Bobby Bonilla was a pretty good ballplayer. But he made a mistake. And the Mets made a mistake. They were mutually at fault.

Bonilla was a native New Yorker and wanted to get out of Pittsburgh and play in his hometown. Rather than choose the Yankees, who wooed him a bit, he chose the Mets. That was HIS mistake.

The Mets were reeling from a disaster after seeing their mini-dynasty of the 80’s fall apart and needed to make a big splash. Bonilla was the biggest free agent that year heading into the 1992 campaign. A year later, Barry Bonds would be the next Pirate to leave Pittsburgh the following year as the biggest name in that free agent class. The Mets, rather than waiting out the year, went all in on Bonilla. That was THEIR mistake.

The Mets signed Bonilla to a 5-year, $29 million contract on December 2, 1991. When Bonilla finally retired but the Mets still owed him $5.9 million in 2000. With the Mets in financial straits at the time, Bonilla agreed to deferred payments of the monies in the amount of $1.2 million a year for 35 years.

So you loan someone $5.9 million and you receive $42 million by the time you are done in 2035. And some Mets fans may think Bonilla made out like a bandit. In reality, the Mets made out on the deal. Think about this: If you had invested $5.9 million dollars in the S&P 500 index in 2000, today in 2026 you would have $50.3 million dollars. Projected at approximately the same growth, that $5.9 million dollars would be worth approximately $118.5 million.

So who fleeced whom?

We’re all mocking Bobby Bonilla for getting his $1.2 million annually, but if the Mets, instead of give Bonilla the money, invested the money as stated above…the Mets would have benefited by $76 million.

So why are Mets fans, and the media, so irritated by Bobby Bonilla?

While Bonilla teamed with Barry Bonds to make a formidable tandem in Pittsburgh and enjoyed a great supporting cast, Bonilla was not afforded that same luxury with the Mets. He was not expected to be the savior with the Pirates. In fact, as exuberant a personality as he was, he always took a back seat to the caustic and standoffish Bonds. In New York, Bonilla would be front and center.

While Bonilla would perform admirably for a time, he wasn’t the superstar that it appeared the Mets were getting, and paying for. The fans let him know that. And the brash Bonilla was not able to elevate his performance and soon he was run out of town for a mere bag of balls. Okay, it was for prospects. But the Mets may have done better with the bag of balls.

If management hadn’t had enough, or hadn’t learned their lesson, they brought Bonilla back for an encore in 1999 and he embarrassed himself and the management embarrassment THEMSELVES with going to the well one too many times, and released him after he managed to hit only .160. And by the way, that 1999 season would be one of the very best offensive seasons in Mets history and so he only had to be a part of the supporting cast, he didn’t have to be a star, but his performance and attitude was not going to cut it. So they cut him.

Deferred payments were nothing new for the Mets, they are certainly very common in players’ contracts in today’s financial structure in MLB. Just look at the Los Angeles Dodgers payroll.

Bobby Bonilla is not only a yearly reminder of compensation agreement that is really not so unusual, but a reminder of a player that Mets fans loved to hate for more appropriate reasons.

Nonetheless...Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! I am quite sure we will be revisiting this again next year.