MLB free agents: When millionaires realize they’re the dregs
MLB free agents not signed by now all fall into one odd category — the multi-millionaire who is too expensive at too young an age.
The market for MLB free agents this passing winter, as everyone knows, has been considerably livelier than last year’s market. At this time last year, the Phillies still hadn’t signed Bryce Harper. This winter, Harper has been in Spring Training camp for a while now, showing off his Phanatic doll, and the Phillies stopped signing people around Dec. 15 after a couple of big names were acquired.
This winter all the “important” players floating freely have found homes, and this is especially so among pitchers who could be considered starters.
In fact, when the Yankees lost Luis Severino Feb. 25 to planned Tommy John surgery, New York Daily News writer Kristie Ackert penned this line, “Free agent starters still not signed include Clay Buchholz, Andrew Cashner, Jason Vargas, and Matt Harvey.”
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Actually, Cashner is sort of being marketed as a reliever, but whatever. Since he isn’t signed, if the Yankees called and offered him a contract to start, it’s very likely the 57-97 lifetime pitcher would imagine he’d died painlessly and gone to heaven.
That isn’t the point here. It’s more that those four lonely names prompted a meditation on unemployed young multi-millionaires. (Don’t worry, we’re not going to veer into Bernie Sanders territory.)
When millionaires realize they’re the dregs
The Clay Buchholz Example
Every year there are a few or, some years, more of them – they’re like the clockwork figurines on old cuckoo clocks. They just show up. Some are or were pretty good, some were pretty bad by MLB standards (and tend to retire), and some are just “mediocre enough” to be in MLB limbo for a while.
And all of them show up at this point in their mid-30s because they’re very, very expensive. Or they think they are. Or their agents do.
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Otherwise, how do you explain a guy like Clay Buchholz still being on the unsigned list of MLB free agents? Yes, Buchholz has battled injuries. He’s entering his age-35 season, and he had a shoulder injury last season that kept him out of the majors for three months.
However, in ancient days, well before Buchholz’s $12 million-plus salaries for three straight years starting when he turned 30, he would definitely have a job this season.
Look at his numbers. He’s certainly not the greatest pitcher ever to be listed among MLB free agents, but he’s has gone 90-69 with a sub-4.00 era in the AL, with a 17-7 season when he was 25 (for a third-place team) and a 7-2 season with a 2.01 ERA in 16 starts for Arizona as recently as 2018. Yes, that’s a truncated season, but goodness, back in the day as the saying goes, somebody would have hired him by now because “he knows how to win.”
Of course, the geniuses who run MLB clubs now might chuckle at this because of secret information about this player’s health, but I suspect the real reason he hasn’t been hired is because of (drumroll, please) his agent or agents.
That is to say, for Buchholz, somebody at something called ISE Baseball. Guys, ladies of ISE, get this dude a contract. He has said, “I feel like I’m capable of pitching as well as I did five or six years ago. It’s not about money. It’s about considering myself a major league pitcher.”
You people do work on commission, right? Buchholz took a $10.5 million drop in salary to pitch last year.
Clay Buchholz is still too expensive, seemingly, but he’s made over $60 million. Do you actually think he’s desperately over-valuing himself? I guess that could be since, right, he might think his salary should go up after posting a 6.58 ERA last season. It might be, however, that the guy just wants to pitch in the majors another year.
When millionaires realize they’re the dregs
They’ve Priced Themselves Out of Their Profession in Their 30s?
How about the rest of these multi-millionaires who are just realizing they’ve been designated the pitching dregs of MLB free agents?
Andrew Cashner, as noted, has a lousy won-lost record, but some of that could be blamed on pitching for losing teams; on the other hand, his WHIP figures throughout his career are not particularly good. He did have a 1.194 as a starter for Baltimore for part of ’19 when he posted a 3.86 ERA, so maybe he should hope the Yankees give him some serious thought.
His agents are doing who knows what, but this guy has earned more than $41 million as an MLB player, and is, as per his $9.5 million contract last season, overpriced as a starter or reliever. He’s the dregs, and if he wants to keep making big money, he needs to drop his price.
Jason Vargas has that proverbial grit – wait, is there a proverb having to do with grit? Maybe.
The lefty pitched for the Mets and Phillies last season, ending the decade having earned more than $65 million in his career to go 99-99. Surely, he wants to win that 100th game. Who wouldn’t?
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At this point, no one saying anything knows if anyone is interested in Vargas.
Arguably, he’s overpriced. He made $2 million last year after a $6 million drop in salary. He’d seem to be the best candidate among these MLB free agents to announce retirement. He’s still a young multi-millionaire at 37. He’s made more than anyone else under discussion here.
When millionaires realize they’re the dregs
The Curious Case of Matt Harvey
Finally, there’s the youngest player we’re looking at, problem child Matt Harvey.
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Harvey’s injury history is so prominent it shows up in that special box on the right of the search page from Google for “matt harvey injury” – he’s had “Tommy John surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome, and a stress fracture in the scapula.”
Well, entering his age-31 season, if he does, he’s still getting some attention.
In 64 games started at the beginning of his career with the Mets, Harvey had a 2.53 ERA, so it’s not surprising that NJ.com writer Randy Miller suggests, “Maybe that old Harvey magic returns if the Yankees sign him to a minor-league contract and let him work with new pitching coach Matt Blake.”
Arguable – and if the Yankees let him start in the minors, he surely wouldn’t get anything even five zip codes away from the $11 million the Angels wrote into a contract for him last year. And this is because the Bombers would also have to ignore the clubhouse problem Harvey has seemed to be sometimes.
Moreover, has anyone given a thought to the idea that a stress fracture of the scapula is an indicator of bad mechanics? At the time of the injury in ’17, a Mets coach suggested the injury was “fallout from offseason surgery” even as Harvey was admitting he tried to push through discomfort. OK, then….
This is what happens when millionaires dig in their heels and then realize they’re actually the dregs of their profession, as age inevitably dictates.
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Expect Jason Vargas, perhaps, to gracefully retire from this group of MLB free agents.