Record contract for Trout

If you have a son, get him a mitt. Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels just signed a record contract for a professional athlete. Trout agreed to a 12-year, $426.5-million contract that presumably will keep him in Angels red for the rest of his career. The deal is more than 30 percent larger than the 13-year, $330 million deal Bryce Harper signed with the Philadelphia Phillies on March 2.

Trout sacrificed some future pay in order to have certainty about his future, both in where he figures to spend the rest of his baseball career and to lock in almost half a billion dollars now without having to worry about what happens if he gets run over by a bus before 2021. Ten years ago, Alex Rodriguez made $33 million while playing for the New York Yankees, which basic math tells us is less than the $36,833,333 that Trout will receive this year. 

The argument has been made countless times when players get paid enormous sums of money that it shows the need for a salary cap in baseball. It turns out, the opposite is true. In the NBA, NFL, and NHL, the players get a set percentage of league revenues – that’s how the salary caps are calculated. In baseball, where players are getting less of the revenue all the time, a salary cap would force management to do what a supposedly free market no longer is doing, and mandate that labor get its fair share. With Trout now getting his record pay, the question becomes who’s next?