By Bob Bonett
The way Major League pitchers are getting paid this off-season, I think my services might be worth three years and $24.5 million.
Better yet, not only could I score eight million per year, I could get that easy.
All I would have to do is put up, say, seven wins, and a 5.14 ERA.
I’m not even making these numbers up. Adam Eaton just signed with the Philadelphia Phillies for that exact salary with those exact (pitiful) stats.
Ladies and gentleman, if you want a great retirement plan, you should think about becoming a mediocre No. 4 starter. The free agent market is filled with them this off-season, and they are getting paid off big.
Real big.
And I’m not talking about the stars that are signing for tens of millions of dollars. I can understand top free agent starter Barry Zito signing for seven years and $126 million with the San Francisco Giants, (seeing as Omar Minaya feels El Duque and Tom Glavine are a great one-two punch for the upcoming season).
Heck, I can even sympathize with the Los Angeles Dodgers giving the unpredictable Jason Schmidt three years and $47 million. At least he has decent, if not great, upside.
Some of the other signings by the sorry excuses for general managers, (who, by the way, are often self-proclaimed geniuses), in the MLB this off-season have been completely mind-boggling, though.
Take, for example, the aforementioned Philadelphia Phillies splash in the free agent pool for 2007, Eaton. This guy has never won more than 11 games, never pitched more than 200 innings, and posted a downright horrific 1.57 WHIP last season.
Move on to the likes of Gil Meche, whose 4.48 era and 11-win season landed him five years and $55 million with the free-spending Kansas City Royals.
And if Meche is worth $11 million per year, Vicente Padilla must be worth every penny of his three year, $33.75 million deal with the Texas Rangers. After all, the ace of the group managed to post 15 wins last season, (albeit with a much less-than-respectable 4.50 ERA).
Wondering about postseason hero Jeff Suppan, formerly of the St. Louis Cardinals? Suppan proved that general managers in the major leagues have a very short-term memory. His career 4.60 ERA was good enough to earn him a four-year, $42 million contract with the Milwaukee Brewers.
No team could match the Chicago Cubs, though. Nor could any general manager match modern-day Albert Einstein Jim Hendry, either.
This is because the Cubs did not land only one overpriced starting pitcher, but two.
Start with Ted Lilly. This former great New York Yankees farmhand, (just kidding, of course), has a career record of 59-58 with a paltry ERA of 4.60 – lights out stats that earned him four years and $40 million dollars with the Cubs.
Move on to my personal favorite signing of the off-season, Jason Marquis. I hate to poke fun at one of Long Island’s own, (hailing from Manhasset, NY), but this guys is just the cream of the crop.
Last year, Marquis did win 14 games. I certainly will not take that respectable statistic away from the guy. However, the 14 wins went hand in hand with 16 losses. And a 6.02 ERA.
You read that correctly. In 33 starts, including 30 decisions, Marquis managed to post an ERA over six.
Now, one year removed from such an embarrassing season, you might expect Marquis to be debuting for the Independent League’s Long Island Ducks.
The Cubs obviously saw some flare in the six-year veteran, though, offering him three years and $21 million.
I guess Hendry figured that Lilly and Marquis could anchor a World Series-caliber rotation.
Now, you may feel like all of these signings are old news. Or perhaps the market demands big money for average pitchers now.
But when I read online the other day that Bronson Arroyo of the Cincinnati Reds, signed a two-year, $25 million extension, I lost it, and developed an overwhelming urge to vent about the inane amount of money being thrown around baseball these days.
Just a few years ago, Kevin Brown signed a contract worth in excess of $100 million. That number seemed ridiculous, and I am sure still haunts the Los Angeles Dodgers today, (the team that paid the over-the-hill pitcher $105 million for seven years).
Now, just nine years removed from that signing, these short-term memory general managers may have made more than just a handful of bad mistakes by clearly overpaying some of the most average starting pitchers in the majors.
I’ll be kneeling next to my bed tonight, praying that next off-season’s class of pitchers is more talented than this year’s. Because if I read next year that another 10-10 pitcher with a 4.80 ERA is signing for tens of millions of dollars a year, I might just lose it.
Oh, as for Kei Igawa’s five year, $20 million deal with the Yankees, and Daisuke Matsuzaka’s six year, $52 million deal with the Red Sox? I would not be the least bit surprised to see those two typical “guaranteed” AL East investments modeling underwear for the same company Tsuyoshi Shinjo now bares it all for, (“Body Wild”), by 2010.
Let your imagination run wild.