The first X-Million Player
Posted: December 9th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 45 Comments »
Wezen-Ball has a really fun piece up now about the highest paid players in baseball since 1979 — when Nolan Ryan became the first million-dollar player. I highly recommend it so that you can see that Mark Davis was, for a time, the highest paid player in the game. That was back when the Kansas City Royals were trying to buy a World Series. What a world it was.
Anyway, I’m going to piggy back on Wezen-ball and do a quick post on something that just struck me while reading it … I was interested to see the first X-million players in the game. It is pretty well known trivia that Ryan was the first million-dollar play. But how about $2 million? Three million? Well, here you go:
Million dollar player: Nolan Ryan, 1979.
– Ryan’s stats the two-seasons before he became baseball’s first million dollar player … 26-27, 3.66 ERA, 105 ERA+, 483 Ks, 262 walks, and he was 33 years old. So, taking that signing as it should have been viewed then: Holy cow, that was a TERRIBLE signing. Ryan became one of the great old pitchers in baseball history … so it worked out reasonably well. But there was no way they could have known that at the time.
Two-million dollar player: Dave Winfield, 1980.
– I’ve often wondered why Winfield — one of the greatest athletes in American sports history and a dominant pitcher at Minnesota — was never allowed to pitch at least an inning in the big leagues.
Three-million dollar player: Kirby Puckett, 1989.
– Five days earlier, the Kansas City Royals gave Bret Saberhagen a three-year, $8.9 million deal — cutting him just short of $3 million per year. I really wonder how negotiations like that go. Did the Royals see the three million as a line in the sand, something they did not want to cross? Apparently not because less than a month later they gave Mark Davis $3.25 million per year. The Royals spending was out of control in 1989 as they tried desperately to get Ewing Kauffman one more World Series championship before he died.
That, I should add, was not the best team money can buy.
Four-million dollar player: Jose Canseco, 1990.
– From 1988-91, Jose Canseco had a 160 OPS+. He really was some kind of hitter then. In fact, his 141 OPS+ through age 26 ranks him with Orlando Cepeda, and is not far behind Alex Rodriguez (144 OPS+).
Five-million dollar player: Roger Clemens, 1991.
– Clemens led the American League in ERA in 1990, ’91 and ’92.
Six-million dollar man: Ryne Sandberg, 1992
Seven-million dollar player: Ryne Sandberg, 1992.
– The Cubs skipped right over $6 million and gave their big guy seven. By the way: Signing a 32-year-old second baseman for a four-year deal that is the largest in baseball history — yeah, that’s a Cubs move. Sandberg had a very good year in 1992, a so-so injury plagued year in ‘93, and they got absolutely nothing out of him in 1994 or ‘95 because of injuries.
Eight-million dollar player: Ken Griffey, 1996
– There are those who talk about Griffey potentially being the first unanimous Hall of Famer … and it makes some sense since Griffey had both the awesome peak and the huge career numbers, he was an all-around player in his prime and he has managed to rise above the steroid stigma of his time. Personally, I think Greg Maddux might come closer to unanimous.
Nine-million dollar player: Albert Belle, 1996
Ten-million dollar player: Albert Belle, 1996
Eleven-million dollar player: Albert Belle, 1996
– Wow. The Chicago White Sox decided to jump WAY into the future and give Belle an $11 million deal when no one before had ever even made $9 million. Well, you can understand it because Belle, in addition to being a great hitter, was, you know, well, he was a pillar of the community, oh, wait, no, well, he was a great teammate, um, OK, but he was a brilliant defensive, um, yeah, in many ways this is the most baffling signing in baseball history. He mashed the ball for the White Sox in 1998 and then left the White Sox for an even bigger deal with the Orioles. You almost have to admire how Belle was SUCH a good hitter that he was able to play the game by his own rules.
Twelve-million dollar player: Pedro Martinez, 1997.
– One of those rare huge money signings where the player turns out not only to be better than expected but A LOT better than expected. Pedro had some injury issues, of course. But just performance: From 1998-2003, he was the best pitcher ever.
Thirteen-million dollar player: Mike Piazza, 1998.
– PIazza had four excellent years for the Mets offensively. Defensively, maybe not so much. But that’s OK, it was probably a pretty good deal — certainly as good a deal as you can expect signing a 30-year-old catcher to an enormous long-term deal.
Fourteen-million dollar player: Kevin Brown, 1998
Fifteen-million dollar player: Kevin Brown, 1998
– Well, if anyone ever asks: Does a player have to be popular in baseball or a fan favorite or media-savvy to get a big baseball deal … you can tell them, uh, no. Albert Belle made the quantum salary jump in ‘96. Kevin Brown made it in ‘98.
Sixteen-million dollar player: Carlos Delgado, 2000.
Seventeen-million dollar player: Carlos Delgado, 2000
– Salaries are jumping by two million at a time now. Delgado had put up a monstrous 2000 season with 57 home runs. He has been a very good player since then — he led the league in OPS in 2003. I was recently asked if he’s a Hall of Famer … my gut instinct is he has a chance but still needs some big years. But I haven’t studied it closely.
Eighteen-million through twenty-five million: Alex Rodriguez, 2000.
– Boy the money was flying in 2000. There’s nothing left to be said about the A-Rod deal except that as a player, he has been worth every penny. In 2007, A-Rod became the first $26 and $27 million player too.
On the horizon, it’s possible that Joe Mauer or Albert Pujols could break the next barrirer, but do that they might have to leave the fans that love them and the cities that have helped create their personas. Only they can decide if it is worth it.
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Ryne Sandberg, Joe. Not Ryan.
Interesting information otherwise.
RYNE Sandberg, Joe. Ryne.
Ryan Sandberg? I do not know this person. I know of a Ryne Sandberg. Is that it?
Sorry Joe. I actually thought his name was Ryan for years too, so I thought I’d bust your chops.
Carlos Delgado only had 41 homers in 2000. He did have 57 doubles, though. Good for 10th most in a single season, and 2nd most behind Helton’s 59 of the same year since 1936. Still quite a monstrous season.
Ah, well, I’d say if you’re just strictly going for who was the biggest or most interesting story, positive or negative, then Andres Escobar has a claim on 1994. He’s the Colombian defender who was murdered in Bogotá after his own-goal against the US. The story of the murder itself is chilling, but it also really speaks to the passion folks have for soccer in the year that the US hosted its World Cup.
Also, does this mean Pete Sampras will never win one?!
In the Delgado blurb, Joe touches briefly on an interesting side note to these X-million dollar guys and their HOF cred.
Of the 13 players above, there are at least 9 who are (or likely will be) Hall of Famers – I don’t see Canseco, Belle, or Brown making it in, and as Joe notes, the jury is still out on Delgado.
While these salary jumps are still absolutely insane, its tough to argue about getting (or keeping) HOF talent.
Thanks, Joe! Glad you liked it.
One thing to think about here… your list is really the list of people who first had their average annual salary top those thresholds. There are plenty of instances where a contract was given out for a certain total that, if averaged, fell below that threshold, but, when looked at on a year-by-year basis, brought someone above the line. The best example is Gary Carter, who signed a ~$6 million contract in 1983 and received $4 million of it that first year (signing bonus, salary, etc – you can see some of the Carter specifics in one of the articles I linked to: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/12/sports/baseball-notebook-highest-paid-player-it-s-your-pick.html?pagewanted=all). If you want to look at those instances, then you’re gonna have a lot of work ahead of you…
Bork – Correct me if I’m wrong, but none of the contracts listed above originated from the New York Yankees.
Therefore, baseball’s outrageous spending did not begin and/or was perpetuated by the New York Yankees. As such, the franchise is absolved from any wrong doing.
However, the Kansas City Royals stand guilty as charged. The Royals signing Mark Davis to a $3.25 million per year deal is what clearly started the upward spiral of contracts in major league baseball. I blame the Royals for infecting baseball with greed and big money contracts.
A pox on Kansas City.
Bork – Correct me if I’m wrong, but none of the contracts listed above originated from the New York Yankees.
You are wrong, see Winfield and A-Rod’s 2nd contract.
Ryan @6
Andrés Escobar was murdered in Medellín, not Bogotá. And reports that he was murdered because of the own goal have been greatly exaggerated. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
@9: You don’t think there is already a pox on the KC Royals?
When Belle was forced to retire due to injury, I remember thinking the relative brevity of his career could provide cover for writers who really didn’t want to vote for him for HOF.
But I never imagined his candidacy would be so stillborn. It takes a really special kind of person to be such a terrifying offensive force and yet have everyone treat that fact as an afterthought.
Joe – Every hour you don’t give us the fast food post, God kills a kitten.
And some people didn’t think Winfield was worth it. Heh. Seriously…. because he’d only hit .300 twice in his career up to that point. Weirdos.
MiB – heheheheheheh…
I remember a time back when the Islanders had the NHL’s highest payroll, during the tail end of and immediately following the four Cups. Often, it’s winning that drives a team’s payroll up, and money is often spent trying to keep together a great group rather than assemble it. Not always, of course, but it happens.
Honorable mention – the Yankees signed the very first free agent, Jim Hunter, and made Goose Gossage the first million-dollar-total contract in baseball… so as goofy as the Mark Davis signing was, KC could possibly be excused. At that point the track record for megabuck players wasn’t that bad, and the kind of sabermetric wins/$ analysis you find so easily on the Web wasn’t readily available.
Waiting for Curtis Granderson to be the first $32 million man…
Interesting list. One thing to note is that you mentioned Delgado had 57 home runs in 2000. Delgado is certainly on pace for 500, but he only had 41 in 2000. He had 57 doubles.
Where are the 2000’s Pozmans? I’m waiting on tenterhooks here!
For some reason I’d always thought that Winfield’s Yankee contract included a lot of that money deferred over a long stretch of time. If that was the case, I don’t think it can be fairly said that he actually got $2M/year.
Still don’t understand how Jim Rice managed to make it into the HOF after all these years, and Albert Belle never got any support at all. Career stats:
Rice: .298/.352/.502/.854, 382 HR, 1451 RBI, 41.5 WAR (2089 GP)
Belle: .295/.369/.564/.933, 381 HR, 1239 RBI, 37.1 WAR (1539 GP)
Belle was easily the better hitter of the two, putting up similar counting stats in 500 less games with better rate stats. And he was also a pretty darned “feared hitter”. He should have won the 1995 MVP, has a decent case for ‘94 and ‘96, and led the league in OPS in ‘98 but only finished 8th in voting.
I don’t think Mauer’s going to get more than 27/yr or so, but Pujols could get 30-35.
Joe – Your comment that Pedro Martinez was the best pitcher ever from 1998-2003 made me do a little research. His 1997-2003 stretch was certainly one of the greatest peak stretches ever, but it’s hard to argue that he was any more dominant than Greg Maddux 1992-1998 or Sandy Koufax 1963-1966.
Any other stretches that compare?
I love how Texas is its own region in the poll. Texans take American Exceptionalism to the nth degree.
I never look at the polls, but now I’m curious….how did you come up with that geography?
Is MN in the Heartland?
Wasn’t Dave Parker the first to have a million dollar per year salary, but the Pirates wouldn’t confirm it?
After Cal Ripken, Jr., failed to be a unanimous HOF selection, I accepted that no one ever would. I seem to recall that there’s at least one voter who won’t vote for anyone who went on strike, and Griffey went on strike with the rest of the MLBPA.
Dan, I’m going to guess that Lefty Grove from 1926 to 1932 is in the discussion (and in 1933, he went 24-8).
Pete Alexander won 30 or more games for 3 years in a row; in fact, from his rookie season (28 wins) until he went off to war 6 or 7 years later, he was pretty dominating.
Obviously Walter Johnson has to be included somewhere…he certainly had the best “decade” ever, mainly because his peak was from 1910 to 1919, exactly 10 years.
1910 ERA+ :183
1919 ERA+ :214
Yes, those were dead ball days, but even compared to the other pitchers in the league, he was dominant. Plus, you would have to say that the AL, where he pitched, was a much stronger league in that decade; it featured Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe, Tris Speaker and Eddie Collins in their primes, plus Babe Ruth. The NL didn’t have anyone like that, besides an end-of-his-career Honus Wagner.
Still Pedro’s ERA+ during his peak years trumps them all, and he did it against superior competition.
[...] check out the post. And then, when you’re done, check out Joe Posnanski’s post about the first X million player. Who was the first $10 million player? The first $15 million? Joe’s got all the [...]
I am protesting your geography poll. The American West? Really? You’re going to lump, say, California and Montana together? You could’ve at least divided it into American Southwest and American Northwest. Or West Coast and American Rockies. C’mon, Joe.
(Note: Geographical and climate differences aside, I’ve lived in both the NW and SW and the cultural differences are substantial. Or if you want to go Rockies v. the Coast, well, that’s a big difference too. Just saying, is all.)
@22: “His 1997-2003 stretch was certainly one of the greatest peak stretches ever, but it’s hard to argue that he was any more dominant than Greg Maddux 1992-1998 or Sandy Koufax 1963-1966.”
Quick and dirty way to look at it, but, according to baseball-reference, here’s where their peak years rank on the all-time single-season leader board:
Pedro:
#2 (291, 2000)
#9 (243, 1999)
#18* (219, 1997)
#27 (210, 2003)
#33* (202, 2002)
#227* (163, 1998)
[in 2001 he only pitched 116.2 innings, and put up an ERA+ of 189)
Maddux:
#4 (271, 1994)
#5 (262, 1995)
#59* (189, 1997)
#71* (187, 1998)
#143* (171, 1993)
#199* (166, 1992)
#239* (162, 1996)
Koufax:
#57* (190, 1966)
#71* (187, 1964)
#254* (160, 1965)
#285* (159, 1963)
*tied
So, by this measure, it looks like a toss-up for who had the best back-to-back seasons – either Pedro in ‘99-’00, or Maddux in ‘94-’95 – but there’s a bigger dropoff after that for Maddux, and it’s hard to argue with Pedro’s ‘99 being the best season in the modern era.
Bah – forgot to put at the beginning of that that this is the ranking by ERA+ (if it’s not obvious).
@ 22… its a contextual thing. Pedro put up those numbers in the greatest hitting era since the 30’s… Koufax’s numbers, while certainly legendary, don’t compare to what Pedro produced due to the difference in context. Pedro pitched in an era where the average team scored roughly 5 per, while Koufax was pitching in an era where teams scored an average of roughly 3.5. When you consider their ERA’s are so similar, which is more impressive? This difference is highlighted by ERA+.
As far as Maddux, his run is nearly as impressive, but the offense hadn’t completely exploded yet. I think Pedro’s 2000 blows everything else out of the water… 18-6 with a 1.74… a .74 WHIP? Simply insane.
Since I’m feeling prolix at the moment, I’ll agree with Mike L., and say your geographic breakdown of the US is too broad. I’d go something like this, top to bottom, east to west:
Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest*, Midland, Great Plains, Rocky Mountain States, Southwest**, Northwest, California.
*or Great Lakes States, if one prefers
**includes Texas
@31 JKB – one thing I was wondering while I was putting together that big post – ERA+ only normalizes for league, right? So it wouldn’t account for the difference between pitching to DHs and pitching to pitchers? I forget.
@ Brian – IIRC it normalizes to league context, which would include the inherent bias of each individual run environment. AL ERA’s will always be higher, but a pitcher with a lower ERA will basically get bonus ERA+ points for having a lower ERA in a higher scoring environment because his ERA is compared to the league average. It also accounts for an adjustment for ballpark effects, but I’m not completely sure how to calculate that aspect of it.
I feel completely comfortable using ERA+ to compare players across eras or leagues.
Joe – I think I’d make the American part of the poll simpler:
East Coast
West Coast
Flyover Country
Joe,
The Cubs got “absolutely nothing” out of Sandberg in 94 and 95 because he retired and then decided to make a comeback in 96. And according to Baseball Reference he was never paid more than 6 million.
JKB – okay, thanks. That’s about what I figured.
I knew this was a can of worms, but, man, I had no idea: even the federal government can’t decide how many regions there are in the U.S.
If wikipedia can be believed (and if you can’t trust wikipedia, who can you trust?), there are either 9, 10, or 12 different regions, depending on how you define “region”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_States
I kind of like the way the Census Bureau does it. But, then again, I worked for them on the 1990 census, so I might be biased.
“That, I should add, was not the best team money can buy.”
Comments like these are why I read this blog.
Help me out fellow readers, live in Chicago (but not a native). Am I Rust Belter or a Heartlander?
Nearby cities don’t help. Peoria is certainly Heartland, but Gary is definitely Rust Belt.
@ Brent (40)
I, too, am a non-native Chicagoan, but consider myself a Heartlander. I am probably biased, however, since I am a KC native.
Ah good old Dave Winfield. From 1985-88 I was a part time waiter at the hotel across the street from the ballpark in KC. Winfield came in with a woman I am pretty sure(!) was not his wife. I cannot quote to the penny, but their bill came to $64 and change (a large tab for two in those days) and he left three twenties and a ten on the table. One of the highest paid athletes in the world, and a five dollar tip on excellent service!
I didn’t like him before, but he was demanding, rude, and then cheap! An utter jerk.
Jim C, you’re pretty sure Winfield came in with a woman or someone who wasn’t his wife?
Pet peeve of mine: If I order a $500 bottle of wine on top of my average $ dinner, why should I tip more when the service performed on a $20 bottle is the GD same! IOW, I tip a percentage up to a point unless I am receiving additional service I otherwise would not have.
And to the guy suggesting Midland as a region: Great help, dork. Where the H is Midland. Next time don’t include confusion. Hmm, am I in the Midwest or the Midland? Now, if Midland is Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylavania and all those other states that aren’t part of the South, Northeast or East Coast, fine, I’m on board, non-dork. Because I can’t stand people from those three states (and others) who say that they are in the Midwest.
/dorked
Regions, schmegions. Here’s a true rendering of the US:
http://tinyurl.com/ydt27p5
Yes, in case my screen name didn’t already tip you off, I am from NYC.
However, please no anti-Yankee screeds in response. Trust me, I hate them as much as you do, if not more.
I am sure of one, not quite sure of the other. You guess!
If you buy a $500 bottle of wine (and I have served plenty of them….) I really don’t expect a $100 tip on that. I won’t complain. But it is not expected. On the other hand, you should be able to tip on what you buy. If you can afford a $500 bottle of wine, you an afford the upkeep. If you can’t, drink at home. And I’ve also served some cognac that was 50 bucks a shot. Not much of it though…..
You have a $100 dinner and a $500 bottle of wine, tip $50 and your waiter will be happy. At least I was…..