Joe Posnanski ranks the contracts given to Travis Hafner and Kerry Wood as the ninth and eighth worst in baseball.
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hafner could possibly be the worst contract in the majors. i'd rather have a stiff who can play in the field than a part time dh.
EVERY G.M. IN BASEBALL NEEDS TO READ THIS LIST.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Wonder how many of those were Scott Boras clients? Folks, the time is long past due that baseball teams re-take control of their sport. The inmates and their insane agents have runs the asylum for too long and have literally destroyed the national pasttime.
These deals are absolutely outrageous. I was STUNNED that Shapiro would dole out our dollars to two stiffs, but that's not even the first time he's done it!
However, his stupidity PALES in comparison to the Toronto GM….it's unbelievable that he still has a job! Start adding up all the IDIOTIC deals he has made! The B.J. Ryan contract was so shocking, Shapiro just about lost his lunch. But Vernon Wells? Alex Rijo? Ha ha!!!! He is the freakin' laughingstock of all of baseball!
The next owner who approves such a deal should be blackballed right out of the game! If the owners do not give their GM's power to make such assinine deals, then teams can get back in the black, instead of bleeding cash endlessly on players who aren't worth a FRACTION of their contracts!!!!!
It's an honor to have two of our boys on such a distinguished list. And I love that "Murray Koufax" line.
Hafner's contract wouldn't look nearly as ridiculous if the Indians had handled his injury situation better. He was struggling in 2007– his performance in May and June and July and August was substandard (.253 or less each month, OPS below .760 in three of the four months)– but the Indians didn't have him checked out at all in the off-season.
He has a terrible 2008– but unlike Victor Martinez, who shut his season down to have surgery (so he could be ready in 2009), Hafner did the "I'll rest and take cortisone" shuffle. He didn't have surgery until mid-October.
If you google "shoulder surgery", you'll see that rehab runs about 9-12 months. So an October surgery, in a best-case scenario, means it's mid-July until Hafner is at full strength. Normal expectation is October.
Hafner has played well, when he's been able to play. I think he'll probably be at 100% again– although he'll also be 33, so he'll be aging. But that'll be 3+ years since he started to show wear– basically half the contract messed up because the Indians kept denying reality.
The annoying thing is that the seem to be heading down the same road with Grady Sizemore. For what reason is a guy with an elbow problem playing?
Geoff, under the best of circumstances the deal for Hafner is the worst in team history. Hafner was never the same after his decline in late 2006. If I'm not mistaken, he had ZERO homeruns in 2007 spring training, and was an abysmal failure leading up the All-Star break in 07…the point where Shapiro decided it was a good idea to give this lug $57-million!!!!!! And why? Remember the notion: "Travis is pressing because of his contract status." When ACTUALLY, the Tribe controlled Travis thru 07 AND 08. That was a bogus excuse. He knew he was hurt, may never hit again, and decided to rape the organization while he could still swindle them good.
And he did.
Hey, when you've got a local columnist low-key screaming for Shapiro to lock up Hafner, maybe Shapiro thought it would bring in fans to see a power hitter. Both 2005 and 2007, they were winning and still drawing flies. It showed real commitment, and since Indians fans don't give a crap no matter how many games they win unless 50 power hitters are in the Indians' starting lineup, maybe he thought it was imperative to sell tickets.
Besides, when you've got Terry Pluto writing nonsense for the Beacon Journal imploring the guy to be locked up, how can any GM resist? Maybe Shapiro thinks the local columnists felt the pulse of the local public, maybe he was misguided, who knows.
Here's a very special sentence leading off a Pluto column after the deal was done. "Indians designated hitter Travis Hafner grew up on a North Dakota farm where his mother cut his hair until he left home to go to college." How quaint.
I wonder if his mother still cuts his hair with a cereal bowl. Maybe he uses his old Texas Rangers syringes attached to a stick. I don't think he uses the Flowbee. http://xr.com/6tm
And looking back, there really was no fan protest of the deal. In fact, people at the time seemed delighted in a subdued kind of way. I can't stand hypocrites.
Jonah: Yes, you're mistaken. You describe Hafner's decline as beginning in 2006 which is simply wrong.
In 2006, Hafner led the league in slugging percentage and was second in on-base percentage. Even though he had his hand broken by a pitch on September 1, missing the last 29 games of 2006, he finished in the top 10 in home runs, RBIs, extra base hits and walks.
Hafner finished eighth in the MVP voting, and would have done better if the Indians hadn't gone 78-84, causing him to be left off nine ballots. (He was the only player in the top 10 in votign to come from a losing team).
And he wasn't declining at the time his season ended. His statistics for August, 2006 .361 average, 13 homers, 30 RBIs. His on-base was .484 and he slugged .856. To quote Posnanski, "you can certainly understand why the Indians made the deal."
I don't know what Hafner did in spring training of 2007. but I know what happened when the games started to count. He hit .338 with 5 homers in April (.471 on-base, .550 slugging). He did not hit well in May or June, but the day the signing was announced (July 7, 2007, he was hitting .262 with 14 homers (.397 on-base. ,452 slugging).
Most people would not call that first half as "an abysmal failure"– they'd call it a below-average first half for one of the AL's top sluggers.
And since Hafner had drawn 65 walks in 84 games (12 intentional)– after drawing 100 and 16 the year before– people were blaming it not just on the contract situation, but on teams pitching around Hafner and the poor production of the #5 hitters (Trot Nixon, Ryan Garko, Jhonny Peralta).
Aside from the fact that he wasn't sucking rocks and spitting gravel, he was the most popular player among ticket buyers (Sizemore had more fans among teenage girls), the best player of the three guys whose contracts were up in 2008 (Jake Westbrook and C.C. Sabathia being the others), and the team was trying to squelch the "Larry Dolan won't pay players what they're worth" reputation.
It was dangerous, because most slow-footed sluggers break down or hit the wall at 33 or 34… but if you're running a team and trying to attract fans, it was a no-win situation. Sign him and the deal might bust out. Don't sign him and everyone calls you a cheapskate and you lose fans.
The worst contract in Indians' history is the other one that made the list. Kerry Wood is getting $20.5 million for 2009 and 2010– and if he finishes 55 games in either year, he gets a guaranteed $11M in 2011. (He has 38 so far, and if the Indians keep winning…).
This for 32-year-old pitcher with a frightening history of injuries, who'd had only one year as a closer (where he spent a month on the DL) and was coming to a league where you have to have a breaking ball to get batters out.
Plus, unlike Hafner, the Indians signed Wood in the off-season, AFTER the banks had begun to implode (when it was pretty clear that unemployment was going to spike and most fans would be able to afford seats). Had he not been signed by Cleveland, my guess is that he might have waited as long for a team as Adam Dunn– at which point he would have cost much less.
Actually, I wish someone would follow up on Posnanski's comment that teams like the Indians actually seem to make the worst deals, and go look at some of the unaccepted offers Shapiro has made over the years. after the 2004 season, for example, he reportedly offered B.J. Ryan 9 million over 3 years Matt Clement $24 million over 3, Derek Lowe $24 for 3, Ray King $1.25 for 3, Kyle Farnsworth $1.1 for 3 and Jerry Hairston $4 million for 4.
If I remember the deals correctly, the Indians would still have both Brian Giles and Nomar Garciaparra signed right now if someone hadn't beaten them out. There are, it would seem, benefits to being a small market team that gets outbid.
Somebody's in love with Travis Hafner, I see.
And Alan, I seem to recall plenty of fan opposition to that contract. I even recall writers asking "Why now?" It was very evident that *something* was wrong with Hafner, and now we know. He was hiding an injury, or he never would've quickly pushed to get a deal done midseason.
terry pluto may have been thrilled with the hafner signing but many fans were not. the guy had a bad elbow at the time of the signing and that was no secret. i'd say fan reaction was mixed at best.
No, someone just thinks the decision, at the time, was defensible based on the facts. I don't reinvent history or change my opinion when it becomes convenient to do so, like so many folks on forums do.