This past offseason, 19 MLB players signed contracts worth $40 million or more. Months later, the first real verdict is in — courtesy of Spotrac and FanGraphs. Some of these guys have already justified every dollar. Others are still running a tab. And a few have their front offices quietly wondering what they were thinking.
The measuring stick here is WAR — Wins Above Replacement — which captures how many extra wins a player delivers compared to a Triple-A call-up. It’s not perfect, but it’s the most honest single number we have when you’re trying to compare a shortstop, an outfielder, and a starting pitcher on the same spreadsheet.
Nineteen Big Bets, One Scoreboard
Nineteen contracts at $40M or more in a single offseason is a lot of money moving at once. Teams were betting that these players would repeat — or build on — what they’d done in previous years. August is the right moment to check in: the «it’s early» excuse is long gone, but there are still two months of regular season left to move the needle.
On August 19, Spotrac published a FanGraphs breakdown ranking all 19 signings by accumulated fWAR. The number matters because it strips out the narrative: a player sitting at 4.0 fWAR has already delivered four more wins than any replacement-level option. A player in negative territory is, literally, costing his team games.
The Benchmark: What Does a $40M Deal Actually Need to Produce?
The industry consensus is fairly clear: roughly 2.0 WAR per season justifies approximately $10–12 million on the open market. Run that math and a player who signed for $40M and is sitting below 2.0 fWAR heading into September has serious ground to make up.
Here’s how to read the tiers:
- 5.0+ fWAR: All-Star caliber — your front office looks like a genius.
- 2.0–3.5 fWAR: Solid starter, contract is defensible.
- Below 1.0 fWAR: Your team is overpaying, and the payroll hangover could last years.
The Starkest Case: Jorge Polanco
The most extreme example in this class is Jorge Polanco with the Mets. The Venezuelan infielder signed for $40 million, appeared in just 37 games, and ended up on the operating table for ankle surgery. His season fWAR tells the whole story — an investment that evaporated before it ever had a chance to pay off.
What the August Snapshot Tells Us
A team that handed out $60M and is looking at 4.5 fWAR can breathe relatively easy. A team that paid the same and is staring at 0.8 fWAR in August has a real roster problem baked into its books for years to come.
The full verdict arrives in October, when the numbers are set in stone. But the August table already says plenty. In baseball — like any investment — timing is everything, and several of these deals are already starting to look very good or very bad right now.
