I disagree with the premise that paying a free agent 10+ years is stupid. It costs the total contract. MLB player contracts are fully guaranteed and incentives are limited to games played, can’t be based on outcomes in the games, so for all intents and purposes, the total dollars and how to work out when the payments happen.
when you are specifically looking at the “when” part, the years, ignore the length of the player contract and just look at how the team pays the bills. Lights, facilities, what have you. That sell 2 million tickets at an average $54 per person is 108m plus TV contract, probably a bit more than that. Call it $250m to $300m in revenue including advertising revenue as a guess.
Operating costs are the first thing that comes out of revenue, not sure what that is, but with a hundred plus employees of $50k per year salaries, it’s at least 15 mil per year
the Twins (or the Mets) clearly can’t pay a full $300m contract on day one. $315 mil is what Carlos Correa costs. If the market couldn’t bear the $315m, the prices couldn’t sustain the growth. Teams can however pay that salary over time. Now looking at the career of a baseball player. Verlanders are extremely rare. Most players reach free agency around 29 to 30, and play until 35. 6 years at 315 mil Would be 63m per year, still difficult to pay considering revenue. The team still had to pay other players too. 10+ years, bringing that salary to 25-28m per year, most teams sell half their tickets as season tickets and can flow that cash in season, basically selling it before they pay for it. Whether or not the player will play for 10 years is irrelevant.