It places all of the injury and performance risk on the team. It may be worth it for a superstar, but it is a terrible deal for most teams
sure. It's a gamble on the teams part, so they should only do it when they are so concerned about up-front costs that they can take the risk of a getting burned long term.
Consider the first Stras extension. That worked out for the team. The opt-out was after all productive use was extracted from him by the end of 2019. He gave up money he could have gotten on the open market by signing that deal, then he opted out. The dumb decision was to chase him instead of letting him walk, not the decision to sign him to a contract with an opt out.
Xander Bogaerts might turn out to be another good opt out contract for the Red Sox. I think they were able to get him for a couple of years at $19 million when his open market value was in the $25 million range. The savings there for a team in the luxury tax gave them the ability to spend the money on other complementary pieces.
