Sometimes you get a paradigm-shifting superstar who elevates your franchise to the promised land (e.g. Shohei Ohtani, Corey Seager, Max Scherzer). Other times, you find a guy who never reaches the heights of his earlier years, but still manages to be a legitimate MLB player for at least a few years (e.g. Xander Bogaerts, Albert Pujols).
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But the contract in which, almost from the beginning, the player stops being a starter-quality MLB player, if he plays at all, is a rare contract. At a minimum, you should get a guy who can immediately be an acceptable addition to the lineup or rotation. You can count on one hand the list of large contracts that do not meet that standard.
That’s why it’s pretty surprising when two of those contracts contain the same terms and involve players from the same team.
The Washington Nationals’ 2019 dilemma was doomed from the start
On Wednesday came news that seemed inevitable for years. According to ESPN’s Alden González, Anthony Rendón and the Los Angeles Angels are in talks to buy out the final year of his contract in 2026. If successful, Rendón will retire.
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Rendon spent all of 2025 recovering from hip surgery and is still owed $38 million for 2026. Because he has almost all the leverage in the buyout talks, he will likely get most of that money in exchange for the end of an Angels career that has been a distracting fiasco.
Let’s now rewind to the end of the 2019 MLB season. The Washington Nationals had clinched their first World Series title, featuring a variety of veterans and young stars. Going into the offseason, they had two things clear at the top of their to-do list: re-signing Rendon and World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg.
It was a difficult decision. Rendon, at the time, was one of the MLB’s best third basemen and, in theory, a better long-term bet despite past injury issues. He had just hit .319/.412/.598 while leading the National League in doubles (44) and RBIs (126). He had also played at least 130 games in the last four seasons.
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Strasburg, meanwhile, had just posted the best season of his career and had the emotional factor of being the first overall pick that ushered in the Nationals’ new era. He had been a face of the franchise since being drafted in 2009 and had just led the National League with 209 innings pitched while displaying his usual ERA post-Tommy John surgery.
The Nationals would have liked to retain both players, but ultimately reached an agreement with only Strasburg, for seven years and $245 million. Coincidentally, those were the same terms Rendón would agree to with the Angels just two days later.
In hindsight, it’s now clear that the ideal outcome for Washington would not have been to sign either of them. Because the identical deals turned out to be possibly the worst deals any MLB team has ever made from a financial perspective.
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Only one other contract compares to that of Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg
Let’s keep this simple. Here’s Baseball Reference’s list of the 50 biggest contracts in MLB history, with deals dating back to 2001. It includes both free agent contracts and extensions.
On the high end is Juan Soto’s record-breaking 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets. On the lower end is David Wright’s 12-year, $165 million extension also with the Mets, although that will be canceled once Cease’s $210 million deal is added.
Among those 50 players, Rendon ranks 42nd in Baseball Reference’s wins above replacement calculation, while Strasburg ranks 47th. That doesn’t sound extravagantly disastrous, but consider that two of the deals (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Garrett Crochet) haven’t even started yet, so those ranks are actually 48 players. And it only takes one good season (say, Max Fried’s in 2025) to move into No. 40, where Fried is now.
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Then consider that of the five players outside of Strasburg under Rendon, three of them signed those deals in the last two years: Willy Adames, Aaron Nola and Corbin Burnes. So it’s too early to judge them.
That basically leaves two candidates to compare with Rendon and Strasburg as the worst ever: Miguel Cabrera’s eight-year, $240 million extension with the Detroit Tigers and Kris Bryant’s seven-year, $182 million deal with the Colorado Rockies.
At the risk of hand-waving, we can at least say that Cabrera had a Silver Slugger-level year in 2016, the first year of that contract, and will enter the Hall of Fame as a Tiger. They could have spent the money more wisely, yes, but he doesn’t quite fit into this group.
So, among the 50 biggest contracts in history, we are left with Rendon, Strasburg and Bryant.
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In the case of Rendón, you have a player who started well, but only in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, in which he had slash lines of .286/.418/.497 in 52 games. Since then, well, he has yet to play more than 60 games in a season with the club, while hitting .231/.329/.336 in 205 games from 2021 to 2025. There was a season-ending hip injury in 2021, a near-season-ending wrist injury in 2022, a season-ending tibia fracture in 2023, a torn hamstring and oblique injury in 2024 and hip surgery in 2025.
Strasbourg was even more devastated by injuries. After that 2019 season in which he led the National League in innings pitched, he made seven starts in total, in which he posted a 6.89 ERA. Seven, also known as the number of starts a pitcher typically makes over the course of less than two months. He experienced a nerve problem in his pitching hand in 2020, then was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome (TAS) in 2021. There may be no more feared problem for a pitcher than TAS, of which successful returns are few and far between. He never recovered properly and retired after negotiating a buyout last year.
Bryant’s contract was strange from the beginning. When the Rockies signed him, they were selling him as a middle-of-the-order bat who could play five different positions. Colorado, of course, decided he should be a full-time left fielder. Like Rendon and Strasburgo, he was fine the first year when he was on the field, with a .306/.376/.475 line in 2022, but back and foot issues limited him to 42 games.
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Since then, Bryant has only been able to play in 128 games over three seasons and was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease in May. If he plays a full season again, it will be a surprise. Like Rendón, there are rumors that he played his last game, although he recently insisted that he is not contemplating retirement.
How do you compare these three? Ultimately, that’s up to you, but let’s say Strasburg is the worst because, again, the Nationals ended up having to pay almost all of that $245 million for seven bad starts overall. And the contract was reportedly unsecured.
So Rendon and Bryant had similar arcs with good but limited first seasons and then a complete breakup due to injuries, with Rendon playing 205 games in five seasons and Bryant playing 128 games in three seasons.
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Now let’s consider two things. First, Rendon’s contract was $63 million more expensive overall, which is nothing. Second, while Bryant has committed to returning, Rendon has been indifferent to his future in baseball to an infamous degree. He said baseball was not his top priority in 2024 and has downplayed attempts by reporters to verify the status. There was also that 2023 incident where he punched an opposing fan.
So Rendon has barely played since 2020, hasn’t played well at all since 2020, and has played a central role in the Angels becoming the complete laughingstock they are now. To us, that sounds like a worse contract than Bryant’s, even if the latter is worse by total WAR.
It is true that all this is hard. None of these actors have control over their health, and judging a person by the relationship between their work and its cost is inherently dehumanizing. All of these were good players at one time and all three have well-deserved World Series rings. They also happen to be big reasons why so many fans get nervous when their team actually commits to spending in free agency.
Congratulations, 2019 Nationals. You will be remembered for reasons beyond a cathartic World Series title. And those reasons, barring a complete reversal by Rendon and the Angels, are beyond mitigation.