Jayson Werth has plenty of cash to spend on beard grooming supplies.
(AP Photo/Lynne Sladky,File)

Opinion regarding the signing of free agent outfielder Jayson Werth, who signed a massive seven-year, $126 million contract with the Nationals on Sunday, have been split — some see it as an incredibly desperate team making an incredibly foolish offer for a player, while others see it as a positive sign that someone, anyone worth their salt has voluntarily signed with the Nats. Either way, it’s a big roll of the dice for Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo and the ownership team — a seven-year deal for a player who is already in his 30s is always a risky move.

But before the Nationals can toss around any more money, we thought we’d take a look at some of the more eye-popping facts about the Werth deal.

• The deal places Werth into a tie as the third highest-paid outfielder in baseball history. Just…think about that for a couple of minutes.
• When measured by both total value and per-year value, Werth’s contract is the 16th largest contract in sports history.
• According to Baseball Reference, Werth has made a total of $13,845,000 over his nearly eight years in the big leagues. This means that next year, prorating his new contract evenly, Werth will make 130 percent more in one year than he has during his entire career.
• I don’t have any data to back me up on this, but I feel pretty comfortable believing that Werth is probably just getting paid a hundred bucks for every time we’ll hear a pun based on his surname over the next several years.
• Probably my favorite factoid about Werth’s contract: the deal, with its total value of $126 million, is actually a higher figure than the amount of money which Major League Baseball purchased the Montreal Expos in 2002 ($120 million). A consortium led by Ted Lerner then bought the team from the league in 2006 for $450 million to establish the Nats. This means that the Nationals have signed a player to a contract worth more than the franchise was valued at eight years ago.

We’re not sure if Werth is paying attention to his new hometown’s budget crisis, but we imagine that he’s pretty glad Harry Thomas’ “jock tax” proposal was voted down.