SF Giants will be paying for Rafael Devers far longer than most fans realize

The SF Giants swung a huge trade with the Boston Red Sox for Rafael Devers last year hoping he was the bat the lineup was desperately missing. He hasn’t quite been that and there’s a good chance the Giants are going to be paying for that decision far longer than many fans realize.

Devers is under contract until 2033 when he will be 36 years old. The Red Sox signed him to a massive deal and the Giants felt comfortable taking it on. They may feel foolish since he’s hitting .242/306/.458 on the year with 15 home runs and 44 runs batted in. 

Those aren’t completely awful numbers and there’s a chance he’ll reach 30 homers on the year but the win-loss record since acquiring Devers speaks for itself. The team has been bad which is why they are open to trading Devers ahead of the deadline even though many other teams probably view his contract as toxic.

Giants will be paying Devers for years and years

What makes all this even worse is the fact that Devers’ contract with Boston had some of that dreaded deferred money in it. It’s a dark art the Los Angeles Dodgers have mastered but a lot of teams partake in it. As things currently stand, the Giants will be on the hook to pay Devers $4.2 million in 2035 and then $7.5 million every year after that until 2043.

If fans thought it hurt to pay Blake Snell some deferred money, that Devers deferred money is really going to hurt especially if everyone ends up looking back on the Devers trade as one of the worst in franchise history which it very well could be if Kyle Harrison continues to be an ace, James Tibbs turns into something with the Dodgers, and the Giants continue to stink with Devers.

Yesterday was Bobby Bonilla Day which is a little inside joke amongst baseball fans commemorating the day each year when the New York Mets pay out roughly $1.2 million to former MLB player Bobby Bonilla even though his last season as a player was in 2001 and he only played for New York for all or parts of four seasons. Bonilla will continue to be paid until 2035.

With a lockout looming this offseason since the MLB and MLBPA are far apart on a new CBA, one of the things MLB has proposed is getting rid of deferred money. That would probably be smart given how goofy teams, cough…Dodgers, have gotten with it in recent years.

Maybe the Giants can get some desperate team to take Devers off their hands and then they’ll be the ones paying him until the 2040s but it seems like the Giants may have to deal with that burden which makes the trade look even worse.

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