I agree Emmz.
The second paragraph is just about perspective. The problem with Lackey, is the time and the overall amount. I understand that you see it as year by year, regardless the dollars two years ago don't have the same value these days and still is not the best approach to compare those contracts.
Sorry if I take this form an economic engineering perspective but since this is business as well, when you make a business case in order to evaluate an investment (player's contract) or even look at it in order to consider invest, you need to take the whole thing, I mean, n (period), i ( annual interest rate), and each cash flow in order to calculate the NPV (net present value) and IRR (Internal rate of return), otherwise your judgement wouldn't be correct. Said that, It's clear that Lackey's contract is far to be the same Buehrle's contract. There are +-35 M of deference considering that it was two years.