Baseball Stew: Are big baseball contracts justified?
In Part One of this story, we addressed the question of greed and how, in so many ways and in so many instances, the big contracts in baseball today just don’t seem justified.
Simply put, in the world of baseball soaring salaries never seem to end. Just when a person might be tempted to think salaries can’t possible go higher, they do. Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in the game today, recently set a record for the largest contract ever awarded to a pitcher based on total salary, giving him baseball’s highest average salary of $30.7 million per year, but that doesn’t mean he’s set the bar at its zenith forever.
Later Jon Lester, another fine pitcher to be sure, set MLB records for the largest signing bonus, $30 million, and for the largest upfront payment when he finalized his $155 million, seven-year contract with the Chicago Cubs. Lester will soon turn 31, begging a question asked also of other players who possess long term contracts such as Albert Pujols. The question is this: given the fact that aging players eventually wind down and contribute less and less as time goes on, will a given contract look good by the time it comes to an end? Will teams look back and regret such signings, or will the glut of money in the game allow owners to shrug any failures off?
Pitchers with long, proven records like the winningest lefty of all-time, 17-time All-Star Warren Spahn (so far Lester is a three-time All-Star) would cringe if he were around to see some of today’s paychecks. $73,500 is reported to be Spahn’s highest salary for a single season, and this is a guy who won 363 games, #3 all-time, and who led the NL in wins eight times—five years in a row from the year he was 36 through the year he turned 40. In fact, as a 40-year-old Spahnie won 21 games and led the league in ERA (3.02).
Today, marginal players get multi-year deals worth as much as 100 times more than Spahn’s $73,500 salary— heck, a player today making the league minimum makes almost 10 times what Spahn made at his peak salary. For example, while Luke Gregerson is far from being a bum, he’s no Rollie Fingers, either. He is a six-year veteran with a career record of 22-27, 19 saves, and a WHIP of 1.078. In 2015, as a member of the Houston Astros, he will earn more than $6 million.
Jason Hammel will earn around $10 million per season when he joins the Cubs in 2015, and his W-L record stands at 59-70. His ERA is a lofty 4.60, his WHIP is 1.392, and he’s never topped 10 wins in a single season. Brandon McCarthy went 10-15 last season (4.05) and he is a sub-.500 pitcher lifetime at 52-65 with a 4.09 ERA. That didn’t stop the Dodgers from agreeing to a four-year contract which will run through the year he is 35-years-old. And how much will McCarthy earn on average over that span– a crisp $12 million. Justin Masterson is coming off a miserable season in which his record was 7-9 and his ERA stood at an inflated 5.88. Think his agent hesitated before asking for big bucks? Think he or Masterson blushed when they finalized a one-year contract with Boston for $9,5 million–nope.
When the Cleveland Indians signed Gavin Floyd to a $4 million deal recently, I thought, “That’s a ton of money for a guy who’s just an average pitcher.” In fact, one could argue Floyd is the profile of an average pitcher—his lifetime record is precisely .500 at 72-72 and his lifetime ERA is run of the mill at 4.40. Then, when I saw an item in the newspaper on Christmas Eve which reported the average big leaguer will probably earn right around $4 million next season, it all made sense—that is, in a sort of twisted way. His contract also gives him the opportunity to earn an additional $6 in performance bonuses.
Dig through recent signings and you’ll find many more examples of such craziness, but the few mentioned here should suffice.
An idealist would argue that if players weren’t so greedy, and were willing to take fair compensation (enough to live very, very comfortably, but not as well or better than, say, dictators of small countries) and not constantly push for gaudy salaries, and if equally greedy owners wouldn’t charge so much for tickets that many families can ill afford a trip to the old ballpark, the world of baseball would be a better place in which to dwell.
In the early days of free agency, Bill Veeck, then the owner of the White Sox, said he didn’t mind paying high salaries to the bona fide superstars, but that the financial system which was in place rewarded mediocre players who piggybacked on superstars and hauled down overblown salaries. I kind of think even the liberal Veeck, who tended to fight for the “little guy,” would balk today at the salaries being dished out. I suggest even he might shout out, “Enough!”