I wish people could stop this delusion of believing that when a team signs someone for 7 or 8 or 10 years that this must mean they expect elite performance from that player for the full term of that contract.
That’s just not the reality of it.
The reality is the team decides they want to secure as much production as that player can provide, and the final term of the contract is often just a way to spread out the financial obligation to land the player.
If people think the Angels expected Pujols to be an elite offensive player through age 42, they are smoking crack.
They expected probably 5-6 years of very high level performance with the marketing power of him being a star, and then probably passable performance for a couple more years.
Pujols didn’t deliver on the actual performance expectations, but the point remains: teams do not actually expect excellent production for the whole term of these long term deals.
Rendon signed a long term deal and it sucks that he has lost some time in his prime to injuries. That really sucks.
But all this talk about how these long term deals “don’t age well” is about as insightful as saying 60 month terms on a new car “won’t age well.”
A $700 a month payment on a new car feels much more worth it on the first year than it does in the 5th year. Duh. And the person choosing the 60 month term knew that, just as teams know the production at age 38 or 40 will most likely be lousy compared to the first couple of years.