Highest Paid Players

MLB Trade Rumors linked to this interesting piece from Wezen-Ball on the history of baseball's highest paid players. It's a fascinating read that really does a nice job exploring the circumstances of each contract at the time, as well as the impact on the future of precedent-setting deals.

One thing that immediately jumped out to me is that there are surprisingly few "busts." One can argue that giving pitchers long-term, record setting contracts is inherently risky, and some may feel that the impact of one player -- a pitcher being more injury-prone that most position players -- never can, by the nature of pitching once every five games, be worth it. But, Mike Hampton aside, I was surprised by the overwhelming majority of the players on the list being relatively worthy of deals that would shape the market in the future.

Obviously, the market may have plateaued with A-Rod's $252 million deal in 2000 and his $275 million extension with the Yankees seven years later. As they point out, there wasn't a player more worthy of the biggest contract in baseball when he signed the first deal, and probably not another one when he signed the second in '07. It is, however, significant that the size of his deals were both likely higher than market value. That is, even for the best player in his prime, with the opportunity to reach new heights, Scott Boras did a nice job setting a standard that few can rationalize touching again for the foreseeable future.

The other thought that jumped into my head looking at the list, and this one was far less surprising, was the amount of players linked to performance enhancing drugs. I am no scientist, and I don't claim to know exactly what impact steroids have on a player's performance, but it certainly looks like many were rewarded with huge deals before, during or following years aided by illegal -- if not against baseball's rules -- drugs.

As I look at the current free agent crop, it is apparent that we don't have any candidates to join this list. And I'm not sure if anyone will any time soon. The point is that history has shown that the best player doesn't always get the most money. No, all it takes is a Tom Hicks, with help from a Scott Boras, to make history.

The combination of the recent economic climate, the implementation of drug testing, and apparent initiative to seek market inefficiencies has led team's to find other ways to fill their rosters than outspending the competitor's. On the other hand, some teams are still hamstrung by past mistakes (Vernon Wells, Barry Zito, Gary Matthews, Juan Pierre/Andruw Jones/Jason Schmidt), so who knows what will happen in the future.