Interesting. He was owed $23 million for next year (plus another few million this year) -- I wonder if the Orioles are still paying him or gave him some sort of buyout.

115 million for -2.6 WAR (well, less than that money-wise because of 2020 but i don't know how it was prorated). Chris not playing at all this year made it the 2nd most valuable year of the deal for the Orioles...

Interesting. He was owed $23 million for next year (plus another few million this year) -- I wonder if the Orioles are still paying him or gave him some sort of buyout.

MLBTR cites Heyman saying Davis will be paid the $23M owed for next season.

Is this the worst MLB contract of all time?

1, Bob Nightengale
@BNightengale
·
1h
Chris Davis will still be fully paid for his seven-year, $161 million deal with the #Orioles, even after retirement. The only difference is that next year's salary will be deferred and paid over the next three years.

Bob Nightengale
@BNightengale
·
1h
Chris Davis' hip simply was not going to allow him to continue playing. He already had $6 million deferred from his salary next year, and now will defer the entire $17 million through the next three years.

So Davis decided it was not worth it to try to come back.

He gave the Orioles a bit of a break in exchange for retiring, in that they get some time-value-of-money relief.

Is this the worst MLB contract of all time?

The Howard extension, and the Cabrera extension have to be close.

Chris Davis' hip talent simply was not going to allow him to continue playing.

Is this the worst MLB contract of all time?

I think the worst has to be something that was obviously, monumentally stupid at the time it was signed. Like Howard, who was signed two years before free agency and paid like a superstar despite by that point being merely above average, trending downward, and sure to age poorly. Or Dreifort, who was mediocre and injury-riddled but got a star contract for reasons no one can discern.

The Davis contract was likely to be bad on the back end, but there wasn't reason to believe he'd be sub-replacement for practically the entire length of it.

It is too bad that the first thing that comes to mind is that he signed a big contract and wasn't healthy or productive. He was a really good player for about 5 years and legitimately outstanding in 2013. A fine career, better than most.

this Mets fan chortled when the Phillies gave Howard that - to turn a phrase - obviously monumentally stupid contract.

I'm still willing to die on the hill of Chan Ho Park's Rangers contract being the worst ever. The disappointing play of the team (fueled in large part by Park's own terrible pitching and the percentage of the payroll he was getting) suckered the idiot local sports-talk callers and front office into thinking their resident superstar player was the problem, prompting the team to trade him away for nickels on the dollar and furthermore paying the poor cash-strapped Yankees for the privilege of playing him.

The Howard one was just so obviously pointless. It was an overpay at best and it was overpay done before he was really even close to being out of contract. Deals like Davis, Park, etc...hey those are just the risks you take in the free agent market. Davis was a bit like Sandoval, it was a bad deal but also one that wound up being a lot worse than should have been expected.

While the Howard contract was dumber at the moment it was signed, Davis has performed far worse than Howard ever did. The Phillies released Howard after he hit .196/.257/.453, but that season would have been easily better than anything Davis has put up since 2017.

While the Howard contract was dumber at the moment it was signed, Davis has performed far worse than Howard ever did. The Phillies released Howard after he hit .196/.257/.453, but that season would have been easily better than anything Davis has put up since 2017.

In the extension Howard put up -4.8 WAR, -11.5 WAA. Davis totalled -2.6 WAR, -9.9 WAA. Hard to say Howard was better.

Davis at least had one good season (3.1 WAR in 2016). Howard "peaked" at 0.5 WAR during the extension.

Or Dreifort, who was mediocre and injury-riddled but got a star contract for reasons no one can discern.

Were the Dodgers in serious negotiations for Mussina that offseason? The new Dreifort contract happened within a week or do of Mussina signing with the Yankees, so maybe they went to their fallback plan and got utterly schooled in the negotiations.

That still doesn't fully explain it.

I'm still willing to die on the hill of Chan Ho Park's Rangers contract being the worst ever. The disappointing play of the team (fueled in large part by Park's own terrible pitching and the percentage of the payroll he was getting) suckered the idiot local sports-talk callers and front office into thinking their resident superstar player was the problem, prompting the team to trade him away for nickels on the dollar and furthermore paying the poor cash-strapped Yankees for the privilege of playing him.

Yea, I'd argue that if you were able to get someone to take a contract off your hands, it's not even in the running to be worst-ever. No one was ever going to trade for Davis. Or Howard for that matter.

Any chance the Orioles have insurance against Davis being physically unable to perform?

I think the Pujols contract and Cabrera contracts are worse. The Pujols contract crippled the Angels for so long. Cabrera - he’s been bad for so long and has 4 more years at $30 million. That’s a lot of damage to a tigers rebuild.

Davis really didn’t terribly impact the Orioles

Dreifort had a nice second half in 2000, at least superficially -- 3.14 ERA, increased his strikeout rate and improved his K/BB ratio, held hitters to a .212 batting average against. Still walked way too many guys and still gave up way too many homers. But he had been the number two overall pick in the draft and everyone loved his "stuff" and "potential" (even though he was already 28), and I guess it was easy for the Dodgers to talk themselves into the idea that Dreifort had just experienced his big breakthrough.

Howard's may not be the worst ever, but it definitely wins points for flair: Tearing his ACL while making the final out of the Phillies' 2011 season was one hell of a way to kick off that new 2012 contract.

I still vote for Dreifort, because guys like Howard and Davis at least had some demonstrated history of good play.

“The Orioles support Chris Davis as he retires from baseball today,”

Boy, do they ever!

After winning the World Series in 2004 with the Red Sox, Gabe Kapler signed with the Yomiuri Giants for the 2005 season, for $2 million, big money for an American player in Japan for those days. In 38 games, he put up a line of .153/.217/.261, and was put on the inactive list by the Giants. After clearing waivers, he re-signed with the Red Sox. He's remembered as one of the biggest US busts in Japan, up there with another Red Sox outfielder, Mike Greenwell, whose career with the Hanshin Tigers lasted 7 games before he broke his foot and went home.

Cabrera - he’s been bad for so long and has 4 more years at $30 million

only 2 more after this year. and then 2 options where he has to come in the top 10 in MVP voting the previous year for them to vest. Now, it would be hilarious if some of the AL award voters gave him MVP votes and he ended up in the top 10, but, I doubt that is happening.

I wondered if he might be the career K/RBI leader. His 2.374 beats Rob Deer's 2.348. But then I checked Joey Gallo: 2.559. Gallo might bring it down over time, but probably not.

I'm pretty sure the Dreifort contract was pretty widely panned by us Thinking Fans (even though we weren't even Primates yet I don't think) but my memory is that today's equivalent would be a guy with great statcast numbers and mediocre results. Zack Wheeler missed two years to injury, had just 750 IP, a 100 ERA+, a FIP that matched his ERA and was turning 30 when Philly signed him for 5/$118. I did not hold that contract in high regard ... oops.

Dreifort had 670 IP, 97 ERA+, a FIP a bit better than his ERA and was turning 29.

In fairness, many here dissed the Davis contract from second one -- I'd say even more than the typical number (there are always plenty of objections o any contract except maybe Trout's ... Mookie didn't have too many). So fair play to them. I don't recall any of us liking it. But I quasi-defended it because it simply wasn't that expensive. I kept pointing out at the time that he signed for basically the same raw AAV and through the same age (36) Teixeira, Fielder and Adrian Gonzalez had signed for 5-7 years earlier. 7/$161 wasn't superstar money anymore ... or maybe it was as that's when payroll started flattening out but we didn't know it yet. It was roughly the contract that Heyward got the same year and while, at the time, you'd rather have Heyward, it wasn't close to Pujols or Cabrera or, given it ran out at 36, as scary as Cano's.

The main risk was he had already been boom or bust as a player. And why was he getting 7 years and who were the O's bidding against? Still, two boom years and maybe an average year out of 7 and the contract moves close to meh territory. Zero boom years, not so much.

Don't mind incorporating a "sheer stupidity" factor in "worst contract" though. But "dumb and too pricey" is still not as bad as the Miggy extension -- a huge, unnecessary risk. I do wish we had some way to genuinely know what other offers were on the table. I guess that's one advantage of ranking the Miggy and Howard extensions so high -- we know they were bidding against nobody except hypothetical future offers. It's hard to believe anybody was close to this offer for Davis but we don't know. Maybe Davis will write a memoir.

Strausburg may be another albatross. Not too many people survive TOS well. And that contract may very well have triggered true sell off so it’s very consequential

Not too many people survive TOS well.

I've watched The Original Series of Star Trek several times, and I survived!

Tried to find a discussion of Davis’s signing but no such luck. Official signing date was 1-21-2016. The signing was first reported a bit before that, but couldn’t find anything in our archives.

Here’s a place to start, maybe someone has better eyes than I do.

https://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/blogpen/archives/P17400

I'm pretty sure the Dreifort contract was pretty widely panned by us Thinking Fans (even though we weren't even Primates yet I don't think) but my memory is that today's equivalent would be a guy with great statcast numbers and mediocre results. Zack Wheeler missed two years to injury, had just 750 IP, a 100 ERA+, a FIP that matched his ERA and was turning 30 when Philly signed him for 5/$118. I did not hold that contract in high regard ... oops.

Dreifort had 670 IP, 97 ERA+, a FIP a bit better than his ERA and was turning 29.

I'll never understand why you were so down on Wheeler. I recall you saying something like the Phils had fallen in love with the radar gun readings. But in the 2 seasons prior to his contract, he had a 3.37 FIP (12th in MLB), a 3.65 ERA (20th), and 377.2 IP (12th). All that added up to him being worth 8.9 FWAR (10th) and 8.1 BWAR (?). That's a really good pitcher, an ace on most staffs. And it's not like his contract was near the top of the market. Cole got $324 mil, Strasburg $245 mil. His $118 mil. contract fit very well with his more traditional stats, no need to worry about spin rates, movement, or velocity.



On Davis, I assume someone must have come up with this theory at some point, but I seem to recall the O's coming under a lot of criticism for not spending before this contract. Did they intentionally sign one bad, big money, long-term deal so that they could say, "Hey we tried that, and it didn't work out"?

#31 The only discussion I can find is here

Quickly turns into famous people primates have interacted with.

I think there was no disagreement with the idea that he wasn't objectively worth what he was looking for (and eventually signed for close to what he was looking for) and that doesn't make for a very interesting discussion.

There was one objection -- that we didn't know the structure of the contract and might feature a lot of deferred money.

"Worst Contract Ever" can be considered in two ways: straight $/WAR, or (for the largest contracts) impairing the organization's ability to sign other free agents, which is an opportunity cost argument.

Dollars/ WAR doesn’t work so well when you have negative numbers. And inflation is an issue. Here’s what I do: convert the dollars to WAR using whatever $/W is appropriate for the year it was signed. If we assume 8 million for 2016, then the Orioles paid for 20 WAR. Then find the difference from what the player actually produced.

The lack of a specific thread devoted to the contract plus the general tone of "of course he should ask for everything he can get" in the negotiation thread suggests that this wasn't on most Primates' radars at the time.

The procedure in 35 sounds legitimate. You also might try normalizing by the highest salary in the game in a particular year.

2015