How Padres Could Benefit from MLB’s Economic Proposal

While the players and owners continue to fight over how to divide up money in a shortened season, the San Diego Padres could benefit.

There is no denying that the San Diego Padres have some bad contracts on their hands. They even tried their hardest to move one of those contracts this past offseason.

The Padres were set to pay Eric Hosmer, Wil Myers, and Manny Machado a combined $75.5 million in 2020.

And quite frankly, while I think all three could have had a bounce-back years in 2020, they’ve all underperformed with their new contracts.

No matter what kind of season we get in 2020, the Padres won’t have to pay them their full salaries.

Obviously, the downside is the Padres won’t be bringing in nearly as much money. But still, this could be a huge benefit for the Padres.

Especially in the case of Hosmer whose contract goes down to $13 million in 2023. That means the Padres would only have to pay him $21 million for two more years (yuck).

And perhaps it becomes easier to trade Myers and Hosmer this coming offseason with another year off their contracts.

Basically, the MLB’s economic proposal given to the players on Tuesday would pay higher paid players a small percentage of their prorated salary.

The salary scale in the proposal is:

- $0 to $563,500 (league minimum) paid at 90%
- $563,501 to $1 million paid at 72.5%
- $1,000,001 to $5 million paid at 50%
- $5,000,001 to $10 million paid at 40%
- $10,000,001 to $20 million paid at 30%
- $20,000,001 and up paid at 20%
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) May 27, 2020

That means Hosmer, Machado, and Myers would be paid 20 percent of their prorated portion based on an 82-game schedule.

I’m not going to try and get into the math of all that and what exactly they would make, but Passan gives an example of what Mike Trout would make in that Twitter thread.

Just a quick estimation says that Hosmer and Myers would make $2-3 million each while Machado would make between $3-4 million.

That’s a significant difference from what they were expecting to make in 2020.

Now, obviously, the players were not very happy with that proposal and something different will ultimately be put into place.

But either way, the players will have to take a significant pay cut in 2020. And with the Padres expected to have one of their highest payrolls ever in 2020, they could benefit from this shortened season in that regard.

While the players and owners continue to fight over how to divide up money in a shortened season, the San Diego Padres could benefit.

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