If your baseball client wins the MVP, Cy Young, or Rookie of the Year award, he better be content with getting a piece of hardware to hang up on the wall, because MLB will no longer allow a team to compensate him with cold cash. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America recently passed a new rule stating that if a player has a bonus stipulation built into his contract at the start of the 2013 season and beyond, that player will not be on any BBWAA award ballots [Starting in 2013, players banned for awards if they have bonus clauses]. Players may still have clauses in their contracts for awards that are not granted by the BBWAA (Hall of Fame, Gold Glove, World Series MVP, etc).
So this serves as a heads up to all agents. Make sure that you are getting your stud clients some monetary gain in another way, but do not risk their ability to win one of these prestigious awards. Ignorance is never an excuse in this business, and not knowing about a rule like this could make a high profile client jump ship.
On a side note, Curt Schilling was very upset about the ESPN article and decided to go all sobby on his blog [The Schilling clause??]. I honestly did not read his commentary, but you are more than welcome to.
