Money cannot buy happiness, but it does buy regret for a lot of Major League Baseball teams. Per Spotrac , there are 166 currently rostered players making at least $10 million* in 2024, and that list doesn't even include guys like José Abreu who were making big bucks before getting designated for assignment. (Don't worry.
We made sure to include them here.) To put it lightly, those 166+ players aren't all worth what they're getting. In fact, a bunch of them are getting eight-figure salaries while producing at a below-replacement level, per Baseball Reference.
We'll discuss two overpaid players at each position as well as five starting pitchers and five relief pitchers. This 28-player All-Overpaid Team is making a combined total of $628 million in 2024, which is more than 10 times what the Oakland A's are paying their players. By the way, that doesn't even include the 10 players who we'll mention in the "fully sunk cost division" intermission who are making at least $10M and have yet to play in 2024.
Factor them in and you're up north of $810M. Might want to have some anti-nausea medicine nearby for this one. *We're using payroll salary figures as opposed to luxury tax or cash.
Not that Shohei Ohtani is anywhere near the list, but that means we'd be talking about his $70M payroll salary, as opposed to the $2M he's getting in cash in 2024 or the $46.1M figure being used for luxury tax purposes. Worst ROI : James McCann, Baltimore Orioles $12.
15M, 0.2 bWAR The good news for the Orioles is that the Mets retained most of McCann's remaining contract when he was traded to Baltimore two winters ago. However, if you combine the $4M on Baltimore's ledger with the more than $8M New York is paying, this backup catcher is making more money in 2024 than all players on Baltimore's roster not named Corbin Burnes.
McCann has been at least hitting better over the past two months, but only after his OPS dipped below .500 in early June. And though he does throw out base stealers a little more often than Adley Rutschman does, he's not the same asset on defense at 34 years old that he used to be, committing six errors in barely 400 innings in the field.
All that said, McCann did heroically play all nine innings of the first game of a double-header against Toronto on July 29, despite getting drilled in the face for an RBI HBP in the first inning. He played two more games before undergoing nasal realignment surgery for a nose that was broken in multiple places, and then played again a couple days later. So, he's kind of a legend in Baltimore right now, even if his numbers are lackluster.
Runner-Up : Max Stassi, Chicago White Sox $7M, has not played since 2022 Most of the backstops making eight figures have been either worth every penny or at least not laughably overpaid, so we had to dip below the $10M threshold to find Stassi. He was traded twice in the span of about 24 hours in December while Atlanta was churning out deals left and right. The Braves did agree to pay the majority of his salary in sending him to Chicago for a player to be named later.
But he missed all of last season and will miss all of this season because of a hip injury. Worst ROI : José Abreu, Houston Astros $19.5M, -1.
6 bWAR Gone but hardly forgotten, the Houston Astros released Abreu in mid-June, not quite at the mid-point of his three-year, $58.5M contract. Might as well go ahead and pencil him in for this spot again next year, too, when he will cost Houston $19.
5M for nothing. Then again, not playing at all would be better than what he gave them this season. The previous year, it took Abreu a long time to heat up.
He didn't homer until his 51st game with the Astros, but then he hit 18 the rest of the way. They had to have been hopeful he would snap out of his funk in a similar way this year. After a certain point, though, they had to accept there was no indication that was going to happen.
Abreu finally got the axe with a .124 batting average in 35 games played, even with a stint in the Florida Complex League in the middle of that disastrous run. Runner-Up : Anthony Rizzo, New York Yankees $17M, -0.
6 bWAR Josh Bell ($16.5M) maybe would have been the pick here two weeks ago, but getting traded from Miami to Arizona lit some kind of fire in him and he has been playing like it's 2019 all over again. Rizzo might have been the choice anyway, as he was sputtering through the worst season of his career prior to missing the past two months with a broken arm.
His 2024 OPS (.630) is nearly 200 points below where it was when he inked his two-year, $40M extension during the 2022-23 offseason. Worst ROI : Gleyber Torres, New York Yankees $14.
2M, 0.0 bWAR A lot of impending free agents around the league are playing well in their contract year, but not this one. Last season, Torres was basically the only hitter the Yankees could count on.
Aaron Judge was awesome while healthy, but he missed more than a third of the campaign, leaving Torres to rack up 42 more hits and 45 more total bases than the first runner-up in those departments. He ended that year with a career OPS of .789, and he easily could have been headed for a Marcus Semien (seven years, $175M) type of contract if he had one more season of that ilk.
Instead, he has become maybe the weakest link in a lineup that has a ton of weak links beyond Judge and Juan Soto. After hitting at least 24 home runs in four of his first six seasons in the majors, Torres didn't hit his first of this season until his 33rd game. And that was hardly a dam-breaker, as he is on pace to finish the season with around 14 and just recently snapped a streak of 15 consecutive games without an extra-base hit.
Runner-Up : Xander Bogaerts, San Diego Padres $25.5M, 0.9 bWAR From a 2024-only perspective, Bogaerts hasn't been that bad.
In fact, since returning in mid-July from his fractured shoulder, he's batting around .350. However, he was woeful for the first two months of the season, he only had one home run in his first 25 games back and the reality that this soon-to-be 32-year-old is signed for another nine seasons after this one is starting to feel a bit ominous.
Worst ROI : Anthony Rendon, Los Angeles Angels $38.6M, 0.2 bWAR From 2016-19, Rendon was phenomenal, batting just a shade under .
300 while averaging better than 40 doubles and better than 25 home runs per season. From 2021-24, he has been a .236 hitter with 36 total doubles and 13 total home runs—none of the latter thus far this season.
He has been in a seemingly constant state of injury recovery, but he can't even hit when he is "healthy." Halos teammate Mike Trout has also missed a boatload of games in recent years, but at least he has a .951 OPS and a 162-game pace of 46 home runs when he has been able to play over the past four seasons.
Rendon's marks are .678 and 11, respectively. Two years left after this one until this $245M nightmare is over for the Angels, too.
Runner-Up : DJ LeMahieu, New York Yankees $15M, -1.4 bWAR The fact that the Yankees traded for a center fielder (Jazz Chisholm Jr.) and then immediately asked him to become their primary third baseman tells you all you need to know about LeMahieu's value added these days.
LeMahieu missed the first two months of the season with a broken foot, further expediting what was already a rapid decline. He had a .922 OPS in his first two seasons (2019-20) with the Yankees, finishing top four in the AL MVP vote each year.
From 2021-23, though, that mark hovered at .720. And now it's down to .
522—with two more years left on his contract, no less. Co-Worst ROI : Javier Báez, Detroit Tigers $25M, -1.1 bWAR Co-Worst ROI : Trevor Story, Boston Red Sox $22.
5M, 0.1 bWAR Without a doubt, Báez has been the bigger detriment to his team's cause. Among the 264 players with at least 250 plate appearances this season, Báez's 45 wRC+ is worst in the majors.
And that's after homers on Tuesday and Thursday. There's still a chance he'll end up with the worst mark in 18 years among players who made at least 350 trips to the plate, with Jackie Bradley Jr.'s disastrous 36 wRC+ in 2021 currently holding that dubious crown.
Then again, at least he's playing. He might be playing miserably most of the time, but there is hope he'll do something to help out on any given night. Story, on the other hand, has been out since a week into the season—this after missing 187 games over the previous two years—leaving Boston in a tough spot in its middle infield all season long.
Story is unexpectedly nearing a return from what was originally thought to be a season-ending shoulder surgery, but we shall see if that even helps the Red Sox in their quest to sneak back into the wild card picture. Though they have taken divergent paths to their complete lack of value added in 2024, it just feels fitting to call this a draw, as they both signed their six-year, $140M deals in the same offseason. Báez's deal got finalized just before the 2021-22 lockout, while Story inked his contract about a week after the work stoppage came to an end.
They've been equally painful, though, each going from decent in 2022 to replacement level in 2023 to now terrible-looking deals that aren't even halfway done. Worst ROI : Andrew Benintendi, Chicago White Sox $17.1M, -1.
7 bWAR Credit where it's due, Benintendi has at least been slugging lately. After hitting five home runs in each of the previous two seasons and homering in just three of his first 199 trips to the plate this year, he went off for five home runs in the span of five games earlier this month..
. To bring his batting average up from .202 to a still pathetic .
214. When the White Sox signed him to this five-year, $75 million deal two winters ago, Benintendi was an All-Star coming off a .304 batting average.
To that point, he was a career .279 hitter and a respectable defender with a 2021 Gold Glove to his name. But now, his contract is the biggest albatross for the team that might set the modern-day record for losses in a season.
Runner-Up : Manuel Margot, Minnesota Twins $10M, -0.6 bWAR As is the case with James McCann in Baltimore, the silver lining for Minnesota is that someone else is holding the majority of the bag here. Tampa Bay is paying Margot $2M and and Dodgers are paying $4M, so the Twins are only on the hook for $4M.
All the same, trading for Margot was the second-most noteworthy acquisition the Twins have made in the past calendar year, behind only the signing of Carlos Santana. And in more than 100 games played across the three outfield spots, he hasn't helped their cause on offense or defense. Worst ROI : Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels $37.
2M, 1.0 bWAR There are three outfielders making at least $30M this season: Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Trout. Needless to say, one of those things is not like the others this season.
While Judge and Soto are battling each other (and Bobby Witt Jr.) for AL MVP, Trout is out for the year once again after twice tearing his meniscus. As previously mentioned in regard to Anthony Rendon, at least when Trout does play, he plays well.
He had 10 home runs in 29 games played this season, putting him on a 162-game pace for 56 dingers. At this point in his career, though, even 100 games played in a season is starting to feel like a pipe dream. Since the start of 2021, he has played in just 266 of a possible 648 games—including the ones we already know he'll miss the rest of the way.
There are several relief pitchers who have appeared in more games than that. We haven't yet reached the point of questioning whether his 12-year, $426.5M contract has become one of the most painful of all-time.
With six years remaining on that deal, though, and declining production when he has been available between this season and last, that might become a discussion if he's back on the IL again early next year. Runner-Up : Jung Hoo Lee, San Francisco Giants $7.8M, 0.
2 bWAR If you count the $18.825M posting fee the Giants had to pay the Kiwoom Heroes to be able to sign Lee to his six-year, $113M deal, the amount they actually spent on him for this year was north of $26M. But he only played in 37 games before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury.
Even before the injury, he was struggling to adjust to MLB pitching. Lee hit .340 with an .
898 OPS in seven seasons in KBO before ending up at .262 and .641, respectively in his first MLB season.
Worst ROI : Kris Bryant, Colorado Rockies $28M, -0.7 bWAR You knew Bryant had to show up somewhere on the list. It was just a question of which position we assigned him, with 15 games started at DH, 12 in right field and nine at first base.
Whether he'll make any more starts this season remains to be seen, as Bryant is back on the IL for the third time this season, this time with a back strain. It's already official that he will miss more games than he plays for a third consecutive season since signing his $182M deal with Colorado. Even in the 159 games that he has played, though, he has looked nothing like the four-time All-Star, 2015 NL ROY and 2016 NL MVP we once knew.
Bryant had an .886 OPS in his seven seasons with the Cubs, but he's sitting at .713 with the Rockies.
Colorado hoped it was getting the second coming of Larry Walker. It ended up with an egregiously overpaid version of Connor Joe. Runner-Up : Nick Castellanos, Philadelphia Phillies $20M, 0.
1 bWAR Castellanos has at least drastically turned things around after a horrific start to the year. In addition to his permanently subpar defense in right, he had a sub-.500 OPS 35 games into the season.
Dating back to May 6, he has an OPS slightly north of .800. However, he has needed that solid three-month run at the dish just to scratch and claw his way back up to replacement-level production.
Worst ROI : Giancarlo Stanton, New York Yankees $32M, 0.5 bWAR Between how poorly he hit over the past two seasons (.202 AVG, .
729 OPS) and how poorly most of New York's lineup is hitting this season—13 players with at least 100 plate appearances, eight of whom have a sub-.690 OPS—it kind of feels like Stanton is having a good year, batting .241 with 20 home runs and a .
780 OPS. However, he's the 15th-highest salaried player in baseball right now—even making $1M more than Juan Soto—so it's a situation where he's less horrifically overpaid than he had been in recent seasons, but definitely still not worth the $32M. When he does produce, though, it's usually good news for the Yankees, who are 36-8 when Stanton either scores or drives in at least one run.
And it's hardly a coincidence that they went 10-18 while he spent more than five weeks on the IL with a hamstring strain. Runner-Up : Seattle's Mitches Mitch Haniger: $20M, -0.3 bWAR Mitch Garver: $10.
5M, -0.2 bWAR Whether it's Garver at DH with Haniger in RF or Garver behind the plate with Haniger as the designated hitter, the two Mitches Seattle acquired this offseason both rank top five on the team in plate appearances—with very little to show for it. Of the 169 players with at least 350 plate appearances this season, Haniger's 85 wRC+ is tied for 150th-best, while Garver's 84 puts him in a tie for 155th.
Garver's .167 batting average is worst in the bunch, by far. Whether he'll make enough plate appearances to quality for a batting title is on track to be a photo finish, but he just might set the MLB record for worst batting average in a season with at least 500 plate appearances—a dubious title that presently belongs to Chris Davis with a mark of .
168 in 2018. Rather than sprinkling the expensive UCL surgeries in amongst the healthy(-ish) pitchers who simply aren't faring well this season, let's quickly run through the players making at least $10M who have yet to (and in most cases will not) throw a pitch this season. Jacob deGrom, Texas Rangers ($40M) —One of the few from this tier who might actually make it back to the mound in 2024.
Though, at this point, 10 games out of the playoff picture, why bother? deGrom has logged just 186.2 IP since the beginning of 2021 due to various injuries, but he has at least been absurdly good when available, posting a 2.03 ERA, 0.
65 WHIP and 12.7 K/BB ratio. Stephen Strasburg, Washington Nationals ($35M) —Strasburg officially retired earlier this season after countless unsuccessful attempts to recover from the complications from his thoracic outlet syndrome.
It's a shame things ended as abruptly as they did, and a shame for the Nationals that they'll need to continue paying him more than $20M per year through 2029. Lucas Giolito, Boston Red Sox ($18M) —Giolito underwent UCL surgery during spring training with the hope that he'll be able to make it back in time for Opening Day 2025. Boston gave him a two-year, $38.
5M deal with a player option on the second season. It's a foregone conclusion he'll be accepting that option before hopefully reinflating his value next year. Lance McCullers Jr.
, Houston Astros ($17.7M) —McCullers had a flexor tendon surgery in June of last season, which ended up costing him all of 2023 and all of 2024. He has two years left on his five-year, $85M contract, which thus far has amounted to 47.
2 IP. Madison Bumgarner, Arizona Diamondbacks ($14M) —The Snakes cut Bumgarner in late April of last season, but he still had this season left on his contract. There were reports in early March that he might be considering a comeback, but those have yet to amount to anything.
Anthony DeSclafani, Minnesota Twins ($12M) —Another flexor tendon surgery, this one coming in late March. DeSclafani was traded twice this offseason, but he won't pitch in 2024. Antonio Senzatela, Colorado Rockies ($12M) —Underwent Tommy John surgery last July, and there's a chance he could pitch later this season.
Again, though, why bother? The Rockies are playing for absolutely nothing and should be encouraging Senzatela to just take it easy and prepare for the two remaining $12M seasons left on his contract. Robert Stephenson, Los Angeles Angels ($11M) —The lone reliever in the bunch, Stephenson signed a three-year, $33M deal with the Halos, faced one reliever in a rehab appearance in mid-April and then underwent Tommy John surgery. He's going to miss all of 2024 and likely a big chunk of 2025.
Eric Hosmer, 1B, San Diego Padres ($13M) and Hunter Dozier, OF/DH, Kansas City Royals ($10M) —Not pitchers, but let's at least mention them here anyway. Both former top 10 picks were released in late May 2023 and have yet to resurface. Hosmer retired in February, but Dozier is still trying to play, spending the first couple months of this season with the Angels' triple-A affiliate (Salt Lake) before getting released again.
They're both still getting a nice chunk of money, though. SP1: Patrick Corbin, LHP, Washington Nationals $35.4M, -1.
0 bWAR Mercifully for Washington, this six-year, $140M contract is almost over. The first year was great. Corbin made 24 quality starts in 2019 and was one of three Nationals pitchers who logged at least 238 strikeouts.
He also pitched three scoreless innings in Game 7 of the World Series. He's not the legend that Stephen Strasburg is, but he'll never be forgotten in the nation's capitol for that (post)season. However, Corbin is on the verge of leading the National League in losses for the fourth consecutive season—and it's hardly just due to poor run support.
Since the beginning of 2021, he has a 5.79 ERA, a 1.55 WHIP and a bWAR of -4.
1. He almost never misses a start, though, consistently taking his lumps every five days over the past four years. SP2: Max Scherzer, RHP, Texas Rangers $43.
3M, 0.4 bWAR SP3: Justin Verlander, RHP, Houston Astros $43.3M, 0.
7 bWAR Quite the 2A/2B tandem here with two of the four oldest players in baseball and two of the three highest-salaried players this season finally nearing a very expensive finish line. Scherzer (39.1 IP) and Verlander (57.
0 IP) have combined to make just 18 appearances this season, albeit each doing so with an ERA below 4.00 and a K/9 north of 8.0.
They're both on the mend, though it's too little too late on the Scherzer front with the Rangers now hopelessly out of the postseason picture. Verlander, however, could end up being just about worth his salary for the Astros if he comes through in the clutch in September and helps them edge out the Mariners for the AL West crown. SP4: Jordan Montgomery, LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks $25M, -1.
3 bWAR Most of the free agents who this past winter had little choice but to settle for short-term, high-AAV contracts with player options have done relatively well for themselves. Matt Chapman has a top 10 WAR in baseball right now. Blake Snell started out horribly, but has rallied to an incredible degree.
And while Cody Bellinger hasn't been great, he has maybe been good enough to test those free agency waters again. And then there's Montgomery, who has a 6.25 ERA through 18 starts and just cannot get into a groove.
He has made just three quality starts in the past three months, and immediately allowed eight runs his next time out after two of those. But he's making more money (by an $11M margin) than anyone else on the roster, so of course he's going to continue pitching if he's healthy. With Eduardo Rodriguez and Merrill Kelly back in the mix, though, it wouldn't be terribly shocking if the Diamondbacks left Montgomery off their postseason roster, assuming they make it to October.
This is, after all, the same franchise that kicked Madison Bumgarner to the curb in spring 2023. SP5: Gerrit Cole, RHP, New York Yankees $36M, 0.9 bWAR At 83 percent the cost Verlander or Scherzer, Cole hasn't been actively hurting the Yankees with poor performance, but it most certainly hasn't been a vintage or injury-free year for the reigning AL Cy Young winner.
Cole just made his 10th start of the season on Friday and has a 4.15 ERA to show for it. All that really matters at this point is October, though, as the Yankees are pretty comfortably destined for the postseason.
However, this could make for a fascinating offseason game of chicken between the Yankees and Cole. There's a clause in his nine-year, $324M contract allowing him to opt out of the final four years and $144M this offseason. If he does, the Yankees then have the option of retaining him on a five-year, $180 deal—in other words, adding another $36M onto his contract to keep him from leaving, turning it into a 10-year, $360M deal.
Heading into the season, it seemed like a sure thing that both sides would do exactly that and Cole would be locked up through 2029. If he doesn't rally down the stretch, though, if he opts out, the Yankees just might let him walk and reallocate that money toward the massive offer they're going to make to Juan Soto. RP1: Edwin Díaz, RHP, New York Mets $19.
65M, 0.2 bWAR If you take out the four-week stretch early in the season where he blew four saves, lost a fifth game and racked up a 9.58 ERA across 10.
1 innings of work, Díaz hasn't been too shabby. In fact, he has a 1.20 ERA since the beginning of June, going 9-for-10 in save chances and still winning the one game where he took a BS for allowing two inherited runners to score.
All told, though, the highest-paid reliever in baseball has been a replacement-level closer with a 3.60 ERA and a 74 percent conversion rate on save opportunities. RP2: Craig Kimbrel, RHP, Baltimore Orioles $13M, -0.
1 bWAR As has been the case for the bulk of the past six seasons, the Kimbrel experience has been a wild ride, this time for the Orioles. From May 10 through July 10, he pitched 21 innings, allowing just 11 baserunners and one run while striking out 31. For two months, he was worth every penny of this one-year deal and then some.
However, Kimbrel only caught fire after temporarily losing his closer gig in April, and he has been all over the map lately with a line of 9.2 IP, 11 H, 11 ER, 12 BB, 11 K in his last 10 appearances. RP3: Ryan Pressly, RHP, Houston Astros $14M, 0.
0 bWAR When the Astros signed Josh Hader and turned Pressly into their primary setup man, it kind of felt like it was going to take a small miracle to beat this team if it had a lead after seven innings. Instead, Pressly has struggled in the predominantly eighth inning role, blowing seven saves and taking two other losses, despite only being forced to deal with three inherited runners in the entire season. He has at least rallied a good bit from what was an 8.
31 ERA through his first 10 appearances, but not enough to have been worth any wins above replacement for the year. And now he's on the IL with a low back injury. RP4: José Alvarado, LHP, Philadelphia Phillies $9.
025M, -0.1 bWAR Not quite an eight-figure salary, but we'll make an exception for what had been one of Philadelphia's weakest links. Alvarado had a 1.
74 ERA last season, and his presence in the bullpen was a big reason they were more than happy to let Kimbrel walk in November. But he hasn't had it this season, saddled with a 4.44 ERA as the former primary choice for save opportunities.
They traded for Carlos Estévez because of it. RP5: Aroldis Chapman, LHP, Pittsburgh Pirates $10.5M, 0.
5 bWAR Chapman walked 23 batters in his first 19.1 IP this season. At that point, he had a FIP of 5.
92, a K/BB of 1.5 and it seemed like his career could be over at any minute. Since the end of May, though, he has a 2.
19 FIP, a K/BB ratio of 3.5 and has emerged as arguably the No. 1 player to keep an eye on over these next two weeks for waivers purposes.
Had he pitched like that all season long, he'd be nowhere near this list..
