That seems to me likely. They came up with a way for Boras to claim he got a player $30 million a year without it actually costing the team $30 million a year.
But there may be a win-win scenario here. An accountant may be able to answer this better, but I think there may be a bit of an inefficiency working here that makes a deferral like this allow the team to provide more cash to the player, while the player doesn't give up a corresponding amount. It's one thing to talk about the time value of money in the abstract, but it's different when you're talking about an individual and a organization, I think. Instead of paying $30 million each year, the team can simply bank the extra $15 million each year in some sort of investment vehicle that likely gives them between 2 and 3 percent. So, over the 14 years, that gives them an extra amount of money to bargain with to give Max -- maybe makes them able to call it $210 instead of $200 million.
It's tempting to say, "yeah, but Scherzer gives up a corresponding amount of earning potential on the money". Maybe that's correct. But a player who takes in $30 million in a year pays a ton of taxes -- let's say conservatively $12 million -- and his agent gets a chunk, and he has living expenses and stuff, so in the end, it's not exactly like he would have been able to invest that whole $30 million anyway. Let's say he gets to invest $15 million or so of it. If instead he gets $15 million, he pays about $6 million in taxes, and about $750,000 to has agent, and has the same million or so in living expenses, and now he gets to invest about $7.5 million.
Put more simply, the organization can pay him the interest on the entire $15 million it saves per year to get over the hump, whereas because of taxes and agent fees, Max can only invest about half as much. So, he's sort of freeriding on the organization's ability to invest more of his money for him over time by delaying his taxation and agent fees on it.
I'm sure this is all incorrect, but thrown out there for flyspecking by the experts.