Happy Bobby Bonilla Day?

[Psychstache]

Another July, Another Bobby Bonilla Day:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/37938979/bobby-bonilla-day-2023-new-york-mets-paid-119m-every-july-1

While it is a funny story and it brings about people calling the Mets idiots, I always like to reflect on BBD as a great example of the power of compound interest.

The NY Mets bought out Bonilla's remaining $5.9M contract with a deferred comp plan that started in 2011. But what if Bonilla had just taken the money and run? Where would he be?

As of today, The Mets have paid Bonilla $15.4M (1.19M per year since 2011), but if he had gotten the $5.9M lump sum in 1999 and dumped it in an market index fund he would be sitting at.......$39.8 million today*. It shouldn't take much of an annualized return for him to win out, but time will tell. Tune in next year!

*ish. Calculated by getting market returns from 1999 to 2022, plus the YTD returns on the S&P 500 for 2023.

[aetheldrea]

The Mets actually were kind of idiots, though. Not because they did the math wrong, but because they believed Bernie Madoff telling them he could get them guaranteed returns from their investments.

[Chris Pascale]

The Mets actually were kind of idiots, though. Not because they did the math wrong, but because they believed Bernie Madoff telling them he could get them guaranteed returns from their investments.

The best part of the story was that they came out ahead with Madoff (I think - let me know if I misunderstood, because my reading of this is that they had to pay back into the vicitim's fund for gains).

https://www.amazinavenue.com/2015/3/30/8288295/new-york-mets-wilpon-madoff

While this was going on, there was rampant harassment that was openly displayed to a pregnant employee.

https://www.amazinavenue.com/2015/3/13/8211731/new-york-mets-owners-jeff-wilpon-leigh-castergine-harassment-lawsuit-settlement

I linked to that blog because the WSJ and NYT sites require subscriptions for you to read.