LOS ANGELES (AP) — Reliever Tanner Scott's $72 million, four-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers includes $21 million in deferred salaries.
Scott receives a $20 million signing bonus as part of the agreement announced Thursday, payable in four equal installments each Feb. 1 from 2025-28.
He has salaries of $11 million in each of the first two seasons and $15 million apiece in 2027 and ‘28, and $5.25 million of each year’s salary will be deferred.
His deal includes a conditional $5 million option for 2029 that can be exercised if he has a defined injury and has not been traded. If he plays under that option year, he could earn $4 million in performance bonuses that season. Scott could get $1.5 million for games: $500,000 for 67 and $1 million for 72. He could earn $2.5 million for games finished: $750,000 each for 30 and 35, and $1 million for 40.
He would get a one-time $3 million assignment bonus if traded.
Scott gets a hotel suite on road trips and agree to donate 1% of his earnings to the team charity.
Los Angeles has committed $452 million to eight players after winning its second World Series in five years.
A 30-year-old left-hander, Scott was a first-time All-Star last year when he went 9-6 with a 1.75 ERA and 22 saves in 24 chances for Miami and San Diego, which acquired him on July 30. He struck out 84 and walked 36 in 72 innings.
He is 31-24 with a 3.56 ERA and 55 saves for Baltimore (2017-21), Miami (2022-24) and San Diego.
After winning their second title in five years, the Dodgers kept utilityman Tommy Edman with a $74 million, five-year contract, outfielder Teoscar Hernández with a $66 million three-year deal and right-hander Blake Treinen for $22 million over two years.
Los Angeles has added Scott, left-hander Blake Snell ($182 million for five years), outfielder Michael Conforto ($17 million for one season) and second baseman Hyeseong Kim ($12.5 million for three years), and also agreed to a minor league contract with right-hander Roki Sasaki for a $6.5 million signing bonus.
During the 2023-24 offseason, Los Angeles committed more than $1.3 billion to five players: two-way star Shohei Ohtani ($700 million for 10 years), right-handers Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($325 million for 12 years) and Tyler Glasnow ($136,562,500 for five years), Hernández ($23.5 million for one year) and catcher Will Smith ($140 million for 10 years).
In addition, the Dodgers owed release fees to Japanese clubs of $50,625,000 for Yamamoto and $1,625,000 for Sasaki.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB
Andrew Friedman right, president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Executive Vice President and general manager Brandan Gomes, left, watch as the team's new reliever Tanner Scott puts on a Dodgers jersey during an introduction baseball news conference at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
Left-handed new reliever Tanner Scott dons his new cap and jersey during an introduction baseball news conference at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
Left-handed reliever Tanner Scott answers questions during an introduction news conference at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Ex-rugby league international Kane Evans won’t have to worry about the extortion threats any more or be concerned about his family finding out about his sexuality before he’s ready to tell them.
In a television interview Monday with Channel Nine’s “100% Footy,” Evans said he was gay and that he felt like a weight had lifted off him when he finally could talk about it publicly.
Evans is the first high-level rugby league player in Australia to come out as gay since Ian Roberts in 1995.
Evans played 131 games in the elite National Rugby League from 2014-2021 for clubs including the Sydney Roosters, Parramatta and the New Zealand-based Warriors before finishing off his professional career in England in 2023. He played 13 international games for Fiji.
“I had three goals in life: It was to play NRL, to buy my parents a house, and then I wanted to top myself, because I was living in denial from a young age,” the 34-year-old Evans said in the television interview. “I know that I’m gay. But I went down every other avenue to sort of build up these walls ... to escape who I am.”
After struggling with addiction and suicidal thoughts as he dealt with his sexuality as a younger man and professional footballer, and then experiencing homelessness after a business collapse in his post-rugby league career, Evans finally got the support he needed.
Evans said it was only after talking to Joe Galuvao, a former player who works with the Rugby League Players’ Association, that he realized help was so close.
“I thank God that he came and visited me and got me into rehab with the help of the RLPA,” Evans said.
Others in the football fraternity reached out, Evans said. Like Sydney Roosters head coach Trent Robinson, who helped pay the bills while Evans was in rehabilitation and invited him back into the club.
“He called me just to let me know that the Roosters are still my home and they’ve got my back, whatever I’m facing,” Evans said. “That meant the world to me. He took me, my best friend, and one of my mentors to Roosters HQ a week after I got out of rehab."
Evans had planned to come out to his family before the television interview aired.
“I've been fighting a war within since I was about 15 years old and it's not sustainable,” he said. “I’m here today to show people that you don’t have to live like that. Even now I feel a bit more free, just by saying it out loud, I’ve brought it to the light."
Evans said he'd had “people blackmail me … I’ve had people try to deflect their problems by trying to out me. And it just built up a lot of shame, and fear and guilt within myself.”
“Now I’ve spoken about it, I’ve shattered all those chains. They’ve lost their power," he added. “I feel like coming and speaking to you today, fear, shame, guilt -- all of that, I’ve cut ties with all that. I feel peace within.”
Roberts, who played for Australia in the 1990s, described Evans' interview as an “extraordinary moment” and “I was in tears watching.”
“I am so proud of him,” Roberts told News Corp. “Everything he was saying ... I thought ‘this poor kid,’ I know exactly where he is in his head, what he is going through, the extremes of uncertainty of your own sense of self and your sense of other people.”
Andrew Johns, one of rugby league's greatest players, said the bravery Evans had shown would be encouraging for other people.
“To come out and tell the world, especially the rugby league world, it's incredibly strong," Johns told the Nine network. “There's going to be so much love for him in the rugby league — he's going to save a lot of lives.”
Johns said there were a lot of young people struggling with their sexuality and when “they see someone like Kane and the pain he's gone through, and the strength he's shown, it'll help them stand up and talk to parents, or people close to them.”
“So Kane, well done mate," he added. "We all love you. Incredibly proud of you.”
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
Kane Evans of the Parramatta Eels, top, is tackled by Bayley Sironen of the South Sydney Rabbitohs during their National Rugby League match between in Sydney, on Aug. 27, 2020. (Dan Himbrechts/AAP Image via AP)
