How Much Extra Money Will Young Cubs Stars Make Based on New MLB Rules and Playoff Shares?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images

As part of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (which took effect in 2022), players throughout the majors who are not yet eligible for salary arbitration have some extra ways to accrue bonus pay and service time. Winning (or placing highly in the voting) for certain awards nets automatic, standard bonus amounts, and if a player wins the Rookie or the Year or MVP Award despite not having otherwise qualified for a full year of service time, they're retroactively granted the extra service time needed to do just that, moving them one year closer to free agency. In addition, a wins above replacement formula agreed upon by the players union and the owners distributes extra bonus money to players who produced major value for their teams during those early, team-controlled, often minimum-salary seasons of their careers.

That money is all paid from the league's central fund, so when Cubs players receive those bonuses, it doesn't increase the team's payroll or affect their competitive-balance tax threshold number. However, these payments can be very important. They alter the leverage relationship between players and teams (tilting the power toward the former), but they also improve players' morale during seasons when there can otherwise be some resentment about salary.

Once awards season is over, we'll get a specific announcement about who receives what allocations based on this new bonus pool. However, it's safe to guess the following:

• Cade Horton will finish first or second for the Rookie of the Year Award, and thereby get a full year's service time for his first full (partial) season with the parent club;
• Horton will make a little over $1 million in bonus money, for winning the award and for the WAR he accumulated;
• Pete Crow-Armstrong will finish somewhere in the top 10 in NL MVP voting (though only if he finishes in the top five will that net him a direct bonus), and net roughly $1 million in bonus money in total; and
• Michael Busch will make somewhere around $500,000 in bonus money for the WAR he accumulated as the team's star-caliber first baseman.

Matt Shaw and Daniel Palencia could also net modest amounts of money via this system, but the big earners will be Horton, Crow-Armstrong and Busch. Since Horton will earn a full season of service time, he'll also become eligible for free agency after the 2030 season, the same autumn when Crow-Armstrong will be able to hit the market. 

Because the Cubs made it to the Division Series before losing this fall, every player who made a substantial contribution to the big-league team this year will also receive somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000, sometime this offseason. That's not life-changing money, for big-league ballplayers, but nor is it an unimportant amount, for a player still making the six-figure salaries at the bottom of the big-league pay scale. In short, a few of the Cubs' most important players are about to have their official earnings roughly double—or better. To Horton, the money is just one part of the windfall coming to him. He's also going to gain significant earning power, by getting one year closer to free agency.

For the Cubs, this is good news, too. They just have to be savvy and humble enough to see the upside. If the Ricketts family is interested solely in trying to squeeze every marginal dollar possible out of Crow-Armstrong or Horton, it's a nightmare of a development, because extending either player on a long-term deal on team-friendly terms just got a lot harder. In fact, it's probably impossible. The endorsement opportunities available to each (especially Crow-Armstrong) and the major infusion of cash reduces the leverage the team has in any long-term contract negotiation almost to zero. It only hurts them, in that regard, that each is also a former first-round pick who got paid plenty of money on their way into professional baseball, in the first place. Horton's acceleration toward free agency will also make it harder to insist upon any concessions in contract talks.

However, if the team has already made their peace with the fact that they aren't (and were never) in position to extract a very team-friendly deal from either player, this extra money should only grease the skids. Crow-Armstrong and Horton can each afford to acknowledge the fact that the Cubs gave them great opportunities and developmental support to facilitate their accomplishments, secure in the knowledge that they've gained a lot of earning power and won't even have to seriously consider a lowball offer.

Busch is a totally different story. Already set to turn 28 this winter and playing a position that will make him undesirable as a free agent by the time he gets to the market, he just doesn't have much of a path to nine-figure career earnings in the modern game. That's unfortunate, but payouts like these cushion the harsh realities at hand. Busch and the Cubs are unlikely to strike a deal that keeps him in Chicago beyond 2029, when he can become a free agent, unless it be on very team-friendly terms. (Think back to the long-term deals signed by guys like Whit Merrifield and Jeff McNeil, after they bloomed exceptionally late.) For him, the extra earning power (however small, in a relative sense, it might remain) is nice. He'll play in 2026 as a pre-arbitration player, too. Not until 2027 will he qualify for arbitration, so whatever extra money he can make up front will be a welcome change.

When it comes to players like Crow-Armstrong and Horton, expect to see fewer extensions in years to come, except in cases where teams are willing to pay market-rate prices even several years before a player reaches free agency. That's the new nature of the sport, for first-round picks who make it to the majors relatively young. With this bonus pool in place—and especially on a good team, where playoff shares provide a nice boost and there's a good chance of earning even bigger such shares in the future—there's much less incentive for a player to give their team a discount, unless the team is taking a big gamble by guaranteeing them money before they've demonstrated that they can succeed in the bigs.

For players who made far less money as amateurs entering professional baseball or who don't find a foothold until their mid-20s, the leverage remains with teams. Palencia and Busch are candidates to sign team-friendly deals with the Cubs. The downside is that those deals would hold less potential to be game-changers for the team, because those players (based on their skill sets, ages and risk profiles) are unlikely to be star-caliber contributors as they gain earning power later in their careers.

If the Cubs do strike long-term deals with either Crow-Armstrong or Horton, meanwhile, expect them to look a lot like the one Bobby Witt Jr. signed with the Royals prior to 2024. Witt was a former top pick over whom Kansas City had little leverage, and his extra earning power based on the bonus pools allowed him to drive an even harder bargain. He got nearly $300 million in guaranteed money, despite signing a deal several years before he could become a free agent. Fernando Tatis Jr. got a similar concession from the San Diego Padres. The Cubs won't pony up that much for either of their best pre-arbitration stars, because neither player is quite at the level of Witt or Tatis. However, the new reality of the game—which will be reaffirmed this winter, as extra money flows to these guys in ways the Cubs can't control—affects the terms of any deal. Don't expect team-friendly extensions for budding stars anymore. The Cubs missed that window, and they'll need a wide-open checkbook to keep their young core together if it gels into the winning machine they envision.

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[CubinNY]

Enough extra money to fund a TPA "conference" in Omaha.