Comments on: Since Pavano Signed…

By: DCFan

DCFan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:35:53 +0000

Ha ha ha – Pavano is enjoying his $$ while we all are sweating – he does not care. Got a multi million farmhouse in Florida with a bunch of cutie babes, watches Tampa bay games with wine and cheese. News is, dude got his own plane too.

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:59:50 +0000

Simmy, what I meant was that Pavano looked like he could be capable of being a good #3-#5 pitcher but that his injury prone-ness, and decreasing K/9 in the NL, before even moving to the AL were red flags that should have suggested maybe he’s not the guy the Yankees thought they would be getting.

I actually thought Vazquez deserved more time in pinstripes. Jaret Wright didn’t make sense, no, and Weaver’s a case where perhaps the mental makeup and scouting department could have helped a bit more because his numbers were pretty good coming in.

By: Simmy

Simmy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:48:50 +0000

“The Pavano deal, at the time, I considered a bit suspect. He seemed like a good #3-#5 pitcher but there definitely were red flags, mainly his decreasing K/9 and injury prone reputation.”

I’m a Yankee fan who liked the deal at the time. He was coming off of 2 200+ inning seasons and a great post season, the Yankees have tried almost everything this decade to improve their rotation but most seem to backfire. If Pavano turned out to give merely 180-200 innings a year with league average pitching, the contract would have been more than fine given the current set by recent free agents.
As for every Yankee move that has backfried, I liked most of them at the time… In no order: Weaver, Contreras Randy, Brown, Vazquez, and Pavano. The only ones that were bad not only after the fact but also at the time were Jaret Wright and Kei Igawa in my opinion, the rest were at worst justifiable as an improvement in the rotation short term based on recent results.

By: Ron

Ron — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:43:00 +0000

$2.9 million per run above replacement level pitcher according to Baseball Prospectus, or about 15-20 times more than the market value of a marginal run.

By: Joser

Joser — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:33:45 +0000

Hmmm, yeah. Which is worse: scrambling to find a starting pitcher because your regular starter is unavailable, or scrambling to find a reliever because your regular starter just gave up a bunch of runs in the early innings? Seems like in the case of the perpetually-injured player you’re starting each game no worse than 0-0, whereas with awful starters like Zito you’re quickly in a hole. The Yankees can just proceed like Pavano (and that $40M) never existed, whereas the Giants have to try to win games despite Zito’s best efforts to make them fail. And of course Zito’s money is a much bigger chunk of the Giants payroll (which doesn’t feature Yankeesesque infinite elasticity).

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:13:17 +0000

i’ve done this math before but can’t remember the exact figures…

but have a little fun and figure out how much the yankees paid pavano per inning pitched and per out.

the numbers are staggering.

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:29:51 +0000

Dan, yeah Pavano made it clear to his agent that he wanted to be a Yankee.

By: dan

dan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:28:31 +0000

What’s strange is that he actually took less money to come to the Yankees. Detroit offered him $50 million over the same 4 years (if there’s a source, it’s an ESPN magazine from that off-season)

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:57:42 +0000

Exactly. We’re essentially on the same page. The Zito and Hampton are worse because it’s more money for production that hinders the team… Pavano’s contract was just a waste.

By: AndrewYF

AndrewYF — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:53:33 +0000

But if the job is being completed by others, better, then that is better for the team than doing what Zito is doing.

Also, Pavano made far, far less than Hampton or Zito. Those contracts are in another galaxy of awful.