The Backloaded Contract Phenomenon

News that Albert Pujols had passed Ted Williams, Frank Thomas, Willie McCovey, Jimmy Foxx and Mickey Mantle, on the all-time home run list, and is now bearing down on Mike Schmidt, got me thinking about posterity. 

If Pujols can maintain the assault this year, 18 more home runs will leave him as the all-time 35-year-old home run leader.

Of course, what made Hank Aaron the home run king, or Barry Bonds, if you consider all of his 762 yard clearings to be legitimate, was their longevity at a high level. Hammerin' Hank popped 201 dingers after age 35, posting a productive year as late as age 40. Bonds smashed 268 in his geezerhood, including the record 73 at age 36. He, of course, remained productive on the field through his last at bat but was banished by a conspiracy among the lords of baseball for other reasons.

We can speculate about where Pujols might end up on the home run list by career's end, but the more pertinent question might be where his skills will be. They had obviously begun their retreat long before age 35 (in fact at age 31), delivering all of his four worst seasons on the new contract with the Angels. The decline has been steep: .331/.426/.624 before age 31; .279/.339/.498 since. Pujols has fallen from Willie Mays to Justin Upton.

What has to make that contract particularly nettlesome to the Angels' brass is that they backloaded  it, so Albert will be collecting $30 million in his age 41 year, a full decade after he slipped off the hitting cliff. But because he's guaranteed that 30 extra large, it's nearly inconceivable that he'd retire before then, no matter the state of his skills.

It's not just Albert. Back-loaded contracts have been the free agent form the last few years, with analysts proclaiming that the only way to sign a free agent behemoth -- ARod, Robby Cano, Max Scherzer, etc. -- is to "eat" the final years of the deal. 

(This has always struck me as a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more likely truth is that any team dumb enough to offer such an over-generous guarantee is, by definition, most likely to win the bidding war, Pyrrhic though that victory may be. But if everyone recognized how stillbirth the logic in the long-term, a winning bid could be made without any late-contract consumption.)

Will Alex Rodriguez finally, mercifully, hang up his spikes following his age 41 season before or after he needs a hip replacement?  How much embarrassment will ARod and Albert (and Robby, etc.) heap upon themselves and their front offices in their final seasons when they're more likely to work a walker than a walk? 

Certainly other great players ended their careers on down notes. But in almost every case they stowed their cleats immediately thereafter, without the temptation of a guaranteed $30 million opportunity cost. If Albert can hardly move at age 38, will he have the fortitude to leave $100 million on the table to save his dignity?

These are new questions necessitated by the goofy philosophy dominating free agent signings. The sad declines potentially facing Albert, ARod, Cano and others may bring the subject into sharp relief, but it's the offending GMs who will have to answer for the players' decrepitude.