$15 million men

[Ben (Rays GM)]

Last year, 25 free agents were signed to contracts of $15 million or more. One year later, I'm curious: how many of the contracts do you think were wise moves? Which of these players would you want on your team at that price?

Yes, some of these players were released when new GMs took over the team (marked by a *). Yes, some have been traded and have had a portion of the contract covered and don't cost their new teams quite as much. But if you could take on any of these players at their original price, would you even want to?

With free agency starting tonight, I want people to really think about how these contracts look, so that people can learn from last year's lesson and make wise decisions this year.

Also, these are the values of the contracts post-discounts. The highest player on here (Matt Holliday) was won with a $31 million bid that received a 15% discount. Discounts help, but they can only do so much: 15% of $31 million is only $4.65 million, so don't rely on discounts to save you.

Vote and discuss.

[Ben (Rays GM)]

Ignore the percentages next to the players' names. Just look at the number of votes received by the player and compare it to the number of total voters (scroll down to the bottom of the poll) to see how many voters like the contract.

[Chris (Former Cubs GM)]

Still think ther r Gona b some huge paydays. But ther is alot of depth at all positions. Think some serious $$ will fly tonit with a star studded 1st list. Good luck to every1 and hope to see 30 GMs on tonit.

[Brian (Blue Jays GM)]

I think it's important to understand the constraints of how much money exists in this game.

There are 30 teams, each with a spending limit of 105 million, which means 3,150m is the total money available in the game. Of that 3,150m approximately 1,300m is available to be spent in free agency among all teams which means approximately 1,850m has been spent already.

There are roughly 65 players on the type A free agents list alone. If they all received 20 million dollars, there would be no money left to be spent in the game.

[Deleted]

Yeah, the very first thing I noticed when I entered the league was the rediculous amount of money spent on free agents the first season. $26 million for Adam Dunn? Really? Albert Pujols must be worth $40 million then.

[Kevin (Guardians GM)]

I think it may come down some this year - you will still get some guys 20 - 30 million but what happened last year was teams that lost out on those players, then put that money on people that might not have been worth it in fear of having no one, hence the bloated contracts.

That may happen again but I sense that some of those wont be as bad just as we all have learned and better understand the value and the system.

But I could be wrong - guess we will find out soon!

[Ben (Rays GM)]

A typical auction league has a budget of $260. The top players usually get rated in the $50 range, but sometimes you'll see somebody overpay and go as high as $60, or 23% of their budget. The absolute most anybody is ever willing to spend on a single player is 23% of their budget, and that's only if he's one of the two or three best players in fantasy baseball.

23% of $105 million is $24.15 million.

[Ben (Rays GM)]

On average, the people who have voted so far think that 3 of these 25 deals were good moves.