[unreal37]

The argument is that they immediately spent the $5.9 million on another player the next season (who they would not have been able to get due to the salary cap), who led them into the World Series. They traded that player away for another player who has become a superstar. So they did in fact turn the savings into something meaningful.

It worked out for both of them. There are win-win deals.

[the_watcher]

I both agree and disagree. From a purely financial standpoint, this was almost assuredly a bad deal for the Mets over the course of the payments.

That said, the whole point of owning a sports franchise is to get to and win a championship, so in that sense, yes, this was almost definitely worth it. Also, I don't know the economics for baseball in 2000, but I know that in the NBA, each home playoff game is generally considered worth several million dollars, so if Bonilla buyout for Hampton was causal to reaching the WS, they may have made the money back in 2000 alone.

Plus, there's the whole "Bobby Bonilla seemed like he was a gigantic pain to the organization" aspect.

[zerocrates]

There is no salary cap in MLB. At the time even the "luxury" tax on particularly high payrolls had just been eliminated.