Gunnar Henderson was paid a $756,200 salary this year, before the bonuses that come with his All-Star appearance and performance-based supplements. Flip a couple of numbers, “The Price is Right” style, and add some zeroes at the end and you’ll get the agreed-upon $765 million contract the Mets are handing Juan Soto, who at age 26 raised the bar for free agent contracts not just in baseball but all professional sports.

Baseball’s pay structure is such that young players like the 23-year-old Henderson make the league minimum for three years, then earn a series of raises through salary arbitration until they have six years of major league service time and can become free agents. That’s where the promise of these record-setting contracts comes in, and given the size of this most recent one, it’s hard to envision a world where Henderson has any fate but reaching free agency.

For Henderson, the possibility of breaking Soto’s record is absolutely in play. It’s increasingly infrequent that the game’s brightest stars reach free agency, and Henderson hasn’t signed the same kind of long-term contract extension with his club that his 2023 Rookie of the Year counterpart — Arizona’s Corbin Carroll — did before that season, reaching a deal for eight years and $110 million. Fellow 2019 draftee and superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. locked in with Kansas City last February for 11 years and $288 million (with a club option that could bring it to 14 years and $377 million).

Others in Henderson’s cohort, including Seattle’s Julio Rodriguez and Atlanta’s Michael Harris II, are extended as well. That leaves few players of Henderson’s stature who could compete for the top free agent contract after the 2028 season, which is admittedly a long time from now, but is close enough, given where Henderson is in his career that the window to lock him down long-term might have closed.

That closure would have occurred for a couple of reasons. Executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias has never specifically commented on a contract extension offer, but vagaries around the subject include the idea that they’re constantly engaged with players on such things and they’re trying to do what’s best for the club. Before John Angelos sold the team to David Rubenstein and company, that meant something much different than it did now, and ownership simply wasn’t authorizing the kind of financial commitments it would have taken to lock down a Henderson or Adley Rutschman in the early stage of their careers when such deals are made. Angelos, as you’ll recall, said such a contract would sink the franchise.

Jordan Westburg and Colton Cowser are next in line in terms of experience, with less than Rutschman and Henderson. Heston Kjerstad, Jackson Holliday, and Coby Mayo are beyond them. Each player’s situation is unique, and the calculus for accepting or not accepting an extension changes from player to player.

For Henderson, the Witt extension always felt like the benchmark. Players who sign such deals are frequently locking in strong overall commitments that aren’t as high as they’d get in free agency, and doing so because any risk of injury or decline is removed. Considering Witt’s breakout this year — he finished second in MVP voting — you can see a world where his contract is a bargain relative to his talents and the price he’d fetch on the open market.

And considering Henderson could make around $40 million in his three arbitration years, a la Vladimir Guerrero Jr., then be a free agent at age 27 with at least three years of peak production remaining ahead of him, it would probably take a true catastrophe for him not to at least match Witt’s guaranteed earnings with his club-control years and whatever he signs for in free agency. That’s the floor. The ceiling, as Soto and Henderson’s agent Scott Boras knows well, is only going to keep rising. Maybe we’re talking a billion dollars by that point.

I’d love to see the Orioles try to keep him here for his entire career. We may have just seen why, once and for all, that’s not going to happen.

Meoli’s Mailbag

“O’Neill’s career stats are mediocre. He’s an OK player who will make about $16.5 million per year because people don’t seem to mind paying outrageous prices for tickets, parking and concessions, and are willing to endure two hours of advertisements in a televised game so that journeyman players can be paid exorbitant sums and team owners can all be billionaires. They don’t call this The Second Gilded Age for no reason. – Patrick Purcell

Patrick’s email, which dismissed many of the stats like Tyler O’Neill’s performance against left-handed pitching and the left-right splits in hard-hit rate, expressed some annoyance at paying a potential platoon player that much.

I will say that I kind of dismissed O’Neill as an option for the Orioles because of his strikeout rate, but hadn’t dug in much on it. If he has 317 plate appearances against righties and strikes out 34.7% of the time in 2025, as he did in 2024, then that would be a failure by the Orioles. If he’s hurt all the time, that would be bad as well. But if he does what he’s been signed to do, he’ll be more than worth it.

Talent Pipeline

I feel compelled to note the Orioles received Minor League Baseball’s inaugural Sportsmanship Award. I think it says a lot about the makeup of the players the Orioles target and the caliber of humans on their coaching staffs that no one was suspended for on-field conduct all year, and for this to be recognized by MiLB is something that all involved should be proud of.

Free Agent of the Week

With The Athletic reporting last week that the Orioles are skittish on signing a free agent pitcher who received the qualifying offer (Max Fried, Sean Manaea, and Nick Pivetta) because they’d lose a draft pick that likely would fall in the 30s, my focus on the pitching list shifted, even as Elias said yesterday in Dallas that such pitchers were, in fact, on the table for the Orioles.

That leaves Nathan Eovaldi as the next-best option, and he’s honestly a pretty good one. There’s some injury risk there, but when he pitches, he pitches really well. He had a 3.80 ERA with a 1.11 WHIP in 170 2/3 innings last year, hasn’t seen a real dip in his expected stats, and has two World Series rings to help add some gravitas to the Orioles’ clubhouse. Given how hot the market is, he may not come on a reasonable short-term deal, but he’s the best target for such a thing I can see.

Further reading

🧢 ‘We’re in on everybody’: Danielle and Paul got the winter meetings coverage off to a great start yesterday, outlining Elias’ pitching plans and digging in on the potential for a Samuel Basallo debut in 2025.

🏟️ The left-field wall: Andy dove deep on the benefits of the left-field wall change, which, as you can imagine, is going to be as good for hitters as it is bad for pitchers.

🐮 Cowser’s year in review: Colton Cowser seems to have good perspective on his rookie season, per his conversation with Andy.