronx, said spending a lot of money as a player was never a big deal for him. The deferred money was not meant to protect him from squandering money.
“It was just being sure I put money away,” Bonilla said. “I wasn’t that much of a big spender. I never needed five of the same car or 17 houses. I never overdid anything. But the most important thing with Dennis, and I expressed that as a young player, I just wanted to have when I retired.”
Bonilla’s contract was not the first…