The definition of placebo states the following:
- A substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient's expectation to get well.
- Something of no intrinsic remedial value that is used to appease or reassure another.
Does that remind you of any free agent signings this off-season? It sure reminded me of some. Are the Kansas City Royals and Milwaukee Brewers really that eager to prove to their fans that they won’t just sit on their hands that they’re willing to tie up tens of millions of dollars in the mediocrity of Gil Meche and Jeff Suppan?
I would have thought that the Royals would have learned their lesson with the last 5-year $55 million contract they gave out. That contract got them an injury-plagued Mike Sweeney who has been barely able to muster more than 20 homeruns a year since signing the deal. What better way to answer an encore to that contract than with another of equal length and value to a pitcher who has rarely kept his ERA under 5.00 in any Major League season. And that’s not the worst of it. Gil Meche is a pitcher with a home/road ERA split of 3.91 to 5.34, and a lifetime ERA of 6.48 at Kansas City’s ballpark. And now he’s going to get paid $11 million to prove what…that he really can’t be a productive pitcher outside of the friendly pitching confines of Safeco field.
Hold your head high Bobby Higginson, Preston Wilson, and Adrian Beltre, because you no longer have the franchise worst baseball contract of all time. Not only is this contract bad in terms of how much it pays Meche each year, but also how long it pays him. Last year, at least the Royals only gave Scott Elarton, Reggie Sanders, and Jason LaRue two-year deals. They won’t be burdened with those average players beyond next season. But the Meche contract confounds the mind even further because we see that John Schuerholz protégé Dayton Moore was the one who drew it up. The history of Schuerholz and the Braves is one of prudent contracts, of not tying up money for a long time, and of not signing pitchers that are closer to the bottom of the league than the middle or top.
With Gil Meche, the Royals GM is drinking the Kool-Aid. "He is an impact pitching talent who fits in with our plan for long term success,” says Moore. “At 28, he is entering the prime of his career." He better hope he’s entering the prime of his career. He better hope that every year from now until the end of the contract is better than the last. But Dayton Moore seems to have based his decision to sign Meche on nothing more than hope. And while Meche may have great tools, how much will his home park retard his development if his historical stats are indeed an indicator of how he will fare.
Jeff Suppan’s contract might look rather reasonable when compared to Meche’s, but it is nonetheless equally as flawed. Like the Royals, the Brewers simply can’t afford to go around spending $10 million on a 30-something pitcher with a career ERA of 4.60 (0.05 points better than Meche’s career ERA). The Brewers, unlike the Royals, at least did their homework when it came to the pitcher’s track record in their own stadium – Suppan has a 1.76 ERA at Miller Park. But Jeff Suppan is not a pitcher who’s worth $10 million a year. He is a steady pitcher who will give a team a predictable number of quality innings and will take the ball every time his number is called – he’s started at least 31 games in every season since ’98 – but he’s also averaged just over 12 wins a year during that time. That’s kind of like Pedro Astacio, or Ismael Valdez, or Esteban Loaiza – all average steady pitchers, but not great pitchers. So why are the Brewers committing a sixth of their payroll to Suppan and making him their highest paid player?
Perhaps the Brewers were mystified by Suppan’s postseason performance last year and felt that they were adding a proven winner. But how much more valuable is Suppan over recently traded Doug Davis? How many more games will he really win for the $6 million more they’ll be paying him? He is not an ace…not really even a number two guy. He’s a middle to back of the rotation starter, and I repeat, that is not worth $10 million a year.
We could continue on down the list of bad contracts given to starting pitchers this off-season with Adam Eaton, Ted Lilly, or Jason Marquis, but Meche and Suppan are especially pressing for the Royals and Brewers because they don’t have the budgets that the Phillies or the Cubs have. These are teams with very little to spend, and they spent it on the wrong guys, and will continue to spend it for years to come. So when Rickie Weeks, Chris Capuano, Bill Hall, J.J. Hardy and Prince Fielder near the time when they’ll be eligible for arbitration or free agency, the Brewers will still be spending $10 million a year on Jeff Suppan and his 12 wins a season. And while the Royals are paying Meche $11 million per year, will they still be able to sign and keep Luke Hochevar, Zack Greinke, Mark Teahan, Joey Gathright, Alex Gordon, and company?
The more troubling aspect of these contracts is that, for the money these teams are paying these pitchers, there’s no way they can take them out of the rotation. What if three years from now the Royals are in playoff contention and Gil Meche is the weak link of the rotation? Do they bench him for a more deserving pitcher? Moreover, what if Meche takes the spot of some deserving young pitcher during Spring Training who isn’t given a chance to develop because the team has to send the guy they are paying so much money to the mound every fifth day?
It’s one thing for a team to try and prove to their fans that they’re still open for business and that they haven’t given up – and the easiest way to do that is to make a big splash in the free agent market (something the Royals and Brewers did). But how many times will these signings prove to be failures, like they were in Colorado (Denny Neagle, Mike Hampton) and Texas (Chan Ho Park, Alex Rodriguez), before teams realize that they don’t work. For these teams, the big name free agent is not the remedy - not even close because there are so many other holes on these teams, and there’s no money left to fill them. Take the A’s or Indians or Twins – teams that have built slowly from within while using their limited resources to keep their core together and add small pieces to their puzzle. In the off-seasons, when they add the finishing touches to their organizations, can the GMs of those teams really say that for $10 million they’d rather have Meche than Keith Foulke and Joe Borowski, or Rondell White and Luis Castillo, or Mike Piazza and Alan Embree? Those are the collective $10 million pieces that the Indians, Twins, and Athletics have added to plug the gaps that need to be plugged. But in signing Meche and Suppan, the Royals and Brewers are saying that these are the players they are going to build around – that these are players that will be the cornerstones of their organizations.
And so we are back to that word; placebo. We could also call it “fools gold”, or just plain foolish. Whether it was done to “appease or reassure” the fans, or whether it was done with the “expectation” that the team would get better, it was done in error and both teams will grow to regret their decisions to hand out such lucrative contracts.
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