As the holiday season approaches, Major League Baseball teams open up their checkbooks and prepare to start handing out big-money guaranteed contracts to the most popular free agents of the season.
This year, the two favored prizes on the market are outfielder Josh Hamilton and pitcher Zack Greinke. Both are tremendously talented but come with enough baggage to weigh down a jumbo jet.
Both are likely to land nine-figure guaranteed contracts, but in today’s MLB, there’s no good reason for a team to do that.
With young talent and parity on the rise across the sport, executives who marry themselves to players with gigantic contracts are handcuffing their franchises down the road.
There is no better example than Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez.
After the 2007 season, Rodriguez and the Yankees agreed on a record 10-year, $275 million contract that will pay him until he is 42 years old.
His 2012 salary: $30 million.
Rodriguez is already breaking down physically and is a shell of the former perennial MVP candidate he was when he signed.
He hit a new low this past postseason when he was benched by Yankees manager Joe Girardi after he went 0-for-18 with 12 strikeouts against right-handed pitching.
By the time his contract is up, Rodriguez will be nothing more than a part-time player and a full-time headache for the Yankees.
The Rodriguez contract might be the worst example, but it isn’t the only big-money disaster. Take a look at the seven-year, $142 million contract the Red Sox gave recently traded Carl Crawford two winters ago, the five-year, $125 million extension the Phillies gave Ryan Howard in 2010 or the eight-year, $136 million deal the Cubs gave Alfonso Soriano in 2007.
These clubs missed the playoffs last season and have less budget flexibility this winter because they have so much money tied up in underperforming superstars.
Even if the player is worth the money for the first few years of the contract, that doesn’t justify paying the same big-money rate as the player deteriorates in the latter years of the deal. It is paying seven years of superstar money for a couple years of superstar production.
With the number of standouts that burst on to the scene every season, there is no reason to make such long-term commitments.
Look at Angels outfielder Mike Trout. As a rookie this season, he hit .326 with 30 home runs, 83 RBIs and a league-high 129 runs scored. He won the American League Rookie of the Year and finished second in the MVP race.
His 2012 salary: $480,000.
Take the Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey. He learned the knuckleball to prolong his career as a major league journeyman.
This season, at age 37, Dickey won 20 games for a bad Mets team, posted a 2.73 ERA and led the National League with 230 strikeouts on his way to a Cy Young Award.
His 2012 salary: $4,750,000.
Some simple math would show that with some good scouting, a team could pay a Cy Young-quality pitcher and an MVP candidate five or six times the price of one “superstar.”
Consider the Oakland Athletics.
Last winter, Oakland traded most of its starting rotation, but this season the A’s beat out the Texas Rangers and won the American League West with a starting rotation that included four rookies.
The A’s won their division with the lowest payroll in baseball at $49,137,500, and the Orioles and Nationals made the playoffs with the Nos. 18 and 19 payrolls in baseball.
In comparison, the Rangers’ payroll was more than $120 million.
Parity is increasing and spending money does not always translate to winning games.
The Yankees have had the highest payroll in baseball for the last 10 seasons and have only one World Series Championship to show for it.
So before you scream that you want your team to pony up major dollars for Hamilton, Greinke or whomever else this winter, remember that winning the hot stove battle in December does not mean a team will hoist the World Series trophy in October.
