Back in the days when I had time to play Rotisserie Baseball, my better-looking but balder partner and I liked to sandbag other teams with high-cost players, husband our resources until the bidding cooled off, gobble up value picks and then spend lavishly on one or two players who particularly tickled our fancy. (Usually they were top players at positions of scarcity.) It was a pretty successful strategy.
The San Francisco Giants may be engaged in the same dance, albeit with a million times as many dollars.
The Goliaths inked pitcher Matt Cain to an astounding five-year, $117.5 million deal Monday that doesn't kick in until after this season and that can't, by any reasonable measuring tool, be justified. It's too much money for too long for a guy who isn't even the ace of the staff.
Make no mistake, Matt Cain is a stud. He's thrown 190 innings in each of his first six years, posting park-aided ERAs between 2.88 and 3.76 in all but his rookie campaign. Because he gets less support from his hitters than from his jock strap, his W-L record belies his excellence, but he is among the 10 best hurlers in the NL.
The problem is, early studliness does not ensure future results. Some inning eaters keep gobbling, like Greg Maddux and Mark Buehrle, and some push away from the buffet, like Johan Santana and Mike Hampton. That's why in the old days, say 2010, long contracts requiring teams to take big risks involved smaller payouts.
But there may be a method to the Big Men's madness. If the they can lock down ace Tim Lincecum with another mega millions outlay, they will have the entire young core of their roster signed or under team control for half a decade. That includes starter Madison Bumgarner, catcher Buster Posey, cornerman Pablo Sandoval and promising first baseman Brandon Belt. If a couple of their farm assets ripen on schedule, the G-Men have a championship window that is closed without Cain and Lincecum.
Such justification is an empty bucket in Cincinnati, where the Reds re-upped Joey Votto for a decade at $225 million guaranteed -- and it doesn't even commence until after the next two seasons, when anything could happen, like their slugging first baseman blowing out his Achilles on the last play of the season just before the cash machine starts pumping.
Again, Joey Votto is a monster, the best player the Reds have seen so far (he's only 28) since Joe Morgan. Really. He hits for average, gets on base, slugs, flashes leather, runs reasonably well, plays with hustle and humility, shares his hair product with the guys and tears up at Hallmark commercials.* But for a bout of depression that sidelined him for three weeks three years ago, he's been relatively healthy.
(*Or he doesn't, whichever.)
The Reds were right to seek to retain his services for the foreseeable future but they rushed into a deal they could have made a year or two later after assuring themselves that Votto didn't turn into a pumpkin at midnight of his sixth season. They are shelling out the superstar Benjamins, assuming all the risk and accepting the late-year over-payments without any concessions from the player. It's almost impossible to detect downside for Votto unless he reprises the second half of Barry Bonds' career, and even then he has $264 million of career earnings to salve his wounds.
Teams need to tell their players that top dollar and long guarantees are either-or propositions. If the club is going to accept all the risk, it has to get a discount. If they pay market rate, they don't have to make a long commitment. Our fantasy team may have spent $26 on Miguel Tejada, but we could throw him back into the auction the following year.
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