As you’ve probably heard a time or 10, the Mets are paying Bobby Bonilla more than a million dollars a year until 2035.
It sounds crazy, yes, but the deal was part of a deferred-payment plan the club agreed to in an effort to avoid paying Bonilla’s final-year salary of $5.9 million way back in 2000. Bonilla might be the most well-known example of “dead money” in baseball — paying money to players no longer on the roster — but it’s a relatively common practice.
Money is regularly exchanged in trades in an effort to move overpaid veterans, and when players are cut, the clubs are still responsible for whatever money is left on the contract.