The Yankees have wisely locked up CC Sabathia through 2018 for the GDP of Cote D'ivoire, but woe unto the franchise that wins the C.J. Wilson sweepstakes.
It's a thin market for quality starters this winter, leaving the Rangers' worm-killing ground ball specialist as the prize mound offering. The market appears poised to present the 31-year-old lefty with something like a six-year contract worth in the vicinity of $90 million. This could work out well. The roulette ball could land on 17. Neither is the way to bet.
First, let's review recent large, long-term contracts: CC Sabathia ($161 million), Johan Santana ($137.5 million), Barry Zito ($126 million), Mike Hampton ($121 million), Cliff Lee ($120 million), Kevin Brown ($105 million), Carlos Zambrano ($91.5 million), Mike Mussina ($88.5 million), John Lackey and A.J. Burnett ($82.5 million). Smell anything there?
That's 10 mega-contracts with two successes (Mussina and Sabathia's first contract with NY) and one that remains to be seen (Lee). All but one of the remaining deals face-planted like a drunken klutz. (That Santana has returned just 14.4 wins against replacement over the first four years of his Mets tenure at the cost of $78 million is due entirely to missing 45 starts over the last three years. He's owed at least $55.5 million over the next two years, which will really determine the efficacy of his signing.)
With the exception of Burnett, all the pitchers above had long track records of ace-level performance. Their new teams celebrated their contract negotiating "victory." D'Oh!
C.J. Wilson does not have a long track record of success; indeed, he has just two years as a starter on his resume. He has impressively delivered nearly 10 wins against replacement in those two seasons while toiling 200+ innings. His ERAs of 3.35 and 2.94 are all the more impressive coming in a hitter's park. On the other hand, he delivered up-and-down performances as a reliever in the five seasons prior.
Wilson is also older than most of the pitchers named above. A six-year deal brings him to age 36. Wilson's age worries me less -- what with just 708 career innings -- than the increased uncertainty attendant to each added year of a contract. A $90 million outlay requires 20 wins above replacement to pay off. That's three MVP-level seasons, four or five All Star-level seasons or six very good seasons of work, a taller order than Wilson is likely to measure up to.
There's one more pretty serious demerit on Wilson's balance sheet: the Rangers don't appear particularly eager to sign him to a market deal. Research shows that teams fare better when they re-sign incumbent free agents, presumably because they know more about the labor being offered. That the Rangers are skeptical should signal to other clubs that a similar attitude is in order.
Nolan Ryan and Braindrizzling seem to agree: caveat emptor on C.J. Wilson.
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