{"id":4167,"date":"2012-05-25T08:43:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T12:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4167"},"modified":"2012-05-25T08:43:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T12:43:39","slug":"has-anyone-ever-signed-a-good-100m-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4167","title":{"rendered":"Has anyone ever signed a “good” $100M+ contract?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Werth's wrist issue has not helped his cause with pundits who ridiculed his contract in the first place. Photo AP\/Richard Lipinski via cbssports.com<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the things that’s always irked me as a Nats fan is the continual presence of Jayson Werth<\/strong>‘s 7yr\/$126M contract on the ever present lists of “Worst Contracts in Baseball.” \u00a0Or the fact that when Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong> signed his $100M extension, an anonymous front office member was quoted as saying that the Nats now had “two $100M contracts but no $100M players.” \u00a0(paraphrased from memory, can’t find the original quote).<\/p>\n

Lets face it: professional baseball (and to an extent most Professional Sports) is a unique industry when it comes to paying for performance. \u00a0Most players perform in their peak professional years for pennies on the dollar (especially those in pre-arbitration years) as compared to their general “worth” on the Free Agent market. \u00a0Teams can lock up players for at least 6 years and sometimes 8-9 years (depending on the amount of time they spent in the minors) once they are signed. \u00a0In most cases players are first reaching free agency in their early 30s, whereas most would agree that a player’s peak performance age is probably in the 27-28 timeframe. \u00a0That means that by the time a star \u00a0is finally ready to cash in and sign that life-defining guaranteed contract …. they’re mostly on the downside of their career. \u00a0This means that teams are almost always paying for players’ decline years, and it almost always means that teams are generally regretting these huge contracts almost the moment they’re signed.<\/p>\n

Teams that want to add through Free Agency thus are almost always paying ahead for past performance. \u00a0And usually this means that, especially by the end of a long FA contract, teams are vastly overpaying for the performance they’re getting on the field.<\/p>\n

So I asked this question; has anyone ever signed a “good” $100M+ contract? \u00a0Good meaning, did the player perform up to the value of the contract the entire way through it? \u00a0A group of friends of mine argued about the same topic while drinking beer in the bleachers at Nationals Park last week; lets revisit the conversation.<\/p>\n

According to Cot’s site<\/a> (now at Baseball Prospectus), there have been 35 such contracts of $100,000,000 or more. \u00a0I’ve divided these contracts into three categories: those that are in the past or are sufficiently worked through in 2012 as to pass judgement, those that were signed starting with 2011 (so they only have a season and a quarter to judge), and those that started in 2012 or in the future. \u00a0Of these 35 contracts, they break down as follows:<\/p>\n