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July 1 every year is known by MLB fans as Bobby Bonilla Day, with good reason.
Each July 1 until the year 2035, Bobby Bonilla is paid $1,193,248 by the New York Mets.
He also gets paid $500,000 by the Orioles on the same day each year until 2028.
Bonilla last played for Baltimore in 1996.
Last year, Bonilla was the 26th highest paid player on the Mets payroll in 2022, and the 29th highest paid player on the Orioles, according to SportTrac.
He will have made $42,331,200 without setting foot on a baseball field since 2001.
Incredible, right?
Former MLB slugger Chris Davis kindly asks you to hold his beer.
Davis, who played 13 years in the bigs with the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles, will be making $59 million from 2023 to 2037.
He last played in Major League Baseball in 2020.
Guess who is footing the bill?
That’s right. Once again it is the Baltimore Orioles.
The detail and total don't line up.
The $42M total was the original sum of deferred payments set up with Davis signed that FA contract in 2016. He later to defer his 2022 salary of $17M from 2023-2025.
So the total due for the next 15 years is actually $59M.
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) December 13, 2022
Davis hit .230 over 10 seasons with Baltimore, crushing 253 home runs and driving in 656 runs. He also struck out a whopping 1,550 times (going over 200 twice in a season) and had a batting average under .200 four times.
He wasn’t all bad though.
In 2013, Chris Davis hit 53 home runs, drove in 138, and finished third in the American League MVP voting.
In 2015, he jacked 47 more bombs, drover in 117 runs (and struck out 208 times, 11 short of his career high, set the next season).
Needless to say, Major League Baseball fans who just discovered how much Chris Davis will be getting paid over the next 15 years, were left amused and amazed.
This dudes getting $9.16M a year for the next 2 years and then $3.5M for 7 years and it doesn’t even stop there? I never want to hear anything about Bobby Bonilla ever again.
— Justin (@JustMets26) December 13, 2022
“This is why you don’t sign players to long term deals when they are 30+,” another fan tweeted. “Sure a few are worth it but most contracts end up being bad. What’s Judge going to look like at 36. A tall broken down useless player.”
He's their 2nd highest paid player for 2023 right now.
— stever20 (@StatmasterSteve) December 13, 2022
That’s even better than Ken Griffey, Jr. He was the Cincinnati Reds’ sixth highest paid player when the 2022 season began. He last played for them in 2008.