An annual tradition at Royals Review is when I take 30 fans, and let them run a MLB team under semi-real world conditions to simulate baseball’s off-season. We use the real list of free agents, real salaries, and try to recommend realistic budgets. You can read all the ground rules here.
You can see a list of where each free agent signed and what each team’s payroll looks like here. In all 106 players signed MLB free agent contracts, totalling $2.8 billion. Here were the ten biggest contracts (players in bold were made Qualifying Offers):
Biggest free agent contracts
| Last name | First name | Team | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last name | First name | Team | Contract |
| Harper | Bryce | NYY | 13 years, $515 million, opt-out after 2021 |
| Machado | Manny | PHI | 11 years, $433M with an opt out after 2022 |
| Corbin | Patrick | NYY | 6 years, $153M |
| Kershaw | Clayton | LAD | 4 year, $130M |
| Grandal | Yasmani | ATL | 4 years, $98 M with a $26 M vesting option (400 PA in 2022) |
| Eovaldi | Nathan | COL | 6 years, $90M |
| Keuchel | Dallas | LAA | 4 years, $88M |
| Kimbrel | Craig | STL | 4 years, $82M |
| Kikuchi | Yusei | HOU | 6 years, $65 M with an opt out after 2022 |
| Donaldson | Josh | TBR | 4 years, $64M with an opt out after year one |
Holy smokes, that’s a lotta moula!