The first thing I think of is bad economics. How can a sport afford to spend 200-300 million plus for ten years plus on players that by the time they hit the midpoint of the contract that players numbers will surely decline. In basketball, and football that's a recipe for disaster. In other sports this kind of money management mishandling is the kind of think that cash straps an organization for years.
According to some quick research I did, most baseball players peak between the ages of 26-29. The PED steroid era in baseball ushered in a new fantasy of how well players could perform into their mid 30's. This is just not common and highly improbable in baseball and all other sports. Is it possible to have an anomaly of a player who performs at a higher level than when he was in his early 30's or late 20's? Yes but its highly improbable. In the late 90's well into the 2000 era there were some players who were performing at a high level into their mid 30's. Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Nelson, Cruz, David Ortiz and many many more. These players names were in one way or another linked to steroids, and some admittedly used them. Baseball was handing out 10 year contracts to players 30 years old and this was totally absurd as the average players peak was between 26-29 years old. Baseball expected the steroid era to continue. The steroid era brought in a lot of revenue for baseball, and it allowed teams to spend on these fictional players to the tune of 200 million contracts which were the max at the time. Reality has set in, or so it seamed over the past 8 years,and we are back to conventional wisdom of players not performing well past age 33-35.
This year we have two contracts that are destined to fail. Manny Muchado (26) 10 years 300 million. He will be 36 years old at the end of the contract. Bryce Harper (26) 13 years 330 million dollars. He will also be 36 years old at the end of the contract. These contracts are not as bad a Alex Rodriquez and Albert Puljos contracts but just as irresponsible. The last 3-4 years of the Muchado, and Harper deals the teams will be paying a player who just cant perform at a high level. The Phillies will be good for a couple of years but out of the 13 years they will eat most of the contract with very little success.
https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/what-age-do-baseball-players-peak/
Here is a list of players who were not recognized as great players during the steroid era. They were overlooked and forgotten because their stats were not sexy enough to meet lofty steroid home run status.
Kenny Lofton, Brandon Phillips, Tori Hunter.
