NY Mets trade retrospective: Phase 2 of MLB's worst contract per the internet

How often does a reunion with a former player work out? On November 11, 1998, the New York Mets began the second phase of the MLB contract the internet will tell you is the worst in sports history.

Coming off a near-miss at the postseason, the Mets were on an offseason mission to build a super team. They’d add multiple big name players to the roster, including Robin Ventura and Armando Benitez. The table was set. This was a Mike Piazza-led team.

One of their first offseason transactions involved a swap with the Los Angeles Dodgers. After 72 games in Hollywood, Bobby Bonilla was headed back to Queens in exchange for Mel Rojas.

Was the Bobby Bonilla trade in 1998 as bad as the internet tells us?

Rojas was not a good Mets reliever, posting a 5.76 ERA in his year and a half in New York. He’d implode in Los Angeles, allowing 7 earned runs in 5 innings of work before the Dodgers paired him off with Dave Mlicki in a deal to the Detroit Tigers for two guys who never made the majors and Robinson Checo, a guy with a 10.34 ERA after the trade in limited action with the Dodgers.

Rojas’ career was over after 1999. Bonilla managed to linger around through 2001, quietly becoming more infamous for his contract negotiations. Rather than the $5.9 million owed to him for the 2000 season, the same salary he had in 1999, the Mets agreed to his annual pay day with 8% interest from 2011-2035. It made Bonilla and the Mets the first LOL in human history because of the sheer magnitude of silliness involved. The contract wasn’t outrageous and with a Ponzi Scheme pulled on the Mets owners, it only got more ridiculous as the years went on.

Adding to the awfulness is how badly Bonilla performed. He batted .160 while being virtually unplayable on defense. He’d log about two dozen games in right field, looking every bit his age.

A disappointment in many ways his first time with the Mets in the early 1990s, the repeat of having the more aged version of him is what helped this become a more legendary misfire on behalf of the organization. The deferred payments instantly catch our attention, but this is made far worse because of how little he contributed and how much he gained financially. This isn’t a case a beloved player getting hurt after an extension or a failed free agent signing. Round two of Bonilla lives on in infamy because of how uniquely bad it ended up. The irony is, current Dodgers ownership might have done something similar had they not been able to dump him off on the Mets.