Somehow, a sportswriter named Mike Lupica still is.
Now it is the season when he turns 37, and Rodriguez is coming off a season when he only played 99 games because of injuries, only hit 16 home runs. It is the season when Rodriguez will look like one of the most dangerous hitters in the game again, the kind of hitter who hit 54 home runs and knocked in 156 five years ago, or will just continue to look like the worst contract in the history of the Yankees, in all of baseball, at least until Albert Pujols starts to break down in Anaheim.
He has had amazing seasons here. He has made all kinds of news, good and bad and occasionally ridiculous. Once, Dave Winfield, another great player, though not one in A-Rod’s class, came here making huge money. He joined Reggie Jackson as a star Yankee the way Rodriguez joined Derek Jeter and the rest of them. Only Winfield never won here, and became the big poster child for the Yankees not winning it all in the 1980s, especially after he could produce just one base hit in his one World Series, in 1981 against the Dodgers.
...Somehow he is a Yankee for nearly a decade. Somehow he is about to turn 37, trying to look like a great Yankee again instead of just a bad contract that seems to go forever. The Yankees thought they were getting a young Mickey Mantle when they got him in 2004. They want him to be more than the old one in 2012.
They want to be talking about his numbers on the field when this season is over, not the nearly $300 million contract extension the Yankees gave him after the 2007 season. Yankee fans? They just want to be talking about at least one more ride through the Canyon of Heroes for A-Rod, not asking what idiot actually signed off on signing him through 2017.
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. Gonna break my Rusty Kuntz and run . . . Arbitol Posted: April 08, 2012 at 11:30 AM (#4100260)Brien Taylor gets my vote for worst contract in history of the Yankees.
In all of baseball? Gimmie a minute.
DB
Mathews Jr. Doesn't take a minute. Worse contract in history at the time of it's signing and it turned out exactly like people thought it would.
Baseball inflation waters the numbers down a bit, but the Mike Hampton/Rockies deal was a real loser.
Also, the Pavano deal was orders of magnitude worse than the Brien Taylor deal.
Yeah but he made a great catch!
Could be. Kei Igawa's contract certainly deserves consideration as well.
The contract that I was trying to remember as worst all-time was Wayne Garland getting a ten-year deal from the Indians after the 1976 season. But I couldn't remember his name; so I turned to Google. Searching under "baseball free agent bust pitcher 1970s" did not give me Wayne Garland. It did, however, give me Tom Seaver.
Google can give some very strange results at times.
DB
Darren Dreifort's deal must be up there as well.
Yeah, I wonder how deals from the late 70's or the 80's compare. BB-ref has Ed Whitson making $800,000, which doesn't seem like much. But he was horrible.
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time
Don't need database for that. BBREF has it.
A Rod - 43.6 WAR $218 Mil
Jeter - 32.8, $161 Mil
Per BRed:
Jeter: 32.8 WAR; 161m; 4.91m/WAR
ARod: 43.6 WAR; 218m; 5m/WAR
Edit: coke, bla bla bla
Igawa has to be the worst Yankee contract in history. All that money spent for a guy who just had zero upside.
It hasn't been pretty recently, but he won two MVPs for the Yankees. When healthy, he has hit in the extreme middle of the order (3rd or 4th) virtually every day. He is a World Series champion, and will be an inner-circle HoFer.
Yes, they've paid him a zillion dollars to do it and it will likely get worse before it gets better. But I just philosophically don't think that overpaying a great, great player could ever be the worst deal in history.
No, it wasn't.
It turned out that way, but at the time he was basically the same player as Torii Hunter and got the same contract as Torii Hunter. Without hindsight, they are either both putrid or both fair. Torii's deal turned out OK, Vernon's didn't. That's baseball.
Wells got 7 years at $126 million (according to Cot's) and one year later, Hunter got 5 years at $90. I don't think they're the same contract.
Two things happened that made it a bad deal:
1) Wells followed it by having his worst season ever in 2007, and missing half of 2008.
2) The market went way down, making his contract look higher than it seemed at the time.
Neither of these things were foreseen by anyone. If Wells had continued to put up OPS+'s in the 110-130 range and the market continued to go up every year as it had been, nobody would question the deal, even now.
Vernon was signed after his age-27 season, having put up a 118 OPS+ in the past four years while winning a gold glove in CF every year. He was signed for an average of 18M/year, through his age 35 season.
Torii was signed after his age-31 season, having put up a 112 OPS+ in the past four years while winning a gold glove in CF every year. He was signed for an average of 18M/year, through his age 36 season.
Without knowledge of the future, which of these players would you rather have, the player with the higher OPS+ (and the same components, they are mirror-image hitter-types,) signed for his age 29-35 seasons, or the worse player, signed through his age 32-36 players for the same AAV? It's a no brainer!
As it turns out, Torii stayed consistent while Vernon fell into a snakepit. That #### happens; it will always happen, and no one will ever be able to see it coming. But it was nothing close to an indefensible contract at the time.
Tulo's original 7 year contract will have a hard time not working out for the Rockies.
Agreed. And if Vernon Wells had been a gold glove calibre center-fielder, with an OPS+ of 125 the contract would have been entirely reasonable. But he was a 108 OPS+ player, with crap defense.
As is the answer to most questions - Barry Bonds (1993 7 years/$42 million, IIRC). (or maybe it was 6/42?)
I think Evan Longoria might have some regret for dollars left on the table, but generally I completely agree.
That's nonsense.
Total nonsense. He was 27 years old, had a OPS+ of 118 the prior four years, with 129 in his most recent season. His ZiPS for 2007 was .285/.344/.501, and a 125 OPS+ would not have been close to shocking. His defense may have been over-rated, but it was nothing close to "crap." One year (forget which) he had the best zone-rating in CF while leading in outfield assists and not making a single error. Advanced defensive metrics for outfielders are very, very spotty. None of them take into account positioning or hang-time. Vernon was making high-light reel catches every week.
Only with the gift of hind-sight is it easy to dismiss Vernon as a garbage player. After the 2006 season he looked every bit the star that Curtis Granderson does now.
This was Dan's comment on the signing:
Vernon Wells was a very good hitter, playing a premium position, and in his prime years. He was not a garbage player, and tt was not a grotesque abomination of a contract, no matter how much people want to revise history to make that so.
Manny's 8 year contract worked out fine
Carlos Beltran's contract was just fine
Albert's 7 year contract worked out just fine
ARod's original 10 year deal.
But the Rangers essentially dumped Rodriguez. And the Mets more or less dumped Beltran.
With half a season left on the contract, in return for a top 50 prospect, and after he had given them 6.5 seasons and 30+ WAR. You don't think that qualifies as successful 7 year contract?
A team and a player sign the contract. In the end, I think that both of them deserve a "vote" about whether it was a successful partnership.
Also, I was not able to find Frank Thomas' deal (deals?) with the White Sox. I do remember that he was unhappy about the terms just about every year.
Frank wasn't happy with some of the clauses that his own agent told him not to have in the contract but Frank ignored him and then I think the agent quit on Frank. Then I believe he died in the plane crash that took the professional golfer's life as well.
Frank signed a 6 year extension after the 1997 season. His contract at the time ran through 2000. After the 1993 season he signed an extension that was guaranteed for 4 years plus two options. The Sox picked up those two extensions.
He signed extensions that were generally among the best in the game at the time he signed. Like I said above what really ticked him off was the diminished clause that allowed the White Sox to defer a huge chunk of his salary.
I'd love to know more about this. A quick google search didn't bring up anything relevant.
The selective endpointing is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. If you take his 3 prior years instead of 4, he is at a 112 OPS+, same as his career. He had only 2 legitimate good years, both came on the two years where his BABIP was over .300, having shown no reason up to then to believe that he can keep it there regularly.
His defense is pretty much below average every single year other than 06, which looks like a massive outlier. Nobody I knew who watched him play regularly thought he was better than average defensively at the time.
I am not saying they should have expected Wells to crater like he did, but that was a 50m overpay off the bat.
I'd love to know more about this. A quick google search didn't bring up anything relevant.
Frank had a "diminished skills" clause in his contract that Reinsdorf could use if Frank didn't make the All-star, top 10 in MVP voting, or win a batting title. If he didn't do at least one of those things Reinsdorf could pay him $250,000 a season and defer around 10 million each year and Frank if he wanted to could elect to become a FA. The first year it came up was during the 2001 season when Frank was out with a torn bicep. Reinsdorf didn't elect to exercise the clause but he did end up doing it the next year.
As for his agents I got two groups mixed up. Fraley was his agent when he signed the extension and Fraley died in the plane crash that killed Payne Stewart. His new agents quit on him in spring of 2001 because Frank was boycotting spring training because of the "diminished skill" clause of his contract.
112, with the most recent season at 129. What matters is the projection. What was his projection for 2007 and beyond? As I said, ZiPS had him at .285/.344/.501. I don't know what that translates to, OPS+-wise, but I bet it's higher than 112. A 125 OPS+ was completely reasonable, if optimistic. Why "expect" him to go back to 106? are you expecting Granderson to go back to 108 this year? Or 102?
We know what happened. It's easy to find "red flags" after the fact.
This seems impossible to believe.
Vernon Wells has become a punchline. But at the time, he was a legit star in his prime years. The revisionist history is galling.
I seem to recall opinion at the time being split between two parties
PARTY A
Those who saw it as a refreshing sign that the Jays were willing to spend money ot keep their talent. Sure it was probably a bit of an overpay, but not a terrible one.
PARTY B
Saw it as a mistake, though not a mind-blowingly awful one. Since I was in this party I can say that my feeling was that the Jays had passed up a good opportunity to build through trade as they already had a strong CF in-house in Rios (HA!) and there were rumours of a deal with the Angels centred around Brandon Wood (ha-HA!)
Speaking of which, remember the Rios - Lincecum/Cain trade rumour? Good times.
I remember thinking that they were paying a lot for a guy who would likely never be the best hitter on the team.
Delgado had left 4 seasons previous (and the Jays were so cheap they didn't even offer arbitration for fear of him accepting)
Green had left 8 years previously (and had been shipped out just as soon as he started making money in arbitration)
The Delgado/Green experience is why Jays fans were happy they were finally spending money on someone.
EDIT: Vernon Wells had the highest OPS+ on the Jays the year the deal was signed. You can argue whether a team with Vernon Wells as their best hitter is a legit contender...but at the time it was signed he was the best hitter on the team.
Complicating factors:
- the bizarre back-loaded nature of the contract (08:$0.5M, 09:$1.5M, 10:$12.5M, 11:$23M, 12:$21M, 13:$21M, 14:$21M) combined with the hilarious detail that he was allowed to opt out after 2011.
- sixth biggest contract of all time. For Vernon Wells? Two good seasons and 28 years old. Well, okay, hope it works out.
- the previous year they had signed the less-than-reliable AJ Burnett and BJ Ryan to massive free-agent contracts.
- they had just finished second in the division and were therefore in a frantic "IS THIS SEASON OUR ONE AND ONLY CHANCE TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS" phase exemplified by signing the aforementioned Frank Thomas. Hopefully this works out, you guys!
Hey! Stop being mean or we'll activate our "return Roy Halladay" clause.
Of course Vernon Wells as a "star" is open for debate. I think he had two seasons as a star and a handful of lesser years. In my mind that left him slightly below star level, but I'm not sure how official any of these star rankings are.
25m signing bonus, so it wasn't backloaded as much as those numbers make it seem...
IIRC, Green's account of this (from his book) is that the Jays offered him enough money, but he didn't think that they could compete so he didn't want to sign an extension. Once he said that, the Jays traded him. I don't have the book with me so I could be wrong about the details (and it's also entirely plausible that he's not being honest in that part of the book), but I'm pretty sure that's what he wrote.
*EDIT*
Before posting this snark, I looked at bb-ref to make sure that I wasn't misremembering. Gak!
Only because they were looking for a scapegoat to cover up their own incompetence. Their non-Rodriguez payrolls (rank in the AL without his salary) in his years there:
$66m (7th)
$83m (3rd)
$81m (4th)
They couldn't compete with that payroll + an 8 WAR player? Nonsense. A fantastic bullpen and adequacy everywhere else got them a surprising 89 wins in 2004 but that was their only sign of life in the first five years of being "relieved" of most of A-Rod's contract. The contract would have been plenty worthy for them if they didn't suck at building a good team.
You can assign blame to whomever you want (and I largely agree with your assignment), but the Rangers/Alex Rodriguez marriage ended in divorce.
There was no statistical reason to expect the deal to turn out any better than Garret Anderson's last deal, GA was 32 heading into 2004 with a 107 career and 131 most recent season OPS+. While Hunter had the advantage of being a center fielder, he did get paid a premium for it and Anderson in 2003 was a very good left fielder.
Well, kinda. If it's a marriage where you've got about 5 wives, all expensive, but you can get somebody to take one of them off your hands and give you a pretty hot chick in return.
The Rangers traded ARod for (a) PR purposes and (b) because he was the only one of their expensive players anybody wanted. I'm sure that if they could have traded the Park and Greer contracts instead, they would have gladly.
$83m (3rd)
$81m (4th)
And I believe those were #1 in the AL West.
I know that in the dark days of a few years ago, I did the math to figure out how long I could afford to stay in my house (it ended well; I'm still there). But if I could have stopped paying a big bill (what, 1/5 of the payroll), it would have changed the math significantly, allowing me to hold onto my house a bit longer.
Is it possible that Hicks knew what his balance sheet and projections were, and in saving the $18 million or so by trading Rod, he was able to hold onto the team a bit longer?
I don't even think it was a terrible decision on my part. Sometimes decent decisions look really stupid if something changes.
And if you spent a million dollars on Tyrannosaurus eggs so you can make your favorite omelete is it your house's fault that you can't pay your bills?
I think we also have to factor in the economy, which collapsed shortly after the Wells deal; the fact that the Free Agent price-tag went down, or stopped increasing at the same rate, is noteworthy too. 20M seemed like a lot of money at the time, but it also seemed reasonable that by the time 2012 came around, 20M wouldn't be a big deal anymore. That was the direction we were heading in. And then, the economy tanked and as it turns out, in 2012 20M is still a big deal.
That was exactly the point I was making. Both Hunter and Wells were signed to risky deals that had the potential to look horrible. Hunter's did not, Wells's did. That's the way it goes. But anyone who wants to say that Wellls's deal was bad at the time has to admit that a lot of other contracts from that time period were also very bad, even if they turned out.
The fact that nobody brings up Hunter in these discussions is evidence that we are only evaluating these moves based on the results.
Or that we (well, primarily it was just me) were talking about whether 7-year contracts ever work out, and Hunter did not sign a 7-year contract.
You brought that up after I brought up Hunter.
At the time of the Vernon Wells signing, Phillies and Blue Jays fans were in similar spaces. I remember posting repeatedly about how every team that had a winning record over the past 8 years (or something) had made the playoffs in that time (and most of them made it more than once), except the Blue Jays and Phillies.
Fortunately for us, the Braves-Mets juggernaut didn't last as long as some other juggernauts of the world.
We matched your big-money signings by trading Bobby Abreu for absolutely nothing and assembling an imposing starting rotation by adding Adam Eaton, Jamie Moyer, and an injured Freddy Garcia. This of course led to a long-awaited division crown.
Even crazier, somebody in this thread has not only read it, but bought a copy at some point.
We kid you not.
DB
My recollection from the Vernon Wells deal is that pretty much everyone that it was a somewhat massive overpay, but that at least he was a pretty good player.
Not sure where you're going with this ...
a) Maybe Hicks couldn't afford a $100+ M payroll no matter what. If so, maybe he shouldn't have signed ARod to begin with but he certainly shouldn't have signed Park and Gonzalez (Greer was bad but relative chump change).
b) Maybe Hicks overestimated ARod's impact on attendance ... in which case he must have really, really, really overestimated the attendance impact of Park, Gonzalez and Greer.
c) Maybe (most likely) Hicks and whoever was GM at the time (Hart?) overestimated the quality of the team -- which is to say they overestimated the quality of Park, Gonzalez and Greer and wasted a lot of money on them.
d) Quite possibly by the end of 2003, Hicks needed (or desparately wanted) to chop payroll. He certainly succeeded as they cut it by about $45 M. But again this leads to the conclusion that the mistake was all the wasted money on other contracts such that the only player he could trade to make big savings was ARod.
It seems to me that no matter what path you go down, the conclusion you reach is that the Rangers wasted tons of money on bad players and the ARod contract was good. That they backed themselves into a corner such that the only "solution" was to trade ARod (and save themselves only about $10-15 M a year) is not a sign that the ARod contract was a bad one for the Rangers.
And they just had bad timing as this was after the market "correction" put a dent in FA salaries. Had they waited a couple of years (which might not have been possible) they'd probably have gotten a better deal, at least financially.
It is sort of amazing but ...
from 2001-2010 (the original contract), ARod put up 65 WAR for $252 M or $3.9 M per WAR. That ain't bad.
Cot's puts the Rangers opening day 2004 payroll at just over $55. I'm guessing that does not include the $9 M a year (or whatever it was) that they were paying the Yanks but maybe it does. (I know Cots includes such payments but I don't think Cots existed back then so I don't if their historical payroll data does.) B-r only lists $43 M worth of payroll but does not include Greer who was still on the books for over $7 M and might be missing others. They were also paying Park $14 M and they were paying Soriano over $5 M (which is who they got for ARod). $14 M to Park, $7 M to Greer, $9 M to the Yanks and $5 M to Soriano -- that's enough to pay ARod and have $10 M left over. The problem wasn't ARod even if trading him was the solution.
So it was you that threw a monkey-wrench in Jacob/fate's plans. Just think how differently things would have worked out if John Locke's world view had been influenced by Shawn Green.
I got it as a Christmas present and the person who bought it for me got it for $3 or something like that. It's a good book, there's interesting stuff in there on Tony Fernandez, Carlos Delgado, and hitting.
It's been discussed here before, the reviews here were generally positive.
Big contracts given to guys with little-to-no history like Dreifort and Gary Mathews are worse in my mind.
Which actually points to it being a good contract for the Rangers. They overextended themselves (for the sake of argument) and they were able to get out from some of their problems by trading Rodriguez.
It's a lonely job being a GMj "defender" ...
In the 3 years prior to that contract, in 1533 PA, he had put up 7 WAR. Go back another year and it's over 2000 PA with 7.8 WAR. GMj was a slightly above-average CF from ages 28-31.
Now the years were too many but the money was about right. Hunter, Wells, Andruw and Ichiro (a CF playing RF) had or were about to sign for $18 M per year -- that's what an "elite" CF cost. Pierre signed for $9 per (5 years), Rowand for about $12 per (5 yhears). Alex Rios (another CF in RF) signed an arb buyout for 7/$70 (roughly $13 M in his FA years) and Granderson signed a 5/$30 buyout ($10 M in his 1 FA year).
Now, no argument that if the answer to your question was Juan Pierre at 5/$45 then you should check your math (correct answer: Mike Cameron) but an average CF in those days was gonna cost you $10 M give or take (unless his name was Mike Cameron) and GMj was an established average CF whether we like it or not. And his first year in LA, that's pretty much what he was (1.6 WAR, 2.1 oWAR).* Things didn't go so well after that.
* By the way, GMj is one of the guys where there's a pretty big difference between fangraphs and Chone. Fangraphs has him as +20 on defense across those 3 years, + 26 over 4. They give him 8.5/10.2 WAR over those 3/4 years. I checked because I recall MGL being the only other guy who "defended" the contract at the time.
** Wait a second, how does fangraphs have access to my facebook pic? I don't recall ever loading a fangraphs plug-in or anything.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main