On Sept. 29, a touching scene unfolded in Milwaukee’s American Family Field. As Brewers shortstop Willy Adames came to the plate in the first inning, he received a huge ovation. It was substantial enough to halt the game for a moment as Adames acknowledged the warmth and love that was pouring down from the grandstand. Adames knew he was playing his last regular season game in a Milwaukee Brewers uniform. Everyone else in the ballpark knew it as well. He was completing a season in which he drove in 112 runs and would finish 10th in the Most Valuable Player voting. He had been the key player on a team that won the National League Central Division pennant by a 10-game margin. He was extremely popular with the fans, but those fans knew the Brewers could not afford to keep him. The Brewers paid Adames a little more than $12 million for his services in 2024. That’s a lot of money, but it’s far short of what the 10th-best player in the league is actually worth. Five days after the World Series ended, Adames would be free to negotiate with any of the 30 major league clubs and sign with whoever would pay him the most. Of course, the majority of those 30 clubs weren’t even going to make offers. Like the Brewers, most of them knew they could not pay anything close to the amount he was going to be offered by one of the handful of mega-rich clubs. Ultimately, Adames elected to join the San Francisco Giants, who gave him a signing bonus that was much greater than his 2024 salary with the Brewers had been. Not that that was big news. The big news that week was the deal Juan Soto got from the New York Mets. Soto agreed to a 16-year contract that will pay him $765 million — plus incentives. If you’re having difficulty wrapping your head around that number, look at it like this:If Soto remains healthy and productive during the length of the contract, he will earn approximately $30,000 for every inning he plays. Would you believe the Mets had the highest payroll in the major leagues even before they added Soto? Would you believe there are creditable reports that they’re still attempting to land other free agents? Would you believe there is no bottom to their pockets? The Mets aren’t the only ones. The New York Yankees have the second-highest payroll, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are a close third. They both made enormous signings a year ago and appear to hyper-active this year as well. During the season, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner complained that his team’s salary structure was “unsustainable.” What a load of hot air that was. Face it. A handful of baseball’s very wealthy franchises are going to continue to suck all the best talent in the game, and there isn’t anything the rest of the teams can do to stop it. There isn’t anything the commissioner can do to stop it. Maybe it wouldn’t happen if broadcasting revenues were pooled, as they are in football, but the large-market franchises wouldn’t stand for that. Maybe it wouldn’t happen if there were a salary cap, as there is in basketball, but the Players Association wouldn’t stand for that. So, they try to trim around the edges. Each team is limited on the amount of bonus money it can bestow on its draft class. Each team is limited on the amount of money it can spend on international signings that fall outside the draft. Every year some of the poorer teams are granted additional “competitive balance” picks during the draft. Most significant of all is the “luxury tax” which requires the teams with large payrolls to hand cash to the teams paying their players more modest salaries. Rich clubs complain about that, but those seem to be forgotten when it’s time to lure free agents into their orbits. This stuff is a fact of life with baseball, and it isn’t going to stop anytime soon. *** On Dec. 11, the Yankees swung a deal with the Red Sox in which minor league players were exchanged. The Yankees also received an undisclosed portion of Boston’s international bonus pool allotment. That would suggest the Yankees have their eyes on Roki Sasaki, a right-handed pitcher from Japan who is capable of reaching 100 miles per hour with his fastball and throwing a slider in the 90s. Because of his age (23), the team that signs Sasaki will not be permitted to give him a contract that exceeds its international bonus pool allotment. Funds from the 2025 allotment can’t be used before Jan.15. The Dodgers, San Diego Padres and Chicago Cubs have indicated an interest in Sasaki, but the Yankees will probably have the upper hand. After all, they’ll have all of their allotment plus a significant hunk of Boston’s. I can’t help wondering if any of those teams have bothered to kick the tires. Whatever team signs Sasaki is going to be taking a substantial risk. He has spent four seasons in Japan’s major leagues, and his lifetime record is 29-15 with a 2.02 earned run average. That’s impressive. So is the fact that he has struck out 524 batters in 415 innings. The problem is that 415 innings over four years is an extremely light workload for a starting pitcher. Sasaki has never had to pitch on an every-fifth-day schedule, which will be required if he comes to North America. In four seasons he has appeared in 64 games — total — and has never worked more than 20 games in a single season. Only twice has he pitched as many as 100 innings in a season and never more than 129. And — get this … Sasaki’s career fielding percentage is .792. That means he has misplayed one of every five fielding opportunities over the past four years. No wonder his earned run average is so impressive. What about the unearned runs he’s creating with that erratic fielding? *** Soto’s contract calls for a $1 million bonus if he wins his league’s Most Valuable Player Award and an even larger bonus if he wins more than one. One million dollars might seem trivial when it’s part of such a huge package, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that it isn’t trivial. By all normal standards it a very large sum of money. Large enough to invite manipulation and even scandal. The MVP Award is determined solely on the whims of 30 voters. That’s a very small group of people who might be making a very expensive determination. Each MVP voter is required to list his or her top-10 choices for the award — in order. The winner is determined by a weighted point system (14 points for every first-place vote, nine for every second-place vote, eight for every third-place vote, etc.). Sometimes the identity of the winner is obvious, and the vote is unanimous or nearly unanimous. When that occurs, a single corrupt voter could not alter the outcome. But every winner is not obvious, and every vote is not unanimous. Sometimes there is legitimate debate over which player was most valuable. On a year like that, a single rotten apple could ruin the barrel. A voter could skew the whole process if he were willing to place one co-favorite’s name at the top of his list and leave another off his ballot entirely. Crazier things than that have happened when there’s a lot of money at stake. Former Hall of Fame voter Jay Dunn has written baseball for The Trentonian for 56 years. Contact him at [email protected]