$10,000 Per Pitch — The Absurdity of Gerrit Cole’s New Contract
Yankee fans rejoice, the rest of us be dammed.
It was perhaps not possible to not let out an audible groan when learning of pitching phenom Gerrit Cole’s new contract. For two reasons: first, that he signed with one of the more despised teams in baseball — the always on, rarely out of the pennant race New York Yankees. Two, the value: a nine year contract worth $324M, an average of $36M per year.
Not bad for a 29 year old.
I suppose I should pause here to disclose a few things: this has nothing to do with Cole himself (Stephen Strasburg recently signed a deal worth $35M a year and this article could have just as easily had his name on it). Second, I’m from Toronto, and thus a divisional rival, with no love for the Yankees or Red Sox. Finally, most strangely, I’m not much of a baseball fan at all. I find it to be a uniquely drawn out and boring affair compared to literally all other sports. You can catch me watching curling more often than regular season baseball.
I do, however, enjoy numbers, and social commentary that we can derive from said numbers.
So, onward.
Major League Baseball is no stranger to big dollar contracts. It is the only major sports league in the United States that has yet to adopt a salary…
