A-Rod’s First Contract Was A Good Move
Yesterday, Orioles General Manager Andy MacPhail spoke to some students at the Baltimore School of Law, and among other things, he said this:
Alex Rodriguez to Texas was the worst signing in the history of baseball in my view,” MacPhail said, according to The Baltimore Sun. “Why? Because he played as well as you can possibly ask the kid to play. He had great years. And the needle didn’t move at all. … The team didn’t improve. Attendance didn’t go up. But hey, they got the lead story on ESPN. Well, if that’s what motivates you, you’re going down the wrong path. You want to put 35,000 people in the ballpark, win the games. That’s what (fans) are there to see. That’s what the Orioles need—to win some games.”
MacPhail is right on with one thing – Rodriguez did indeed play as well you can possibly ask anyone to play. His productivity gets lost in the narrative, but take a look at what Rodriguez did for Texas after signing The Contract That Changed Everything.
2,172 PA, .305/.395/.615, .424 wOBA, +25.2 UZR (2002-2003 only), +26.7 WAR
For three years, Rodriguez averaged over 700 plate appearances per year while hitting like Albert Pujols and playing defense like Elvis Andrus. Rodriguez was far and away better than every (normal human head sized) player in baseball, and nearly averaged +9 WAR per season in his three years in Texas. Nine WAR, on average, over three years. For comparison, Pujols has never matched that production in any three year stretch of his career. During his time in Texas, Alex Rodriguez was absolutely phenomenal.
But, of course, MacPhail doesn’t disagree with that. He acknowledges Rodriguez’s greatness, but still derides the contract because the Rangers didn’t improve even with Rodriguez on the roster. They averaged just 72 wins per year during his tenure in Texas, and finished last all three seasons he was on the team, which pushes forward the narrative that MacPhail – among others – is promoting: that Rodriguez was a bust because the team he was on flopped. In fact, the story often gets pushed even further, with Rodriguez being blamed for the team’s failures because his contract presumably limited the Rangers from being able to afford to surround him with quality players.
The problem is that it’s just not true.
In 2001, USA Today lists the Rangers with an $88 million payroll – seventh highest in MLB – with $22 million of that going to Rodriguez. Removing Rodriguez from the picture, the Rangers’ remaining $66 million in expenditures would have still ranked as the 13th highest payroll in baseball that year, and that’s only removing the highest paid player from the Rangers. If you remove the highest paid player from every team, the Rangers move back into the top 10 in payroll.
In fact, here’s an interesting tidbit for you: Here’s the Rangers’ salaries for everyone but Rodriguez matched up with the 2001 Mariners’ salaries for everyone but Aaron Sele, their highest paid player that season.
Mariners, minus Sele: $67.7 million
Rangers, minus Rodriguez: $66.6 million
Both teams spent essentially an equal amount of money on their “supporting cast”, but the Mariners ended up tying the Major League record for wins in a season, racking up 116 victories and running away with the AL West. The Rangers finished a staggering 43 games behind Seattle that year, despite having the same amount of resources available to acquire players. The difference is that the Mariners got a +7.8 WAR season from Bret Boone, a +6.1 WAR season from Ichiro Suzuki, a +5.5 WAR season from Mike Cameron and Freddy Garcia, a +4.7 WAR season from Edgar Martinez, and a +4.6 WAR season from John Olerud. Those six players produced +34.2 WAR for a grand total of $31.5 million in salary.
The Rangers, on the other hand, paid Kenny Rogers and Darren Oliver a combined $14.5 million for a whopping +2.7 WAR, and that’s a generous assessment based on their FIP, as they each posted an ERA over 6.00 that year. They also gave Andres Galarraga $6 million for -0.1 WAR, Rusty Greer got $4.6 million for +0.1 WAR, and Ken Caminiti got $3.5 million for +0.1 WAR. The Rangers essentially flushed a huge chunk of their payroll down the drain on players who produced around replacement level, and I cannot come up with any rational way to blame that on Rodriguez.
In 2002, they sought to make some drastic changes to their roster, and in the process, raised their team payroll to $105 million, third highest in Major League Baseball. They gave Juan Gonzalez a two year, $24 million deal to return to the Rangers and try to recapture his past glory. They gave Chan Ho Park a five year, $65 million contract to try and fix their pitching problems. They traded Darren Oliver to Boston, and in exchange, they took on the remaining $17 million left on the final two years of Carl Everett‘s contract. They brought in John Rocker to try and stabilize the bullpen.
None of it worked. Those four big splash acquisitions combined for a total of +2.2 WAR, and the team was once again remarkably bad. The Rangers had simply invested in lemons, but again, I fail to see how any of that is due to having Rodriguez on the roster. Did he advise management to throw a large amount of money at bad players? Was he in charge of giving Carl Everett over 400 plate appearances despite a .295 wOBA and disastrously bad defense?
By the time 2003 rolled around, the Rangers decided that the best way to improve their roster was to overhaul their bullpen with name value relievers. They spent money on Ugueth Urbina, Jay Powell, and Todd Van Poppel; traded Travis Hafner to get Ryan Drese‘s questionable pitching ability and Einar Diaz as depth at catcher, and then went with young position players to try and rebuild, breaking in the the likes of Mark Teixeira, Hank Blalock, and Laynce Nix. Predictably, the combination continued to not work, and Rodriguez was shipped to New York following that season. His tenure in Texas was deemed a failure, and even today smart executives like MacPhail continue to hold up his contract as a shining example of what not to do.
The problem is that Rodriguez more than held up his end of the bargain, and if the Rangers front office had behaved with even moderate competency, they could have put some good teams together. The blame for the failure of the 2001 to 2003 Rangers does not lie with Alex Rodiguez’s large paychecks, but instead with the total wastes of cash that they surrounded him with. You want to know why those teams failed? Look no further than Park, Gonzalez, Everett, Oliver, and Rogers. In their attempt to surround Rodriguez with talent, they brought in a never ending series of terrible players who had name value but lacked ability. It didn’t have to be that way. They had enough resources to put good players around Rodriguez – they just failed to identify which players they should actually be giving money to.
Alex Rodriguez’s first contract was far from the worst deal in baseball history. In fact, given his performance in the years after he signed the deal, Rodriguez was actually worth the money he was paid. Unfortunately, the narrative of the deal lives on, despite all the illogical hula hoops you have to jump through in order to reach the conclusion that MacPhail suggested yesterday. Don’t believe the hype; A-Rod was not the cause of the Rangers failures, and the contract they signed him to was actually a wise investment. The problem is that was the only good investment that franchise made in those three years.
Well said.
I hear this a lot about Barry Bonds too, even though his contract was only for $15 million. When you have players putting up that kind of WAR, even if their contracts are big, you’re still getting a lot of value per dollar. In fact, it’s going to be hard to beat, especially when you factor in positional WAR density.
You might be the only non-Oriole fan talking about MacPhail being smart lately, especially after the Guerrero signing. The Orioles are paying $90m to win 70 games this season.
That’s why they play the games, douche.
Is there an Oriole at any position who is best in the division at that position? Maybe Wieters, but probably not.
Martin = Wieters
Tex/AGon > Lee
Cano/Pedroia/Zobrist > Roberts
Jeter/Lowrie/Escobar > Hardy
ARod/Youk/Longoria/Bautista > Reynolds
Gardner/Crawford > Scott
Granderson/Ellsbury/Upton > Jones
Drew/Swisher > Markakis
Ortiz/Manny/Posada > Guererro
Any pitching staff > Os pitching staff
Don’t need a crystal ball to see the Os in last.
Sure, if you put all the best players from the AL East into one super team, which is what you’re proposing.
Will the O’s finish in last? Probably. But they’re much improved thsi year.
AndyS: The point is that the Orioles’ lineup is worse than at least 2 teams, probably 3 and their pitching is worse than all of the others. There is no reasonable way to expect the Orioles to finish with more than a couple wins more than last season. They gave up talent and cash for the privilege to come in last.
You leave out variance in your logic. I could see decent odds of something going wrong for another team and them getting 4th. Plus, them improving the team will lead to more ticket sales, especially with marketable players like vlad.
andy s: I don’t buy into marketability of players. They’d have about the same performance with Scott-Pie-Reimold instead of Vlad-Scott-Pie and performance is what sells seats.
Variance suggests that yes, the Orioles could finish 4th or even could shock everyone and come in 3rd, but it doesn’t look like the Orioles will be anywhere near first in the division or the wild card.
You play to win the game!
actually that is right around the expected outcome of a $90m team. Around 30 War for $90m is not market value, but I believe it is around the major league average value. The problem is that people usually judge teams on raw payroll and wins as opposed to payroll vs marginal wins. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Replacement level is what, 48 wins? Getting 22 WAR for $90MM is around $4m per win, which is not good for a rebuilding team.
Dash, you seem to be having a bit of a problem with drawing conclusions before games are played and then using those conclusions as evidence. Your entire list above is filled with possibilities, not certainties (It wouldn’t be all that shocking if Jones, Wieters, Hardy or Markakis ended up with the best seasons at their respective positions in that division…and that’s assuming the entire division stays healthy).
Then you’re assigning them a team WAR and using it to calculate $/win? WAR is not a projection tool. It’s a cumulative statistic. And considering that the O’s were a 20 WAR team last year and are now plugging Lee and Hardy into positions that accounted for literally negative WAR last year, along with what could be a slight bump from young pitchers improving, it wouldn’t be all that shocking if this is a 30 WAR team.
Bottom line, let’s let them play the game before we write the story.
Oh, and yeah…the A-Rod contract was fine. Certainly better than Albert Belle’s deal with the O’s, for instance.
Ben: I wasn’t using war as a projection system, I was looking at projections for the division and deriving an outcome out of them. Nik brought up the dollars-to-war argument and I was simply refuting it.
Yes, it is possible that the Orioles could have players that outperform other players in the division, but the odds are that they won’t. The Orioles need more good luck than any other team in the division to do better.
I don’t need to be a rocket scientist to look at projections and see that the Orioles won’t win the division or the wild card and it won’t be close. I don’t need to be a genius to see that a $90m payroll is way too much for these kinds of results.
Dash, how many wins should $90 M get a team?
Yes. You don’t play to win games. You play for rangz. The Orioles have a minimal chance of one. Many of their moves are silly in this context.
You just took a veritable sh*t down Andy MacPhail’s throat.
Really good write-up. I think another large factor in the “failure” of this signing was that their division was really good during the time Arod was a Ranger. You mention the Mariners ridiculous 2001 season, but the Angels and A’s were also great.
better than every (normal human head sized) player in baseball
Laughed at that…
Great write up, totally true. I wonder how long it will take for “baseball people” to turn into “logical thinkers”. It’s cool to look back at that Ms team with advanced stats in hand, too… so good.
I laughed as well, considering by A-Rod’s account he too was sipping from the Chalice Of Roidheadedness.
Yea, he never really looked unnatural though. Did he admit to taking them back then? In the words of Snooki, was certainly no gorilla juicehead. I think that’s why Bonds and McGwire bother me more than any of the other steroid guys. They were just… greedy. Great. You have 68 inch biceps. And two years ago you were both rail thin. Awesome.
There’s roiding, and then there’s I WANNA WEAR BIGGER FUCKING HATS roiding. I don’t think one is better than the other, but the latter is certainly more hilarious.
Telo:
“His voice shaking at times, Alex Rodriguez met head-on allegations that he tested positive for steroids six years ago, telling ESPN on Monday that he did take performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers during a three-year period beginning in 2001.”
No mention about his hat size though.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3894847
Yep, settles that. Thanks, Erik. Still, I think the subtlety is still worth something to me. Not sure why.
I laughed at the normal human head sized comment too, but it confused me a bit: I don’t remember Vicente Padilla being that exciting back then.
I was wondering why he was bringing up Kevin Mench.
So.. does he have a huge dome? Or this is a comment about his character… sorry to need it spelled out :)
I thought it was odd that he considered Bruce Bochy one of the best players in baseball for being a manager.
I hate Vicente Padilla.
It was because he was injured and couldn’t pitch that the 2002 All-Star game was a tie.
I think MacPhail is making a pretty good point, he just picked a bad example of it. I imagine there’s pressure in Baltimore to go out and pay big money for a big name, but if your team isn’t equipped to put a winning team around it, it’s not worth the trouble. Like you point out so well though, Texas was plenty equipped to do so and just didn’t. Miguel Tejada might be a more apt example; Baltimore spent a lot of money on a pretty good player in a setting they really had no ability to compete in.
It’s not so much MacPhail’s point as his point of view, which is one he shares with every GM in baseball: he’d rather not pay top dollar to get the top players. Any narrative that enables them to justify spending less, or passing on handing out big contracts to the best players, is a narrative they want to tell (and believe). When directed towards the players, this narrative is about cost containment; directed towards the fans (especially in the case of the Orioles) it’s about setting expectations. It never about logic (it merely has to sound logical).
Exactly. When there’s a once in a decade type player hitting the market, you pay what you can to get him.
If you lose, this is the narrative you tell the fanbase to make them feel better.
Fact is, there’s never been evidence that teams pay a premium dollar per marginal win value for top talent, and that the value is most likely linear. Therefore, assuming teams analyzed correctly, missing out is neither good nor bad, it just is.
If a contract nets a team the best player on the planet, and then that player not only lives up to the contract, but also exceeds it, then it’s clearly not the worst contract ever.
The point he’s perhaps trying to make, that spending too much money on one player might hurt an organization, is valid, it’s just that A-Rod wasn’t the good example. Probably also doesn’t help him that he’s questioning the wisdom of signing A-Rod when his team just signed Vlad. Glass houses, and all that.
My guess is the real point of the narrative is to try and talk down the need to pay players a lot of money. It’s the GM’s side of the story. Yet it’s not working. Just look at the money given to Jayson Werth, Cliff Lee, and Carl Crawford. They money is a flyin’
So he didn’t desperately try to sign Mark Teixeira? Because I’m pretty sure he did. So is does he think paying one player that much money is a bad idea only because nobody good enough to demand that much money will go to his lousy team.
Powell and Van Poppel were signed prior to the 2002 season, not the 2003 season.
What I find really interesting is that the people who jumped all over the A-Rod contract (not necessarily MacPhail) are typically the same ones who justify deals like Jayson Werth’s by saying that non-contenders need to pay a premium to get free agent talent to come there, and that this is somehow a good thing.
Hahaha yea. And when the non-contenders are over paying… and the powerhouse franchise’s with deep pockets are overpaying…. wait a second……………..
Then the guys in the middle get a good deal. Yeah this is confusing.
It must be so demoralizing to hear the GM of your team make such stupid comments, especially when it appears they really believe it.
Andy MacPhail is a rhetoric machine. He’ll make any excuse to try to get Orioles fans to continue to believe that it’s “not the right time” to spend on marquee talent.
It’s this kind of talk that has led a lot of Oriole fans to believe that MacPhail was brought in not to rebuild the Orioles into a championship caliber team, but to reduce spending and make more money for Peter Angelos.
If the O’s make another laughable “attempt” to sign guys like Pujols and Fielder next winter, I might start to believe that.
Comparing to Pujols isnt fair. He has not even been whispered of using roids, while A-rod used. Compare him to Bonds and all the juice headers of the era. Leave albert out of it lol
it’s for comparison of performance. so that the audience gets an idea of how much ARod did earn that contract. people always point to that megadeal and say it was a mistake and should have never happened, perversion of baseball, blah blah. that contract was a good deal for the best player in baseball (at the time). however, his 2007 deal… kill me now lol. and ARod did use, but not nearly on the level of bonds or mcgwire. nothing close to that. they grew 100 pounds of muscle in a year, gaining about 30HRs per year ON TOP OF the 30HRs they would hit per year normally. ARod from maybe a 40-45/yr guy (when he was that age) to a 50/yr guy, not nearly as huge a jump. still though, it is the principle of the matter…
Trying to judge who did more steroids and who got helped the most by them is worse than just talking about steroids. Fuck that.
Comparing A-Rod and Pujols is perfectly fair. Sure ARod admitted to using steroids, but you don’t know how often he took them or for how long. In the big scheme of things it doesn’t matter.
Alex Rodriguez is and was a baseball player.
Albert Pujols is and was a baseball player.
They played in the same or similar eras. They both have put up ridiculous numbers. They are inherently comparable.
Does it make Pujols that much better that we haven’t heard a whisper of steroid? To some small degree yes. However, just because a guy cheated doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate how good at baseball he is and try to get a good comparison against another great player in the same era. If we took this to a logical conclusion no player would be comparable to any other player because we don’t know whether either of the players cheated or not.
I think the comparison is just there to illustrate how stupid a 9 WAR average is. It’s so good that Pujols doesn’t even get there. That’s not a knock on Pujols; the only reason Pujols isn’t getting there is because playing 1B prevents him from getting meaningful WAR from his defense, both in positional adjustment and the opportunity to put up gaudy range stats.
It is a bit of an exaggeration to say he hit like Pujols, because he didn’t get on base as much. That .426 career OBP is what really sets Pujols apart as a hitter (A-Rod’s a very respectable .387) even more than the power.
Of course, he doesn’t play shortstop.
Roids don’t help as much as people like to think. This isn’t football.
You are an idiot.
Bonds 73.
I don’t think we really have any idea how much roids help hitters or pitchers.
How do we know how much they help football players? Or sprinters? Or swimmers? Or bodybuilders? Or weightlifters?
How do we know anything?
Being able to put a specific quantity on it, that applies to wide range of individuals, with unique makeup and abilities, is not a requirement for establishing knowledge.
We know they help recovery, strength, speed, etc.
I don’t want to rehash the whole steroid discussion again. But look at the career numbers and seasons of some of those that have admitted to use, and compare their own performance to their own performance. McGwire, Bonds, Canseco, Caminiti, etc.
Steroids won;t affect everyone in the same way or the same magnitude, but what are we really expecting in order to conclude that they “help performance”, including baseball players?
chuckb seems to believe that without an RPG-style statistics system on steroid bottles, any claims of them enhancing humans may as well be made up. or maybe there’s a certain total bonus you can get, divvied up between certain things, like you can have +10 total, be that +5 STR and +5 health regen, or +3 SR, +3 hat size, +5 regen, -1 testicle size
Oh there have been whispers about Pujols over the years. Just like there have been whispers about Piazza and Bagwell and other players. Not getting caught does not mean he didn’t/isn’t taking some form of PEDs.
I’m also not saying he did. Just not making assumptions either way.
…guilty until proven innocent, then, huh
Oh, please, fredsbank. People (like you) screaming about how terrible steroid users are created the “guilty until proven innocent” situation. All one of you idiots has to do is start a rumor and a guy’s rep is ruined. Who cares if someone used steroids. As it was stated above, we don’t know how much of an effect they have on baseball players.
break out the critical reading skills and maybe you’ll see that’s exactly the point i made
While I agree with the sentiment it is convenient to forget that ARod put up 9 WAR season in no large part to him cheating and taking performance enhancing drugs. In any other profession you would be black-balled for life. This is like saying the 100m runner ran great times for the 100m but he neglecting to mention got a 20m headstart in every race. ARod was a great player back then without any “help” but once you turn that corner, all your accomplishments are moot as all performances now become suspect. Players that admittedly cheat the game after years of lying should be villified, not glorified on the basis of a performance that was aided. From an on-field performance ARod’s contract was justified but this situation is not that simple.
well except that roid numbers count as much as regular numbers in games and on the field. so while his accomplishments are tarnished, the games he won with the team and the actual value to contract ratio remains the same. doing roids hurt his credibility for sure, but it did help the team, making the deal even better, and making the team look worse for not being able to win with him…
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/
read it
If I post internet articles that provide evidence to the contrary, and leave it at that … which one of us is correct?
is it lonely up there, on your pedestal?
Nope. There are a lot of “born-again” sportswriters and Monday-morning-quarterback fans up there with him.
“they brought in a never ending series of terrible players who had name value but lacked ability.” Kind of what the Mariners did by bringing in Milton Bradley and Ken Griffey Jr.?
Clearly it WAS all of A-Rod’s fault. If he had shared his steroids with all of those crappy, expensive players, they would have been better!
yea wtf arod! share the wealth man! how inconsiderate of him. obviously deserves his reputation of not being a team player. lol
He tried to give Carl Everett some, but he refused, saying “They didn’t have that shit in the Bible, so I don’t believe in it.”
It’s even worse. He’s heard people claim that a-steroid came crashing to earth and killed the dinosaurs, which he also doesn’t believe in. Therefore a-steroids are part of the secular humanist anti-biblical conspiracy, and taking them will turn him into an extinct dinosaur.
Which somehow seems to have happened anyway.
There was not a problem of Texas Rangers sharing steroids. Actually, based on reputation, they were one of teams that shared them the most. *grin*
True.
Two things:
1) How much did the Rangers have to pay the Yankees to take A-Rod? $70MM. This changes the $/WAR argument substantially.
2) This might be what MacPhail really believes, or what he wants to let us believe, or what makes a good speech to a group of law students who probably don’t understand UZR or even OPS+.
1) I think it’s less than that (there was a lot of deferred money, which I think got cancelled when he opted out). Still, paying Rodriguez $70MM to play All-Star-level ball somewhere else certainly makes the trade worse, but I don’t see how it changes the valuation of the three years he actually spent in Texas. They didn’t sign him with the intent to deal him and eat part of his salary three years later.
2) While I don’t think MacPhail is just saying this to mess with our collective head, you’re certainly right that his actual take on this is probably more nuanced than five or six sentences during a single speech.
Source:
http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2004/12/alex-rodriguez_01.html
We could argue whether or not the $70MM is a sunk cost or can be considered salary, but either way it hinders the ‘contract is a success’ argument.
So the A-Rod contract was a good move. Got it.
Slow news day, eh?
it was actually a pretty daring topic, considering how much vitriol Arod gets. but um… yes it is actually a slow news week in baseball. the biggest news was the twins might be sort of almost interested in considering maybe trading liriano if they got a hypothetically huge and impossible offer from a team that could never come back to hurt them!
Man, its been slow news day in the baseball word since the announcement of the HOF voting results.
God, I can’t wait for March 1…
God, I can’t wait for Pujols to sign.
Any minute now …
… still waiting …
*** crickets ***
you forgot “with a shitty team and not help them at all despite being so awesome”
Furthermore, you could argue that such a dominant player, even at the price of ARod, actually helps the team financially. There’s less of a need to acquire more premium players across the roster (and pay more for every WAR above a certain threshold). Roleplayer type players at 2-3 WAR apiece could have helped the Rangers win big instead of overpaying over-the-hill veterans
Sure, A-rod’s contract was not the worst ever. You don’t need to look far to find other highly-paid players on bad teams in situations where the “needle didn’t move.” At least A-rod played well enough to earn his money.
But that said, I didn’t take the McPhail’s comments as a rip on A-rod personally but more as a comment on the unrealistic expectations that were placed on him and the motivations of ownership and management in building a team. Ultimately the desired results failed to materialize for the Rangers and so it’s easy to see how the contract could be viewed as a failure from that perspective.
except that the contract was not a failure. the contract was a success. the team around him was a failure. you see it’s the terminology of “the contract was a failure because the team didn’t win” that makes it seem like a bad contract. his contract helped the team enormously. it was a big success. the FO that surrounded him with crap was a failure.
Viewed in a vacuum it did help the team. He individually played well enough to merit the contract. But from the team’s perspective, did they sign him to a historic contract to be a hall of fame player on a bad team? MacPhail is saying that if team goals are to win games and sell tickets, those aren’t necessarily going to be achieved by making a splash in free agency even when the player lives up to his deal. The quote reads to me like a criticism of fans, owners and FOs who think big-ticket free agents are the solution when there’s a lot more that goes into building a successful team.
“Ultimately the desired results failed to materialize for the Rangers and so it’s easy to see how the contract could be viewed as a failure from that perspective.”
So, because the Giants won the World Series last year, Barry Zito’s contract was great, right? Baseball is a team sport and you can only look at contracts by what the player could have been expected to do, the market at the time of the signing, and what he ultimately accomplished. If a team wins or doesn’t win, is not the fault of one individual player. ARod’s contract was not even close to being the worst contract the Rangers gave out in that period.
I am blown away by the fact that Aaron Sele was the highest paid player on the 2001 Mariners. AARON SELE!
That was my favorite part of the article as well.
Did that account for Ichiro’s posting fee at all or just called it part of something else?
I still can’t believe how that 2001 team worked out.
Couldn’t you make the argument (from a GM’s perspective) that the contract was bad mostly because it reset the possibilities for how much a player could get and for how many years? Or is that another myth? Did the ARod contract change the way players were paid in the following years?
Yes, that’s definitely the narrative the GMs want everyone to hear (whether it is true or not) and the reason GMs like MacPhail repeat it (whether they believe it or not).
Great analysis Dave . . . In addition to all of the other terrible moves you list that were made by the Rangers, how about the fact that even if Arod “earned” his money, that Boras got the Rangers to massively overpay for him as the only competitive bid was the Mariners @ $100 million over 5 years vs the Rangers $250 over 10 years
You don’t really believe that do you? Manny got 8/$160M the same offseason.
Hicks overshot the market with ARod, but there was no way 5/100 was going to be the next highest offer.
That is not accurate at all, the Braves offered something like 180-190 million.
Was MacPhail arguing that ARod’s contract limited TEX financially?
Or, from another perspective, was that it does not make sense financially to pay market value to premium FAs unless you can field a winning ballclub concurrently.
That’s a timing issue, not a financial constraint.
That’s kinda what I was wondering. Weren’t the Rangers coming off a last place finish the year they got A-Rod? I don’t remember what their farm system was like or how it was viewed so I’m not sure what expectations were for the team in the coming years but if it wasn’t that good did it make sense to spend 250mm on one player if you had no shot of competing in the near future?
It was a 10 year deal for a guy entering his prime. It’s reasonable to believe that even if the team wasn’t contending for a championship during years 1 and 2 that they would over the course of those 10 years.
Here here.
This article is a great example of why I’ve become a regular fan of Fangraphs and why I think Dave Cameron is one of the premier sportswriters out there right now.
Would love to see Dave do a comparison of the most valuable three-season stretches ever. I imagine A-Rod’s in Texas would be way up there.
I’m guessing it’s a very sel;ect few … ARod, Pujols, Bonds, Ruth, Morgan, Mantle …
Ruth probably has multiple 3-year segments on there.
Morgan is one that probably goes overlooked quite a bit. But his peak was just unreal (halfway short, but unreal).
Bonds had a 4-year stretch where every season was 10+ WAR (3 of the 4 years were 12+ WAR/each)… and another 4-year stretch (PIT) where he nearly averaged 9 WAR.
Morgan had 5 consecutive years of 9+ WAR seasons.
from 1905-1909 honus wagner was worth 10+ WAR each season
from 1955-1957 mantle was worth 10.2, 12.2, and 12.0, followed by 9.2 in ’58, two 7+, and then 11.1 in ’61
ruth’s last season with the sox and first two with the yankees saw 10.3, 14.1, and 14.4. 1922 he must have been hurt or something, posting a little girl’s 6.7 WAR, and the next two years saw him post 28 WAR. another short season saw a toddler’s 3.9, the next 3 years he put up 37 WAR. followed, yet again, by a lame season, this time of just 7.8 (why didnt he just retire, he was clearly done) he shut everyone up with 30 WAR the next 3 seasons.
i want to go hide in a corner now
Willie Mays, 1962-1965 WAR:
11.1, 10.2, 10.9, 11.5.
I don’t know, I think McPhail has a point. Would it be a good idea for Kansas City to sign Pujols, and still lose 90 games next year? Would they get enough of an increase in ticket sales to make up that money? TX was awful, they signed ARod, and didn’t get better. Ergo, in retrospect, it didn’t work. Doing the deal may have made sense, that doesn’t mean it worked. It makes sense for me to put money in my retirment account, that doesn’t mean that things couldn’t go downhill and I could not lose it all. The point has layers, that I think you are ignoring.
1. Don’t sign the biggest contract in MLB if the rest of your team stinks, and you have no farm system. That is not likely to make your team a winner.
2. You can make the right choice, and it can still not work out. (you can make the wrong choice, and it can work out). In retrospect, TX did not get their money’s worth out of ARod because they made so many other bad decisions. Like if I buy expesnive Tequila and then mix it with Chi Chi’s margarita mix, that tequila may be worth buying, but not if I mix it with swill. (heck, I could mix it with something I have never tried, that seems like a good idea, but it could taste awful – did I get my money’s worth if I then poor it down the drain?).
I’m a huge believer in statistical analysis and all the stuff this site stands for. But, that doesn’t mean that ARod’s contract was good for TX (it may have been fair or not, but it didn’t help TX win or make more money).
Nicely spoken.
Does it make sense for the Royals to sign Pujols next year?
Maybe. They have a really strong farm system and Pujols will sign and 8-10 year deal. They may not compete the first couple of years but it’s not unreasonable to think that they’ll compete in the AL Central in years 3-8. Pujols adds 5-6 wins (or 7 or 8) to the Royals in the first couple of years and gives the players and fans some hope and the team some revenue they can use to add a couple of other parts. If their young guys pan out, it’s reasonable.
Exactly. MacPhail isn’t blaming ARod’s contract for Texas’ misery. He’s saying that it wasn’t enough to alleviate it, so why spend that much money for a headline on ESPN?
It looks like Dave took the wrong opportunity as a launching pad for an otherwise strong argument.
You;re shifting the argument. MacPhail said it was the “worst contract signing” ever, while you’re questioning if it was good for the Rangers. There’s an Atlantic Ocean-sized gap between those two scenarios.
The failure of the A-Rod contract wasn’t A-Rod. It was in the Rangers’ front office. Dave Cameron clearly showed they had money to spend elsewhere, yet they deployed that money poorly.
Under MacPhail’s belief, if the Orioles once again finish last in the AL East, all of his moves and money spent should represent the worse series of moves in baseball history.
MacPhail gets a FAIL in logic.
Yeah I agree with that one guy there is no chance Albert Pujols did steroids. Definitely.
So FanGraphs rips McPhail for signing Vlad to a 1yr 8mil deal because the O’s have no chance of competing but is okay with a 250mil deal when the Rangers had no chance of competing?
At the end of Vlad’s deal the O’s will not have been competitive for every (1) year of his contract.
During the 10 years of contract given to A-Rod there is ample opportunity to build and field a competitive team.
The Rangers eventually did promote some young quality players in Tex and Blalock but if they had made just one or two “decent” moves a year for the first couple years they could have been in a much different competitive position, while there is basically nothing the O’s can do to change their fortune during the year of Vlad’s contract.
McFail has a point, even though he is wrong about the Rodriguez contract. Orioles fans need a ray of hope, and this year, they have a chance to be much less embarrassing. That will be more entertaining than the product they have put out there for years now.
you completely missed the point of this article, the rangers had plenty of hope, the mere presence of arod ensured that, they just couldn’t figure out how to make good on it and made really bad signings trying to build a team around him
A very good argument. And it clears up a lot of misconceptions about that signing.
Unfortunately, I can’t figure out where you’re refuting anything that MacPhail said.
It’d be different if he said any of the things you vaguely assign to *his* line of thinking throughout the article. As it stands, I don’t see where his quote and your argument are mutually exclusive.
The writer is correct in that A) Arod did everything humanly possible to live up to that contract, and B) all the other moves made by the Rangers were miserable
But if the deal was really a good deal, then A) why did the Rangers feel the need to trade him, and more importantly B) why did they have to eat so much money to do so?
Its kind of like buying a car for 50g, then getting 20g for it 3 years later when you trade it in. That depreciation figures into the overall cost of ownership
I think the reason the Rangers ate so much money was because there were a few perks and deferred money in the Rodriguez contract.
By that point, the Rangers were rebuilding, and I think Rodriguez expressed a desire to play for a contender at that point. Showalter was manager at the time, it would not surprise me that he would have wanted Rodriguez traded as well.
It was the worst signing in history, because it was $50 million more than anyone else was offering at the time, and after that, it really pushed the scale as far as salaries were concerned.
Second worst signing…or maybe a tie…A-Rods 10/$275 that the Yankees gave him. More money, lesser production….especially as he gets closer to 40.
for the love of god, it is “try to”, not “try and”!
Mike is right. You miss the point. ARod was great. The signing was still terrible though. You’re right it’s not his fault they didn’t win. It was the organization’s for wasting a lot of money on a player and not improving their wins, standing or attendance. I remember being mortified they were going to spend that much on a player and didn’t have nearly the pitching to compete even if they had murderer’s row. I knew they were going to stall or dump their younger players for retreads. It was a sickening feeling.
A signing isn’t just, ‘was the player good or not?’ It’s always contextual.
I think you are making Dave’s point for him. The signing was good. How the organization spent the rest of their money was the mistake.
If they had signed ARod with the intention of still finishing last, and spending little or no money to achieve that goal, then the signing was a mistake. That wasn’t their goal, and they showed it by spending plenty of other money. But they spent that money poorly. There was the mistake.
The A-Rod signing was a good one. Management simply did not make good use of him.
The Yankees 10 year deal with A-Rod may go down as the worst ever though.
Very unlikely it will go down as the worst ever as A-Rod is still going to be a productive player into his 40s, and the Yankees can afford to pay his salary. There is no way it will be a worse contract than Jason Werth, Barry Zito p Alfonso Soriano.
Darren Dreifort is the worst contract of all time. $21.2 million per WAR by FanGraphs WAR, undefined by Baseball-Reference WAR (by their formula, he produced 0 WAR for his $55 million).
we cant put the werth contract into that club, he hasnt played even one season of it yet, what if he goes and posts 10 WAR/year for the entirety of his contract? it will be one of the best ever if that happens
its not likely, i know, but it’s stupid to rate it as the worst ever before he has a chance to earn any of it
Why do you say Alfonso Soriano is a bad signing?
He’s already entering year four of his ten-year contract, and he has been productive, including being the key position player in delivering them the 2009 World Series based on his postseason. In Yankee-dom, that’s worth a lot. If they eat the last couple years of his contract, it will mean little to the Yankees and will zero impact on their ability to make moves.
The title of “worst contract” only goes to players delivering zero value for a high cost. Oh, think, Kei Igawa!
I’ve always liked Peter Gammons columns a lot; reading this column reminded me of how disappointed I was in his interview of A-Rod.
What an astonishingly weak, cream-puff, pussy-assed interview that was.
This is such typical snottiness and icoclasm from Dave Cameron. It’s so perfectly obviously that $252 million deal to which the Rangers signed A-Rod after the 2000 season was a terrible on . The fact that the Rangers went on to sign Chan-Ho Park to an even worse contract doesn’t make A-Rod’s contract good.
The Rangers were a last-place team in 2000, the year before A-Rod arrived in Texas. No other team offered A-Rod more than $190 million. The Rangers had a team payroll of about $58 million in 2000. It jumped to $87 million in 2001, meaning one player, A-Rod, now accounted for 30% of the team’s payroll.
A-Rod was never going to work-out in Texas. That’s why Rangers’ manager Johnny Oates quit a month into the 2001 season. A little more than two years after signing him, the Rangers traded A-Rod, along with about $40 million, to the Yankees. For four years, the Rangers paid A-Rod about $10 million a year to play for the Yankees.
The A-Rod contract was, in fact, so bad that PAYING THE YANKEES ALL THAT MONEY TO TAKE A-ROD OFF THEIR HANDS made more sense to the Rangers’ organization than keeping A-Rod and paying his contract.
Here’s what’s hilarious about our resident genius, Mr. Cameron.
- The Rangers ended-up paying A-Rod about $115 million for three seasons. The Rangers finished last-place each of those years, averaging 90 losses per season.
- The Rangers went through three managers in A-Rod’s three seasons, and there was noted tension between A-Rod and both Oates and Showalter.
- Since A-Rod has left, the Rangers have had three seasons with 87+ wins, and have averaged an 83-79 record.
- It has since been proven that A-Rod used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers.
I mean, the evidence is just overwhelming! Only Dave Cameron possesses the keen insight to see just how much the A-Rod signing benefited the Texas Rangers. The rest of us are fools for not recognizing this.
Yes and in 1999, 98, 96 they were in first place (finishing ahead of Arod’s mariners).
Think its fair to say that the rangers were coming off a bad year after having back to back division titles. Hard to blame Texas for thinking Arod could propel them back to the top, and same with hard to blame arod for thinking the rangers could be competitive.
I can’t argue with waynetolleson’s comments.
Most of the people read this site just accept everything Cameron says as gospel instead of thinking critically. Just because a guy has a high WAR doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a selfish, disruptive prick who cared only about his own stats and really didn’t care much about winning, leadership, or fostering harmony in the clubhouse.
You’re right – instead of performing fellatio people on a writer readers should look at the facts IN ADDITION TO WAR.
There’s a distinction I think Dave is missing here: the one between a “signing” and a “contract.”
I don’t think MacPhail is saying it was a bad contract – in fact, he says the opposite. But the point he is making is that the idea of signing A-Rod was a bad one for a team without the other pieces to contend. That point still holds.
Anyone else think that massively overpaying (in comparison to the other offers) is something the Cardinals might do with Pujols? I see a similar effect happening. A team that shows it can win but doesn’t really have a farm system and will be really top heavy signs most of their payroll to a few players. History is a great way to look at the future and it’s somewhat a similar situation.
the rangers didnt really have an analogous holliday, wainwright, and carpenter though
Not at all similar.
Pujols has already played 7, going on 8 awesome seasons in StL. MVPs and a World Series title, being the face of the franchise during the time, and quite possibly THE face of the franchise for the next 50 years … much like Musial was/is.
If the Cardinals do overpay, and I hope they do (compared to the alternative), it will be due to the “only wear one uniform for his whole career” type of thing.
The signing, if it happens, does present StL with some problems, namely they will have signed 2 very good players to long deals that will pay them in their declining years (even though both guys may still “earn their money”). But, it likely means that one of Carpenter or Wainwright will not be in StL long-term (I can guess which one it is *grin*).
It might also mean that Rasmus is not a Cardinal once his contract is up in a few years.
Or, StL is going to have to be a little more like Philly and forget their budget until the “Pujols Era” is over. The Cardinals system is not loaded or even balanced, but there are 1-2 potential stars down there. They are going to need to be very smart, annually, and pick up under-valued, but productive free agents to fill in gaps
But the Rangers paying ARod and the Cradinals paying Pujols are completely different situations. Unlike the Jeter deal, there are teams that are likely willing to pay Albert what the Cards would, if not more, including a team in blue just up I-55. I cannot imagine many things being more disastrous for a teams’ fanbase than to have its best player (ever) play for the hated rivals.
Texas was in no such position with ARod.
Tom Hicks purchased the Rangers in 1998 for $250 Million. The $252 million AROD contract was bad business because 1) it was worth more than the franchise 2) the owner couldn’t afford to pay it. Hicks was borrowing money from the bank to make payroll. Even after AROD was traded, Hicks couldn’t afford the deferred payments he owed to AROD.
By 2010, Hicks was about $600 million in debt and was forced to sell the team. So it wasn’t just the AROD contract that was bad, it was nearly every contract multi-year that put them over budget.
IMO, baseball owners shouldn’t be allowed to give out contracts that they can’t afford to pay. There should be an escrow account set-up for all contracts, so that owners can’t renege. Baseball needs to be fixed so that this never happens again.
Evaluating the O’s moves this offseason isn’t exactly what this article was about, but since most of the comments address it, here goes. AM went into this season looking to get better. He got a SS in his prime to replace Izturis. He got a 26 year old third with 40 homer power who walks a little to replace Tejada/Bell. For the position of SS or 3B, who out there beside Beltre, was better than what AM got for virtually nothing. So, you can’t fault those moves.
Now, AM had a huge hole at first base. There was a guy in his mid-30s who was injured last year, but prior to that had pretty consistently been an 850-950 OPS guy with a very nice glove. Oh, look he also wasn’t offered arbitration so he won’t cost a pick. Lee come on down to replace Wiggington for a year until Fielder or maybe another option is available.
So, looks at his pen. He has lots of young pitchers and doesn’t want them discouraged or having to pitch deeper into games than he wants because of a bad pen. Boy, Uehara had a really nice second half. Better offer him arbitration. But if you do, he will probably get upwards of $6mm. AM reads the tea leaves, doesn’t offer arbitration, and then gets Uehara for a cheaper deal. He then goes out and gets Gregg as insurance for Uehara and also to help eat bullpen innings.
Now AM looks around and sees that the Rays are down, the Jays are down having traded Wells (great move for the future, not so great for 2011), and the Yanks who seem to have lost out on everyone are looking awfully old. Maybe 2011 is the year to really make a push for the Orioles. All of the aforementioned teams will be stronger in 2012, Vlad is out there. Ok, let’s get Vlad and hope to sneak into second place or a wild card.
All of the above makes a ton of sense. The future has not been mortgaged, fans will come to the park, and Orioles fans are excited again. If the Yankees had signed Cliff Lee and the Rays hadn’t lost so much, the Orioles maybe continue on the same path. But AM sees an opening and is right to try to exploit it.
Evaluating the O’s moves this offseason isn’t exactly what this article was about, but since most of the comments address it, here goes. AM went into this season looking to get better. He got a SS in his prime to replace Izturis. He got a 26 year old third with 40 homer power who walks a little to replace Tejada/Bell. For the position of SS or 3B, who out there, beside Beltre, was better than what AM got for virtually nothing? So, you can’t fault those moves.
Now, AM had a huge hole at first base. There was a guy in his mid-30s who was injured last year, but prior to that had pretty consistently been an 850-950 OPS guy with a very nice glove. Oh, look he also wasn’t offered arbitration so he won’t cost a pick. Lee come on down to replace Wiggington for a year until Fielder or maybe another option is available.
So, looks at his pen. He has lots of young pitchers and doesn’t want them discouraged or having to pitch deeper into games than he wants because of a bad pen. Boy, Uehara had a really nice second half. Better offer him arbitration. But if you do, he will probably get upwards of $6mm. AM reads the tea leaves, doesn’t offer arbitration, and then gets Uehara for a cheaper deal. He then goes out and gets Gregg as insurance for Uehara and also to help eat bullpen innings.
Now AM looks around and sees that the Rays are down, the Jays are down having traded Wells (great move for the future, not so great for 2011), and the Yanks who seem to have lost out on everyone are looking awfully old. Maybe 2011 is the year to really make a push for the Orioles. All of the aforementioned teams will be stronger in 2012, Vlad is out there. Ok, let’s get Vlad and hope to sneak into second place or a wild card.
All of the above makes a ton of sense. The future has not been mortgaged, fans will come to the park, and Orioles fans are excited again. If the Yankees had signed Cliff Lee and the Rays hadn’t lost so much, the Orioles maybe continue on the same path. But AM sees an opening and is right to try to exploit it.
Well said CM. So good you said it twice. McPhail admits he is trying to reverse the Orioles 13 years of futility. He could have said “we’ll never beat the Red Sox or Yankees (although they are vulnerable this year)” and done nothing but that would do nothing for the fans. He picked up a few players who are upgrades from last year and he’s betting on the young players’ (Jones, Madusz, Wieters, etc.) improving. The improvements cost very little. Is it so bad to try give the fans something to be excited about? Sheesh, if they win half their games the Oriole fans will be delighted. Who cares what the WAR calculations suggest?
Oh, and scratch that apostrophe from “players’”.
Letting Alex go to the NY was one of the worst transactions of alltime! Andy MacPhail is a typical GM. “The industy is in big trouble with these salaries”,bla bla bla. This is why Macphail has largely been a bust where ever he has gone. Had they kept Haffner,Texeira,A. Gonzalez, Carlos Pena, to build around A-Rod, there is no telling what might have been. Imagine today’s Rangers lineup with Alex in the middle. How much higher would his numbers have been in Texas? I applaud Tom Hicks for having the courage to sign Alex. I detest the fact that he choose to sell, arguably the best player of ever. To NY, of all places.