Are the biggest MLB contracts actually worth it?
Juan Soto's $765M deal is under fire—but he's not the only one. We broke down MLB's top 10 biggest contracts to see who's earning their salary and who's striking out. The results might surprise you.
Juan Soto has the chance to pull off an all-time troll move and change his walkup song to “Hustlin’” by Rick Ross.
The Mets star outfielder has drawn recent criticism from fans and analysts for a seeming lack of on-field effort—raising the conversation, once again, about whether players with monster MLB contracts are living up to their salary. Soto signed a record 15-year, $765M deal in the offseason, but is so far turning in the worst on-base percentage, slugging, and OPS figures of his career.
The calculation: MLB teams paid an average of $8M per WAR in free agency this past offseason, according to a Paraball Notes analysis. Using this figure as a baseline:
- Soto’s contract carries an average annual value of $51M.
- He’s generated 1.5 WAR so far in 2025, which projects out to 4.9 WAR for the full season. That figure multiplied by $8M works out to $39.2M—or below what he’s getting paid. Outlook: not so good.
But why stop at just one?
Here’s how the other ten biggest MLB contracts stack up*:
- ✅ Shohei Ohtani: $70M in annual salary vs. $73.6M on-field value created/year
- ✅ Zack Wheeler: $42M vs. $44.2M
- ✅ Aaron Judge: $40M vs. $76M (!)
- ✅ Alex Bregman: $40M vs. $73.6M (!)
- ❌ Jacob deGrom: $37M vs. $16M
- ❌ Blake Snell: $36.4M vs. $12.8M
- ❌ Gerrit Cole: $36M vs. $31.2M
- ❌ Mike Trout: $35.5M vs. $28.8M
- ❌ Anthony Rendon: $35M vs. $4.8M (😳)
- ✅ Corbin Burnes: $35M vs. $44.8M
📊 Check out the full chart breakdown here
Not quite a rising tide: As the biggest contracts keep getting bigger—Mike Trout’s current deal was the biggest in MLB history when he signed it in March 2019—the median league salary has been getting smaller. Baseball’s median salary this year dropped to $1.35M from $1.5M, well below its record high of $1.65M in 2015.
Zoom out: The NBA has the highest median annual salary of the Big Four US sports leagues (~$6.7M), followed by the NHL (~$2.9M) and NFL (~$2.8M).
*Contracts were signed at different times, and injuries may have played a factor in on-field value calculations. See a more in-depth chart here.
