Is Adrian Beltre the worst free agent signing ever?
Today’s fun venture into random comments or emails!
Warning! Contains condescension, sarcasm, and weariness
Contention:
Adrian Beltre is the worst free agent signing ever.
Refutation:
This is one of the most ridiculous and uninformed statements ever to waste our electrons here, the kind of lazy exaggeration that turns the mundane into the blissful or the unsufferable. If you know anything about baseball, if you pay attention at all, it takes about ten, fifteen seconds if you’re asleep to come up with worse deals, and if you’re totally ignorant, a couple of minutes informs you so you know better. There’s no excuse for making this kind of error.
Beltre doesn’t have one of the top 25 deals in baseball. Among those who are clearly right now in the middle of worse deals: Chan Ho Park ($15.5m), Mike Hampton ($14.5m).
In baseball history, you’re awash in choices, especially if we include players felled by injury — Mo Vaughn! Darren Driefor’s LA contract is, strictly in terms of production for dollar, the worst signing in baseball history (I used VORP for that, btw).
Or, to sum up: no.
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Agreed. Any analysis of where he falls so far, at least among M’s free agents? (Leaving out Bobby Thigpen, of course. Although he did allow us to use Bob Wolcott against the Indians in Game One of 1995 ALCS, in a roundabout way.)
Well, Beltre in dollar amount is much bigger than the last two recipients of the 3B Curse (Scott Spiezio and Jeff Cirillo)… but I’m not so sure he beats them unproductivity-wise. Yet.
The way I’ll tell if this is a huge flop is if in 2007 we trade Beltre along with 30 million for a couple of A-ball power arms and a crate of baseballs. That’s usually the “oh, crap, we really screwed this up” signifier (note that Hampton, Vaughn and Park all have had something like this happen).
Well, Beltre certainly sits as one of the worst free agent signings by the Mariners, based on his production to date. This considering he hasn’t been injured (that we know of), was coming off of a career year, didn’t have any distinguishing years before the career year (please correct me), and was signed for premeir dollars. Now he still has time to make me change my mind, but nothing suggests he will. We ended up paying for a great glove and a poor bat. Not worth the money.
I have to admit, my least favorite free agent signing by the M’s is still the Pete O’Brien signing way back when. A friend and I bitched about if he had only hit .280 for years.
To me, Mo Vaughn’s is the gold standard for Worst Free Agent Signing Ever. I know Mo Vaughn, and Adrian Beltre, you’re no Mo Vaughn.
Disclaimer: I do not know Mo Vaughn.
[ot]
Clearly not the worst ever, but certainly Bavesi should’ve seen the huge warning signs about Beltre’s production.
SEASON TEAM G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1998 LA 77 195 18 42 9 0 7 22 14 37 3 1 .215 .278 .369 .647
1999 LA 152 538 84 148 27 5 15 67 61 105 18 7 .275 .352 .428 .780
2000 LA 138 510 71 148 30 2 20 85 56 80 12 5 .290 .360 .475 .835
2001 LA 126 475 59 126 22 4 13 60 28 82 13 4 .265 .310 .411 .721
2002 LA 159 587 70 151 26 5 21 75 37 96 7 5 .257 .303 .426 .729
2003 LA 158 559 50 134 30 2 23 80 37 103 2 2 .240 .290 .424 .714
2004 LA 156 598 104 200 32 0 48 121 53 87 7 2 .334 .388 .629 1.017
2005 Se 156 603 69 154 36 1 19 87 38 108 3 1 .255 .303 .413 .716
2006 Se 30 107 10 22 4 0 1 7 11 26 7 0 .206 .292 .271 .563
Plus, there were more viable options on the market in ’04-’05 – Troy Glaus is a good example – we could’ve signed him cheaper and for fewer dollars
Mo Vaughn? How about Albert Belle?
Okay, Vaughn is worse, but Belle warrants mention.
And Troy Glaus is having a pretty good year. I’m sure a lot of teams wish they’d nabbed him last year.
from his history Beltre is about a 25hr-80rbi-.280average guy. certainly not a top tier free agent…
and another thing: Beltre had a bum toe in ’04 when he went crazy offensively. The toe caused him to lay off the low and outside stuff and created a more selective hitter. Someone should either drop an anvil on his toe again or make him wear an electroshock device that zaps him everytime he thinks about swinging at a pitch a foot outside and 6 inches off the ground…
um. his toe was fine. He had a bone spur on his ankle.
Actually I don’t think he has been fishing for that low-outside breaking pitch so much lately. I’ve seen him chase a lot of high fastballs, but he’s been hitting a lot more balls hard lately than before.
Mo Vaughn’s ranks even higher, upon reflection, because they should have foreseen that injury.
By the way, is any player’s listed weight more laughable than Mo Vaughn’s 275?
Yeah yeah yeah, he sucks, whatever.
Is he the worst free agent ever? No, he is clearly not.
Felix was listed at 170 until last year.
Greg Hibbard, not Bobby Thigpen. Whatever. They both were terrible.
It should be noted, of course, that “worst” can mean either “stupidest” or “most disastrous.” (The distinction is that “stupid” means “it should have been obvious that this wouldn’t work,” while disastrous just means “this really, really didn’t work.”)
In the case of Beltre, of course, we’re dealing with the latter category. What was obvious at the time was that the signing was a gamble– but not that it wouldn’t work.
If someone says, “oh, but I knew it wouldn’t work, and if you had half a brain cell it would have been obvious to you too”– such a statement is worthy of consideration only if it either comes from person with a Bob Fontaine-type record of successful scouting, or from an objective method with a PECOTA-type (or better) record of successful projection. Otherwise, it’s just a nut finding a blind squirrell, or however that metaphor goes.
I agree that it’s a better question whether the Beltre signing, if he doesn’t turn things around, would be the “worst” (read: “most disastrous”) in Mariner history. The question might be whether you include Cirillo in the discussion, counting the assumption of his contract as sort of a de facto signing. Salaries have only inflated about 20% since the Cirillo trade, so even accounting for inflation, his contract cost only about half of what Beltre’s will. So Beltre will still need to step it up, I think, to avoid hurting the team more than Cirillo did. ($65M for a below-average regular hurts worse than paying $32M for a washout, even if it’s less embarrassing.)
(From looking up Hibbard on the Internet, it seems that his deal was only for $5M total over three years– not $5M a year for four years, as I had incorrectly remembered it. In that case, he’s not really part of the discussion.)
To give Bavasi some credit here, there really wasn’t much of a FA market the year the M’s finally gave him some money to spend. Beltre have had mixed returns, but has anyone else from the class of 05′ paid off big? Beltran sure seems a bit of a toss up at this point, at least for what he got for $.
Looking at the past few FA classes it really doesn’t appear that there have been too many impact players the M’s could have gotten that would have paid off. Too bad the Front Office couldn’t have pulled the trigger on the Vlad or Miggy deals….but i guess that’s just rubbing salt into the wounds at this point.
Point is, Sexson is a still a higher risk to be a worse signing because of the length. Beltre may never be a gem, but I’m content with it so far, base solely on defense and a hope that someday he can get a consistent approach at the plate.
Felix was listed at 170 until last year.
I remember. Proportionally a bigger error (because Felix is smaller), but in terms of total poundage, I think Mo’s missed by more.
It looks like Mo was listed at 230 for much of his career. I think that was his college weight.
I think Felix’s right leg weighs 170.
weights… well, 250 seems to be the benchmark weight; Cecil Fielder & Rich Garces were both “250 lbs”; Prince Fielder is 260, they say– Sabathia went from 235 lbs to 250 and now is listed as 290
#180-it must be that their original signing weight gets on file, and stays there unless someone makes a change (not unlike drivers license height/weight)
Just as it is foolish to say that Beltre is the worst FA signing ever, it’s equally foolish to say that the ROI on his signing has been anything but terrible.
The Beltre contract is certainly not among the worst free agent signings ever, and we’re only 25% into it so the usual cliches still apply, hope springs eternal, it’s always darkest before the dawn, it ain’t over til the contract’s over…. but unless there is material improvement, the good ship Mariner has taken considerable water. It might not be long before the “Cabrera For Third” blogsite appears.
Yes, because so many people are running around saying that.
argh. a caller on KJR was just complaining that Hargrove playing Guardado was a classic example of what he misses about Lou — that Lou never cared who the GM was, Lou never would play a guy who wasn’t doing his job, Lou would have pulled Guardado. sigh. I love the mythology that has grown up about Piniella.
You just know that the caller was one of the guys who back in the day was continually bitching Lou out for running Ayala out there game after game….
Lou had no control over player acquisitions. He used Ayala because he could throw strikes and he didn’t have much options in the pen. Bobby did a fairly decent job his first two years in ’94 & ’95. In ’96 Charlton, Jackson, Carmona all had more appearances than Ayala. In ’97 Norm Charlton had just as many appearances as Ayala. In 98, Timlin had more game appearances than Ayala. You’re right it is mythology that Sweet Lou ran out Ayala game after game. Bobby Ayala was not Lou’s #1 option out of the pen after ’95 and Lou did not run out Ayala game after game. He was used because that’s all Piniella had. Blame the GM not the manager. It’s mythology to even insinuate Piniella could be compared to the Hargrove’Guardado circus. Piniella was a great manager, Hargrove is not. IMO.
Boy, and I thought Magglio Ordonez was the worst free agent signing ever.
Some deals are bad because of injuries or circumstances that cause the player not to play — Juan Guzman, Tampa Bay, $12 million/two years, and his only appearance: 1-2/3 IP 7 H 8 R 8 ER 2 BB 3 SO 2HR 43.20 ERA.
Some deals are bad because the player just sucks and/or messes up the team’s salary structure and chemisty (I guess Denny Neagle and Mike Hampton, signed within a week or so of one another, would fit here).
I love how people just overlook the fact that the Devil Rays were absolutely terrible with Lou at the helm.
I think that Beltre can still prove to be worth his ducats. He is rock-solid with the leather and actually appears to make Betancourt’s job easier. The value of his D can be overlooked when he is flailing at the plate.
While he definitely appears to shoulder a tremendous amount of pressure (albeit self-induced) and overswings frequently, I think that the development of the lineup around him can allow Adrian to relax a little and be the hitter he has the potential to be.
We are paying Beltre $64M over five years. The Rangers are paying ARod $71M over seven years for the pleasure of watching him play for the Yankees. So far in 85 plate appearances against the Rangers Arod has a 905 OPS including four home runs. I know which contract I would rather being paying.
If Piniella is a great manager, Bob Melvin must be a genius, given that he got the same number of wins out of essentially the same old team, with everybody being one year older.
I don’t mind the Beltre signing. Even though he’s under performing he looks to be comming around at the plate and even if he isn’t he’s stellar with the glove. I think he’s going to start hitting more soon, but regardless it was a good signing at the time. When Bavasi made the move, it was what he had to do at the time. He needed a big name and Beltre was a young hot hitter who filled a void on the team. Sure it sucks that he had a bad year after a carreer year but, if memory serves, there really weren’t a whole lot of other options in the ‘big name’ department right then.
Looking at appearances doesn’t tell you whether Ayala was being used badly by Lou after 95. Lots of guys lead their teams in appearances without ever closing a game.
Ayala was second on the team in games finished in each of 96, 97 (to Charlton both times) and 98 (to Timlin). In 1998 Ayala went 1-10 which suggests he was blowing save opportunities (I couldn’t find blown save numbers). My recollection is that Ayala switched off with Charlton as closer in 96, and that Ayala was the primary closer in 97 until they picked up Heathcliff Slocumb at the break. Lou kind of shuffled through closers, trying Charlton, Ayala and Slocumb those years until he kind of settled on Timlin by default (who led the team in saves in 1998 with 19).
Those were awful years for the bullpen, and Lou can’t be blamed for that given the personnel he had.
Nor can he be blamed, I think, for the terrible personnel he’s had to work with in Tampa.
The Mariners haven’t sucked the last 3 years because Lou left. They’ve sucked because they haven’t had good enough players. Lou was clearly a better manager than Melvin or Hargrove, but that might have meant 3-4 games each year IMHO.
But Lou’s in the past. Get over him. Yes, Hargrove has to go, but that’s not going to make this a contending team.
Doesn’t Beltre have 3 5/6 years left on that contract? Can we at least watch this crap for another year or two before we decide the contract is a total failure?
Yes, signing a guy off a massive contract year, after years of okay production, to a huge contract isn’t a great idea, but there are worse signings out there from guys who didn’t play everyday and weren’t worth a damn in any sense.
Don’t forget that Beltre’s defense hasn’t dropped off that much.
I love how people just overlook the fact that the Devil Rays were absolutely terrible with Lou at the helm.
Yeah, well, the Mets were terrible with Casey Stengel at the helm, and Stengel also didn’t make anyone go “OMG, what a genius” as an NL manager with the Dodgers or Braves. Joe Torre was very “meh” in New York and St. Louis. Tony LaRussa had bad years in Chicago and Oakland when the talent wasn’t there, Connie Mack managed some of the worst teams ever in between some of the best teams ever, and so on.
Managers can’t make talent precipitate out of nowhere, the D-Rays are a terrible, terrible organization, and I think people are quite right to consider Piniella’s tenure there a no-op. There are certainly arguments to be made for and against Piniella’s worth as a manager, but I don’t think his tenure at Tampa Bay says a lot about them one way or another.
I think that by the end of this year, Beltre’s contract will leave the “worst ever” discussions completely and sink into the very, very crowded “overpaid” category.
Because it’s what I do… Adrian beltre since the nadir (April 16th):
.279 .353 .393
It was better a few days ago (.306 .382 .429) before he ran into the Santana buzzsaw. That day he was old Beltre… the next day he was at least making decent contact again.
Personally, I think he’s going to settle in the .290-.310, .350-380, .420-.460 range soon and that should take at least some of the hyperbole away.
But yes, I admit to being a hopeless optimist so don’t throw things at me.
The bigger question to me is… oveer the life of their contracts does Sexson pass Beltre on the “bad signing” ladder – even among casual fans? I think it’s very possible – either from injury or performance.
http://ussmariner.com/index.php?p=2170
That link was when Dave ranked the best and worst free agent signings on 12/24/2004. Dave is a smart guy. I’m sure if I looked for other such lists, I’d find equally puzzling (by today’s standards) selections. Forecasting any individual player is extremely difficult, at the mercy of all the unknowns and injuries.
Calling something a good or bad free agent signing (at the time of signing) means that you’ll probably be wrong almost half the time. GMs are basically flipping a coin.
So, if you want to call Beltre the worst free agent signing in Mariners history, or over the last 4 years or whatnot, you are basically saying that the GM called heads when he should have called tails.
I think it’s waaaay to early to place Beltre in the bust column. Dissapointing so far to be sure, but it’s just plain silly to classify a five year contract as a mistake when you aren’t even a year and a half into it. Perhaps if he was in his mid 30s and fight off chronic/major injuries it might be a pretty good bet, but he’s 27 and it would not shock me in the least to see him put up some significant numbers before the his contract is up.
When Beltre was signed, at that time I was giddy with joy. I actually hugged a co-worker who thought (still does) I had lost my mind. At the time, A-Train (only slightly smirking) was a great signing, period.
It is very easy to cast Beltre’s signing as awful today due to the lack of production with the bat. However anyone pointing to the Beltre signing and calling it a bad signing is simply Captin Obvious in overdrive.
Trying to comare this to other signings that did not work is premature today. I like that some continue to believe Adrian will turn it around and I’d like for that to happen. Not only as a fan but as a sports fan in general. Don’t we all want to see the guy succeed? If he came around and sprayed the field with extra bases hits and the occasional dinger I’d be estatic.
When all is said and done, I think the Washburn contact will be regarded as worse than Beltre’s under either of Paul’s criteria.
We can argue projections/predictions/flukes until we’re blue in the face but it’s hard to see that a player coming into his prime years would put up his worst year(s) ever. Regressing to the mean, to be sure, but not worse than ever.
in addition to number 18 and just to amuse everyone else.
David Ortiz was listed at 220 last year
I love how people just overlook the fact that the Devil Rays were absolutely terrible with Lou at the helm.
I love how people just overlook Lou’s effect on the D-Rays’ pitching. Still seems like they’re still losing an arm a week.
And as for the “Lou didn’t have talent” argument, the D-Rays have a lot of young players that are getting better every year. Unfortunately, they play in a division where even if they tripled their payroll they would still be outspent by every other club in said division.
The bigger question to me is… oveer the life of their contracts does Sexson pass Beltre on the “bad signing†ladder – even among casual fans? I think it’s very possible – either from injury or performance.
It’s very possible because Beltre is on the good side of 30, while Sexson is on the bad side of 30.
Not that it’s bad to be on this side of 30, but we might be looking right now at what we’ll get out of Sexson the next three years. And I’d rather be paying a 3b $13M to hit .270/.350/.420 than a 1b $11M to hit .200/.300/.400.
hmmm. “Lou Pineilla, Fact or Fiction”, an off-season thread?
41 – But Ortiz isn’t manatee fat like Mo. And he’s taller.
Sure, 220 is probably 40 lb. light, but 40 lb. isn’t a bad miss by baseball standards.
*bing!*
spelling error. Piniella.
Hargrove is Pinella-light, but he is cut from the same cloth: he’s more comfortable playing aging veterans and he’s slow to develop talent, his strategy is strictly by the book, he’s soft on statistics and believes in intangibles, he likes putting the game in motion.
If you look at Pinella’s rosters in the late 90s, with Griffey, Arod, Randy, Edgar, and Bone, a very good argument can be made that, except in 2001, his talent regularly underachieved their potential. His bullpen was often poor, but I’m not sure the blame for that is only allocable to the FO.
Beltre CAN’T be the worst free agent signing ever, because even if he turns out to be — a pretty long shot — it’s too early to tell. If he never gets another hit in his ML career, then maybe we can talk in a year or two. Even then, I’m going to go with Chan Ho Park, the signing that destroyed a franchise. Beltre could never get another hit and he still only gets a moderately-sized chunk of blame. Park’s contract — not ARod’s, as is commonly claimed — crippled the damn Rangers for four years.
If Sexson doesn’t start turning things around, he might be moving well up this list. I already expected us to regret that signing; I just didn’t expect to start this soon.
speaking of Dreifort, there was an interesting article about him last month in the LA Times
worst signing ever? nope.
dissapointing to date? yep.
great glove? yep.
does that mitigate the bat? yep but this year he’d better hurry up and get back to his career mean.
should last year’s performance have been a surprise (especially to sabermetricians)? hell no.
were those who were surprised by last year stupid? nope. just blissfull homers… (nothing wrong with that except it means you’ll be wrong more often)
should this year to date be a surprise? yep.
will he continue to be this bad? not likely….i mean even this contract will have it’s final year.
Can M’s fans wait that long? doubtful since there probably wont be any M’s fans left by the seventh losing season in a row. well maybe there will be a couple.
Come on, that’s ridiculous.
People, like me, had very good reasoning for thinking Beltre would do well last year. It’s not all homerism.
Given that many people (DMZ included) thought Beltre would do well BEFORE we signed him, it’s hard to call it homerism. Look at the USSM off-season plan from two years ago.
What people have a hard time accepting is that predictions can be wrong. That doesn’t make them bad predictions. Anti-stathead people have always said “you were wrong on this guy, so your method is bushwa”. But baseball is not science, it’s probabilities. Beltre was a well-supported idea. Hasn’t worked out (yet). That’s too bad, but signing him was still a good decision based on what was known THEN.
When analysts perfect the time machine and gain 100% accuracy, baseball will start being boring. But it’ll never happen, because when they do, they’ll be too busy playing the market to worry about the game.
Why do we insist on overlooking Beltre’s superior defense? It’s no small thing, folks. It’s a huge part of his value, and he hasn’t lost a bit of it.
harkening back to an earlier discussion, apparently, Jim Moore’s column today did one good thing, it reminded Gros&Gas of Jeff Hoyt & Ken Boynton’s 2001 imaginary Texas/Mariners game (originally done for Rewind) with the Texas broadcasters tucking in some new sponsorships to help the Rangers pay for acquiring Alex — KJR plans to get a link to it up on their site, but it is also still available on the NPR site.
I was just adding some cynicism to the condescension, sarcasm, and weariness… i sometimes forget that cynicism doesn’t always work in black and white…
baseball is not probabilities….. sabermetrics is a science that models baseball events to assign probabilities in order to predict baseball events…
baseball in it’s purest form is an analogy for life and baseball players are warrior poets on the field…..thus in many ways sabermetrics can both enhance AND diminish the beauty of this silly game that means more than I’m sure it’s creators intended or could have ever envisioned….
Too true. The guy has good range superior hands and an absolute cannon for an arm. Did you guys see him turn that 3-5-1 double play the other night when they had the Thome shift on? He glided over the bag like he’d done it a million times. The guy is a really good athlete.
47 – Even then, I’m going to go with Chan Ho Park, the signing that destroyed a franchise. Park’s contract  not ARod’s, as is commonly claimed  crippled the damn Rangers for four years.
How can you say that? Park made $65M over the five years. The Rangers are paying Alex $71M over seven years to play for the Yankees. That’s on top of the $69.5M that they paid him for his three years of service. I can’t imagine how you can claim that one or the other of these deals is solely responsible for the crippling.
Yes Jim but at some point inferior offense diminishes the value of superior defense… although I’m sure D. Mientkiewicz would tend to agree with you rather than me….
My suggestion is that people not rewrite their own memories. When the Mariners signed Beltre I was excited and from what I was reading most of the Mariner blogverse was excited.
I’m not going to start criticizing the Mariner upper management, however I may dislike them for other actions, for taking a step that I entirely agreed with and, indeed, praised them for.
I also, as I recall, was very critical of the St. Louis Cardinals for trading young superstar Garry Templeton for Ozzie Smith.
My point is this: if you remember accurately what you were excited about and what you were critical of when it pertains to a team’s management’s actions, you can modify your own judgments in a positive way.
My other point is this: given all the criticism of Mariner management for the Beltre signing, and given the popularity of that move at the time it was made, some of you out there have erased part of your memories and replaced them with something else. It’s hard to learn from mistakes when you retroactively don’t make any.
Most Mariner fans were calling for the team to sign Beltran instead of Beltre. I’m still glad we got Beltre (though I get less glad every time Grover sits Reed).
this, of course, doesn’t take into account the fact that Kendall actually did try to get out of the way of the pitch, and succeeded, which is why Lackey didn’t walk in a run right there.
I see that Lackey is trying to calm things down in his usual concilatory manner
…. “I threw a breaking ball and he kind of stuck his little elbow guard out there,” Lackey said.
Jack Howland: you’re confusing the issue. The money they’re paying the Yankees has nothing to do with the FREE AGENT SIGNING, which is the question here. That money is the result of the trade for Soriano. If anything, their willingness to part with the cash in addition to ARod indicates that the money was not the worst part of the deal.
Alex Rodriguez provided the Rangers with outstanding, MVP, Hall of Fame, potentially the best player in the history of baseball caliber shortstop for the money. That didn’t hurt the Rangers; it helped them. Park on the other hand got almost as much money but SUCKED HORRIBLY. He was one of the worst pitchers in all of baseball; frankly, he shouldn’t have been in a major league uniform, and the only reason he was was the $65 million. $69.5 million for dozens and dozens of extra wins wasn’t the problem with the Rangers; $65 million for dozens of extra losses was.
I can’t believe I’m explaining this to someone AGAIN.
I don’t want to hijack the thread, but [deleted, off-topic]
It seems we’re forgetting something. Where did Bavasi come from immediately before he was hired by the M’s? Exactly. The Dodgers. In fact, he was Director of Player Development — chief in charge of the Dodgers’ minor leagues.
One of the things I said in my blog and other blogs before the M’s signed Beltre is that Bavasi should have had quite a decent handle on Beltre and what he would bring to the table in Seattle. You think he was too busy overseeing the Dodgers’ farm system not to know the inside scoop on Beltre?
If there’s any GM in baseball (at the time of Beltre’s signing) that knew what Beltre would bring to his team, it would’ve been Bavasi. That’s one of the things I was using as an argument against those who said “No way the M’s sign Beltre!” Bavasi would’ve had to have argued hard to Howard and Chuck as to why it was “safe” to spend that much money on Beltre.
They say you do have to get out of the way. Try & get that called, though…
#58: I agree. I wonder if research has been done to determine just what that point is, other than a VORP score.
All this is sound and fury signifying virtually nothing, really. Beltre, with his contract, is virtually untradeable. If he hits .184, you stick him in the 8-hole and live with it. Benching him does nobody any good. Releasing him is stupid, and you wouldn’t get more for him in a trade than MAYBE a middling prospect (and only then if you promised to eat a bunch of his salary.)
We can be upset about him all we want, but he isn’t coming out of the lineup  nor should he be taken out. You just keep working with him and hope you push the right buttons.
Didn’t Beltre really break out in LA after they moved him to the 7-hole?
If anything, their willingness to part with the cash in addition to ARod indicates that the money was not the worst part of the deal.
Steve T: This is the part that I don’t understand the most.
Back on topic, I think Mo or Chan Ho have to be the worst signings I can think of (although I’m sure there have been plenty of other horrible signings I just don’t remember).
A-Rod put up the numbers that they expected when they signed him. Mo and Chan Ho didn’t come anywhere near their expected contributions.
They may have overpaid for A-Rod, but I overpay for beer at the bar, and that doesn’t mean it’s a horrible beer (or a horrible purchase, just maybe not the smartest decision financially)!
My fault for #63. My apologies..
A-Rod obviously put up great numbers. Nobody doubts that. But that doesn’t mean that overcompensating for his services just doesn’t matter. It seems as though this same argument could be made had he signed for $250M, $500M, or $1B. He had a great year so the amount of money just doesn’t matter.
I’m not trying to say that the over compensation doesn’t matter. They never should have made him that offer, because it wasn’t a good deal.
But if you pay too much for a car, but it ends up doing everything it was advertised to do (or more), does that make it a horrible deal, or just “not the best deal you could have had”?
I just don’t think A-Rods deal belongs in quite the same category as some others where they paid a ton of money, and really got nothing in return. At least the Rangers got what they expected out of A-Rod.
A bad FA signing is where you sign a guy for big bucks who has a minimal chance of being successful, plenty mentioned above. Also a bad signing is where you give years to declining players. Signing Beltre was a good move that so far has collapsed. Who knew? Carl Everett vesting is bad.
Sometimes I swear it’s just dumb luck. If it were easy, there wouldn’t be nearly the number of busts (or surprises)!
It certainly wasn’t a bad signing at the time. The team needed a third baseman and got the best on the market.
Nor has it turned out to be the contract producing the least value in hindsight. I think Washburn is worse, but the unknown future should not be the grading metric for a GM. How good did the Lyman Bostock deal look after the fact?
Well, thank you everybody for the lively debate, time for this guy to get out of the office and celebrate Cinco De Mayo (as all good Irish people do!).
And again, my apologies for the off-topic stuff. What was I thinking starting with “I don’t want to hijack the thread…”?
I don’t know, I guess my brain left the office before my body.
Go M’s!!
Looking back at the Chan Ho Park contract, how bad was it? Granted, he wasn’t going to repeat his numbers from LA in Texas, thanks to a big park effect jump, but he was a pretty groundball/flyball neutral pitcher, and even managed a 1.2 HR/9 non-park adjusted HR rate during his tenure with Texas. Not great, but certainly not an Eric Milton-style debacle.
Other than giving a pitcher a 5-year deal, were there injury warning signs? Park had been able to pitch 190+ innings for 5 straight seasons before getting to Texas, and his pitcher abuse points were on the high side, but not anything you’d get especially worried about in and of themselves. And Park was 29 at the time the contract was signed, passed the point where you worry about injuries as a prospect grows, and not that old that you’d expect him to decline for another couple of years.
It was probably a bad contract, just because you have to be really, really sure to give a 5-year deal to a pitcher, and I don’t know if teams like Texas and Colorado should do that until they see how a pitcher holds up pitching half his games at a launching pad, but what the Rangers got was certainly something of a worst-case scenario.
I guess my point is, that with Park, you could’ve at least expected some positive value out of the contract. He was a solid, if unspectacular pitcher, who was being overpaid. For my money, I think the Eric Milton contract was probably worse. $24M/3 years for someone with a career 0.60 G/F to pitch in Cincinnati? He had solid K/BB numbers, but always had problems pitching from the stretch. (Milton had some insane none on/runners on splits that should’ve given GMs pause. In 2002, while healthy, hitters were .207/.242/.349 with no one on and .350/.377/.583 when Milton was pitching from the stretch. And it really wasn’t all that fluky, as he’s been .245/.298/.437 vs. .304/.350/.528 for his career.)
Anyway, this got to be a lot longer than it should have been, but I think there’s a case to be made for a 5 year/$60M deal for a slightly above average player being a better contract than a 3 year/$24M deal for a player who’s below average.
I think almost everyone knew that was a bad deal. His road numbers away from LA were horrible, and for someone with his profile to move to a hitters park like Texas — that was a bad idea all around.
Just for fun, can we Include Managers…. #2 BoMel, #1 Grover
Beltre has been hitting better than most Mariners (Bloomquist, Ibanez, Betancourt, and Lopez excepted) the last few weeks. His batting average has come up about a hundred points. And his fielding is awesome. He hasn’t been worth the money we paid for him, but he is far from a bad player.
I think almost everyone knew that was a bad deal. His road numbers away from LA were horrible, and for someone with his profile to move to a hitters park like Texas  that was a bad idea all around.
Damn, I forgot about those road numbers. How does anyone get such consistently huge home/road ERA splits? In 2001, for instance, he only allowed 3 more HR on the road, and had better strikeout and walk rates on the road than at home.
I think it was more obvious that the Beltre deal was not a good deal than the Park deal. You don’t have to look into even simple statistics like home/road splits or peripherals. You just had to realize that nobody in the history of baseball has ever had such a long string of major league mediocrity at the plate, had one great year, and maintained anything close to that improvement.
You can have a good team when management doesn’t understand statistics, but you can’t have a good team when management believes in magic.
As a different perspective, Beltre isn’t even the worst free agent signing of that offseason. I’m sure the Yankees’ aquisition of The Dessicated Remains of Jaret Wright was worse, as was their ‘pickup’ of Pavano.
The book on the Beltre signing is very much open. In $$$ risked, he’s not the worst. If Adrian hits like he did last year, it’s a failed signing, but not a catastrophe. If he hits this year at anything like he did in April . . . *yikes* It’s a ‘Vaughn Situation’ (Mo or Greg, take your pick), ’cause you really, really CAN’T keep playing a guy hitting like that, so the contract becomes a total loss. If that happened, the deal is certainly a semi-finalist for the Biggest Bust Ever in the free agency era. But I don’t expect Adrian to be quite that bad. Either way, we won’t have a read on that until this season’s over. “Too early to tell.”
I will agree, though, the the Chan Ho Park deal in Texas is probably the stupidist signing I’ve ever seen. Park is far from worthless—except in that context, and the $$$$ figure was absurd for his career performance. That deal, to me, is Exibit A in the case for Scott Boras as Dr. Caligari.
73- I just don’t think A-Rods deal belongs in quite the same category as some others where they paid a ton of money, and really got nothing in return. At least the Rangers got what they expected out of A-Rod.
I agree that the Park deal was a horrible deal and that A-Rod has performed as expected. I do not agree that the Park signing was the defining deal that killed the Rangers as opposed to the A-Rod deal which was the orignal argument. After this year the Rangers will be done paying Park. On the other hand, the Rangers will be paying Alex approximately $10M/year until 2010 during which time he will be abusing the Rangers every trip that the Yankees make into Arlington or the Rangers make into the Bronx. Yes, the Rangers did get Alfonso Soriano who they paid approximately $14M over the three years. Assuming that he was worth $30M over those three years (which I think is extremely generous) and subracting the $14M that the Rangers paid him over those three years we come to the Rangers oweing approximately $55M to the Yankees for Arod over seven years. You may think that that is the equivalent of overpaying for a beer in Pioneer Square or even overpaying for a car, but in actuality it’s not even in the same ballpark.
DMZ – you do come off sounding a little defensive. Is this because of the constant cheerleading from yourself and others on this site leading up to the time of his signing?
Of course Beltre isn’t one of the worst signings ever, but thus far (and he has lots of time to change this) he is certainly one of the M’s worst signings ever. Admittedly, you couldn’t have foreseen how precipitous the dropoff would be for Beltre’s production in his time with the M’s – no one could – but looking at the trendlines up to the time he was signed, it was clear ’04 was an anomaly and the contract he signed with the M’s was a risky one.
Now that he’s performing so terribly, I wonder if your verbal eye-rolling at the mere mention of how bad the contract has to do (maybe just slightly) with how much you pushed for his signing?
Beltre was signed the off-season after he led the National League in Home Runs and was the runner-up for the league MVP. He hasn’t produced offensively yet, but he will. At some point during this contract, he’ll have an MVP-caliber year.
For the season he had, the M’s probably signed him for 2-3 million below market. It was a good signing that hasn’t panned out yet.
It was not clear 04 was an absolute anamoly.
If someone wants to say it’s a bad contract so far — yup. It’s horrible.
To say it was a horrible gamble – well, others have spoken to that.
To say it was unforgivably stupid – again, many people, including myself, had good reasons to support it, and that we’ve been wrong so far doesn’t mean they were stupid.
To say it was the worst of all time – this is what drives me nuts. It’s the kind of lazy, uninformed belief that destroys intelligent conversation, delivered with the confidence of the ignorant. It’s not the worst of all time. There’s just no way.
At least in terms of results, the Christian Guzman signing is working its way up the list. This year he’s hurt and going to miss the whole season, last year he was much worse than that. At $4.2M/year, they’ve overpaid by about $10M and the salary/production ratio is actually negative.
“It was not clear 04 was an absolute anamoly.”
It’s clearly an anamoly in his yearly stats from an OPS % from the beginning of his career to the year before we signed him. The 1.017 OPS was way above his average of .755 through 2003. That looks and smells like an anamoly.
“To say it was unforgivably stupid – again, many people, including myself, had good reasons to support it, and that we’ve been wrong so far doesn’t mean they were stupid.”
I never said anyone was stupid. I think maybe you’re referring to another comment?
“To say it was the worst of all time – this is what drives me nuts. It’s the kind of lazy, uninformed belief that destroys intelligent conversation, delivered with the confidence of the ignorant. It’s not the worst of all time. There’s just no way. ”
If he continues to perform as he has, from a money perspective and length of contract perspective, it’s shaping up to be in the running for worst M’s contract of all time. I’d be curious as to who you nominate from a dollars and length perspective, factoring performance compared to expectations?
Now, he has plenty of time to turn it around, and I think he may, but if he doesn’t, it’s right up there.
92 –
First off, “worst M’s contract of all time” is not the same thing as “worst free agents siging of all time.”
Second, people, like myself, who knew that ’04 was not likely to be repeated, but thought it was a mark of improvement as well had good reasons to think that.
He was started very young, and his numbers were steadily climbing, long before he was approaching his physical peak… when they fell back again before jumping up in ’04, there were some very legitimate explanations that had nothing to do with his ability, i.e. horribly botched surgery.
Remember that in ’04 every single aspect of his game got better… not just power. It looked like a guy who was finally putting together all the promise he had once had.
’04 was a crazy, phenomenally good year for him… but it wasn’t like he was Joey Cora, this was a guy with all-star promise.
To date it’s been a bad signing for the M’s and that’s about all that matters. Where it stands historically doesn’t change the fact that $13/m a year is tied up in someone who is providing great defense and no power.
I know all the reasons you guys (ussm) thought this was the right solution for the M’s. Personally i am not convinced the .830 OPS or whatever pecota thought he would get for 2005 was really worth that much money, even with his glove factored in. But not even hitting that mark makes the contract a pretty huge letdown. At this point i’ll be happily surprised if he hits .275/.830 for a season during his tenure with the M’s.
I guess the last question is whether or not he is fixable. Over a year in the AL now and every pitcher knows to throw him down and away, and he continues to chase bad pitches. His K rate is up from last year which seems to indicate things aren’t improving, and of course he still isn’t hitting. It’s a sad day when we get excited about him hitting .300 with no power over some stretch of games. WFB can do that.
FIELD MANAGER VS GENERAL MANAGER (Piniella VS Woodward) [See # 26] – The GM does not always act independently from the manager–despite some classic cases (MOE BERG, HANK BOROWY, etc.).
Frequently the GM merely carries out the manager’s wishes Maybe it was: “I need some right-handed power.” – Kevin Mitchell. Or “I need some relievers.” – Timlin, Spoljaric, Slocumb. (Maybe that’s the way it was.)
Like Derek said, it’s not “clear” that 2004 was an anomaly. I won’t dig through the stats right now, but Beltre was remarkably consistent the entire year in 2004. I also won’t dig up examples (I realize this cuts into the value I’m providing here), but baseball history contains several examples of players who took steps up in their mid- to late-20s after getting to the Show at a very young age. The bottom line was that if 2004 had, in fact, been for real, Beltre would be a perennial MVP candidate solely on the basis of his offense, and would play stellar D as well. GMs had to weigh the potential for that versus the potential of getting the same skill set that was there from 2000 to 2003. They did so, and that — coupled with the M’s need to make a splash and “get some power” — led to the M’s getting him. That was the market for his services, and the potential upside was huge. As others have alluded to, if his value was solely on the offensive side of the ball, or if he had put up 2004 entirely out of nowhere at age 34 (i.e., Javy Lopez), it would have been nuts to sign him for the money he got. At the time, the balance of risk and reward was, as judged by Dave and everyone else I paid attention to at the time, not only acceptable but the best of the offseason. Hindsight does not change that, and certainly does not take it from a great sign to the worst one ever. It’s not even close.