Aaron Harang and Matt Capps sign

The Los Angeles Dodgers have continued their recent philosophy of signing veteran free agents who they don’t need, as they have recently given starting pitcher Aaron Harang a two-year deal for $12 million. Some people actually believe that Harang’s improved 3.64 ERA signifies change, but those same people would be dead wrong. The Dodgers are getting the exact same pitcher who took a serious nosedive in Cincinnati.

There’s really no point in ruing over the gruesome details and looking back at another pitcher who flamed out under Dusty Baker’s watch. We must look toward the future, but the future looks even more bleak for Aaron Harang. Formerly one of the best pitchers in baseball, Harang is now safely a back-end starter with no upside and oozing with downside.

Last season, Harang’s statistics were pretty much sustained by PETCO, and his peripherals (6.54 K/9 and 3.06 BB/9) show that he really didn’t change a thing. He gave up less homers, but it actually wasn’t as much as one would hope when moving to such a cavernous home ballpark. Dodger Stadium isn’t exactly Coors Field either, but the difference between PETCO and the Chavez Ravine is significant.

Harang was worth just 0.6 WAR last season, and it really seems like anything more than $7 million dollars over two seasons is a poor deal. He is really only worth $2.5 million or so with those peripherals, and his lack of upside and probable decline (from this?) makes something more than a one-year deal just downright strange. This deal, much like the one given to Chris Capuano, is expected to be back-loaded- hello future owner of this downtrodden ballclub.

In any case, Harang has done very little to make us feel the least bit of optimism regarding the next two years of his future. Don’t expect this “turnaround” to continue while he is wearing Dodger Blue, and I will be left sitting here and contemplating what could have been had the former 5 WAR Reds ace not began his unforeseen decline. It seems like the Dodgers have given him around $12 million overall, and that’s just a waste of money. The sad thing is that it comes as no surprise, because all the Dodgers have accomplished this offseason- aside from locking up their best position player- is wasted money on veteran free agents who, quite frankly, are below-average.

The Minnesota Twins made a little move of their own, as they re-signed closer Matt Capps to a one-year deal worth $4.75 million. The Twins made it clear that their first option was to go back to Capps and keep him as their closer, but this was an awful deal. It isn’t quite as bad as the trade that brought the former Pirate to Minnesota, but $4.75 million for a subpar closer who was below the replacement level last season isn’t exactly a move Terry Ryan will likely look back on fondly a year from now.

Of course, one-year deals don’t create albatross contracts on the roster and don’t break legacies, but one-year deals that involve giving somebody too much money are a step backwards. The Twins basically threw away their money when they decided to make this move, because Capps upside is really just a 1 WAR player. That’s about what they paid him, so the Twins gave Capps what he is at his best. That’s not awful, but you have to remember that -0.4 WAR is what Capps is at what is presumably his worst.

Any time you put the word “closer” and the phrase “negative WAR”, you start to feel uneasy inside. And that’s understandable, because closers are supposed to be the stable guys who make you feel safe at the end of the ball games; not mercurial pitchers of the Edwin Jackson mold. However, not everybody is Mariano Rivera in the ninth, and Capps is one of those guys. He’s erratic and had 14 meltdowns compared to 24 shutdowns last season. He had a -1.12 WPA and isn’t a player who deserves to make almost $5 million per year.

Matt Capps was able to post a 4.75 FIP through 65.2 innings last season, and he only struck out 4.66 hitters per nine. He struck out over seven the previous two seasons, but he also benefited from a .263 BABIP in 2011. To make things even more confusing, Capps had a HR/FB of 11.1%, but there is a legitimate reason to his decline.

A pitcher’s fastball has a strong correlation with a pitcher’s ability and strikeout rate, and this is especially true for relievers (mainly closers). Matt Capps’s fastball lost about a mile per hour in speed, but the main thing is that opposing hitters started chasing his pitches much less and made much more contact (the significantly lower K rate).

Capps did undergo a steep decline last season, so it’s hard to think that he won’t bounce back to at least a 0.3 WAR level. Even if he is worth 0.5 WAR, that’s still not worth what the Twins are set to give him, and the downside of this deal is what makes it so ill-advised. Twins fans have endured these bad deals for quite some time now under the Bill Smith era, so the fan base was happy to see Terry Ryan make solid acquisitions with the signings of Jamey Carroll and Ryan Doumit. However, this most recent signing has hurt the overall confidence in Minnesota, because a team gaining so much momentum with the smaller victories in free agency- including the recent dump off of Kevin Slowey– just undid some of the good with this move.

While it is feasible to think that Capps can right the ship and be worth near 1 WAR, it’s more likely that he ends up being only a little bit above the replacement level.  Remember that Capps was worth -0.4 WAR three seasons ago, so it seems like a 0.2 WAR season is in store. $4.75 million is a lot for a closer, and it’s far too much for one of the most inconsistent closers in baseball. This deal has a chance to be a huge bust as far as one-year deals go. Yes, there is such thing as overpaying for one season; and it just happened.