[Jason14h]

Yeah none of that saves money . Cash flow only makes sense if an owner was cash flow poor in the short term but wouldn’t be in the long term . I guess going through a divorce or having assets locked up or something weird “could” theoretically cause that - or a small market team that is going for it and then knows they will be rebuilding / lower salary in the future and can’t make a large single season commitment (Not a Dodgers or even Jays issue )

Deferring money isn’t taking “less” for a player unless they are an idiot . Ohtani said it because he couldn’t come out and say “I deferred my money so when I retire I can move to a lower tax state (or Japan) to minimize California taxes

A player may prefer a deferred structure if the team is offering a larger rate of return then they can risk free lock in themselves . This happened with Bonilla when the Mets could offer a higher per annum return then he could get on the market deferring because they though they could beat the market (Hint - they couldn’t and were using a ROI based on Madoffs return rate which turned out to be fraudulent)

Even the luxury cap uses the current value of the deal to calculate .

Now I guess teams can gain a few percentages if they can arbitrage current value of money vs what the deferred payment is , but that’s a small rounding error in the grand scheme of things

Bobby Bonilla liked it because the interest rate the Mets were paying to defer was obscene - because they thought they could get the yearly ROI on investments Bernie Madoff was promising . They played themself