What are the benefits of a frontloaded a contract?

[Wurider05]

Would fronloading a contract allow us to have more caproom later on the life of the contract? If we pay JJ 20 million dollars this season of a 70 million contract how would the remaining years play out 12.4 X 4 or would the starting salary be lower and increase with the 10.5% raises annually. If this is so beneficial why won't more teams do it. If we frontload his contract wouldn't that eat up nearly all of our cap space. Exactly how does this work??

[chillzatl]

I could be mistaken on this. But if we're dropping a large portion of it in the first year, if they are matched by their team, they have to match it that way. So a team that is near the cap, it would make it much more difficult to match.

I think that's why they do it that way.

But beyond that, it gets a large portion of it out of the way and gives us more money in the following years, when we would likely need more talent.

[Inside_Man]

For cap purposes, the payments are spread out of the life of the contract. But I think it's not that way for the lux tax. If I'm right, and the other team is in lux tax territory, than they take a huge hit by matching the front-loaded contract.

I'm not positive on this point, though.