I’ve got the idea rattling around in my head that there are restrictions on what incentives contracts can be offered by a team in Major League Baseball to its players. For example, you can’t pay Jim Thome an incentive for hitting 20 home runs this year, but you can pay him extra if he makes 200 plate appearances.
Specifically, I was sure this was enshrined in the collective bargaining agreement, but I found a copy of that online yesterday and I wasn’t able to find anything that clearly delineated what incentives are allowable and what aren’t. That led me to Major League Rule 3(b). Note that this is not Rule 3 of the Official Baseball Rules, which deals with game preliminaries. In finding the relevant Major League Rules, I’ve hit a dead end.
So, two-part question.
Is there a restriction on what incentives are acceptable?
For decades, incentive clauses were illegal (they may have been a contributing cause to the White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series and were banned once the scandal broke), but they were legalized around 1980. At first, there were restrictions (you couldn’t set incentives for things that like number of at bats, since the team might decide to sit the player down in September to keep the incentive from kicking in), but I think there are none right now.
I know that Mets fans are well aware of an incentive clause in Francisco Rodriguez’s contract that vests if he finished 55 games this year. That was the sort of thing that was prohibited when clauses were legalized. The team has an incentive to sit him to keep this from vesting, but the Player’s Association is keeping an eye on the issue and will jump in if there’s not a good reason for him not achieving the goal.