MLB Contracts: The worst contract on every team

As free agent season begins, here’s a look at the worst MLB contracts impacting every current major league team

Every family has a blemish, an under-achieving member nobody wants to associate with over the holidays, but whose inevitable presence can’t be consigned to the attic, much less the kiddy table.

It’s the same way in Major League Baseball, except that the family black sheep are kin by contract rather than blood.

As this free agent season ramps up, the one sure thing is that some team will sign some player to a contractual millstone. Because of its heft, the deal will initially be greeted with virtually unanimously favorable press. But next summer, or the summer to follow, reality will set in. That reality may take the form of an injury,  unrealistic expectations or the unfulfilled need to compensate some other player with assets already committed to the millstone.

Whatever the reason, the contract will soon be exposed for what it may always have been: a bummer.

Here we look at the worst of baseball’s worst, the existing deals from hell. They are presented one per team in order of their damnability, from the least awful to the truly wretched ones threatening to damn a franchise to the eternal flames of fifth place.

The criteria, which are subjective and thus debatable, include the contract’s length and cost, its impact on the signing team, and the value returned by the player for the contract’s duration. Feel free to disagree.

In every case, the introductory information provided below includes the signing player plus the length of the deal, its cost to the team, the years it is in force as well as the agent or agency that negotiated it. Note: This piece is not intended as a criticism of any team, player or agent, even if one agency is responsible for nearly one-quarter of the contracts that are singled out.