At Least Your Team Didn’t Sign Jonathan Broxton to a Three-Year, $21 Million Contract

Oct 6, 2012; San Francisco, CA, USA; Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher Jonathan Broxton (50) pitches the ball against the San Francisco Giants during the eighth inning of game one of the 2012 NLDS at AT

Free agents will be signing contracts soon. Teams have kicked all the tires there are to kick, they’ve looked at all the statistics and medicals and all that other secret junk they have that they won’t tell us about. They’ve ran the numbers, baby. The rubber is about to hit the road, the ink to hit the paper. Wheeling and dealing and making moves and all that. And some of those moves are going to upset fans—most of them, probably. Free agency isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, really. There’s a lot of negotiating and overpaying going on out there. Extra years and extra money always seems to get tacked on before things become official. A player you’d be ecstatic to sign for four years is suddenly a bummer when the team commits to five. You can feel the roster constricting, the holes that won’t get filled, disappointment looms. It will happen. Your favorite team will hurt you. And when it does happen, dear reader, take solace in the fact that at least your team didn’t sign Jonathan Broxton to a three-year, $21 million contract.

I mean, Broxton is fine, I suppose. He’s managed to post some pretty decent ERA numbers in the last few seasons, and his advanced statistics remain solid. There just has to be a better way to spend money than on an aging, velocity-losing reliever coming off a serious injury. Broxton might be a really good reliever, he might even be a really good reliever for three straight years and earn his contract. But relative to other positions in baseball, relievers are easy, you shouldn’t have to pay a premium for their services, and you certainly shouldn’t have to commit three years to old, tired, injured arms.

Stop and think about Jonathan Broxton’s old, tired, injured arm. Visualize it. Know it.

Now give it $7 million a year.

Terrifying, right? Fear not, fans of non-Reds baseball teams. No matter what mistakes your team makes in free agency, no matter how many millions they squander or holes in the roster that remain unfilled, at least your team made an attempt to spend their money in a responsible way and didn’t sign Jonathan Broxton to a three-year, $21 million contract.

And if you’re a Reds fan? Well, you have Joey Votto. No one feels sorry for you.

Kyle writes baseball nonsense at The Trance of Waiting. You can follow him on Twitter @AgainstKyle.