You see, the difference is not handing over an obscene amount of money, but rather the rest of the factors involved. At 32 years old when ARod signed for 10/275m, it should have been a pretty safe assumption by most that at best he was in the plateau portion of his career which only leaves one way to go. At 24 years old, dare I say we haven’t even seen the best of Clayton yet. That in itself makes it pretty scary for a guy whose aged 22-24 seasons has averaged 222 innings pitched with an ERA of 2.57 and also racked up one CY and a second place finish.

I know, people will point to the inherent risk of handing out large contracts to a pitcher, which I agree with in principal. However, in this day and age if a team wants to be a landing spot for superstar players they have to be willing to take risks and hand out large contracts. If the Dodgers won’t pay Clayton, you can sure bet that somebody will. As a Dodger fan, I would be totally fine with making him the highest paid pitcher in the game, but that comes with a stipulation. The key is to not make it so far in front of everyone that over the course of the contract the upper echelon of elite pitchers signing new contracts won’t be passing him up. The thinking there is that the contract itself becomes financially more valuable at the end in relation to other pitchers around the league and the production you will still be getting from Clayton in his early thirties The problem with ARod is that at this point, halfway through his contract, his salary is still quite a distance out in front of everyone with a rapidly declining skill set. That doesn’t make him valuable to the Yankees or anyone else.