No one learns.
How many years in a row can we say (fill-in-the-blank free agent) will not get the money because the industry has absorbed the lessons of the past and won’t do these mega-long deals — only to see fill-in-the-blank get the deal?
This year, Robinson Cano was fill-in-the-blank. And the Mariners were this year’s team with the confluence of reasons — desperation and deep pockets — to ignore the inefficiency of free agency, to go where we were told no team would go.
Cano was not going to get 10 years. He was not going to get $200 million. Except he did. He actually got more — 10 years at $240 million, which ties him for the most ever given a major leaguer from the non-Alex Rodriguez division. So now Seattle fans who have spent more than a decade booing A-Rod for fleeing for the big money will cheer Cano for doing the same, just to come to the Great Northwest.
“I thought after [Albert] Pujols [10 years for $240 million] went so wrong, so quickly, turned into such instant garbage, such a horror show, that the industry had finally learned,” an NL executive said. “I really did think it was the tipping point.”
It wasn’t. Cano won’t be either. Clayton Kershaw just might get a $300 million deal before this offseason is complete. We always will see the pressure points move teams to extend beyond a comfort zone. The Marlins had a new stadium opening. The Tigers have an aging owner in faulty health who wants to win now. The Angels have an over-arching strategy to win the Southern California market from the Dodgers. The Dodgers have new owners who weren’t going to let that happen. The Yankees have their history to honor.
The Mariners were motivated by a variety of reasons to make Cano an offer he couldn’t refuse — $65 million beyond the Yankees’ best and final, a number that made even most Yankees officials agree he couldn’t reject it. The Mariners had plummeting attendance and rising irrelevancy both locally and nationally. They had been humiliated publicly by several big-time hitters who wanted nothing to do with a bad offensive park and as remote a locale as exists on the major league landscape.
Seattle recognized a premium above the norm had to be paid to convince a hitter to come, and something above that to get a homegrown, legacy-type player away from the Yankees. Beating the Yankees by 50 cents wasn’t going to get it done.
Still, the reaction around the majors was, well, what it always is. How could they do it? They are going to regret it. This is craziness on steroids. Most just pointed to the recent tale of woe when it comes to mega-deals:
- Pujols is the player tied with Cano at 10 years and $240 million. He is a fallen star just two years into a pact that — without a reversal — will be worse even than Rodriguez’s perhaps.
- Prince Fielder was traded after just two seasons of his nine-year Tigers deal with Detroit having to kick in $30 million to facilitate a trade to Texas, meaning Fielder cost the Tigers $76 million for two seasons.
- Rodriguez is four years from the end of his contract, near the conclusion of his baseball skills and at legal war against MLB and the Yankees. And, if you remember, the Rangers were so anxious to get rid of his first mega-deal (10 years at $252 million) they agreed to include $71 million in the deal to the Yankees. Thus, Texas essentially paid $133 million for three years of A-Rod and three last-place finishes.
- Reds first baseman Joey Votto is just starting his 10-year, $225 million extension now at age 30 and, as the executive said, “come on, in a few years we will be saying what an albatross it is. Just like we will with Robbie Cano, and I love Robbie Cano. But no way that contract works out long term.”
In fact, one of the first reactions from most executives spoken to about Cano’s signing with the Mariners was their expectation that in some short period Seattle will be looking to trade Cano. That the contract won’t work.
Because it doesn’t make the Mariners winners, or because Cano is unhappy so far off baseball’s beaten path, or because the salary is debilitating for Seattle to make other moves, or some combination of all of that.
“Doesn’t it feel like you will have the first despondent player on the way to his introductory press conference?” the executive said. “He had to take the $240 million, but you know he didn’t want to leave for a bad ballpark with the worst travel in the league. You are always on a plane when you play for the Mariners. He went from the center of the universe to Pluto, and how soon will it be before he wants to get off of Pluto?”
Of the 40 largest total packages signed in big league history before this offseason, one-quarter have been traded during the life of the deal (Rodriguez, Fielder, Manny Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Alfonso Soriano, Mike Hampton, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jose Reyes).
Then there is this: A-Rod left the Mariners and they won an AL record 116 games. He left the Rangers and they went from 71 wins to 89. Pujols left the Cardinals and they arguably have been the NL’s best team since. The Red Sox traded Gonzalez and Crawford and became champions.
In other words, there is life after abandonment. The Yankees don’t have the farm system to thrive post-Cano without throwing their wallet at the problem. So they are avoiding one problem (10 years with Cano) with others — seven years for Jacoby Ellsbury, five years for Brian McCann and three years for Carlos Beltran, all of whom come with various medical worries.
Still, as one Yankees official said about why the team didn’t just go 10 years with Cano as they did with A-Rod: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
But you should bet on some team continuing to be fooled by fill in the blank year after year.