Two billion, 595 thousand, 500 thousand dollars. This is the total amount of money that goes into the 10 biggest contracts in Major League Baseball. What do they all have in common? All but one of them missed the playoffs.

Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Giancarlo Stanton, Manny Machado, Nolan Arenado, Miguel Cabrera, Robinson Cano, Albert Pujols, Joey Votto and David Price are the names behind those contracts. Only one made the postseason, Stanton, but he barely played because of a nagging injury.

Not only in baseball, but in all sports, contracts get bigger and bigger, with the goal of making yourself the richest player at your position. That’s not a problem for the player itself, but the big picture is that the whole reason behind giving big contracts is buying players who can win games.

These contracts are not going to help teams win games, though. The pressure alone behind a fan base is extreme, especially when all this money is put into one person. How could general managers get other pieces to help their team win, especially in small-market systems?

As a sports fan, you shouldn’t be afraid of when a player is about to go into free agency or when you hear rumors of your team wanting to “lock up” a player. In this sense though, you might as well be, because that might be the one thing that can keep you from being a championship team.

As time goes on, players and agents seem to always try to get the biggest contract, and that is an agent’s job. However, it could also hurt the player’s stock, because that could take a team out of contention for the season and the future to come.

Sports is just a business in the long run, but if a team doesn’t win, no one’s going to want to see that team play, no matter how big a player’s name is. Signing big contracts is just a headline in the newspaper. As time goes on, the headlines don’t get better after the pen hits the paper. Teams should be rethinking the way they put a team on the field. Buying isn’t the answer, scouting is.

The younger the player is, the less money their contracts are worth, and some of the players coming right out of college or international players are real difference makers.

Baseball has the biggest contract in sports: Mike Trout’s $426 million deal. The Angels came in fourth place in the AL West last year and haven’t won a World Series in almost two decades. If this trend of the biggest contracts in the sport not making the playoffs continues, could this be the last big contract in baseball?