Albatross Contracts and Baseball Wisdom in Recessions

Anybody going to a ballgame next year?

In January 2002, Chan Ho Park was coming off a career year with the Dodgers, sporting a 1.17 WHIP, 218 Ks in 234 IP, and an All-Star appearance. Despite the preposterously large home/away difference in Park’s ERA and batters’ SLG, not to mention Park’s second-half downturn, and the fact that he was coming off five straight years of 192+ innings pitched, the Texas Rangers awarded him with a five-year deal for $65 million.

The following is a list of pitchers who have or had been given albatrossy contracts similar to Park: Mike Hampton (signed Dec 2000, Colorado Rockies, $121 million / 8 years); Denny Neagle (Ibid to both, $51 million / 5 years); Carl Pavano (Signed Dec 2004, New York Yankees, $39.95 million / 4 years); Barry Zito (Signed Dec. 2006, San Francisco Giants, $126 million, 7 years).

Here’s the difference with Park’s contract, and why I’m bringing it up now. In January 2002, while Wall Street was making a moderate recovery from the terrorist attacks of four months prior, indicators were not rosily optimistic (and for good reason, considering the upcoming recession, based largely on those attacks, the dot-com burst, and all those Enron/Tyco/ImClone type dealies that questioned accountability).

So on September 30, 2008, the Cardinals signed a fairly solid #3 pitcher, Kyle Lohse, to a four-year, $41 million contract. This was after all economic indicators showed that a big pile of corn-ridden poo was heading towards the fan. In the three weeks before the signing, Lehman Bros. had filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was sold, AIG was in the middle of getting $85 billion from the government, Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company, WaMu was sold to Chase, and it was pretty damn clear to most four-year-olds that the economy was in the tank for the foreseeable future.

So, what the hell?

Tampa Bay…Democrats?

 

Change We Can Believe In?

Pity Tampa Bay baseball fans – all four of those diehard souls – who’ve been forced to watch an amalgam of charmless souls take the field over the last decade. Perhaps it was a losing gambit to begin with, a second team in south Florida, when the first one was barely able to draw respectable attendances despite two World Series championships. Though Tampa Bay had long been a (spring) baseball town, attendance for Rays games has never been, uh, good. Before 2008, they drew the least fans in the American League seven out of the ten years of their existence.

Despite hope in the form of a young, steadily improving franchise core, there had not been much the average Joe Sixpack spectator could get excited about. Watching Brent Abernathy range to his left to start a double play was about as titillating as watching, say, Harry Reid deliver the Democratic response to the State of the Union.

 Now this year. Whoo-boy, this year. As the intellectual elite group of statisticians (Baseball Prospectus, notably) predicted, they finished with their first winning record (97 victories) en route to the World Series. In the October classic, they’ll face the Phillies, who last won it all in 1980, the same year Ronald Reagan’s march to the White House crippled liberalism.

Some in the talking-head circuit were predicting a sweep by the Red Sox in the ALCS, but these young, brash Rays have been cool, confident, and calm under pressure. Sure, there was a misstep – allowing the Sox to come back from a 7-0 deficit in Game Five – but nobody reacted in desperation. The game plan was the game plan, and Tampa Bay’s heading to the Series.

Which reminds me of another team, one that’s been down for so long, it’s hard to remember what excitement was like. Let’s compare:

The Parallel Trajectories of Tampa Bay’s Ballclub and the Democratic Party’s Fortunes: