A fairly big deal was made over the weekend about the White Sox picking up Alex Rios’s contract when they claimed him off of waivers from the Blue Jays. Rios signed a 7 year $69.8M deal with the Blue Jays in 2008. The White Sox will pay the rest of the $5.9M he’s owed for this season, $9.7 million in 2010, $12 million in 2011 and 2012, and $12.5 million in 2013 and 2014.
The Sox also traded for Jake Peavy, who after this season is owed $15M in 2010, $16M in 2011, $17M in 2012, with a team option for 2013 for $22M and a buyout of $4M.
Both players are 28.
In yesterday’s post I neglected to dig more deeply into something Shapiro talked around in his interview with Paul Hoynes. That something is the idea the market for free agent baseball players, and those already with teams looking to sign extensions or go through arbitration has changed.
Shapiro mentioned this when talking about the Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez deals, what they would’ve been owed next year - $9M and $7M respectively - as well as what Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook are due in 2010. Hafner, for the record, gets $11M (not to mention $13M in 2011 and 2012). Westbrook is owed $11M in the final year of his deal.
What Shapiro was implying, without really saying it, was that Lee and Martinez were being overpaid in relation to what the economic market had become since they signed their deals. He went one step further, basically saying that Kerry Wood wouldn’t have gotten the contract he got if it was negotiated a few months later.
Amidst these comments was a veiled reference to potentially replacing these players, or other players with contracts made in a different economic environment, with players who are just as productive…with deals made in 2010 that pay far less than they would’ve paid had they been signed a year ago or more.
Simply put, Shapiro was saying everyone with a contract made before spring training 2009 now qualifies as being overpaid.
This is why young talent and prospects are at such a premium right now. Teams that have to be financially aware - almost everyone - couldn’t trade away guys in their early twenties making almost nothing for guys in their late 20’s or early 30’s who were grossly overpaid, especially when the first “big” contract a team will have to offer a young player in the years to come will be far less than what it was in the past.
I bring this up because it makes White Sox GM Kenny Williams’s moves look pretty suspect. Rios has a career OPS+ of 104, just above average, and while Peavy’s numbers are very good - .9 HR/9 2.9 BB/9 and 9.0 SO/9 - they also came in the National League, which if I were a White Sox fan would personally make me nervous.
Maybe the White Sox have the money to absorb these contracts - their payroll was $96M at the start of the season, about $15M more than the Indians, and 12th overall in MLB - but they weren’t necessarily very financially sound deals.
