The point wasn't to say Witt isn't good or anything like that, it was just signing young baseball players to these kinds of deal is risky, especially compared to other sports.
As always, please tell me if my assumptions are incorrect.
You seem to be taking this as a sign of front office approach. The NBA and the NHL both have maximum contract terms. They couldn't sign these kinds of deals today, but when it was allowed in the NHL, it is where contracts were going. And of course the NFL doesn't have guaranteed contracts, which means you're well into apples and oranges.
Not all that long ago, the Flyers signed Owen bleeping Tippett to 8 years. He's a fine player, but no one would call him one of the best players on the planet. (Ok, someone would. No one should.)
But by what metric was it fantastic? Unless there are some new advanced stats of which I am not aware, he doesn't appear to have fantastic stats. Even just comparing him to Bryson Stott their stats are similar or Stott beats him except in the HR and triples department for the most part, and that includes advanced stats (the almighty WAR has Stott with an edge last season). Not trying to argue Stott is better, but I would not want the Phillies to sign Stott to this kind of deal and if I was a Royals fan I wouldn't be thrilled other than to say that the Royals are keeping their homegrown talent rather than trading them away like other smaller market/budget teams. Seems much more likely that these guys (or any guys) are more likely to plateau or regress than improve.
I'm going to do my best to avoid what you would consider new advanced stats. WAR is also not the almighty, but we'll let that one go for now.
First, Stott is almost 3 years older. That's not a small deal. Without even getting into the quality of the defense he provides, Stott is a 2B and Witt plays the most valuable and expensive defensive position on the field. So we have best athletes in the sport generally funneled into Witt's position and him being a perfectly reasonable choice for the best defender among them. I don't want to disparage Stott because it's not a fair comparison to take a good defensive 2B and compare him to a top flight SS. You wouldn't compare Mickey Morandini and Jimmy Rollins as defenders, right? They exist on completely different planes.
Things I know you like to use like Batting Average and OBP are largely washes, but the difference in power is not small. Stott Slugged .419 to Witt's .495. That kind of difference in power is enough to take you from pretty much a league average hitter to well above it.
What I will use fWAR for is one stat I will steal from Michael Baumann to illustrate just how rare it is for a Shortstop to do what Witt did last year. You may or may not be familiar with wRC+, so the only thing you need to know is that 100 is league average and high is good.
Baumann said:
Since the start of the live ball era, there have only been 223 seasons in which an AL or NL shortstop, age 23 or younger, has even played enough to qualify for the batting title. Only 39 of those seasons involved the shortstop in question posting 4.5 WAR or more; only 42 times did the shortstop have a wRC+ of 115 or better. Witt and Henderson accounted for two of the 33 seasons in which the player did both.
Those 33 seasons belong to 25 individual players. (Sorting the leaderboard this way will return the names “Ripken” and “Rodriguez” a lot.) Here they are, with their standing in relation to the Hall of Fame. “HOVG” stands for “Hall of Very Good,” i.e. a player who’s in the 40 career WAR neighborhood, with multiple All-Star appearances or high MVP finishes, but who didn’t make the Hall of Fame. A-Rod got his own unique designation:
Source:
What Could Keep Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr. From Making the Hall of Fame?