Dodgers’ James Paxton ‘ready to get after it’ following reworked contract
The Dodgers restructured their deal with the free-agent left-hander to guard against his injury history
GLENDALE, Ariz. — It ain’t over ‘til it’s over – when it comes to contract negotiations, too.
The Dodgers and free agent left-hander James Paxton, represented by Scott Boras, came to an agreement on a one-year contract last month that would pay the 35-year-old pitcher $11 million in 2024 with incentives that could take it higher.
Pending a physical.
After Paxton’s physical, the two sides went back to work, restructuring the contract to assuage some of the Dodgers’ concerns about the left-hander’s injury history. They settled on a $4 million salary, a $3 million signing bonus, a roster bonus and performance bonuses that will pay him $600,000 each for making six, eight, 10, 12, 16 and 18 games started this season, giving Paxton a chance to make as much as $13 million if he stays healthy.
“I’m an older player now, and I’m not perfect anymore. My body’s not perfect,” Paxton said of the restructuring. “So there’s things that have kind of built up over the years. But I’m feeling really good right now. All the physical tests are really good. I’m feeling strong and ready. We were able to figure things out and just make a plan for me going forward, how to build up and manage my load.”
Paxton said it was nothing specific that came up during the physical – “just my body.” But he acknowledged the Dodgers were “worried” about the right knee injury that ended his season early last year with the Boston Red Sox.
‘They wanted to talk about that,” he said. “Obviously, going through the Tommy John (surgery in 2021) and talking about how my elbow was feeling and stuff like that. But that was about it.”
Paxton returned from the elbow surgery to go 7-5 with a 4.50 ERA in 19 starts for the Sox last season, his heaviest workload since 2019. But his season wasn’t built equally.
After going 5-1 with a 2.73 ERA in his first 10 starts, Paxton was 2-4 with a 6.98 ERA in nine starts after the All-Star break before his season ended in early September.
“The second half, I started to get pretty tired,” he said. “It had been 2½ years since I pitched, and the innings kind of built up there. I was going pretty deep into ballgames there for quite awhile and I just ran out of gas there at end. Then my body started to bark at me a little bit, my knee and stuff like that. So I wasn’t able to execute pitches the way that I needed.”
