ATH $20M Club
I recently came across an article published by MLB.com that details a methodology that they used to rank the best free agent deals in history, and looking at their results I think it would be a good way to look at a variety of groups in HBD such as $20 Million IFA's, Top 10 Draft Picks and Max Contract Free Agents. The methodology is as follows:
Baseline score is WAR per Year (so a player that had 9 WAR in 3 years would have a baseline score of 3.0)
1 point per season with 4+ WAR
2 points per MVP Award
2 points per Cy Young Award
2 points per World Series Ring
1 point per World Series loss
Bonus points are awarded to players who were traded and the return included players who continued to contribute or who left as Free Agents and netted their team Compensation Picks.
Only years that the player was on the signing/drafting team counted, with the exception of the bonus points
Using this scoring method, I have taken a look at all of the $20M+ signing bonuses given out in Around The Horn history so far to see which of the fifteen such contracts from the first ten seasons was the most effective.