Kershaw's Big Raise From Dodgers

The Dodgers offering All-Star pitcher Clayton Kershaw a contract extension that totaled $215 million for seven years illustrates how generous the current team owners are compared to FOX News Corp., which purchased the club from the O'Malley family in the 1990s.
The deal that Kershaw struck with the Dodgers will make him the highest paid player in baseball history, banking checks at over $30 million a season. It is quite a contrast with the story of Mike Piazza, the team's former All-Star catcher, who attempted to negotiate a multi-year extension in 1997 but was instead traded to the Florida Marlins at the start of the 1998 season.


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add Piazza: The Dodgers and Piazza agreed to a two-year, $15-million extension in 1996, which paid $7 million the first season and $8 million for the second. It was widely reported that Piazza wanted a long-term contract that would be worth somewhere between $60 million and $75 million.
Piazza, unlike Kershaw who plays every five days, was an everyday player, batted .362 with 40 home runs and knocked in 124 RBIs in 1997. He finished second two seasons in a row in the National League's MVP voting.
Unfortunately for Pizza, the FOX counted the financial beans instead of the catcher's baseball statistics and he was traded away for a journeyman catcher named Charles Johnson. Even some longtime members of the Dodgers front office quietly took Piazza aside and told him he was asking for too much money.


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last add Dodgers: After Piazza left, the team took the lock off its wallet and signed several players including pitchers Darren Dreifort and Kevin Brown to multi-million dollar deals, Dreifort's coming in at over $50 million and Brown's nearly double that.