120 Million Reasons to Forget

Cleveland’s congenitally tightfisted front office spent an unheard-of $117 million in guaranteed salaries this off-season, netting them the services of four players (Nick Swisher, Michael Bourn, Mark Reynolds and Brett Myers) for a total of ten player seasons. Assuming a current estimated cost of $6m per win added, this group should contribute about 20 wins over the lives of their contracts. Specifically, Reynolds and Myers should each add a win this year; Swisher and Bourn should each add two-plus wins a year through 2016.

That’s not half bad for an offseason, though maybe only halfway to good. Assuming a relatively uncomplicated theoretical baseline record of, oh, let’s say 68-94, adding these guys gets the Tribe close to 75 wins this season. Subtract the likes of last year’s Derek Lowe, Shelley Duncan, Casey Kotchman, et al., and we’re looking at 79 wins. Drop a couple generous hits of what passes for acid these days, pick up a TI-81 and the sports section of your local paper, spend an afternoon inventing an elaborate multiplier for the wizardly effect of Tito Francona’s presence, and maybe you can see this club putting together a winning season.

Looks good on paper [archaic reference acknowledged], but can we, should we, as fans, be prepared to expect anything of these expensive layouts, given the team’s almost unspeakably horrible track record of securing free agent talent?

You see, the Indians have spent $120m on free agents before. Believe it. From the 2004-5 offseason through last year, the Indians laid out $119.6m in guaranteed money, and for that, they retained the services of 30 veteran players for a total of 40(!) seasons. In those slightly less overinflated days, that kind of money should have amounted to at least 22 wins over those eight seasons. Nothing glorious, but respectable enough for a small-market team attempting to simultaneously:

• plug massive immediate and developmental holes in the roster and upper farm system;
• at least occasionally offer the sketchy illusion of trying to compete for a playoff berth; and
• demonstrate that they were not overtly taking advantage of any cynical revenue-sharing schemes.

But in Cleveland, even modest expectations soon learn their place. Over 40 seasons, those 30 staid veterans combined for a total of six wins over replacement. Six wins in eight years. A full 16 wins shy of league average. Each added win cost the team $19.9m. (League average, again, was $5.4m.)  

What follows, dear readers, is a horribly systematic assault on your senses of credulity and pity. I have catalogued below the previous $120m-worth of guaranteed free agent contracts signed by the Cleveland Indians. Tribe fans, shotgun a beer and/or prepare to clench back a few spurts of vomit. Others, rejoice. (Royals fans, should you actually exist, don’t laugh too hard. You’re next.)

All salaries in millions of dollars. Data from baseball-reference.

Signed	Pos	Player	Yrs	$	WAR	WAR/$	$/WAR
2011	3B	Jack Hannahan	2	1.64	2.9	1.77	0.56
2010	OF	Austin Kearns	1	.75	0.7	0.93	1.07
2005	2B	Ron Belliard	2	6.50	5.4	0.83	1.20
2005	IF	Alex Cora	1	1.30	0.9	0.69	1.44
2010	DH	Russell Branyan	1	1.50	1.0	0.67	1.50
2011	OF	Travis Buck	1	.63	0.4	0.64	1.56
2005	SP	Kevin Millwood	1	7.00	3.7	0.53	1.89
2006	1B	Eduardo Perez	1	1.75	0.6	0.34	2.92
2010	2B	Mark Grudzielanek	1	.60	0.1	0.17	6.00
2005	IF	Jose Hernandez	1	1.80	0.2	0.11	9.00
2006	SP	Paul Byrd	3	21.50	2.0	0.09	10.75
2012	LF	Johnny Damon	1	1.25	0.1	0.08	12.50
2012	IF	Jose Lopez	1	.80	0.0	0.00	0.00
2006	OF	Todd Hollandsworth	1	.90	0.0	0.00	0.00
2009	RP	Kerry Wood	2	20.50	-0.3	-0.01	-68.33
2008	RP	Masahide Kobayashi	2	6.00	-0.3	-0.05	-20.00
2009	SP	Carl Pavano	1	1.50	-0.1	-0.07	-15.00
2007	OF	David Dellucci	3	11.50	-0.8	-0.07	-14.38
2006	SP	Jason Johnson	1	3.50	-0.3	-0.09	-11.67
2007	RP	Joe Borowski	2	8.00	-1.2	-0.15	-6.67
2007	RP	Roberto Hernandez	1	3.30	-0.6	-0.18	-5.50
2010	C	Mike Redmond	1	.85	-0.3	-0.35	-2.83
2012	SP	Derek Lowe	1	5.00	-1.8	-0.36	-2.78
2012	1B	Casey Kotchman	1	3.00	-1.1	-0.37	-2.73
2012	RP	Dan Wheeler	1	.90	-0.4	-0.44	-2.25
2007	OF	Trot Nixon	1	3.00	-1.4	-0.47	-2.14
2006	RP	Danny Graves	1	.60	-0.3	-0.50	-2.00
2011	OF	Austin Kearns	1	1.30	-0.8	-0.62	-1.63
2011	2B	Orlando Cabrera	1	1.00	-0.8	-0.80	-1.25
2011	RP	Chad Durbin	1	.80	-0.7	-0.88	-1.14
2010	SP	Jamey Wright	1	.90	-0.8	-0.89	-1.13
		Totals	40	119.56	6.0	0.05	19.93

Truly, unbelievably horrible. The best that can be said is that a few of these bums were pawned for spare parts at midseason, and one of those parts turned out to be Asdrubal Cabrera.

I played around with this data for awhile, searching for some sort of meaning in the badness. One obvious thing that leaps out is: Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti are lucky indeed to still have their jobs. Obviously they have mastered the gentle art of hoodwinking their billionaire overseers, at least insofar as they continue to be allowed to spend money on free agent ballplayers. Even without benefit of hindsight, theirs was a slanderous wreck of the practice of ‘general management’ in corporate-american baseball. Perhaps the shambling wreck of a brain-trust at Carnegie and Ontario has yet gleaned something relatively edible from this hideous, picked-over steam-table buffet of ineptitude.

But there is a second takeaway, which even the most jaded native son can’t ignore. Simply put, the standards for free agent value in Cleveland could almost literally be no lower. Surely we can look forward to this year’s class of incoming mercenaries, and to the probable end they will put to this feverish front-office nightmare.

Just consider this: The average free agent of that last lot contributed just .15 wins per season, at an annual cost of $3m.

To put that in perspective, let’s see what a .15 win ballplayer looks like. This is the guy who Swisher and Bourn will be making us forget for the next four years. The guy who will, even money, be out of baseball a year after playing out his contract with the Indians. 

Rather than invent a theoretical .15-win player, I found two real batters who managed 500 plate appearances in 2012 while posting win totals between .1 and .2. (I know, I know, o ye spunky seamheads, that this is not scientifically sound. Bear with me.) One of them, Jesus Montero, spent significant time at catcher, which notoriously screws up win-total metrics. The other player posted this line (courtesy again baseball-reference):

G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
135	538	457	65	101	26	0	23	69	1	3	73	159	.221	.335	.429	.763	107

So there you have it, Tribe fans. That guy earned $7.5m in the process, more than twice what the 2005-12 Indians would pay for that kind of talent. He even managed to parlay that barely above-replacement season into a guaranteed $6m contract this year.

With your Cleveland Indians.

He’ll be the DH, and will occasionally spell Nick Swisher at first base.

And that, friends, is worth forgetting.