Major League Baseball doesn’t need Denzel Washington or Jay-Z to experience déjà vu.
Checkbooks open, credit cards pressed between fingertips, players and owners are living the winter of 2000 again. That’s when dollars were flying like snowflakes and players such as Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle received deals that were out of this world.
Six years later, fiscal discipline and financial flexibility have given way again to out- rageous spending. The winter meetings commence Monday at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., but the happiest place on earth is not the Magic Kingdom. It’s baseball free agency. Teams already have doled out approximately $758 million on free agents, including a $232.5 million outlay by the Chicago Cubs.
“I said before the offseason started that this was going to be the winter of raised eyebrows,” Cleveland Indians general manager Mark Shapiro said. “And I have certainly raised my eyebrows a lot.”
The tone was set in Naples, Fla., at the general managers’ meetings, when the Boston Red Sox won the negotiating rights to Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. They paid $51.11 million to take him to dinner, and presumably negotiate between bites of filet mignon. That sum was greater than five teams’ payrolls last season, the Rockies among them.
To many executives, the market explosion was predictable. Baseball is healthy (see the new collective bargaining agreement), wealthy (producing $5.2 billion in revenue last year, according to commissioner Bud Selig) and bursting with owners eager to dethrone the world champion St. Louis Cardinals at any cost.
“There are a lot of overriding factors,” said agent Scott Leventhal, whose client Gary Matthews Jr. received a five-year, $50.3 million contract from the Los Angeles Angels despite being a lifetime .263 hitter. “And obviously demand is up and supply is down. Put it all together, and it’s created this.”
As recently as three years ago, collusion was the catchphrase, as every outfielder from Rondell White to Carl Everett received identical two-year, $7 million offers. The new catchphrase? Craziness.
Danys Baez now is the highest paid setup man ever (three years, $19 million), the centerpiece of the Baltimore Orioles’ $42 million bullpen makeover. Juan Pierre, with 12 career home runs, received a $44 million deal from the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Cubs gave Alfonso Soriano ($139 million) an eight-year contract, the longest in baseball since Hampton and Ramirez.
“We lost 96 games last year,” said Cubs GM Jim Hendry, piloting a club that many believe was fattened to help sell. “We had to be aggressive.”
The Astros aren’t strangers to Texas Hold’em. They spent lavishly on Roger Clemens and Jeff Bagwell in recent years. But none got Carlos Lee’s spread. He received the richest deal in franchise history – six years, $100 million – despite having to put in weight clauses to help encourage his conditioning.
“From our point of view, we needed a hitter in the middle of our order,” Astros GM Tim Purpura said. “We had interest in Soriano, and when Lee was available, we moved quickly.”
The Rockies have rolled their eyes at many of the free-agent bonanzas, choosing to spend conservatively on Kaz Matsui ($1.5 million) and reliever LaTroy Hawkins ($3.5 million).
They arrive in Orlando seeking a center fielder, pitcher Jason Jennings their most valuable chip in this winter of high-stakes poker. If the Rockies can’t reach an agreement on a contract extension, they could move him to acquire multiple players, such as the New York Mets’ Brian Bannister and Lastings Milledge. Other teams interested are the Cubs, Astros, Twins, Cardinals and Reds.
Trades represent their best currency, they believe, not forays into marquee free agency.
“The assumption is that we thought through the ramifications of signing Hampton and Neagle, but we didn’t,” Rockies president Keli McGregor said.
“Doing the right things doesn’t always mean a philosophy, sometimes it’s financial parameters. In the end, you balance all things you want to improve and be responsible.”
