worst contract out of these $100 million contracts

the thing with howard is that they gave him an extension before they needed to & that's the real egregious thing -- they wouldn't have been in that tough of a position if they waited two years

i don't know that lee's '08 was totally out of nowhere. he was really good in '05 and solid in '06. '07 was a disaster, admittedly. but since '08 he's been pretty awesome. he's been a little worse with the rangers than he was with the m's, but he's a cool customer, never walks anybody, and seems to be the kind of pitcher who would age really well.

it's extremely tough to play the game of predicting the downfall of your franchise players and not paying them because of that & still remain a respectable franchise to your fans and other players

^ this. no player wants to hear from a team (esp when they've played with their entire career there) when their contract is up that they aren't going to get offered the super mega bucks the used to make because they've been declining and are getting older and the team expects the very normal trend that happens to everyone to continue. 99% of players would say "screw you" and walk.

xpost

he was good on '05 - but it was still nothing compared to '08.

not only that, but it's also tough to sign guys where their contract ends at a point where they are still "good" but def on the decline -- it really wouldn't even have happened with howard if they hadn't given him the contract two years out

to get big players like this you are almost always going to be overpaying for 3+ years

i was expecting him to be another Esteban Loaiza, but he's kept it up pretty well. i guess at 32, if he's going to get himself 100 million, he's going to find a team that thinks he will pitch like this until he's at least 37.

xpost

ya - so i guess it won't be too hard for him to get that contract.

Thermo and I are going to buy the Pirates, restock the team with all our favourite Jays from years past--Moseby in centre, Robbie at second, Cliff Johnson DH'ing--and sign them all to big 10-year contracts. Just because we like them as people.

dude. i hope you're funding this one, i don't even have a job right now!

Key and Henke are key and urgent, btw.

I'll give you $145 in cash and a pickup truck full of watermelons for the stadium concession contract.

xxpost

btw i still think the dumbest contract ever was one that wasn't finished, cf. larry himes deciding that jose guzman, candy maldonado, randy myers, and dan plesac would be better for the cubs than greg maddux, who was 26 at the time.

like it kinda makes zero sense to pay a-rod 27.5 million per season over the life of a contract that will mostly be his late 30s and early 40s, because you can't reasonably expect him to continue at his '07 levels or maybe even his '08 levels. and soriano's deal was even stupider b/c they were basing his deal on his single epic season with the nationals and not a career of consistency.

― ('_') (omar little), Monday, August 23, 2010 4:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

look, i'm firmly in your camp that he hits 25 hrs for next two seasons then settles into an 18 hr a year semi-DL endgame. still, it makes a lot of sense when the mere promise of a bonds hr record chase is the only thing out there that could goose the YES network's already high tune in numbers. ratings = dollars, it's not always sensibly sabermetrical.

I was just going to say that as a GM, I'd be very reluctant to hand out big-money, long-term contracts to pitchers, be it Lee or almost anybody. Obviously you have to to stay competitive, but I'd be very nervous. The Braves had arguably the greatest free-agent signing ever with Maddux. How many other long-term contracts ever worked out so well with a starting pitcher?

Considering the contracts after the fact is kind of unfair. The Griffey deal was pretty reasonable when it happened, but he got injured. He was totally worth it, and injuries happen.

On the other hand, Manny's deal was fucking crazy and yet he totally (and somewhat surprisingly) earned every penny of it.

yeah no one should be giving a pitcher more than 4 years unless they are 1) a legit ace and 2) seem to freakishly resist injury

i think CC will work out fine since he was so young, not sure about the inevitable Lee contract which will probably be about the same size

^ this. no player wants to hear from a team (esp when they've played with their entire career there) when their contract is up that they aren't going to get offered the super mega bucks the used to make because they've been declining and are getting older and the team expects the very normal trend that happens to everyone to continue. 99% of players would say "screw you" and walk.

Is this a partial defense of Wells' contract? Because your post seems to perfectly sum up the mood at the time (he's the face of the franchise, we let Delgado walk so now we have to keep Wells, there are no other decent CF's on the market).

Had Wells continued to hit the way he did in the couple of years before signing the contract, you could argue that the Jays got a reasonable deal. Obv he didn't deserve to get the 7th or whatever largest contract in the history of baseball to that point, but it's also true that nobody could have predicted how bad he'd become.

no, i wasn't thinking of Wells at all.

if anything i was thinking more about the scenario that leads to someone like Delgado walking.

I'm using hindsight and voting for Mike Hampton. Though I guess if we're really playing the long game, the Hampton and Neagle fiascos have made the Rockies FO ignore the possibility of signing hyper-expensive free agents, rather concentrating on the farm and reclamation prospects, which has served us very well the last few years.

Denny NAGL

howard 0-7 5 ks tonight

And an ejection, don't forget.

PLATINUM

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

126 Million Barry Zito 2007

proof, the Giants are leaving him off the 2010 post season roster.

The Giants are leaving not only Zito, but also Renteria and Rowand... their THREE highest salaried players (all healthy mind you) off their playoff roster, proof that the team is run by a Real Housewife of the Berkeley Hills.

That most recent A-rod contract is a humdinger innit..

Clearly those three Giants contracts were bad moves, but that hasn't stopped Sabean from assembling a very competitive team around them. Isn't the ultimate value of a GM determined by how good the team is, not based on which players make the most money? Since he made the terrible Zito and Rowand moves the Giants have made several good decisions, so it seems kinda weird to keep hammering him for those moves when the team is doing so well, and frankly is in position to dominate the division for the next few years. I don't think there's a team in the division that has recently drafted three better players than Posey, Lincecum, and Bumgarner.

vernon wells had a good year, certainly good enough that if he were to keep at it for the remainder of the contract it wouldn't be a complete waste. zito was good for one half and now, yeah...it's not his fault he got all that money and he seems like a bro but it's a horrible deal. the more recent a-rod one is pretty ridiculous, too. how much longer on that one?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

surprised at #s 2 & 4!

100 Million Albert Pujols 2004     1

Poly, just given Sabean's track record, I have to assume that the Stopped Clock Principle applies here. However, he and the scouting dept. do deserve credit for the recent drafts (don't forget Sanchez, whom I'd written off as early as this year, and the relievers).

/guilty

for the lawlz... :D

You mean you resisted voting for Zito? o_O

Anyway, I assume you voted Pooholes because of his advanced age?

i def voted twice, i think santana was the other one but i can't recall for sure. :P

i didnt cheat with multiple accounts but im pretty sure i voted johan a month ago and mauer two days ago. are polls broken?

When cookies expire you can vote again. Long polls are good for that.

what a moral swamp

ha ha!

i only voted once and my horse still won!

Jonah Keri ranks the top 15 stinkers currently on the books

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8914127/jonah-keri-worst-contracts-mlb

Good job by whoever picked ARod in the original poll, but I think Hampton still "wins" for almost putting up a negative WAR during the length of the contract. Looking back at his numbers now, I can't believe that a guy who was walking 100 batters per year got a $100M contract.

Some skepticism about Felix's contract:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2013/02/king-felixs-new-clothes/

(The writer is not claiming it as the worst, by any means, but this seemed like an appropriate thread.)

I agree that its a little bizarre to give a guy a record-setting deal when he's not even a free agent yet, but you do have to consider that A) Seattle may have to overpay to get superstars and B) these contracts aren't ever built to be great in their last year or two. you overpay in the end because a guy who produces 8 WAR is really worth $45m or so and you can't pay that much in one year. that said Felix seems to cap out at 6 WAR. seems like another slight upside/massive downside signing but I guess Seattle feels they'll really be competitive in a few years?

Vernon Wells would get a lot more votes if we did this poll today.

Neyer wrote last week about the dodgy future of pitchers w/ Felix's workload, age etc.

the Vernon Wells signing was obviously pretty bad but I'm much more baffled by the Angels trading for him after the awfulness of his contract was long since established

Bonus points go to contracts that were indefensible at the time. Wells' was at least somewhat defensible -- he'd been a 4-5 win player on average up until then, still a good defender, and was entering his age-27 season. The market for outfielders was thin, and he was a popular homegrown player. I don't think the disaster signs were obvious compared to the Zito and Hampton signings (or A-Rod's 2007 re-up).

Wonder which of the recent massive deals will wind up the worst…my money’s on bogaerts.

it's an older, smaller bad contract, but Bumgarner's deal with the diamondbacks (5 years, $85M) has been pretty bad. this line from the ZiPS preview for the 2023 dbacks jumped out: "ZiPS actually thinks Bumgarner has more value as a pitcher hitting in a non-DH league than as, well, a pitcher."

Wonder which of the recent massive deals will wind up the worst

i'd love to see them all get a chance to stay healthy and see what they can do. unfortunately i think when it comes to a 12+ year contract it starts to become more likely that injuries or PED revelations will derail a career. imagine if a 25-year-old grady sizemore was playing these days, and just got a 13-year mega extension. based on his first handful of years, you'd think there was no way it could go wrong

Wonder which of the recent massive deals will wind up the worst…my money’s on bogaerts.

― omar little, Thursday, December 15, 2022 5:30 PM (forty-five minutes ago)

de grom. bogaerts will at least be on the field

Oof yeah you’re right forgot about him

miguel cabrera, 2016-2023, $248M ($31M AAV)

so far, he has 3 WAR over the course of the first 6 years of the 7 year contract

in the first year of the contract, he had a 5.1 bWAR, followed by: -0.9, 0.2, 0.0, 0.1, -0.5, -1.0

but hey, that first year -- great!

buyer bWAR

I'm posting the exact opposite here--or maybe this is the worst contract post free-agency from a player's standpoint. Ozzie Albies, of course. For seven million this year, the Braves have a 4.0-5.0 WAR second baseman with 30 HR, 100 RBI, and a .500+ slugging percentage, just heading into what should be the prime of his career. They also have him for the same seven million in 2024 and 2025.

Stephen Strasburg has retired. He signed a $245,000,000 contract in 2019 but threw only 530 pitches in the big leagues after that. pic.twitter.com/rrPKMmChwS

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) April 7, 2024

Actually unbelievable. They got their ring though 🤷‍♂️

I think Strasburg would have been good for a few more years if he had stayed healthy, unlike most of the players discussed on this thread.

this was a trickier situation than usual due to the size of the money owed to Strasburg and the Nationals' lack of insurance for his contract, which usually mitigates long-term injury risk.

i have no idea what it would have cost to insure a contract like that, but wow was forgoing it a terrible decision

It might not have been insurable if he had a history of injury

i hate to say it since i will love him forever, but that contract the Rockies gave Kris Bryant is looking pretty bad.