Wonder who Jason Heyward is signing with this off-season. Yeah that’s not the point though. Players who already have leverage (due to age positional scarcity or whatever) will always ask for opt outs. Once one team is willing to kick in, they all have to. You might as well be complaining about the per year dollar figure. “But why do we have to pay him $30 million?????” Because he asked for it and he could get it from someone else if not us. If you don’t want to do it, don’t, but you aren’t getting the player. Consider the absurdity of wanting Harper but griping about his opt outs. It’s the price of doing business baby That's fine, but if he wants the opt-outs, you better be getting a discount on the total money over what he would be getting from an opt-outless deal. If you're willing to pay him $30m with opt-outs, he better bet worth $50m without them. "Opt-outs are a way of giving more value" is a very different story from "Lol, who even cares about the total value because the opt-outs will invalidate it."