The scoreboard for money has changed. These are the deals where one player, one signature, and one Average Annual Value reshape how every front office thinks about risk, reward, and the Competitive Balance Tax line.
MLB highest paid players by AAV live in a strange space. Their value is measured in wins and WAR, sure, but also in how their salaries bend a franchise tax bill and its future. When a team commits more than 40 million per year to one star, that choice ripples into every other roster decision.
Context: Why AAV runs the sport
In MLB, teams live with AAV far more than they live with total dollars. The CBT system does not care about how an owner structures signing bonuses or back loading. It cares about what the contract is worth per guaranteed season once you smooth it out.
That number is what sits on the books every year, even when the player is hurt or in a slump. Once you cross the CBT threshold, every extra dollar of AAV is taxed at rising rates, especially for repeat payors. Clubs like the Mets, Dodgers, Yankees, and now the Phillies know exactly how every big contract pushes them into higher brackets
So this is not just a list of rich stars. It is a snapshot of where teams have chosen to stretch the system. The 7 highest AAV deals show who is trusted to carry not only a lineup or rotation but also a giant share of the tax bill, year after year.
Methodology: Rankings use contract AAV figures from official MLB reporting and Cot’s Baseball Contracts, weighted by AAV size first, then recent on field impact and role in current CBT planning, with ties broken by how central the player remains to his club today.
The Deals That Reshape Payrolls
1 Juan Soto tops highest paid list
The defining moment came when the Mets and Juan Soto agreed on a 15 year, 765 million contract, with a clean AAV of 51 million. No huge deferrals. No creative opt out maze. Just a franchise saying out loud that a left handed hitter in his mid 20s was worth the largest yearly salary in league history.
From a pure CBT standpoint, it is simple math. That 51 million AAV sits higher than any other deal on the board, more than 7 million above the previous pitcher class record that Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander shared. More than that, the commitment runs through Soto’s late 30s, so the Mets have tied a record setting CBT hit to a player who is expected to be an MVP level bat for at least half of the contract.
Here is the thing about Soto. He has already spent years living with the “generational hitter” label, and yet the contract still felt like a statement. Mets owner Steve Cohen called the deal a moment that showed the club was “all in on chasing championships” and described Soto as a player with “championship pedigree and a passion for the biggest stage.”
Behind that press conference was a long story. Soto had turned down a 440 million extension offer with Washington earlier in his career, betting that the market and his production would grow together. That bet paid off. Now every time he steps into the box at Citi Field, the sound in the building carries that extra edge that only comes when fans know their club has pushed its payroll right through another CBT line. [Link: Team Profile]
2 Shohei Ohtani rewrites AAV math
If Juan Soto owns the highest nominal AAV at 51 million, Shohei Ohtani owns the most complicated one. When he signed his 10 year, 700 million contract with the Dodgers, the headline number was so big that it felt almost abstract. Then the deferrals dropped. Ohtani agreed to push the vast majority of his money into the 2030s, taking only 2 million per year in current salary so that the Dodgers could keep spending now.
For CBT purposes, the league values the present value of those future payments, not the raw 700 million figure. That calculation puts his AAV a little above 46 million, second on this list and still ahead of the old pitcher record. It is a reminder that while the headlines screamed 70 million per year, the actual tax hit came in far closer to the level of other top contracts once adjusted for time and interest.
Maybe it is just me, but this deal feels like the clearest example of how stars now think in CBT terms. The crowd at Dodger Stadium does not chant “present value” when he hits balls into the seats, of course, yet front office folks absolutely do the mental math. Every time he pitches or hits, they are watching the rare case of a player who bent his own AAV downward and still landed near the top of this list.
3 Max Scherzer sets short term record
Before Soto and Ohtani reset the numbers, Max Scherzer was the yearly salary king. His 3 year, 130 million deal with the Mets gave him an AAV of 43.33 million, a level that once felt almost impossible for a pitcher in his late 30s. The defining image from that signing period is Scherzer holding up a Mets jersey and talking about why he believed in an owner he had just met.
The contract put him in his own tier at the time. No other pitcher had crossed 40 million AAV, so his deal sat several million above everyone else, and it did so over a short three year window. That meant an intense CBT hit concentrated in the front end of the owner Steve Cohen era, with luxury tax bills that rivaled several entire small market payrolls.
At his introductory press conference, Scherzer could not stop talking about Cohen’s approach. “He looks at this like he wants to win a championship, and he is going to do whatever it takes to win,” Scherzer said. “You do not hear that from owners too often these days.”
There is a behind the scenes layer here too. Scherzer had his choice of contenders, including clubs with less CBT baggage, yet he chose the team that was already leaning into tax penalties. Even after the Mets later pivoted and traded him to Texas, that first Mets contract still sits on the books of league history as the deal that opened the 40 plus club for starters and changed how rivals looked at short term, high AAV bets.
4 Justin Verlander matches that same bar
Soon after Scherzer signed his record deal, Justin Verlander matched it. His agreement with the Mets was for 2 years and 86.7 million, with an AAV that again came out at 43.33 million and a conditional option for a third season. There is a very specific moment that defines this one. Verlander sitting in front of the microphones in Queens, explaining how a simple phone call helped tip the choice.
On pure numbers, the deal mirrored Scherzer’s yearly figure but tightened the term. For CBT purposes, that meant the same monster tax charge in each season with even less room for error in performance. The Mets were paying two starters at a rate that would have outpaced the entire rotation budget for many other clubs, and their projected tax bill climbed toward 80 million in that first year with Verlander onboard.
I keep coming back to the small scene Sportsnet described, with Verlander pulling on the Mets jersey while his wife Kate Upton and their young daughter watched from the front row. You could almost feel the weight in that room. Not just of a future Hall of Famer changing teams again, but of a franchise doubling down on a high AAV model that turned every start into a very expensive outing.
5 Zack Wheeler joins highest paid club
The timeline here starts much earlier, when Zack Wheeler once chose the Phillies over a richer offer from the White Sox, in part because of geography and family preference. Years later, Philadelphia showed just how happy they were with that decision by giving him a 3 year, 126 million extension that kicked in for the 2025 season, with an AAV of 42 million.
That figure slid right behind the Scherzer and Verlander bar and ahead of most other frontline deals, putting Wheeler into the highest paid tier by AAV for starting pitchers. For a club that already had heavy commitments to Bryce Harper and Trea Turner, this extension pushed the Phillies deeper into the upper CBT brackets and signaled that they were comfortable carrying multiple 30 plus million salaries on the same tax sheet.
Here is the part that sticks with me. Wheeler admitted that he did not want to pitch until he was very old, that he was thinking about his family and the right stopping point even as he signed what many pitchers would view as a dream deal. That kind of honesty cut through the usual agent talk. It also framed the extension as a targeted, high AAV window, not a forever thing, which frankly matches how the Phillies are using his CBT hit in their competitive cycle.
6 Aaron Judge as Yankees highest paid star
The moment everyone remembers with Aaron Judge is not just the signing. It is the risk he took before it. He turned down a sizable preseason offer from the Yankees, then went out and delivered a 62 home run season that forced the front office back to the table. The final result was a 9 year, 360 million contract that carries a 40 million AAV and the captain title in the Bronx.
A 40 million yearly figure does not top this list anymore, but it still sits in rare company. When Judge signed, that AAV tied him with the very top tier of position players and put him alongside big money pitchers in CBT impact. For the Yankees, who have lived near or above the tax line in multiple seasons, locking in that number into Judge’s late 30s meant accepting that their room around the margins would shrink unless revenue jumped again.
Think about it this way. The Yankee Stadium reaction every time he steps to the plate is not only about the homegrown star who chased down Roger Maris. It is also about a fan base that pushed ownership to step up, that spent an entire winter refreshing news feeds to see if their club would actually lose its face. When that 40 million AAV went on the books, it felt like validation that New York was willing to pay whatever it took to keep its signature player.
7 Alex Bregman and Boston payroll gamble
The newest deal on this list belongs to Alex Bregman, whose free agency storyline had been simmering for years in Houston. When the Red Sox swooped in with a 3 year, 120 million offer, they did not give him the longest term on the market. They gave him 40 million per year, matching Judge on AAV and placing a third baseman with injury questions squarely in the highest paid players by AAV group.
From a CBT lens, the structure is loud. Short term, huge AAV, and no real easing of the yearly hit. That 40 million figure drops into a Boston payroll that already has sizable commitments to Rafael Devers and others, pushing the club into a more aggressive tax posture than it had shown in some recent years. In simple comparative terms, Bregman’s AAV now equals Judge and sits higher than long time aces like Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom.
Behind the scenes, there was a sense that this was a make up move for Red Sox fans who had watched Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and others leave in previous years. I have watched enough of their reaction to know that the Bregman contract did not erase that pain, but it did send a message. This front office was willing, at least in this cycle, to carry a highest paid style AAV in order to chase another parade down Boylston.
What Comes Next
The thing about lists like this is that they never stay frozen for long. Another superstar walk year, another aggressive owner, and suddenly someone is nudging past 52 million AAV while we all scramble to reframe what the top of the market even means. Those jumps tend to come in waves, too. One player breaks ground, then three more ask their agents why they should settle for less.
There is also a quiet arms race on structure. Ohtani showed how deferrals can slash CBT AAV while still delivering life changing money. Other stars will look at that design, then at Soto’s clean 51 million figure, and decide where they want to land on the spectrum between flexibility for their team and a straightforward yearly check. Front offices are already gaming out how much present value math the league will tolerate before it tweaks the rules again.
Look, maybe I am reading a bit too much into it, but these 7 contracts feel less like outliers and more like early chapters in a new normal. The real question now is simple.
Who is the next player a club will decide is worth blowing past every CBT line for, without flinching.
Read Also: The 5 Most Expensive Player Contracts in MLB History by Total Value
I bounce between stadium seats and window seats, chasing games and new places. Sports fuel my heart, travel clears my head, and every trip ends with a story worth sharing.
