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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Thursday, December 23, 2021The Worst Free-Agent Signing in MLB History at Each Position
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: December 23, 2021 at 10:23 AM | 52 comment(s)
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1. Rally Posted: December 23, 2021 at 11:42 AM (#6058466)It didn’t even turn out all that bad. 2 productive years, one year missed to injury, and they were able to trade him for a guy who helped the team win the only WS in franchise history.
I’d also nominate Chris Davis. He didn’t change teams, but he did make it to the free agent market and was able to field offers from other teams before resigning with the Orioles.
The yankees got 2 wins and a 6.66 era for their investment.
Even if you look at the whole deal, Reyes was paid for 6 years and gave his teams only 3 good ones. Probably better than the Angels signing Zack Cozart for 3 years and getting nothing out of it.
Mo Vaughn was just shy of 31, an established star, went on to hit 69 HR in the next two years, then got hurt (as Rally notes).
Gary Matthews Jr., now, had a career OPS+ of 97, and at age 32 was coming off by far his best season ever. The odds of him staying that good for five years or even one year were basically nil. (TFA does give the Matthews contract honorable mention.)
Josh Hamilton, signed at age 31, is somewhere in between. Some people at the time thought the Angels had done great – Hamilton like Vaughn was a legitimate star. But he had visibly lost a step (or more) in the outfield and a huge 5-year deal was clearly not advisable. Still, I thought he would do OK for a year or two in Anaheim
Khris Davis, 3 years, $16.5 million per, for nothing (though it's possible that their swap for Elvis Andrus may turn out ok)
Billy Butler, 3 years, $10 million per, for nothing
Trevor Rosenthal, 1 year, $11 million, for nothing
Gee the Angels have not covered themselves in glory over the years....
And trading Mike Napoli for Vernon Wells isn't even in this discussion :)
The cardinals have been repeatedly saved by fate. They almost signed Pujols, Heyward, Price and nearly bought Stanton’s big contract. Instead they got Holliday, Goldschmidt and Arenado. Jury is still out on Arenado but if that isn’t devil magic , I don’t know what is.
Agreed I don't see any reason to limit this to FA signings. A long-term extension for a player (esp if they have 6+ service time or are over 30) is the same thing.
Todd Hundley seems a bit unfair. As the article notes, in 1998, Vaughn got 6/$80 and Albert got 5/$65 and, in 2000, Hampton got 8/$120. Hundely is cited here for 4/$23.5 in 2000 ... not chump change but hardly an expensive contract even in those days. He had been obviously terrible in 98 and not good in 99 and only made 82 starts in his excellent 2000 so the Cubs knew they weren't getting a star and didn't pay him star money.
Granted, there haven't been a lot of C FA contracts and most seem to have worked out OK so maybe it was just a lack of competition. It is hard to beat a zero in the denominator of a $/WAR calculation after all. B McCann 5/$85 for 7.5 WAR; Martin about the same; Pudge worked out very well for Detroit. Those are the ones that spring to mind. James McCann might give Todd a run for his money.
And the Justin Upton trade (and short extension) hasn't worked out too well either. CJ Wilson was better than I remember but nothing to brag about.
And while it pales in comparison to Napoli for Wells, why does nobody ever give the Jays grief over Napoli for Frank Francisco 4 days later?
But here's the thing. They'd have cheerfully moved Wells for a month old bagel. Getting a year of reasonable middle relief was way more than they'd hoped for and everybody knew it. It's hard to be too critical.
5 years 85 M. Through first two years with Dbacks
35 GS, 188 IP, 5.07 ERA, 5.20 FIP, 1.1 WAR, 37 HR allowed ! Struggles to break 90 on his FB, cutter sits in low to mid 80’s at best. It’s a miracle his numbers aren’t worse
Dave Goltz, 6 years, $3 million, -0.5 WAR and then released
Don Stanhouse, 5 years, $2.1 million, -0.7 WAR
These two washouts didn't stop them from winnning a World Series in 1981, of course.
He's tried. I got to speak with him multiple times between ST and end of the season. I was especially interested to see if and how he was developing his Changeup which he had previously used sparingly.
He said that he was trying but it was simply a pitch he has never had a feel for and it was his 4th best pitch, so he didn't try to throw it much. But he started trying to use it more last year and by August-September he threw many more than usual, but he didn't get good results
Without the ability to dial in the Changeup, I don't see how he's going to be able to have a Moyer like old age. His Fourseam/Cutter/Curverball repertoire just isn't cutting it anymore. (Pun not intended)
Maybe percent above league average salary but that's a lot of work.
For six years in a row, 93-98 he's in the conversation for best hitter in baseball not named Bonds, averaging 160 OPS+.
Coming off a 7.1 bWAR 172 OPS+ season, he opts out of his contract with CWS, and Baltimore signs him for 5 years.
He produces a 143 OPS+ season, then gets hurt. He limps through 2000, then never suits up again. They keep him on the 40 man roster, so insurance covers most of the salary, thus they are not financially hamstrung.
Guy got hurt, what can you do? He was a great hitter, and had earned a big paycheck. (Unless "degenerative hip condition" is just a euphemism for something else?) Give him the MVP he deserved in 1995 instead of Mo Vaughn, and he was on a Hall of Fame trajectory. And maybe Vaughn is not on this list, because he doesn't get overpaid so much after being overrated.
Speaking of Vaughn, I'd consider Greg Vaughn for this list before Belle. Article doesn't mention him: signed by Tampa Bay 4/$34M in 2000 (star-level money) he put up OPS+ of 119, 103, 62, then released in spring training. So TB had to pay him out, right? That's a bad return on investment. I suspect that's now a gold standard bad contract, mixing in that Greg was 34 when he signed it.
ed: signing GVaughn for big money was perhaps not as rare for TB as I remembered. They were just bad, I forgot who the players were, but in that era they were also throwing big money (not always as FA signings, just in terms of bad $$$) at vets like Vinny Castilla, Wilson Alvarez, and Roberto Hernandez that weren't giving them much production.
There are so many changeup grips. I hope he is using the offseason to find a changeup that works. He seems like a bright guy, Brent Strom, the new Diamondbacks pitching coach, coached Dallas Keuchel, a noted changeup artist. I betcha there are quite a few former major leaguers with good changeups living in Arizona that could help as well. Alas, Doug Jones is no longer one of them.
It took Jamie himself about 15 years, MadBum just needs to be patient. :-)
#26: the brand new Devil Rays were trying to make a quick splash. Looking back, in year 1, they already had McGriff, Boggs, Alvarez, Arrojo (the big pitching prize out of Cuba), Hernandez and several other recognizable vet names. Alvarez by the way had been a very good pitcher and was pretty good for the Rays in his first two seasons then got hurt. That didn't work well in 98-99 so ... they decided to try again with Castilla and Vaughn in 2000. That first wave of signings worked out pretty well -- McGriff, Alvarez (until hurt), Arrojo and Hernandez all produced, Boggs was just there to sell tix and try to steal a HoF plaque. The second wave not so good. Oh well, at least they tried.
I used to love to keep track of Steinbrenner's lousy moves, going as far back as the Steve Kemp & Dave Collins moves.
Merry Christmas all.
4 years 68 Million
309 Games, 1175 PA, -2.5 WAR, -6.2 WAA
DFA’d and Banished to AAA in 2018, saw all of 6 more PA in MLB after that
At least Arizona got one year with 31 home runs from him. The Yankees didn't even get that from Kei Igawa.
The Royals had the highest payroll in baseball when they signed Mark Davis.
Even that managed to be the 4th least valuable 30 homer season in MLB history
There was no minimum years of service requirement initially. Don't know if you just had to have a MLB contract or what. Billy Smith had been with the Angels for parts of 1975 and 1976, mostly minors in 1976. Played out his option, became a FA, signed with the Orioles. Marvin Miller wound up negotiating this right away.
Very similar to the Rusney Castillo contract. Red Sox dfa’d him. Could’t release him or have him up as a backup outfielder, or else the dollars would count against the luxury tax. So he spent 4 years as the richest man in Pawtucket.
1. Figure out the going rate for dollars to WAR at the time the deal was signed. You can use a shortcut here, for example if 8 million is the going rate when average team payroll is 120 million, assume 2 million was the going rate when teams has 30 million dollar payrolls.
2. How many wins did the team pay for?
3. How many did he actually produce?
That way you can do a reasonable job comparing Wayne Garland to Josh Hamilton.
This trade created my favorite primate/thinkfactory moment of all time.
First, it's announced that Napoli has been traded to the Jays, with no other information available. Primates are upset because the Angels never gave Napoli a chance. Complaints of Scocia favoring the inferior Mathis. Then, the anger escalates as we learn that the trade involves Wells. I believe it was the first comment of this new post that simply said "lol wut". The absolute perfect response to such absurdity and I reference it at least monthly.
The thread then just kept getting better and better as people speculated on how much money Toronto would have to throw in (50 million?) and what kind of players Toronto would have to add to sweeten it.
As we all know, it would be the Angels throwing in the extra player, and no money was exchanged. I can still taste the rage.
Here is the thread
32. Rough Carrigan Posted: January 22, 2011 at 02:21 AM (#3734433)
Wow. First the Angels trade for Scott Kazmir just when it's become obvious that he's not the pitcher he was in 2006 and 2007 [....]
..............
[in 2021 - more than a decade after that post - the Giants both won 107 games and gave Scott Kazmir 4 starts. the heart wants what it wants.]
............
77. shock Posted: January 22, 2011 at 03:35 AM (#3734501)
Leaving the money aside
I see no reason why you would do that.
Wells is a Yankee by 2013
.................
[Wells IS a Yankee - in 2013.
March 26, 2013: Traded by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to the New York Yankees for Exicardo Cayones (minors) and Kramer Sneed (minors).
73 starts in LF, 23 in RF, 22 as DH, 1 at 1B
74 OPS+ in 458 PA, released
paired nicely with the rotting corpse of Ichiro and his 77 OPS+ in 555 PA, mostly starts in RF]
This turned out not to be a problem.
oooh, updating the email I sent to my friends in 2011. Thanks!!
Mike Napoli retired after 2017 and his third stint with the Rangers, always a fan favorite here.
And three years later Jeff Mathis was still catching regularly for the Rangers. I wish I'd predicted that in 2011; nobody would have believed me.
he went 0 for 9 with 5 K for the Braves, but still.
in 2019, he had an 11 OPS+ in 224 PA for the befuddled Rangers.
career OPS+ of 48 for 6 teams in 17 MLB seasons. he turns 39 on March 31. any GMs out there feel ... lucky?
P.S. He was in a deal that had about as many players who ultimately "mattered" as you'll ever see:
November 19, 2012: Traded by the Toronto Blue Jays with Henderson Alvarez III, Anthony DeSclafani, Yunel Escobar, Adeiny Hechavarria, Jake Marisnick and Justin Nicolino to the Miami Marlins for Emilio Bonifacio, John Buck, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes and cash.
Dback fans were apoplectic when Torey Lovullo didn't start Chris Iannetta at catcher in the Wild Card Game against Colorado and again vs LA in Game 1 of the NLDS. Chris had a big year for Arizona that year, 17 hr in 300+ PA and a 120 wRC+. 2.3 fWAR
So of course Mathis had an RBI knock in the Wild Card game and a homer off Kershaw in game 1 of the NLDS to knock him out of the game. Ironically the pitching staff gave up a lot of runs with Mathis behind the plate that post season. In the 3 games he caught they gave up 8,9 & 3 runs for a total of 20. YCPB, amirite ?
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