#so basically the tiger disagrees with the injuries existence

[karmicpunishment]

sometimes i forget that atsushi's healing ability isn't actually described as healing/regenerating injuries but as negating them

and then i stop and think about what that means and then oops its been two hours

[junker-town]

How Pablo Sandoval's awful contract compares to MLB's worst

There are some really bad contracts in MLB right now. And even worse than Sandoval’s, somehow.

The Red Sox designated Pablo Sandoval for assignment. The Red Sox still owe Pablo Sandoval just shy of $50 million, which, according to Jon Morosi’s calculations, is the second-most dead money ever left on an MLB deal after Josh Hamilton’s Angels’ contract. It’s... well, it’s not a great contract. It’s not even a good contract. Is Sandoval’s deal the worst contract, though?

[a bunch of other teams all at once]: hold our beers

Just because of when we’re having this conversation, a few obvious candidates no longer apply. Ryan Howard’s deal, most of which was spent in a spiraling decline from which he could not escape, is over. Matt Cain has the rest of his 2017 bill and a $7.5 million buyout on a $21 million option left, but at this point, that’s more a relief than a candidate for the worst. The same goes for the aforementioned Hamilton, whose confusing contract split up between the Rangers and Angels is also in its final season.

David Wright might seem like an obvious part of the list with $75 million remaining, but insurance is taking away much of that sting for the Mets each year. Also, we don’t want to pile on the poor guy! His dream is probably dead because of an injury that’s out of his control and cut him down in his athletic prime. Don’t you feel terrible now?

Aw come on, don’t worry, though, there are plenty of contracts left to stare at in befuddled amusement and/or dismay, and we won’t even admonish you for doing so.

Robinson Cano

Cano’s contract isn’t necessarily bad yet. Maybe more than any other contract in baseball, though, the fear that it is going to become awful exists. He’s been fine for the Mariners so far — better than fine, really, posting a 130 OPS+ with them over four seasons. He somehow still has six years left, though, taking him through his age-40 season, and he’ll make $24 million in each of them for a total of $144 million.

Would you sign 35-year-old Robinson Cano this offseason to a six-year deal for a guaranteed $144 million? Given what Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion had to do to get signed this past winter, no, you wouldn’t, and neither would any team out there. Again, Cano’s deal isn’t bad yet — that’s why we’re starting this whole thing with him — but he was nominated for his article by a Mariners’ fan when I brought this topic up in our Slack channel, so take it up with him if you disagree, alright?

Matt Kemp

Kemp has two-and-a-half years left on his contract, but it’s also split among three teams for a reason. He might be hitting .293/.340/.486, but that’s not as high above the average as you’d think with offense ever-climbing, and his defense is so atrocious that Kemp’s wins above replacement for 2017 actually has him below replacement in spite of that offense.

Now, Kemp isn’t the worst given how little time is left on his contract, but he’s still owed over $50 million through 2019, the offense isn’t returning to the levels that got him paid in the first place, the little defensive ability that used to be there is gone, and the only thing keeping him from having a deal as bad as Sandoval’s is the fact that he could at least slot in as a DH somewhere and work out the remaining days of his contract.

Shin-Soo Choo

Choo is a somehow even more depressing Kemp scenario, as he isn’t playing defense well, is signed for even longer (he’s owed around $70 million through 2020), and he isn’t even hitting to the levels that Kemp has managed. The outfielder/DH has been below-average at both spots, and has only produced a season that could be considered any good in one of his four chances with Texas.

Things could be worse — see, the last three entries on this list — but Choo not being bad enough to get rid of like Sandoval almost makes this worse. Almost.

Joe Mauer

Poor Joe Mauer. If you forget that he’s a first baseman and just pretend he’s a catcher, his deal is bad instead of one of the outright worst in the game. He is a first baseman and designated hitter, though, so the 103 OPS+ he’s put up over the last four seasons really isn’t cutting it, especially not at an average of $23 million per year.

Now, it is worth pointing out that Mauer only has this year and next year left, and then the Twins are free from this monstrosity. However, Minnesota is also fighting for a playoff spot, and the well below-average Mauer is soaking up over one-fifth of the team’s $108 million Opening Day payroll by himself. If they end up missing out because they don’t have the money for upgrades or couldn’t bring in a better option than what Mauer has provided and will provide next year, it’s going to be hard to overlook this contract.

The Tigers

Justin Verlander is owed about $70 million more through 2019, and is in the midst of a below-average season at age 34. Miguel Cabrera, also 34, is having the worst season of his career since his rookie campaign back in 2003. He’s owed just shy of $200 million more on a deal that will take him through age 40 and the 2023 season. Jordan Zimmermann is in the second year of a $110 million contact, and the follow-up is going even worse than the disappointing first attempt.

On the bright side, J.D. Martinez is once again crushing it and the Tigers probably can’t afford to re-sign him, so at least they won’t be able to overextend him, too. And hey, Justin Upton will probably opt-out, though that’s actually a shame since his contract ends at age-33, anyway.

It’s worth remembering, both with the Tigers and with basically every other major deal we’re talking about here, that teams signed these contracts knowing that eventually, they’d be problems. The hope was that, before they became issues, the Tigers would win a World Series or two and justify all of the horror to come with a trophy. The Tigers haven’t won, though, and given they’re 39-48 as of this writing, don’t look like they’re going to, either. That makes all of this a little harder to swallow, even if the reasoning behind the contracts made plenty of sense at the time they were signed.

Albert Pujols

Well that’s an uncomfortable yet fitting segue into Albert Pujols’ contract. Pujols has actually been pretty good with the Angels — the thing about being the hitter of your generation is that your decline is still better than what a lot of people are doing at their peak. And Pujols, from age 32 through 36 with the Angels, hit hit 146 homers, posted a 123 OPS+, and produced an above-average three WAR per year.

The problem was more with the Angels, as they made the postseason just once in this stretch, and now Pujols is 37 and no longer any good. Also, Pujols is owed another $114 million from 2018 through 2021, and there have already been multiple occasions where, during his time with the team, the Angels were forced to trade away the few prospects and young players they had to fill holes because they didn’t have anymore room on the payroll thanks to deals like the one they signed Pujols to.

And yet, like with Cano, we can’t simply erase what Pujols achieved during the early years of the deal. And that’s going to matter when we bring up the only other deal that rivals his as the worst in the game.

Jason Heyward

Jason Heyward’s deal should have been good. It actually seemed relatively reasonable at the time, with Heyward supposedly not even taking the highest offer because he believed in playing with and for the Cubs in their quest for a World Series. He was right on that last part, but Chicago won in spite of Heyward, not because of him: the Cubs actually did their best to keep him from contributing in the World Series at all by not playing him, as Heyward batted .230/.306/.325 in the regular season, “good” for an OPS+ of 70.

There was a lot of talk this spring about Heyward having a new swing that should heal what ailed him, and it did, sort of: now he has just an 84 OPS+ instead of being even worse, but that’s still a below-replacement bat that even his defense can’t save, especially not at $28 million.

Whereas Pujols’ deal is just now entering the true disaster phase of its life, Heyward’s contract started there. For all the talk of how horrific Carl Crawford’s seven-year, $142 million contract was — and it was not good — Crawford’s debut season with the Red Sox saw him produce an 85 OPS+. Over the life of the deal, Crawford would manage a near-average 97 OPS+ — that’s certainly not anywhere near what the Red Sox (or Dodgers) wanted for their money, but the Cubs would be ecstatic if Heyward got to that level the rest of the way.

As is, Heyward isn’t going to be using those opt outs in his deal, because he’ll never get a contract as good as this one again.

Should we cut Heyward some slack because the Cubs did manage to win a World Series with him around? Maybe a little, but again, they won in spite of him, and on Thursday they traded their top prospect (on outfielder) for Jose Quintana because the team as a whole just isn’t doing enough to keep up in the NL Central. To contradict the contradiction before concluding this paragraph, it’s still one more World Series than the Twins or Mariners or Angels have won with the players who got them on this list, sooooo... yeah. There’s room for debate