The Blue Jays finalized their five-year free agent deal with Anthony Santander this week. The deal came with a $92.5MM guarantee but was known to include heavy deferrals. Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith first reported on Monday that MLB calculated the contract’s net present closer to $70MM.
Shi Davidi of Sportsnet reported more specifics on the contract structure this afternoon. The NPV landed just under $68.6MM, which comes with an approximate $13.7MM annual competitive balance tax hit. The deal includes $61.75MM in deferred money. The specific layout is as follows:
- $13.5MM signing bonus ($6.75MM deferred)
- $13.5MM salary in 2025 ($10MM deferred)
- $16.5MM salary in 2026 ($10MM deferred)
- $16.5MM salary in 2027 ($10MM deferred)
- $14.75MM salary in 2028 ($10MM deferred)
- $12.75MM salary in 2029 ($10MM deferred)
- $15MM club option for 2030; guaranteed a $5MM buyout, which would be completely deferred
Santander has an opt-out after the ’27 season. He’s owed $60MM over the first three years, so he’d be weighing whether to leave two years and $32.5MM ($25MM of which would be deferred) on the table. If he opts out, Toronto can override that by guaranteeing his 2030 salary at $17.5MM. That would also escalate Santander’s salaries for the 2028 and ’29 seasons to $17.25MM and $15.25MM, respectively. The maximum value is $110MM over six years — which would only be reached if Santander opts out and the Jays override it.
At the start of the offseason, the slugger was reportedly seeking five years and a nine-figure guarantee. He got the five years but came up well shy of $100MM from an NPV perspective. MLBTR predicted Santander for four years and $80MM at the beginning of the offseason. He beat that on raw money but did not get there in terms of net present value.
The Jays are into luxury tax territory. They’re taxed at a 20% rate on spending between $241MM and $261MM. They’re close to the $261MM cutoff. Adding Santander likely comes with around a $3MM tax hit for the upcoming season. Toronto would be taxed at a 32% clip for spending between $261MM and $281MM.
Well, well, well, how the turntables something something.
How the worm has turned
Yeah, but everyone knows that Canadian deferrals are different than their American counterparts.
Probably call them Johnnies or something silly like that.
What deferrals this is an outrage!
Damned Dodgers and their deferrals.
Who even knows if this current salary structure will still be in place after the current labor agreement expires in 2027. Deferred money now might not even be considered after 2027. Anything is possible
@Lawrence
They have contracts. They can’t be negated. No way world or be retroactive to contracts issued already.
@Lawrence
The only people who care about deferred money are in the comments section of MLBTR. Itâs not going to be as big of a deal in the next CBA as a lot of fans like to believe.
If they decide to count the deferred money in a different way towards the payroll then the teams will rectify that by offering less deferred money over the long run to where they can keep their payroll in smaller luxury tax brackets.
There is a reason why teams hire intelligent people
to run their front office. They will find a way to make it work.
Iâll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
Wimpie
Big time deferrals. Let the crying begin.
That’s a heck of a deal for the Jays at $13.7MM annual NPV. Well done!
Santander will be a great fit for the BlueJays. I have no problem with the term or price tag here
The Toronto Deferrals at it again eh?
Actually they are a team that don’t generally do it and only recently had opt outs in contracts and no-trade clauses were rare.
“So is this ruining baseball now? Oh, it’s not the Dodgers? I guess it isn’t.”
Definitely wins most complicating contract of the offseason.
People can hate on the Blue Jays all they want this is a good contract.
We’ve come a long way from Bobby Bonilla.
Bonilla should ask Cohen to further defer $100 to be paid out $1 annually. Gotta keep Bobby Bo Day alive. The Wilpons will disapprove.
Even further from Bruce Sutter!
The only way a player like him would hit 10 years service time. Smart move on both sides. Contract wise only, Santander is a stupid signing because he will be dump going forward.
Do you have any stats on that or just your expert opinion?
62 million in deferrals!!!! So 24% of their 262 million projected payroll to be deferred over what a 5 year period after contract ends? I donât see when the deferrals kick in.
So essentially blue jays deferred 1 year of Ohtani over 5 years give or take.
Whats this article suppose to accomplish exactly? People are fine with deferrals within reason. But when youâre deferring say 50-100% of your payroll salary every year reducing your cbt tax hit in the process not exactly an even paying field. Iâm sure plenty of teams can defer 25% of their salary over a 5 year period into the future. Not many can defer 50%-100% every season into the future.
You arenât good at math, are you? You are taking the total deferral and comparing against a yearly payroll.
You arenât good at reading.
The article doesnât say what years the deferrals will kick in.
All we know now is how much is being deferred (62 million) compared to how much their projected payroll is at the time of the signing of the contact (262 mill) which does impact how much the jays are willing to defer. That represents 24% of their payroll this year when they signed the contract. Now will that be spread out over 3 years 5 years 9 years 10 years into the future? Idk article doesnât say just says how much is deferred each year and we donât know final payroll numbers for 2026 2027 2028 2029.
Payroll at the time of the contract makes it okay to use as a reference point for future payroll without accounting for other contacts and departures?
Payroll at time of contract reflects how much money jays were likely willing to kick into the future via deferrals, 62 mill. Which is why 2025 has the lowest deferred amount at 6.25 compared to other years at 10.
And? That doesnât reflect a 24% of their salary like you said.
I never said it reflected 24% of their salary. Reading is hard for you I understand
â 24% of their 262 million projected payroll to be deferred over what a 5 year period after contract ends?â
â Iâm sure plenty of teams can defer 25% of their salary over a 5 year period into the future.â
I did say jays deferred 62 million. Currently the payroll is 262 million. That represents 24% of their current payroll the blue jays felt comfortable enough deferring into the future say over the course of 5 years at the time of signing the contract with Santander.
You sure you know math. Cause twice I said 24% spread across say 5 years into the future. That means 24 divided by 5 in case you were confused
ââŠmuch is being deferred (62 million) compared to how much their projected payroll is at the time of the signing of the contact (262 mill)â. 5 years of deferred funds canât be compared against a single years payroll.
You misquoted yourself. If you misstated then it was a misunderstanding.
You two, get a room
The single years payroll is a reference point to show how much money the jays felt comfortable deferring with their current projected payroll. 24%
Already being over the luxury tax line prior to the Santander signing it makes sense to offer deferrals to bring down the cbt tax implications as to not get closer to the next tax line
If their payroll was significantly less blue jays probably offer less or no deferrals. So payroll at time of signing the contract does play an important part in the amount of deferrals agreed to.
Itâs disingenuous. Comparing multi-year deferrals as a comparison against a single year of payroll. Especially not considering the present value.
@badfinger. Iâve tried to negotiate it, but he keeps trying to defer the room cost over 5 years and saying itâs 20% of his monthly salary.
No itâs important to point out that jays felt comfortable deferring 24% of their payroll given their current payroll situation against the cbt tax thresholds
Had the jays had a lower cbt number or werenât in the tax penalty at all they offer probably significantly less or no deferrals at all.
So itâs definitely important to note how much each team is willing to differ based on their current payroll.
Why can’t other teams defer larger amounts of their payroll?
Theyd rather not have to explain to their fans who the heck Anthony Santander was in fifteen years.
Last place team
Canât wait for the first guy to be paid minimum wage with 95% of his salary deferred.
SoâŠohtani?
$2 million a year is minimum wage in Cali now? I mean I heard they increased it, but dang.
Already happened. He’s called Roki Sasaki.
No one should care about deferrals!!!!! It is all about the time value of money and lessening taxes for the player. Stop harping about it. Nothing special about Bonilla, yet we hear about that endlessly year after year. Simple business strategy that benefits all involved.
@BaseballGuy1 – can you defer some of those exclamation points? đ
I agree. (With a TBD on the taxes, because I have no idea how deferred comp is treated under Canadian tax law.)
And, in this case, my best guess is that it was a compromise solution to a large difference in the bid/ask.
Blue Jays got the deferrals to reduce the contract NPV to a number with which they were comfortable.
Santander and his agent (who, to be clear, *do* understand the NPV) got to save face with a nice-looking headline number.
Bet he doesnât opt out
For Him, it’s a good contract. I hope he hits a lot of homers for them.
dodgers should’ve got in on that
Dodgers finished second this time…lol
Diversify your bondsâŠjust not Barry
But, but that’s not how you spell dodgers. Every team does this to some extent. Let it go.
The only people crying about deferrals are small market fans even though they never had a chance at signing top free agents to begin with.
Yanks should join the freigh and offer Bregman a heavily deferred contract. Something like 5/$160 with an annual of $5 mil per and $135 mil deferred over 10 years.