Baseball’s Least Valuable Player

The Houston Astros have a large problem on their hands — and we don’t even mean their current 66-73 record.

The team did a good job this season of building towards the future; those efforts have been rewarded with a third-place standing in the NL Central that likely could be much worse (they’re playing strong right now, at 7-3 in their last 10).

The long-term future isn’t so rosy, though.

After the 2006 season, when the Astros missed the playoffs by 1 1/2 games, they made a splash by signing Carlos Lee to a six-year, $100 million contract. It seemed like an odd decision at the time. The market for Lee didn’t appear overly competitive. Even if it was, the contract still seemed out of line. Lee produced numbers that would justify that type of contract just once in his career — and that was in his 2004 season with the Chicago White Sox. Since then it had become clear that while he could hit, his fielding was a liability. That can become a problem in the National League.

The first two seasons of the contract looked just fine, as Lee justified his salary with 3.6 and 3.9 Wins Above Replacement, or WAR (explained more here). But in 2009, the situation started to look troublesome, as Lee produced just 2.1 WAR. Converted to dollars, that is $9.3 million — or about half of what the Astros actually paid him. This year Lee has been even worse, producing worse than a replacement player — that is, a theoretical player freely available in a minor league system. Lee has been 0.7 wins worse than a replacement player, costing his team $2.9 million in addition to his $18.5 million salary, or a $21.4 million discrepancy. That’s not something Houston can afford if it wants to contend in the future.

We’ve seen this many times in the past few years. A player might be at the end of a long-term contract, the contract might have been poor from the start, or the player might have unexpectedly declined. There has been no discrepancy worse than Lee’s, which means that he has had the least valuable season in history, based on dollar value. But there have been some particularly poor performances per contract. Let’s take a look at some of the worst.

Jose Guillen, 2009
Guillen is an example of a contract that should never have been signed in the first place. If the Kansas City Royals had designs on contending during Guillen’s tenure with the team — 2008 through 2010 — they didn’t do much else to further that goal. It didn’t help that Guillen performed worse than most could have imagined. In 2008 he produced minus-1.8 WAR, which created a $20.1 million gap between his salary and value. Overall with the Royals he produced minus-1.3 WAR. It was a bad contract from the start, but few envisioned it being that bad.

Bernie Williams, 2005
The New York Yankees certainly signed Williams for at least one year too many, but that’s the price they had to pay for competing with the Boston Red Sox. Their arch rivals came close to signing Williams after the 1998 season, but the Yankees came back at the last minute with a seven-year, $87.5 million contract. Not many players can roam center field briskly at age 36, and Williams was no exception. He produced minus-2.2 WAR in 2005, the contract’s final year, creating a nearly $20 million discrepancy. The Yankees did realize plenty of value earlier in the contract; Williams produced a WAR of 5.0 in each of the contract’s first four years.

Todd Helton, 2010
A nine-year extension for a 27-year-old superstar might not seem like a bad deal, but that wasn’t exactly the case with Todd Helton and the Rockies. The nine-year, $141.5 million contract he signed in 2001 didn’t take effect until 2003. Helton produced heavily in the first two seasons, 6.9 and 7.1 WAR, but after that his production dropped. He has had a few good seasons since, but injuries have sapped his power. The contract would have looked a lot better had it been enacted in 2001, rather than 2003. Helton got a few too many years.

Alfonso Soriano, 2009
Any time a player signs an eight-year deal, the team probably knows that the last year or two will hurt. But the third year? That’s what the Cubs realized with Alfonso Soriano and his $136 million contract. He earned $16 million in 2009, but produced 0.0 WAR. He has recovered a bit in 2010, but he’s still not playing to the level of his contract. The Cubs signing Soriano was not a mistake. Giving him so many years was, though.

Jason Kendall, 2007
It’s tough to fault a team for signing a 28-year-old superstar catcher to a long-term deal, so the Pittsburgh Pirates get a pass for their six-year, $60 million contract to Jason Kendall. He helped justify it by producing 4.7 and 4.6 WAR in years two and three of the deal, but that didn’t bring the Pirates closer to contention. They eventually traded him, leaving Oakland to realize the worst year of the contract, 2007. Decline can be expected from a 34-year-old catcher, but minus-0.7 WAR after a 3.1 WAR season? That seems excessive. Kendall ended up costing the A’s and Cubs $2.7 million, or $15.7 million when factoring in his $13 million salary.

Gary Matthews, 2009
Sometimes one year can make a big difference. Gary Matthews had never established himself as any type of star during his first five years in the league. But then in 2006 he went on an offensive tear and produced 3.9 WAR. This enticed the Angels, who signed him to a five-year, $50 million contract. They set the example for why teams should not sign players based on one good year. It took Matthews just two seasons to produce a negative WAR, and in the third he produced minus-1.1 WAR, costing his team $5 million, or $15 million counting his salary. They ended up eating the remainder of the contract after the season.