"Go to Arizona for Thanksgiving and you miss 5-year, $90 million contracts handed out to Torii Hunter."

That was the subject of an email I received today. I had the same reaction when I saw the news. 5 years, $18 million a year for a pretty good 32 year old centerfielder? Hunter was once an elite defensive player, but all the metrics I've looked at indicate he's declined to merely above average. He's a good, not great, hitter. He's not particularly durable. To top things off, the Angels already have a pretty crowded outfield situation. It certainly seems like a lot of money for Torii Hunter.

But what if $18 million isn't $18 million? This is always hard to predict, but I think there may be some serious salary inflation in the next few years. Salaries have stagnated the last few years while overall MLB revenues have been increasing dramatically. According to a recent article by Jeff Passan, player salaries as a percentage of revenue have fallen from 56% in 2001 to 49% in 2005 to about 41% in 2007. Of course, it may be that owners have finally smartened up and are hoarding their money. A lot of the new revenue is from sources that are split evenly amongst all the teams (i.e. mlb.com, national television contract), so there's less incentive to actually field a good team; why try to draw fans to the stadium when you're getting a fat check courtesy of mlb.com no matter what? On the other hand, this is the second straight weak free agent class, so it may just be a case where a lot of teams are sitting on cash, but haven't had anything tempting to spend it on. If bigger names hit the market over the next couple years, salaries may finally start catching up to revenues. So, $18 million a year may not look so crazy by the end of the 5 year contract.

Despite everything written above, I reserve the right to complain about the size of any future contracts entered into by the Mets.