Ricciardis
Posted: August 11th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 128 Comments »
I don’t want this sound rude … but I have never understood Toronto general manager J.P. Ricciardi. I mean that sincerely. I just don’t understand. I have friends all around the game who will tell me what a bright guy J.P. is, what a good baseball man he is, what a grounded person he is, what a nice guy he is and so on. And I have no reason to doubt them except this: I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
And no, this isn’t about the incredibly dumb things Ricciardi says, like the time he basically called Gil Meche a loser because he signed with the Kansas City Royals instead of his own multiple-championship team in Toronto (Ricciardi’s team career record is 489-482 with zero playoff appearances in seven seasons). Or the time he ripped Adam Dunn for not liking baseball and then claimed to talk to have apologized to Dunn even though Dunn insisted he never heard from Ricciardi (at which point Ricciardi made some comment about how someone was PRETENDING to be Dunn or something like that). Or the time he lied about B.J. Ryan’s injury and then offered up the classic, “They’re not lies if we know the truth,” quote.
No. Forget all that. Here’s my thing about J.P. Ricciardi, the thing that really baffles the heck out of me: How can someone keep giving out contracts THIS BAD and keep his job and reputation? How? I’m serious. How?
Obviously, you can start with the Alex Rios contract. You probably know that Rios has SIX YEARS and about $60 million left on his contract. And the guy is 28 years old and has a 94 OPS+ this year. He has a lifetime .335 on-base percentage, which is pretty darned mediocre. He has never hit 25 home runs in a season. He has not slugged .500 since 2006. He has been a good outfielder, but he even appears to be losing that. This contract is SO BAD that the only way for Ricciardi and the Blue Jays to escape it was to put Rios on waivers and have Chicago general manager Kenny Williams come in, like Bagel in Diner*, and pay off his gambling debts.
*So disappointed to see how poorly Diner did in the “Most quoted movies” poll. More on that in a later post.
I don’t know if the White Sox will get much for their money. They might get something … Rios, in that hitter’s ballpark and a new environment, might be revitalized and might have some good years. I wouldn’t bet on it, but it could happen and, again, some of the people I trust around the game say it will happen. But no matter what happens, that contract was so bad that the Blue Jays needed a bail out. If that was the only time it happened to Ricciardi, OK, everyone is entitled to a mistake. And you could see how the Blue Jays made this mistake: Rios was developed in the Blue Jays organization and put up a couple of pretty good years.
Trouble is, this is a frightening pattern for Ricciardi — B.J. Ryan. Vernon Wells. Frank Thomas just for starters. For fun, I put together an unofficial list of the worst contracts in the game. And, as you will see, Ricciardi’s name is all over it. This turned out to be more involved than I expected … so I had to make up a few rules.
1. To qualify, the contract has to still be going for at least one more year … and it has to be for more than $10 million per year on the remainder. So, that would rule out, say, the bizarrely awful Vicente Padilla contract because he’s coming off the books after this season.
2. I try to take injuries into account when judging the contract. True, the Dodgers signing of Jason Schmidt (three years, $47 million) was, in retrospect, awful. The guy has won a grand total of three games with a 6.02 ERA. But he has been hurt. You could certainly argue that when you sign a 34-year-old pitcher for that much money you are ASKING for pain, but, again, I’m trying to be fair here.
3. I want to judge the contract based on the entire thing. What I mean is … the Red Sox owe $12.5 million more to Big Papi next year, and that’s really, really bad. At this point, I think, you can reasonably make the conclusion that Papi is more or less finished as a good player and so that is dead money. But the Papi contract as a whole was a good one; Papi had a couple of amazing seasons over the four-year contract and I would say he has been worth every penny the Red Sox will pay him.
And so a few contract thoughts, then the list …
Bad contract coming off the books: Adrian Beltre (5 years, $64 million). Beltre is prime example of a general manager putting too much stock into one good year. Beltre had been a certain kind of player for five years — good defensively at third, a bit of power, generally low batting averages, an inability to walk. Then, in 2004 he had that monster year — .334/.388/.629 with 48 homers in Los Angeles — and the Mariners bought into it. To be honest, Beltre hasn’t been as bad as I thought. He’s a mixed bag. He’s a terrific defensive player, he has generally hit 25 home runs a year, he still doesn’t get on base. This year, he looks entirely overmatched at the plate. I watched one game where he struck out three times on fastballs — and he looked to be about five seconds late. Over the length of the contract, he has been a pretty good player. The Mariners paid him like a great one. It’s a common mistake.
Contracts that have may or may not bomb, but I don’t like them: Brian Roberts (4 years, $40 million) and Michael Young (5 years, $80 million). Do you get these two guys confused too or is it just me? I don’t know why I get them confused. Roberts is a switch-hitter, Young a right-handed hitter. Roberts has led the league in stolen bases, Young in batting average. Roberts plays second base (and moderately well) while Young played shortstop and now plays third base (and the numbers suggest he’s been terrible there — minus-19 on the Dewan). They are really not alike.
Except this: Every time I look up either one of their numbers, I’m shocked at how unimpressive they are. Roberts has a career 103 OPS+. Young has a career 105 OPS+. Roberts will turn 32 in October, Young 33, so you would expect that both will very soon enter the decline phase of their careers. Maybe I’m wrong — hope I’m wrong because they both seem like likable guys you would root for — but it seems to me that one or both of these contracts will be an albatross before the day is done.
Another contract that has not bombed yet but probably will: Francisco Cordero — 4 years, $46 million. Two more years in Cincinnati at $12 million, plus a club option. This does not look like a bad deal at the moment — Cordero is having a sensational year at 34. But a wise baseball man man once told me: If you have a team whose highest paid player is the closer, you have a bad team.
A bad contract that you really can’t blame anyone for: Eric Byrnes (3 years, $30 million). He has one more year left at $11 million, and he has been dreadful when he has been able to play the last two years (114 games, .213 average, 60 OPS+), and he can’t keep his hamstrings from tearing. But in this case … I’m just not sure what else Arizona could have done. He had that inspiring 2007 season — 21 homers, 50 steals, all sorts of great defensive plays, good hair, national fame — and the Diamondbacks really had to bring him back. In retrospect, of course, a 32-year-old guy with a career 100 OPS+ for four teams was probably not worth it. But, hey, sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
A bad contract that was just sort of unavoidable: Aaron Rowand (5 years, $60 million). He will be paid $12 million per for next three years, which is a whole lot of money to pay for a below average hitter who probably has been pretty wildly overrated defensively for three or four years. But, hey, he came off that big 2007 season — .309/.374/.515 — and he’d had one year like that before (2004 in Chicago) and he had the great defensive rep, and he was a free agent, and somebody was going to overpay for him. Brian Sabean was the lucky winner.
A contract that is still not a disaster … but the iceberg approacheth: Carlos Lee (6 years, $100 million). He’s still hitting — a 130 OPS+, a .514 slugging percentage, yet another year where he will probably hit 25 homers, drive in 100 runs — and yet, you can see bad things on the horizon. Lee is going to make $18.5 million each of the next three years. And he has already become a horrible outfielder and he’s one of the worst base runners in the game — so as soon as the bat stops producing, he has a chance to become one of the three worst contracts in baseball. And he’s 33 years old.
A different kind of bad contract: Carlos Zambrano (5 years, $91.5 million). The contracts that I list below as the worst are those where (in my opinion) a team has wildly overpaid a player for the production they will get. This could be the case with Zambrano, certainly, but it’s a different deal because Zambrano’s still a good pitcher, and quite often an awesome pitcher. His problems are … er … tougher to define.
Worst contracts in baseball (Updated to move Rios down a bit)
11. B.J. Ryan (out of baseball). Blue Jays still owe Ryan $10 million NEXT YEAR off 5 year, $47 million. To be fair to Ricciardi, I said I was going to consider injuries and Ryan was dominant in 2006 before having Tommy John surgery in 2007. But you know what? You give a 30-year-old relief pitcher (coming off one good season) that much money, and you end up having to release him with about $15 million still on the books … yeah, that’s a disastrous decision.
10. Jeff Suppan (MIlwaukee Brewers). He has two years and $25 million left on a contract — $27 million if you count the buyout. And he is 15-18 with a 5.09 ERA since start of the 2008 season. And he turns 35 in January. I’m just not too sure you’re going to make big strides as a team by signing 32-year-old inning-eaters for a lot of money.
9. Travis Hafner (Cleveland Indians). He has three years at $13 million per left on his four-year deal … and a buyout on top. The reason this is not higher on the list is you can certainly understand why the Indians made the deal. Hafner had led the American League in OPS+ twice. He was coming off a year when he hit .308/.439/.649 — tough to argue with those numbers.
BUT … they gave him the contract in the middle of the 2007 season, when he turned 30, when his numbers had already started to take a precipitous fall, when he had not shown an ability to stay healthy (he had never even played 150 games in a season when they gave him the deal). PLUS, he’s a big, slow guy who literally cannot play a single defensive position … he has not put on a glove for a big league game since 2007. Hafner has shown a little spark of offensive life this year, but he has so many injury problems, and he’s 32 years old, and this contract surely will only look worse as time goes on.
8. Kerry Wood (Cleveland Indians). He signed before this season for 2 years at $11 million per and there’s a reasonable chance it will kick in and become a three-year deal. He has been terrible this year but that’s not even the problem … Why would you spend all that money to sign a 31-turning-32-year-old pitcher with a long line of injury problems who has never pitched in the American League and has had one decent year as a closer? Mark Shapiro seems to me a bright guy who has done some good things … but this was a head-scratcher to me.
7. Alex Rios (Chicago White Sox). I originally had this as the second-worst contract in the game … but that was blowing this out of proportion. Several readers make the strong point that it really is not THAT bad, and I’m probably overreacting to the off-season he’s having now. Either way, this is the third deal where Ricciardi has hit the ejector button in the middle of the contract (B.J. Ryan and Frank Thomas coming first). At least this one, someone else picked up the tab — and yes, Kenny Williams will now be the one judged on how this contract turns out.
6. Gary Matthews (Angels). Still has two years and $23 million left on his contract, which is tough because he has become one of the worst hitters in baseball (74 OPS+ and .346 slugging percentage last two years) and the two big defensive stats I like — UZR and Dewan — both suggest he has lost whatever he might have had defensively. This was another example of a player with a long history of being below average (89 career OPS+ for seven teams between 1999 and 2005), then having one good year and making one incredible catch, and then signing for big money at age 32.
One funny part of this, though, is that I don’t think the Angels have a lot of buyer’s remorse here. They are a weird team, the Angels. They just chug along, year after year. They pretty wildly overpay for a player now and again. They give players odd roles. They do odd things that make you wonder what the heck is going on over there. But they make the playoffs almost every year, and they seem to deal pretty well with whatever mistakes they make. Matthews plays quite a lot for the Angels, and he has a 69 OPS+, but the Angels continue to score runs like crazy. It’s just weird over there.
5. Alfonso Soriano (Cubs). Wow, the Cubs owe him $18 million per year for the next four. And he’s going to be 34 years old in January. And he has a 90 OPS+ this year and he seems to have lost his speed, which was a big part of his game. Bad stuff.
Funny, I kind of thought that in many ways Soriano was underrated when the Cubs signed him … underrated because a lot of people seemed to be talking about all the things he couldn’t do (he didn’t walk, he struck out a ton, he was moody and didn’t want to change positions) and were kind of missing some of the obvious things he could DO such as the fact that he had a 40-40 season (and was one homer away from a SECOND 40-40 season) and was showing improvement even in those troubled areas (he walked a career high 67 times in Washington and moved to left field).
Still … eight-year deal. Damn. You better be SURE before you give someone an eight year deal, especially a guy two months away from his 31st birthday. Check that: There’s no way you could be THAT sure about a player about to turn 31. Soriano still has some value as a player, but you’ve got to think that deal will only look worse from here on in.
4. Carlos Silva (Seattle Mariners). Three years left on that four year, $48 million deal … and a buyout to boot. Funny, people will constantly rip the Yankees and Red Sox and teams like that for all the money they spend … but it is teams like the Mariners, Royals, Brewers, Blue Jays and Indians that seem to actually make the worst signings.
I have absolutely no idea what the heck the Mariners could have been thinking when they gave Sliva that money. The previous two years, he was 24-29 with a 5.01 ERA. He never could strike out anyone. He was turning 29, which ain’t exactly young. Of course he went 4-15 with a 6.46 ERA last year with the Mariners. Of course he was dreadful this year and then got hurt. Of course. This is the sort of signing that makes me wish, just once, I could be in on one of these meetings just so I could HEAR what these people are saying when they make these moves.
3. Barry Zito (San Francisco Giants). Four more years at about $19 million per and a huge $7 million buyout on the end. Well, what can you say? It’s the most famous bad contract in baseball right now … but the tide could be shifting a bit. Zito, you probably noticed, is pitching better. He’s 8-10 with a 4.40 ERA, which isn’t exactly Koufax — it’s not even Murray Koufax — but he has pitched better of late, and he has the makings of a crafty lefty, and crafty lefties can sometimes age quite well. Plus he has endured through some bad times. Look, when the Giants made this deal it was very clear that they had completely lost their minds. And no matter what happens, this contract will be known as a masterpiece of excess. But — and admittedly this is just a hunch — Zito might still be a reasonably valuable pitcher for the Giants.
2. Jose Guillen (Kansas City Royals). One more year at $12 million. I will admit that I’m grading this one on a curve … the Royals, more than other teams, cannot afford titanic blunders like this one. Everything about this deal baffled from the start. The Royals talked about wanting to get players who get on base — Guillen doesn’t and never has. The Royals talked about wanting players who are leaders — Guillen had played for nine different teams and was suspended for the playoffs by the Angels for inappropriate conduct. The Royals talked about players with good character — Guillen was facing a drug suspension when the Royals signed him (he was given amnesty).
But more than anything: Guillen was almost 32 when the Royals signed him to a three-year, $36 million deal … and he’s precisely the sort of player who starts going wildly downhill at that age. And … so he has. Guillen led the team in RBIs in 2008 despite having a pretty bad year. This year, he has been perhaps the worst everyday player in baseball. His power is gone — .371 slugging percentage — he can’t play the outfield any more and his quick bat (the one thing he always had) has slowed measurably. Funny thing is, I have found him to be quite a likable guy, and he has been brutally honest in his own self-assessment. “If I suck then I suck,” he says. “And I suck.” Probably not worth $36 million, but entertaining still.
1. Vernon Wells (Toronto Blue Jays). Cot’s Baseball Contracts — the incredibly awesome site where I got these numbers from — is one of my favorite Internet stops. And on occasion, just for fun, I will go to the site just to look up Vernon Wells’ contract. I don’t know why. It gives me hope, somehow. It tells me that in this world, anything is possible. It tells me that good things happen, funny things, unexpected things. Don’t tell me that I won’t win the lottery … just look at Vernon Wells’ contract.
In 2011, Vernon Wells will get paid $23 million. No. Really. He will get paid $23 million.
In 2012, he will have to take a paycut and will only get $21 million. Same in 2013. And same again in 2014.
This isn’t a baseball contract. This is a testament to the power of mankind to do the impossible.
Oh, Vernon Wells also has a full no-trade clause in his contract. Well, sure, why not? Then, what difference would it make? This is the most untradable contract in the history of the world. Vernon Wells turns 31 this year. The Dewan has him a minus-29 centerfielder, which means he’s exactly as bad defensively as you can be while a manager who is still breathing allows you to play centerfield. He has an 85 OPS+. He has a lifetime .329 on-base percentage. He’s slugging .408. He IS third in the American League in making outs. So he has that going for him.
And it never made sense. Ever. Wells had a very good year in 2003 (and he was a very good fielder then), a couple of OK years, a good year in 2006 at age 27. But he never got on base much, and he was inconsistent, and … then the Blue Jays gave him this hysterical contract.
This deal, to be honest, is not the sort of thing that leads to a general manager getting fired. It’s the sort of thing that leads to entire villages getting pillaged. And that’s what I mean about Ricciardi. I mean, this contract alone should be enough to put him in the Bad Contract Hall of Fame. But when you look over the whole body of work … he IS the Bad Contract Hall of Fame.
In fact, really, we should just start referring to bad baseball contracts as “Ricciardis.”
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Fangraphs (Dave Cameron) sees the Rios contract somewhat differently from you. He may or may not be right, but it is interesting to consider the reasoning behind another viewpoint.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/rios-wells
You might well consider the fact that Ricciardi didn’t have final say on the Wells contract; it’s widely understood that decision was made by then-team president Paul Godfrey & ownership, not the GM. So while JP deserves some of the blame, it’s not really fair to dump it all on him.
Disagree with the Rios contract. There’s no way it should be second on your list. Also, he’s cut b/c of cost-cutting measures by ownership.
There’s really no way anyone can defend the Wells deal. As someone who lives in Toronto, I’ve read that Ricciardi didn’t want to give Wells that deal. Ownership did, to save face after Carlos Delgado left town. The Jays couldn’t possibly let Wells walk, for optics.
I hope that’s the case.
And I still believe Ricciardi has done more bad than good in Toronto.
In free agency, he’s forced to take gambles on guys like B.J. Ryan (only way The Beej comes to Toronto is with crazy dollars), and Frank Thomas. Nobody wants to play in Toronto; the Jays have to pay a ridiculous premium to keep their own free agents (Wells), and start the free-agency game a step behind all other teams.
Great read, as always.
Cheers.
http://www.twitter.com/eyebleaf
The Beltre contract actually has been pretty fair value. He’s not and will not be the MVP like hitter he was with LA for a season, but he’s been one of the best, if not the best defensive 3B the last five years.
I don’t understand how the Rios contract can be considered so bad, if another team is willing to take it on at par. If you are destroying Riccardi for that contract, then shouldn’t the same be said for Kenny Williams? Perhaps Williams should be held more accountable because he had additional data to work with.
So with that, I think that Zito is a much worse contract than Rios. If the Giants were willing to give him away for free, there would be absolutely no takers.
It seems that the Red Sox and Yankees sometimes have to just feign interest in a player (i.e. Wells, Zito) and then other teams feel that if they give an outlandish contract, they’ll “win”. Then the Sox and Yanks can just laugh and say, “OK, now we can take the Jays out of contention for a while because they’ll never be able to afford any other good players with that albatross!”
I don’t know, it just seems like a plausible idea.
I would also echo Bob’s point- there’s a lot of people out there (and people with numbers!) who argue that Rios’ contract is fair-to-good.
Similarly I think Joe is being unfair to Brian Roberts by judging him on career OPS+. Since 2004, he has had an 114 OPS+, not something one would complain about from a good-fielding free agent 2nd basement being paid 10 million.
Is he a bit older than one would like? Yes. But docking him for being a mediocrity six years ago is unfair.
That’s bad. Not Matt Millen bad, but bad. $23 million next year? Is anyone except for Rodriguez making that much?
And yes, Cot’s is an outstanding site.
Joe, I agree wholeheartedly with Vernon Wells at #1, but I think you’re off base on the criticism of the Rios contract. And if you really think it’s the second worst contract in baseball, then your criticism should be directed at Ken Williams for taking on such a bad deal. I doubt any of the others (with the possible exception of Kerry Wood) in your top 11 were claimed on waivers.
Editor’s note: Brilliant readers are right … I overreacted on Rios. I have moved him down to the seventh-worst contract on the list. I still don’t think it’s a GOOD contract by any means like some do. But Kenny Williams did pick it up. It’s not tragic.
I don’t know if they will be bad contracts or not, but the Yankees are on the hook for $95 million in the year 2013. That’s $29M for ARod (who’s signed until 2017!), $25.6M for Teixeira (signed until 2016), $24.3M for Sabathia (signed until 2015) and $16.5M to AJ Burnett (final year in 2013). That’s amazing to me. Also, in 2013 ARod turns 38, Teixeira and Sabathia turn 33, and Burnett turns 36. It’s the Yankees, so who cares about a mere $95 million, but this could turn out pretty bad.
Not to mention Ricciardi just botched the Halladay non-trade like a kid with the best toy. I mean, what was he asking teams for? “Ok, I’ll give you Halladay for Utley, Victorino, and 2 prospects… Hello? Hello?”
“Theo, hey buddy. Interested in Halladay? Cool. I’m not looking for much. What about Buchholz, Ellsbury, Youk and a couple prospects? Stop laughing. Alright, I don’t even like Youk. How about Buchholz, Ells, Lester and prospects? Really?? Man, you’re greedy.”
“Brian, ready to talk? Theo’s loss is your gain… Well, you’re not really attached to A-Rod are you? Alright, forget it. What about Cano and Damon? Ok, good. And then just throw in Hughes and a few prospects. What? Alright, but I’m just gonna go back to Theo.”
Not that it makes it any better, but the avg on Wells’ deal is $18 million; on par with what Soriano and Lee received in 2006. Again, the Jays have to pay a ridiculous premium to keep their free agents in town.
He makes $23 million down the road b/c his contract was back-ended, so the Jays could surround Halladay with talent. Well, all of a sudden, Toronto’s owner, Ted Rogers, died, and the Jays have slashed payroll.
Ricciardi was under the assumption that he could have as much as $120 million in 2010 or 2011. Wells’ contract, while bad, wouldn’t be so as terrible on a team with that type of payroll. All of a sudden, the payroll is at $80 million, and dropping even more, so of course Wells’ contract looks even worse now.
There’s always more to the Ricciardi story, and Wells story, than what’s written, and this post is no different.
http://www.twitter.com/eyebleaf
The Yankees and Red Sox can afford it, but they have some pretty bad ones on the books, too. Kei Igawa and Jorge Posada for the Yankees, for example (and the now off the books Carl Pavano deal).
There is a lot of talk that the Wells contract was ownership wanting to keep one of the bigger faces of the franchise at the time. It’s an awful deal, obviously, but I don’t think you can put 100% of the blame of Ricciardi for that one.
The Rios contract, I think a lot of teams would have given him a similar deal at the time. He was coming off of 2 All-Star seasons (his 2006 season would probably look even better had he not got a staph infection just before the ASG that completely took his power away in the 2nd half).
BJ Ryan, someone would have given him a big contract and Ricciardi took that risk. It didn’t work out, obviously, but he got one great year out of him before he blew his arm out.
Not saying Ricciardi is perfect, but I think that a lot of the crap he gets is misplaced.
I think the Julio Lugo and Andruw Jones contracts deserve mention, too (though, they may not meet your criteria). The Lugo situation reminds me a bit of the BJ Ryan one, while there are some similarities between what happened with Jones in LA and Frank Thomas in Toronto.
I understand the grading on the curve, but would you really prefer owing $28 million to Silva over owing $16 million to Guillen?
(I am assuming $4 million this year for each since we are about a third of the way from the merciful end of this season)
I mean, they are both worthless as major league ballplayers. Guillen’s deal may have been more ridiculous at the moment it was signed – though the Silva one was a huge stretch in itself – but we get out from under it one year before Seattle does.
Of course, with our penchant for overpaid former Mariners, he could be our number four starter next season …..
Oh, and a quick aside about Diner since you brought it up.
I hated that movie. Just flat hated it.
Back in college, they used to show movies on the weekends at the rec center, and my work study gig was to manage the area. They would have two or three movies that would run from 8 to 2 or so, and they would usually relate them in some way.
So one weekend they throw in the Ellen Barkin triple-header, and this was at the apex of her hotness. I am thinking it was The Big Easy, Sea of Love, and Diner.
I had never heard of Diner, and so my only expectation was for topless Ellen Barkin time. So I kept wanting them to fast forward through all the bits about the Colts. Anyway, I hated that movie.
But several people I respect have listed it among their favorites, so maybe I should put it in with modified expectations and see if I like it ….
I live in Toronto, and there are a number of things that grate about Riccardi. But the number one thing is this: he’s sorta been marketed as a Billy Bean/Moneyball disciple. Yet whenever he can he openly scorns “statheads” and Sabermetricians. I mean you can just feel the derision dripping in his voice – he actually talks about them as if they sit in their parents’ basement eating Cheetos.
And the galling thing about the Wells contract was that he wasn’t even a free agent at the time. The Jays were bidding against themselves. Other than the Hafner (and Rios – again with Riccardi) deal, all the other deals on this list were, at least, free agents, where there was competition among other teams as a factor driving up the price.
At least I’m a Tiger fan…
This reminds me: if you love baseball contracts, see if you can name the largest contracts in baseball history:
http://www.sporcle.com/games/baseballs_richest.php
Do NOT click if you have something you need to do in the next hour, though. That website is a fantastic time waster.
I agree with those who say the Rios deal is kind of like Beltre’s. Not in the sense that they are both bad contracts, but that when you take into consideration their contributions on offense and defense, they actually turn out to be good contracts for the team while the common perception is that they are albatrosses.
Again, the Jays have to pay a ridiculous premium to keep their free agents in town.
I think this is a cop-out, and we’ll never really know when it comes to Wells, because he wasn’t a free agent when he signed this contract.
I get a kick out of Vernon Wells’ “Similarity Scores” on his Baseball Reference page. Imagine Jacque Jones, Rusty Greer or Glenallen Hill making $23 million a year? That kills me.
I was expecting to see JD Drew on this list ($28 million over the next 2 years, he’s 33) but I guess technically he doesn’t suck that much.
You should have made an exception on your list for Julio Lugo and his 4-year, $36 million deal that was awful at the time and worse now, so bad that Lugo hasn’t been a full-time shortstop since early last season and was in fact released this season.
@ Eyebleaf:
“Again, the Jays have to pay a ridiculous premium to keep their free agents in town.”
Why do the Jays want to keep below avg free agents in town in the first place? Is it because the fans liked Wells? The media? Some kind of combined backlash if he leaves? I just don’t understand that statement. If they HAVE to pay ridiculous premiums to keep free agents in town, let them walk.
And this:
“Ricciardi was under the assumption that he could have as much as $120 million in 2010 or 2011. Wells’ contract, while bad, wouldn’t be so as terrible on a team with that type of payroll.”
Having over 1/6th of your payroll tied up on a player like Vernon Wells wouldn’t be terrible? I agree, it’s not terrible, it’s egregious.
Also, comparing the contract to Soriano & Lee’s deals doesn’t help make it better. Soriano’s deal is awful. Just because everybody’s doing it doesn’t mean JP had to jump in the pool.
I’d point to this article from USS Mariner about Beltre and his value.
http://ussmariner.com/2009/06/29/adrian-beltre-retrospective/
Essentially he’s performed exactly up to the value of the contract. Like the article says….if they were paying for +10 win seasons they would have paid him quite a bit more than $64 Mil.
@ Stoney
By all accounts, Ricciardi wanted to let Wells walk. Management – especially Pres. Paul Godfrey – wouldn’t let that happen, hence the deal.
Joe, maybe the Angels discovered a way to be the “anti-Moneyball” team. Meaning, what they’re doing isn’t weird at all; they’ve just found value in things that the market/other teams haven’t, and leveraged that to the tune of 95 wins/season for the decade. Now, I’m not smart, so I don’t know what those things are, but I also find it mindboggling that a team with Anderson, Figgins, Matthews, etc. etc. over the course of like 8 years can win this consistently. Something is going on there, but it isn’t “weird,” I think they are the new (old?) anti-Moneyball organization . . .
Re: Soriano, I think it’s pretty clear that the eighth year was a necessity. There were other teams pursuing Soriano. The Cubs were coming off a 2006 in which they were basically the worst team in baseball, and the fanbase – stewing over the choke in 2003, a further, lesser gag in 2004, Sosa’s decline and departure, and a wasting of Derrek Lee’s all-world 2005 – was demanding an overhaul of the way the team did things. They needed a showpiece signing, and Soriano, coming off a huge season in Washington, was the marquee free agent. Yes, they gave him a lot of money and a lot of years, but it’s my belief that he had a seven-year deal offered somewhere else, and he said to the Cubs, I’ll sign with you if you’ll go 8. And they needed that big signing and so they agreed to do it.
The other thing that should be taken into account regarding that is that the Cubs’ window was always going to be the first three, maybe four years of the Soriano deal, when he, Lee, Ramirez, and whoever else was there were going to be at their theoretical peaks. 2013, 2014 – these were not really important years. The contract was signed in the hope that the Cubs could win in 2007, 2008 or 2009, maybe 2010. If you have to sign Soriano for eight years to get him at all, and you think he’s the guy to push you over the top (and had his speed not vanished and injuries reduced his playing time and his bat not been so inconsistent at times, maybe he could have been)… I think you have to do that. The Cubs are a big market team and, like the Yankees and Red Sox, should be able to afford to eat the last 3-4 years of an albatross contract for the potential rewards of the first 3-4.
“it is teams like the Mariners, Royals, Brewers, Blue Jays and Indians that seem to actually make the worst signings”
I found this comment to be very interesting. While I do not disagree, I wonder if we tend to forget about some of the lousy contracts that the good/wealthy teams hand out because the teams are, well, good and wealthy.
Take, for instance, the Oliver Perez contract. I understand he’s been injured, but I think the general concensus is that this deal was crazy from the day he signed it. He’s been a famously erratic pitcher, the market in which he signed it was depressed in the first place, people weren’t sure he had the right mindset for New York, etc. Sure, he had upside, but I get the feeling that every Met fan, despite what his paycheck said, would hold their breath for every Perez start for the next three years.
However, the Mets have millions and millions to spend. We have no indication that they won’t spend money in the next offseason. We have heard nothing about their financial constraints specifically due to the Perez contract. They will probably sign some more big names this offseason and take on more salary and get healthy and win a bunch of games next year and nobody will care how much Oliver Perez is making.
So, do we notice these bad contracts on bad/smaller market teams MORE because we know of the relative impact it has on that team? Do we notice it more because these contracts seem to be the root of all its teams’ problems, because every sportwriter in America has written the “the Jays have to trade the best pitcher on the planet because of Vernon Wells”, because the Indians have to trade Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez because of Pronk? I’m not sure.
Look at it this way – if you make a list of the most immovable contracts, would it look different? Would even someone like A-Rod, as great as he is, make that list? Because, after all, how many teams outside of the Yankees would be willing to take on all of that risk and all of that money?
@Eyebleaf
I get that, but if I were Ricciardi and I knew how awful the deal was, I would be willing to walk out the door. He will have that contract attached to his name, fairly or not, and when he gets canned, I think he’ll find it tough getting a new GM gig, and that contract is going to be a big reason why.
Isn’t Todd Helton making like $20 million per year for the next 75 years?
@BigFlax:
“The other thing that should be taken into account regarding that is that the Cubs’ window was always going to be the first three, maybe four years of the Soriano deal, when he, Lee, Ramirez, and whoever else was there were going to be at their theoretical peaks”
In 2007, Soriano & Lee were both 31yrs old. 4yrs removed from their “theoretical peaks”. Not sure how you can justify the contract based on that statement, because it’s pretty widely accepted that the age 27 season is a player’s peak season. Giving 31yr olds 8yr deals is a terrible idea, no matter how anyone tries to argue it.
I don’t disagree with you often, and don’t disagree with you about Ricciardi. But the Rios contract was not only not that bad, but it was a good deal. A 28 year old should-be-centerfielder with great defense, a great arm, and great baserunning, who puts up a 115 or so OPS+ is easily worth 10M.
Yeah, he’s having a poor year, but he’s on the good side of 30 and isn’t injured. I don’t see why he won’t bounce back. It’s not even close to being one of the worst contracts, in my opinion. He was let go because Rogers is slashing payroll and nobody would take Wells (now THERE’s a bad contract….)
Stoney, I disagree. While we who are fans may want to attach the contract to Ricciardi’s name because he was the GM at the time of the signing, I am willing to bet that most people inside baseball know that the Wells signing was driven by Toronto’s owners and not by Ricciardi and the baseball people, and thus he won’t have that stigma if and when he applies for other jobs.
Fish, fantastic call on Oliver Perez. How did he not make this list to start with? 2 more years and $24 million? Yikes.
Owen, you may be right. I’m looking at it from an outside perspective, and I’m willing to bet front office personnel within the game probably know a great deal more of the true story and how the deal went down.
And Fish, that Perez deal is pretty damn bad!
Adrian Beltre has absolutely lived up to his contract. In fact, he was almost perfectly valued by his GM. According to Fangraphs, his value, up till today, he’s been worth 63.6 million dollars. So his 5/64 contract was almost, absolutely perfect for both player and team.
The worst contracts in baseball has to be Mike Hampton’s deals. No list is complete without them.
I think arguments could be made for Kos-K and Dice-K as well…
Oh, and the Milton Bradley one is certainly risky too…
A couple of points:
1)The Lugo contract should definitely be on this list. Perhaps JD Drew as well but definitely Lugo (when you get replaced in the lineup by Nick Green and released you know you suck).
2)Rios, while slightly over-paid, hasn’t been that bad. Prior to this year he has OPSed 120,122 and 111 in the last 3 seasons with good defense and can steal bases. He would probably have been more valuable had the Jays shifted him over to CF. This year he is having a down year but probably has a good chance of rebounding to something close to his prior levels at least. Had ownership not been so cheap and bogged down with other bad contracts (see Wells) they would have kept Rios for sure. Yes he never developed big home run power but he hits a lot of doubles and triples to sort of make up for that. I don’t think he deserves to be on this list at all.
3)Wells, on the other hand, was a terriible signing. He had a couple of great years and he looked like he might becoming a major star but you don’t sign a guy to a contract like that based on a couple of good seasons.
JP should also get credit for locking in Halladay at below market value for a few years and he extended Hill. which looks pretty good at the moment .
What about the Dodgers signing Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre to such huge contracts? Aren’t those worse than the Rios deal?
Joe, the only reason Matthews is in the lineup is because Torii Hunter is hurt. Matthews is playing exactly like a player of his caliber should play – a 4th/5th OF who will give guys a day off or fill in when someone’s hurt. Unfortunately, the Angels are paying for a lot more than that.
Give credit to Scioscia (and maybe Reagins) who cut their losses, signed Torii Hunter anyway, and deposited Matthews on the bench at the beginning of the season.
Big picture.
Smaller market teams, mostly, seem to be on this list, and rightfully so. But isn’t funny that the teams that should have the brightest GM’s, because they have less room for error, make the most mistakes. Joe briefly touches on this but doesn’t follow through because that could make an already ‘long blog’ even longer.
Could it be that the reason these GM’s make these outlandish moves is because they’re all panicking that if they don’t recognize talent early and buy now, they’ll lose said talent to perennial Free Agent vacuum cleaners New York, Boston, LA & Chicago?
If you’re a Royals fan, talk is beginning to crop up around signing Billy Butler to a long term contract because he’s starting to find his stroke (& 23 years old to boot). Big Market teams would be content to let the young man, who doesn’t hit FA until 2013, continue his education, improve his defense & see how things pan out in a year or so. But a small market team mentality creeps in because fans have seen ownership sell of good players for peanuts in the past.
So two camps are formed. Those that think the Royals should move NOW and lock Butler up before he either gets more expensive or gets too close to FA & decides to test the waters. They believe the risk of Butler being another one-dimensional bust (defense & speed lacking) has to be overlooked in order to make him the foundation of yet another Royals’ rebuilding project. Then there’s the camp that say that not having Butler under contract will be more enticing to a team to offer multiple prospects (Royals need MANY parts) and doesn’t risk entering into a long term contract that may end up on Joe’s list in another couple of years (ala Mike Sweeney in 2003).
Anyway the point is that small market teams make these crazy moves because they are terrified of letting the few bright spots or the big one get away to a big market club and getting crucified by their ownership & fanbase. If MLB had a spending ceiling (& basement) then it’s pretty obvious most GM’s don’t make these crazy deals.
Major League Baseball is a mess.
The Kerry Wood signing makes some sense if you look at it in light of the Indians recent history.
For some years the Indians had subscribed to the notion, popular with the sabermetrics crowd, that closers were overrated and not worth big money* and that the 7th and 8th innings were often more important than the 9th. Accordingly they used their best relievers (Betancourt and Perez, mainly) as setup men and signed cheap veterans like Bob Wickman and Joe Borowski to close, guys who didn’t have world-beating stuff, but who had proven that they could handle the role insofar as a blown save or two wasn’t going to get into their heads.
I thought then and still think, now, that this approach is sound and absolutely can work. Nonetheless, it didn’t work out all that well for the Indians.
In 2005 they won 93 games and just missed the playoffs, leading to high hopes for 2006. But, in 2006, the bullpen completely collapsed and the team declined by 15 games.
In 2007, the bullpen was pretty great and the Indians fell one game short of the World Series. In 2008, the team was expected to be a strong contender again and, again, the bullpen collapsed and the team declined by 15 games.
So, going into 2009, Shapiro was looking at a team that had fallen short of the playoffs 2 out of 3 years because of bullpen failure. He had been following a plan that seemed to make sense, but which wasn’t working. The concensus on the Indians at the end of 2008 was that it was a contending team that was being held back by it’s bullpen. So Shapiro decided to try something different and he signed Kerry Wood.
Now, obviously, it hasn’t worked out well. Once again the Indians were expected to contend and, once again, the bullpen collapsed** and so the signing looks bad, I guess. I still think it’s a defensible signing in context, though. The contract is only two years (3 if an option vests?) so even if it’s bad, it’s not going to hang around forever crippling the team through another development cycle*** . It’s true that Wood only had one good year as a closer, it’s true he had never pitched in the AL before and it’s true that he had an injury history, but, he only had one year as a closer total, he has always had a world-class arm, all pitchers are an injury risk and the whole point of moving Wood to the pen was to protect his arm and it seemed to have worked last year (and this year, too, for that matter).
To summarize, coming into 2009, the Indians looked like a team that needed a closer to contend, so they signed the best available closer they could afford to a deal that, while perhaps overpriced, wasn’t overly long. It didn’t work, but I think it’s easy to see the reasoning.
*unless it was one of the very few consistently effective guys like Rivera or Nathan
** and the rotation collapsed and the offense wasn’t as good as expected, so the Indians have been horrible, unlike 2006 and 2008 when the rotation and offense were okay and the bullpen collapse made the team mediocre
***my guess is Wood rebounds enough this year or next to be dealt to a contender. unless he gets hurt.
which he always does…
now I’m sad
The Angels are weird, we agree, but maybe a lot of that is luck: They lead the league in hitting with a very good .288 mark, but their team Batting Average on Balls in Play is a very high .326.
http://www.fangraphs.com/teams.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&type=1&season=2009&month=0
Joe…how about the deal JP gave to AJ Burnett??
Basically–if you are AWFUL you, Burnett, can opt in to the next year of the deal. If you are good/great..you, Burnett, can opt out!!
Opt out is exactly what Burnett did!
Right now it is deals like this that keeps JP ahead–or below depending on your perspective–Dayton as possibly the worst GM in the AL.
In 2004, Tim Wallach, the Dodgers batting coach, gave Adrian Beltre a magic feather that told him “This is a slider outside and in the dirt; don’t swing at it”. He stopped swinging at unhittable pitches and became an MVP candidate. Then he became a free agent, and Tim Wallach stole the feather back, and Beltre went back to being Beltre.
Were I Beltre, I’d pay Wallach $250,000/year to be my personal batting coach. If he can duplicate 2004, I’d make my money back and plenty more.
@ Dan (#13): Even if the Pavano deal was still going, Joe wouldn’t have counted it because it violated his Rule #2, where injuries after signing a large contract wouldn’t be fair to judge.
To think that Silva was actually a fairly decent pitcher with the Twins…but as soon as the Mariners signed him to that contract, the Minnesota media was immediately saying that 1. The Twins would never have matched that contract, and 2. Silva was not worth that much.
Riccardi would defend himself by saying that to compete with the Sox and Yankees, he needs to offer players years, no trades, etc. That’s what makes many of his contracts seem pretty funny. I think they’d be better off following the Rays and developing talent, but they’ve actually had decent teams for most the last decade. If they weren’t in the AL East, they’d probably make the playoffs now and then.
Hey Bill, here’s a radical, RADICAL thought: Burnett doesn’t come to Toronto without the opt-out.
Why do the Blue Jays have to pay a premium for free agents? From all I’ve heard, Toronto is a great city. Is it that they get paid in Canadian dollars? If the contracts are in U.S. dollars wouldn’t they be worth even more in Toronto? Hi Brian.
“Funny, people will constantly rip the Yankees and Red Sox and teams like that for all the money they spend … but it is teams like the Mariners, Royals, Brewers, Blue Jays and Indians that seem to actually make the worst signings.”
Back when the Royals signed Gil Meche, I remember someone somewhere saying that small-market losing teams find themselves having to overpay for talent because no one wants to play for them. Which seems to me rather sensible, and a point not to be overlooked. Ballplayers want to win. They’re occasionally willing to take a discount to stay with a winner (look at the Wakefield, Arroyo, & Beckett contracts), and it stands to reason they might want extra inducements to go to a loser.
Kei Igawa anyone
As much as I love Chris Carpenter, extending him when you had him under contract and then getting almost literally NOTHING out of him for two years… poor contract. Healthy again, the guy is such an amazing competitor. I think he makes the Cardinals staff better just by the way he goes about his business. But when he’s rehabbing and not going about his bidness w/dem guys, not so effective…
@35
The fangraphs values for players are hugely overstated. There are tons of examples, but a topical one is Alex Rios. In 2008 he posted a league average OPB (.337), and a .798 OPS, good for 14th in the AL among outfielders. Fangraphs value provided? $24.6M
Bryz (#43) – Does is still count as an injury when you are out because your p***y hurts?
(My view of Pavano may be too colored by the book on Mussina and Glavine …)
A-Rod is the worst contract in the history of sports. He is already going down hill. How long will his hip hold up? Definatly not worth 300 million.
I am flabbergasted that someone would defend Byrnes at 10 million a season on average, yet blast Rios for having an average of 11.74 over the next 5 seasons. Let us take a look at some numbers
Byrnes from 2005-2007, the three seasons prior to his deal
94 OPS+, .264/.324/.445/.769, 31 years of age
then Rios 2005-2007
110 OPS+, .288/.339/.472/.811, 27 years of age
Look, Alex Rios hit .296/.347/.489/.836 with a 118 OPS+ from 2006 to 2008. How many Center Fielders can you find with those kind of numbers? Torii Hunter comes to mind, he hit .279/.335/.487/.822 with a 114 OPS+ before the then 32 year old signed a 5 year, 90 million contract with the Angels. That is an average of 18 million a season for 5 seasons.
So 5 years, 90 million to a 32 year old 114 OPS+ hitter is apparently okay, but 5 years, 58.7 million to a 28 year old 118 OPS+ hitter is one of the worst contracts in the game?
Rios is considered a bad contract because of only 2 things.
1 – His BAbip is lower then his normal right now.
2 – He was on a team with Vernon Wells. This one is two fold as it means his contract is clumped together with the horrible Wells deal, as if one contract being indefensible somehow makes them both bad. Then Rios is kicked out of his position as Wells is played in CF to try and recoup value from that horrible deal.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, and I apologize if someone did, but here’s the very best part of the Wells contract according to Cot’s (quoted from their site):
“Wells may opt out of contract after 2011.”
That’s right. With three years and $63 million to go on his deal, he may opt-out of his contract before his year-33 season.
Do you think Ricciardi, or more accurately whomever is the GM at that point, is going to try and intimidate him to opt out? Are they going to have import goons from the US to do it based on the mild-mannered reputation of the Canadian people?
That could be a situation to watch.
No, DJ we won’t have to import goons, we’ll just leak it that Wells is the reason Canada still hasn’t got a 7th hockey team at that point. The crazy hockey fans will take care of the rest.
Count me as one of them.
Heh, I almost threw in an “Except for hockey fans.”
Cripes, I’M outraged that Canada doesn’t have more hockey teams, and I live in Baltimore and am not a particularly big hockey fan.
Sorry, but you really just can’t even mention that Beltre deal. As a Mariner fan myself, he was worth every dime. His production died partly because Safeco Field kills right handed hitters and partly because 2004 was just purely his prime year. Among the boneheaded moves Bill Bavasi made to nearly put our organization in shambles, the Beltre contract was not one of them. The energy and defensive prowess he brought to this organization has been nearly priceless… it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he is the best defender at the hot corner in history (yes, and I’m including Brooks Robinson when I say that).
An interesting point Joe raised, with regard to Carlos Silva’s contract:
“Funny, people will constantly rip the Yankees and Red Sox and teams like that for all the money they spend … but it is teams like the Mariners, Royals, Brewers, Blue Jays and Indians that seem to actually make the worst signings.”
Well, I mean, if you’re the Yankees, you’re spending a ton of money, but you’re getting the top-tier guys like Sabathia and Teixeira (to use this past offseason as an example). If you’re the Mariners, or the Royals, or whoever else, the top-dollar guys (who are safer bets) are unavailable by the time your price range rolls around. But you’ve still got to pay some free agents sometimes, or the media will claim you’re not even trying to compete (being a GM is about public relations as well, after all), so you sign second-tier and third-tier guys, who might pan out (hey, Gil Meche has been a better pickup for the Royals than anyone expected), but are more likely than the first-tier guys not to, resulting in teams like the Royals and the Mariners and the Brewers having their place on this list as well.
(Plus, if you’re the Yankees and you spend a lot of money on Carl Pavano, and he turns out to be a waste of it, you’re still competitive. And there are other big-money contracts that are working out well. So there’s less of a spotlight on the ones that aren’t.)
#55 – agreed on Byrnes. They actually signed him to the extension during the 2007 season (around this time of year), when his numbers looked a lot better than they did at the end of that season. So he’s really tanked since the deal was signed.
Then Arizona ended up “dumping” Quentin on the White Sox because they were overstocked in the outfield … although they did use the guy they acquired there as part of the Haren deal, so at least that worked out for them.
A little more on JP … I once spoke with some people in the Toronto media and was told that JP has said Canadians (including the press) don’t know anything about baseball. Apparently, he also lives in Boston?
Thank god someone took JPR to task….long overdue.
Kenny Williams is next….
Joe, I’m always right with you, but you’re way off on some of these contracts.
First of all, Beltre has been worth $63.8 million over the life of that contract according to Fangraphs. I think you underestimate how much value his defense has.
Second, the Carlos Lee contract is AWFUL. Has he been worth it so far? Perhaps. Will he be by the end of it? Not with that defense, and the expected offensive regression.
Third, the Byrnes contract was bad at the time. Yeah, he had a good season for a bad player, but another player who simply sucks defensively has a few gaudy numbers and he got a deal that he didn’t deserve.
Fourth, the Rowand deal isn’t so bad. He’s not a below average hitter for position, and while he’s lost a step defensively, over the past four years (you picked that number, I’m using 06-09) he’s been about a win above replacement defensively. Rowand will probably not be worth $60 million at the end of the deal, but he’ll probably be worth a solid $50 million. Not a great deal, but really not a terrible one (I still think the Torii Hunter deal is far worse despite his surprising career year this year).
And finally, the Rios contract really isn’t so bad, especially if he can be an above-average defensive center fielder. He projects to be worth about exactly what he’s going to be paid over the life of the deal.
“I once spoke with some people in the Toronto media and was told that JP has said Canadians (including the press) don’t know anything about baseball.”
Well there are certainly many passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans in Toronto and Canada but the press themselves, for the most part, give the impression that they don’t know or care to cover the sport much. I used to live in Toronto and it is a wonderful city but it sucks that baseball news is usually considered less important than The lates Leafs hockey practice even in the middle of the summer.
A lot of Toronto baseball “fans” are really extreme bandwagon jumpers. They loved the team when it was winning championships. They will come out and watch if it looks like it may be a playoff contender but have no interest in following a bad baseball team.
This is why it’s hard for the Jays to ever rebuild fully and suffer through many really bad seasons like Tampa did. There’s always a pressure on them from ownership to keep the team appearing at least somewhat successful and why the fans get even more upset than most places when a free agent leaves, even one like Wells who probably should have been allowed to walk.
I remember the casual Jays fans and the Toronto media absolutely *loved* the Wells extension signing when it happened because it supposedly showed the club’s “commitment to winning”.
**”Zambrano’s still a good pitcher, and quite often an awesome pitcher. His problems are … er … tougher to define.”**
He’s crazy.
What about Young and Helton. While they are still decent players, the amount they make over the next several years is just insane.
i just have a comment on wells’s contract………at the time when the contract was signed, vernon wells value was extremely high..people were talking about him signing a 10 year 200 million deal with Texas or something……so i am not exactly defending JP (i hate him), but the contract was according to the value of the player at the time
To call Beltre’s contract bad means that you don’t value defense. Simple as that. Same with Rios.
http://sports.espn. go.com/mlb/news/stor y?id=2698288
ESPN LIKES WELLS’S CONTRACT AT THE TIME THE DEAL WAS GIVEN> JUST WATCH THE VIDEO
Rios is a GREAT player, the reason for the move is purely because of the Wells contract and a need to cut costs to sign Halladay, and possibly lock up Snider
[...] MLB – Joe Posanaskis Worst Contracts in MLB [...]
As much as I love you, Poz, your labelling of Beltre’s contract as anything but fair value (and even a flat-out good deal) for the Mariners is…well, kind of shocking in its ignorance. Shocking because I don’t really expect those sorts of colossal blunders out of you. Anyway, as others have said here, if you think Beltre’s contract was a bad one, then you simply aren’t paying attention to the value of defense.
[...] And no, this isn’t about the incredibly dumb things Ricciardi says, like the time he basically called Gil Meche a loser because he signed with the Kansas City Royals instead of his own multiple-championship team in Toronto (Ricciardi’Read more at http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/08/11/ricciardis/ [...]
62 – JP’s family (wife and 2 young kids) live in JP’s hometown of Worcester, MA. When he got the job in Toronto, his kids were under the age of 10 at least, so he didn’t want to move them to another city for an indeterminate amount of time. Plus the rest of his family (parents, brothers, sisters) are in and around Worcester and they have proved helpful. Just look up the story of Tim Collins.
I can certainly agree with the Joe’s logic in lambasting the Rios/Beltre deals, even though I side with other posters here who mention the WAR values/defense claims. With Beltre, the Mariners thought they were getting a really good offensive player after his career year with the Dodgers. The Mariners at the time were paying him with the expectation of some excellent offensive production. Of course he regressed, and so the reasons behind the deal were quite misguided. But then his defense saved the day anyway (no one was really valuing defense properly then, least of all Bill Bavasi).
Also, you have to take the FanGraphs dollar values with a grain of salt. It’s based on (I believe) what teams should expect to pay per win in free agency ($4.5 million/win this year), and free agency is a big rip-off. Putting together a team of average (2 WAR) starters would cost $135 million in FanGraphs money (of course this never happens because of pre-arbitration eligible players). Even last year’s Tigers would consider that a raw deal.
Also, I couldn’t let this slide:
From Dave (#59), re: Beltre’s defense, “…it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he is the best defender at the hot corner in history (yes, and I’m including Brooks Robinson when I say that).”
Hyperbole much? He’s a great defender, but he’s not even the best defender since UZR started in 2002! Scott Rolen (just barely) holds that title.
I don’t think you can discuss ricciardi without talking about the trade deadline Halladay posturing. if you believe, as he often stated, that he was willing to keep Halladay, then it’s ok. The thing is i dont believe him. I believe he badly wanted to trade him and he overplayed his hand and misread the market and he backed himself into a corner. If they keep him for the contract then fine, but if they put their fanbase and Halladay in this position again for trade talks then shame on him.
also, from afar, i find kenny williams fun to watch (much like their manager). he keeps them competitive and thinks outside the box. it will be interesting to see if he can get them younger.
How about Andruw Jones, 2 years 36 mil, and he hit under .200 Injured list or not, this has to be the worst contract in MLB history.
[...] I have to admit that I have been a little tough on JP Ricciardi recently. I thought he mishandled his attempts to trade Roy Halladay and his recent salary dump of Alex Rios just further strengthened my belief that he is not particularly good at his job. But my criticism was nothing compared to what Joe Posnanski had to say on his blog. [...]
How about Dontrelle Willis for the Tigers?
Coming off of a bad year with the Marlins in which he led the NL in earned runs, the Tigers got him as part of the Cabrera trade.
Then Dombrowski gave him a contract extension that wasn’t necessary… at $29M for 3 years. If I remember right he had already been having problems in spring training before the contract, so the signs were all there. He’s making $10M this year and $12M next year.
Of course Willis was already in meltdown mode and unable to throw strikes, and has had no value for Detroit at all.
The current Arod contract is easily the worst in baseball…it has a very real chance to be a $30m/year albatross for 5 years. He was 32 when he signed for 10 years…and he wasn’t the best player in the game at that time. He’s certainly a great player but why would the yankees think he wouldn’t age like everyone else?
I love me some OPS+, but you gotta dig a little deeper with some guys.
Wells’ contract is truly horrid, but Rios’s seems about market value.
Rios shouldn’t even be on this list. He’s having a bad luck, low BABIP season. If he returns to .285/.335/.450 levels, and plays CF reasonably well (which his skill set suggests he will), it will end up being a very regular contract.
Dan @ 82
It’s the Yankees, they can afford to ridiculously backload a contract and get .230/.320/.380 with no defense from 40 year old A-Rod without killing their team.
On the Angels — their record is a function of their division and only their division. They’ve been about as good a team as the Blue Jays since 2006. If the Jays were in the AL west in 06-08 they’d have put up 95 win seasons too.
To those citing the Dave Cameron article to justify Rios’s contract, just stop it. Cameron designed the absolutely AWFUL dollar value metric himself. It makes no sense and sucks.
He also thinks Rios will bounce back because his BABIP is down, ignoring that his BABIP is down because he’s hitting fewer line-drives and has lost speed.
Rios’s contract is not good. Maybe it shouldn’t be second worse on the list, but it’s not even close to a bargain as Cameron claims.
Some of the thinking processes that lead to signing really bad contracts:
1. “We need help at a certain position; Player X is the best free agent left on the market who plays that position; therefore we need to spend whatever it takes to sign Player X.”
Problem: There are many other ways to fill a positional need other than signing a free agent. Just because a player is the “best available free agent remaining” at doesn’t mean that he’s any good, and it sure doesn’t mean that he’ll be a worthwhile signing.
2. “We need to make a free agent splash this offseason by signing a well known player to get the fans excited.”
Problem: It doesn’t work. Fans go to see winning teams, not washed up big names who aren’t any good anymore.
3. “If we don’t overpay this guy, he’ll leave us and get overpaid by some other team.”
Problem: overpaying is overpaying. Unless you’re talking about a true superstar who is likely to stay a superstar, it’s better to let a rival overpay that guy.
4. “Last year we were so close to contending, but we sucked at one position. This guy was good last year and plays that position. He’s the missing piece that will put us over the top, so we need to pay him what he wants.”
Problem: That guy might have had a fluke year, or was good because he played in a ballpark that fits him, or played in a weak division. And last year’s problems aren’t necessarily the same ones you’ll have this year.
5. “It’s worth giving the guy that extra year he wants in the deal, if we don’t give him more years than anyone else then he won’t sign here.”
Problem: usually the last year or two of a long contract are bad anyway. Tacking on an extra year above what anyone else would do makes it even more likely that you’re going to have a multi-year albatross.
truantbuick @ 87
Thanks for finally saying that, he will use wOBA and UZR to justify ANYTHING.
While I love Nyjer Morgan, for example, am I the only person who finds it insanocaust that he’s currently the ELEVENTH most valuable player in MLB according to fangraphs?
Sure he’s been awesome in Washington, and BP has him at +13 FRAA, but come on Dave, +25 RAA in the field? Justify this, that’s an historic level of awesome.
+ not to mention the idea that player’s economic value is a linear correlation to their playing value is nutso. For example, no one would offer Luke Scott a 3 year / $27,000,000 contract. Player contracts usually end up fitting a diseconomy of scale pattern, where the low level players get minimum / minor league deals, then it slowly creeps up, but climbs quicker as the player value increases, until you hit Pujolsian levels. Obviously fan interest and extra revenue justify paying more per marginal win for a star.
I will agree with those who have some issues with Fangraphs WAR stuff, because the fielding metrics aren’t really there yet. However, it is a much better attempt to figure out a player’s value than paying lip service to defense and citing simply this year’s OPS+ to call Beltre’s and Rios’ contracts horrible.
I love this site Joe, but this one struck me as off-base.
[...] I don’t want this sound rude … but I have never understood Toronto general manager J.P. Ricciardi. I mean that sincerely. I just don’t understand. I have friends all around the game who will tell me what a bright guy J.P. is, what a good baseball man he is, what a grounded person he is, what a nice guy he is and so on. And I have no reason to doubt them except this: I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. And no, this isn’t about the incredibly dumb things Ricciardi says, like the time he basically called Gil Meche a loser because he signed with the Kansas City Royals instead of his own multiple-championship team in Toronto (Ricciardi’Read more at http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/08/11/ricciardis/ [...]
Joe, Brian Sabean just called, he wants to know why bad contracts can’t be named after him.
Seriously, Rowand and Zito* may be the the two big contracts but Sabean gives out at least one bad contract every year. This year he signed Edgar Renteria to a two year $18m contract!
*In fairness Zitos contract was pushed by management so not entirely Sabeans fault
[...] Poz on the worst contracts in baseball — no Reds in the top 10 and only one mentioned, that’d be Francisco [...]
And now I feel like a jackass.
I did a search of JP Riccardi (obvious misspelling of his name) on google.
First hit was an article I wrote about him on the Bleacher Report.
Great, my typo lives in infamy.
Wells’ contract was a bit much, but again, ownership, not Riccardi, wanted to give Wells this contract. He was young, upcoming, fairly consistent with power and that was something Riccardi coveted. Don’t forget that Riccardi also got Eric Hinske (former AL Rookie of the Year) signed to a long term contract the same year as Wells.
The idea was these players (Rios included) were showing enough potential to be studs and he wanted to lock them up at what was to be a discount. Wells was being touted as a 5-tool superstar and Riccardi and the Jays treated him as such even though his minor league numbers never really backed it up.
In 2005, because of Hinske, Rios, Wells and the pitching of Lilly, Halladay, and Batista, Toronto was deemed one of the most up and coming teams. The players didn’t pan out, which makes the contracts look unjustified. Hindsight is 20-20. Do you think you could have done better Posnanski?
How could you leave the Oliver Perez contract off of there? Four years, $36 million to a pitcher who was never any good, and this year was sent down to the minors (yeah, yeah, we all know the DL stuff was crap). In fact, if Luis Castillo wasn’t pulling some surprising numbers this season, Omar Minaya would be right up there with Ricciardi
I think it’s unfair to say that BJ Ryan had “one good season”. Not to say he had a great track record, but in his last 3 seasons in Baltimore his SO/9 rates were 11.3, 12.6, and 12.8. He just wasn’t made the closer, for whatever reason, until ‘05.
He didn’t have Mariano Rivera’s history, but he had been a very good relief pitcher for a few years before the Jays signed him.
Riccardi is the MLB equivalent of Mike Dunleavy…….wrong so much more than he is right that you have to wonder all the W’s about the ownership.
Sorry… any listing of bad contracts without Bill Hall of the Brewers is seriously lacking!
Worst… contract… ever!
Wow, I’m surprised at all the FanGraphs/WAR/UZR/Dave Cameron-hating going on here. We all know that WAR overstates the reliability of UZR, but it’s still the best comprehensive metric I’ve seen that attempts to estimate player value. And as another commenter alludes to, paying lip service to defense just won’t do.
And Cameron didn’t pull the WAR dollar estimates out of his ass. Read this: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/win-values-explained-part-six/. The dollar values are based on what teams would expect to pay for a win in free agency. Teams are overpaying hugely in free agency simply by virtue of them getting players that aren’t making the league-minimum/arbitration figures. A team should expect to pay twice as much for a win by acquiring free agents than by paying the average player. This seems pretty intuitive – we all know free agency is a rip-off from the teams’ standpoint.
This is how a guy like Beltre can be both properly valued and overpaid at the same time. They’re paying twice as much as they should for the average player of his skill, but they’re getting exactly the amount of production (assuming UZR rates his defense properly) they should have expected out of him considering he was a free agent when he signed. This is why his FanGraphs page says he’s been worth the $64 million contract thus far.
Dave Cameron is just a frustrating writer. All his blogging requires a seperate window for the glossary open, his explainations of everything are complex (which sort of defeats the purpose of his own site), but of course the big knock is that he’s unbelievably reliant on what everyone and their mom knows is a noisy metric, which is defense. Sometimes he even sounds like a parody of a baseball stat nerd; quote stats no one has ever heard of and treat it like gospel.
Hey Joe,
I know Zito’s stats aren’t all that thrilling, 4.40 ERA isn’t terrible. He does tend to walk too many people. But if you look through his game log this season:
Apr 22 (SDG): 7 IN, 0 R = ND
May 3 (COL): 7 IN, 0 R = ND
May 19 (SDG): 8 IN, 2 R = L
May 30 (STL): 6.2 IN, 3 R = L
Jul 16 (PIT): 6.1 IN, 2 R = L
You give him a couple extra wins and take a way a loss or two and he’s got a respectable record to go with a mediocre ERA.
He hasn’t been that bad this year, granted when he is bad, he’s really bad. Though, paying that type of money for a guy who’s your #3 at best… yes bloated, but not to the point that he should be in the top 5.
Thank you for bringing to light the ridiculous Carlos Silva contract. The guy was on his way out the MLB door. At the very best, he should have been given an invite to Spring Training to play for the veterans’ minimum. Instead Seattle gave him $46 million based on his zero good seasons in the majors.
@Joe R
If you were to take the time to examine wOBA and UZR you’d know why those metrics are often the central feature of his essays. Essentially, wOBA properly values on-base skills while not ignoring the value of assorted extra-base hits. It’s much, much better than OPS, which treats SLG and OBP equally, which they are not.
UZR is not perfect…it’s own creator says it’s not a reliable stat unless you look at a two-year sample and it’s not even intended to be predictive, simply a marker. Nevertheless, it’s better than tossing your hands up and saying “we have no idea about defense!” It allows us to somewhat quantify defense in a more sophisticated manner than errors or range factor. So not perfect, but as good as we can do right now.
@truantbuick
Please explain what is wrong with Dave’s valuation method. Saying “it is stupid” is a poor and lazy argument. WHY is it stupid?
Hafner’s contract would look a lot better if the Indians didn’t handle injuries very like the Royals.
Something seemed to be wrong with his swing in mid-2007, but they were in a pennant race and let him play through it. Let’s give them a mulligan on that.
He didn’t get the shoulder fixed in the off-season. It was Sabathia’s last year, they didn’t want their best hitter to spend it rehabbing. Sort of weak, but OK.
But even after they go in the toilet, they don’t insist on him having surgery–even though players need about a year to get healthy after it. Instead they let him get part of the way through the off-season and then have it fixed.
He’s been fine for stretches, but the shoulder has been weak and it’s often sore. I think he’ll be fine next year, but that’s most of the contract burnt.
And now they’re doing it again with Grady Sizemore, who needs elbow surgery.
Really, Joe R.? Reading SABR-heavy analysts can be confusing to be sure, but Cameron’s writing is about as clear and well-reasoned as anybody’s, and he’s extremely consistent in the stats he’s uses. Learn about wOBA, FIP, UZR, and WAR, and you’ll be able to follow Cameron and everyone else at FanGraphs. (You’ll also want to know about other common “peripheral” stats like BABIP and HR/9). And the great thing about the metrics at FanGraphs is precisely that they are so much more intuitive and well-explained compared to the metrics that preceded them such as VORP and WARP1 and FRAA, etc.
Also, if you paid attention to Cameron’s analysis, you’d notice that he is well aware of UZR’s problem with sample sizes. Whenever he’s dealing with small samples in this regard, he’s sure to estimate an appropriate regression to attempt to determine the player’s true talent level.
When you go to a guy like Nyjer Morgan’s stats page and notice he’s accumulated 4.4 WAR this year, blame your own ignorance for not understanding the small sample issues with his UZR and the inherent variability of player performance and assuming he’s one of the best players in baseball. But don’t go the other extreme and assume he’s just average and we can assume nothing because “defensive metrics have so far to go still.”
I disagree with the general tone. The column is built too much on beating up on (a) players who are hurt and (b) what those hurt players are doing this year. Hurt players always look worse. For instance, Beltre is hitting well over .400 since he came off the DL. Soriano has been better since the ASB. Wells is STILL on the DL. Byrnes, Ryan and Hafner have all had injury problems (I did not know Hafner was over 30; where has the time gone?). And the Fangraphs article on Rios is spot on — his numbers are pretty much in line with past years, except his BA is off.
Also — and this is surprising to me, coming from Joe — defense is given short shrift. Wells and Rios are defense guys. They’re OK bats, they only stand out from a defensive standpoint. They’re the kind of players Jim Bowden wouldn’t consider — which means, any smart MLB GM should.
Kenny Williams is a smart guy, one of the best GMs in baseball, and picking up Rios will enhance his reputation.
I saw Adrian Beltre’s first game as a major leaguer. A friend of mine had seen him in Albuquerque and told me, “This guy is a real five tool player, and he charges the bunt as well as anybody I’ve ever seen.” Sure enough, not a bunt but a topped squib down the third base line, and Beltre raced in, snagged it, threw sidearm across his body, and just beat the batter at first. Over the years, I got to see a lot of Beltre plays, and he is a superb third baseman, the best the Dodgers ever had. But he wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen. Brooks Robinson was better, and so was Graig Nettles, and even though I only saw those guys (in person) in the World Series, I cannot say that Beltre was better than either of them.
The other thing with Beltre, and it has to be brought up, is the possibility of steroids. Beltre as a rookie was skinny and fast. As a sophomore he set career highs in steals (and attempts) as well as walks. Then he had the botched appendectomy, lots of infections, lost lots of weight, came back weak, and then started gaining weight without ever stopping. He lost strike zone judgment. I don’t think he’s a five tools player any more; too much muscle has slowed him down. Yes, his homers have improved. 2004 was a magical year for him, and any time a guy’s best home run year is 48 and second best is 26, you have to wonder. But most players have their BB/PA rate increase throughout most of their career, not decrease. I think Beltre started gaining weight and muscle, it changed his body shape and swing (he was a scrawny youngster, and now he’s buff) and perhaps he’s lost some quickness. Maybe he can muscle mistakes an extra ten feet farther, leading to more homers, but maybe he can’t adjust quickly enough to get good contact on sliders away, always his negative. It’s a shame, because the 2000 Beltre (OPS+ 114) was a great fielder and solid hitter. Now he’s a slugger with no patience.
1) Kei Igawa, even with the Japanese media rights that probably went with it, has to be in the top ten worst active signings!
2) Teams that win a lot of games have to pay a lot to get each additional incremental win. Wins above 95 cost a lot more than a win above 75 (because a position must be manned by a player further out on the distribution of ability). That would make some of these signings even worse than they seem.
3) The present value of A-rod’s end of contract salary (that is, corrected for anticipated inflation) was not as gaudy as it seemed because we were anticipating more inflation. The contract is already much worse with the current deflation. I wonder if teams are smart enough to buy inflation hedges for long-term contracts?
$30,000,000 in ten years with 3% inflation is worth $22,0000,000 in present dollars. At 4% it’s only worth $20 million. So evaluating the back end of Arod’s deal requires making (probably false) assumptions about inflation.
@chaz
comparing JP to Mike Dunleavy is insulting. Dunleavy led the Clips to one of the worst records this past year. JP has lead the Jays to 2 seasons under .500 under his tenure (67-94 followed by 80-82). Any other division, the Jays are a playoff team in quite a few of those years.
“In 2005, because of Hinske (etc.) Toronto was deemed one of the most up and coming teams.”
Hinske had one good season. His rookie season in 2003. By 2005 he was already pretty much washed up as an every-day player.
Yet another case of Ricciardi does over and over, taking one good year by a player, possibly a career year, and giving him a long term extension based on the assumption that he he will continue that level of peak perfermance or even exceed it in the future.
Sometimes as in the case of Halladay and , so far Hill, this woks out well for the team but many other times it really backfires. JP is at the bottom of everything a huge gambler and a huge gambler doesn’t really make a good GM. Sometimes he will get lucky but many times he won’t.
Oh and Rios is a good defensive player and that is part of his value. Wells used to be a good defensive player 6 years ago but more recent measurements have suggested that he’s now horrible defensively. You can’t use defense to excuse the Wells deal.
Quite the opposite, Wells’ current extremely poor CF defense is just another stroke against the deal.
To give JP credit where it is due, he and his team are extremely good at drafting and developing talent. Especially in the pitching area. This has allowed the Jays to so far stay remarkably competitive despite some of the disasterous contracts JP has given out. It will be hard for them to continue this after next year though when they lose Halladay and the Wells contract really kicks in.
I expect them to spend whatever money ownership will allow to try to compete for a playoff spot in 2010 because after that they are definitely in for some difficult years.
Pete @ 105.
EqA’s pretty much the same thing, I was more attacking the redundancy of his points (and his unwavering, uncompromising, often over the top support of them).
@ 107
Fielding metrics should be viewed in mass, not just one metric. My beef is with his constant use and abuse of UZR without cross checking what other metrics say (Nyjer Morgan’s awesome, but +25-35 RAA of awesome?)
Believe me, I love statistical analysis. I eat it up. But Cameron can be a drag and a pain in the ass. Sucks because fangraphs has so many valuable, intelligent contributors.
What about Odalis Perez and Luis Castillo? I think Omar deserves his spot on list of worst GM signings
“A different kind of bad contract: Carlos Zambrano (5 years, $91.5 million). The contracts that I list below as the worst are those where (in my opinion) a team has wildly overpaid a player for the production they will get. This could be the case with Zambrano, certainly, but it’s a different deal because Zambrano’s still a good pitcher, and quite often an awesome pitcher. His problems are … er … tougher to define.”
What the hell is that? What problems? The problem that he’s still two years from turning 30? The problem that, since becoming a full-time starter in 2003, he’s 98-55, never had an ERA over 4.00 and has about a 2-1 strikeout to walk ratio? The problem that he’s one of probably 3 pitchers that the other pitcher isn’t eager to face? The problem that he has the most homeruns of any active pitcher?
Which problem, exactly, are you talking about?
Maybe it’s the problem that he listened to everyone talk about Wood and Pryor for years and never said anything, just went out and pitched 200+ innings every year? The problem that he’s the only Cubs pitcher to throw a no-hitter in my lifetime? The problem that he has more .300 seasons as a batter than Roger Maris?
I’m confused here, Joe. Help me out.
@117: Kevin Camp
4.13 FIP, 1.32 WHIP, 1.78 K/BB, $18.3 MM/Y, Zambrano last 1095 days (3 years)
4.17 FIP, 1.34 WHIP, 2.19 K/BB, $10.25 MM/Y, Kyle Lohse over that time
4.07 FIP, 1.34 WHIP, 2.50 K/BB, $6.5 MM/Y, Joel Pineiro
4.06 FIP, 1.28 WHIP, 3.77 K/BB, $12.08 MM/Y*, Arron Harang
4.17 FIP, 1.38 WHIP, 2.11 K/BB, $9.75 MM/Y*, Paul Maholm
4.18 FIP, 1.20 WHIP, 3.12 K/BB, $10 MM/Y, Ted Lilly
(* Past arbitration years on latest deal)
You dont see the problem?
@JoeyO
Career stats:
Kyle Lohse – 97ERA+, 200+IP twice
Joel Pineiro – 98ERA+, 200+IP once
Aaron Harang – 105ERA+, 200+IP three times
Paul Maholm – 96ERA+, 200+IP once
Ted Lilly – 105ERA+, 200+IP twice
Zambrano – 128ERA+, 200+IP five times
Zambrano kills them on park-adjusted ERA while gobbling up innings like they are White Castles. Plus, none of them can touch him at the plate.
So, no I don’t see a problem with that contract.
Oh yeah, and none of them give Fontenot piggy-back rides before every game either.
The point is the comparisons for Zambrano are with simply above average pitchers. For 18 million Zambrano is nowhere near what you should be looking for. The last three years are worth nothing more than 10-12 million.
[...] Joe Posnanski on baseball’s worst contracts: 2. Jose Guillen (Kansas City Royals). One more year at $12 million. I will admit that I’m grading this one on a curve … the Royals, more than other teams, cannot afford titanic blunders like this one. Everything about this deal baffled from the start. The Royals talked about wanting to get players who get on base — Guillen doesn’t and never has. The Royals talked about wanting players who are leaders — Guillen had played for nine different teams and was suspended for the playoffs by the Angels for inappropriate conduct. The Royals talked about players with good character — Guillen was facing a drug suspension when the Royals signed him (he was given amnesty). [...]
[...] Here’s what Posnanski writes about the Wells contract: [...]
I wonder if part of Brian Roberts contract was a nod to his popularity with the Orioles fans and the desire to have a capable veteran in a club house that’s going to be filled with 23-26 year olds for the next couple of years.
The O’s needed a veteran around and the fans needed a recognizable face. Roberts was the guy.
And he’s a pretty good player, too.
I’ve got an ANSWER to your question:
“How can someone keep giving out contracts THIS BAD and keep his job and reputation? How? I’m serious. How?”
I just wrote an article to answer your question. Here’s the link:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/246712-how-has-jp-ricciardi-kept-his-job-for-so-long
[...] And it’s not even about the job he’s done in Toronto — I’ve already said way too much about that, I [...]
You really demonize the Rios contract in your other post about Ricciardi.
Your objections to his contract are pretty harsh in my opinion. Rios indeed never hit 25 home runs, but he did hit 24. His career OBP. is about .335, but he was an ENTIRELY 8).DIFFERENT HITTER in his first two years (it’s been close to .350 from 2006-2008). He also scored 114 runs in 2007 (in a pretty mundane lineup). He stole 32 bases last year at an 80% clip. He is also a good fielder, albeit he has looked off this year.
Rios is having a bad year and in hindsight it might have been a horrible contract . . . . but at the time it seemed like a good deal. Time will tell though.
[...] a full season in center, would probably rank about here. Cited by some as having one of the worst contracts in baseball, Rios turned one year in his youth into a multi-year mammoth contract. Forced to play right field [...]
[...] http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/08/11/ricciardis/ [...]