Random thought of the day: If the economic collapse of 2008 hadn't happened, I don't know if the Bobby Bonilla contract deferral is such a bad deal.

(Short thread, incoming.)

As might be well-known, the Mets bought out the final $5.9M of Bonilla's contract in 2000, agreeing to give him annual payments of $1.19M from 2011 to 2035. In all, Bonilla will bank about $30M.

How this could have been a good deal for the Mets: They had 11 years to get as good of a return on investment as possible for that $5.9M before they had to start making payments of essentially $100K a month for 25 years to Bonilla.

Now, in some robust stretches for the economy, $5.9M invested might have doubled in 11 years. This would have theoretically given the Mets $11.8M at the start of payments to Bonilla.

Of course, we know what happened in 2008. But let's pretend the Mets doubled their investment.

I found this compound interest calculator that shows someone investing $11.8M and withdrawing $100K a month for 25 years would come out with $8.4M at the end if they got 10 percent annual interest: https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/finance/calculators/compoundinterestcalculator.php

And sports teams might be able to beat that.

And if the Mets had gotten really lucky and tripled that $5.9M between 2000 and 2011, the numbers really start to go insane. The calculator shows them with just shy of $80M in 2035.

Last tweet for this: These are just rough calculations, of course. I just don't think the Mets made as awful of a move on this as it's annually made out to be. Without the global economic meltdown, we might be touting them as geniuses.