Saw something on one of the blogs I frequent (I think it was Neyer, maybe Posnanski, but I'm not sure), bringing up the subject of Barry Zito. Zito makes a ton of scratch - he's in the second year of a 7 year, $126 million deal. He's terrible now, with a slim chance of becoming un-terrible in the next 5 years. So should he give any of the money back to the Giants, assuming he continues to play like crap?
Ok, there's probably a wide range of reactions here. Everything from: "No chance in hell!" to "Heck yeah he should - he's a bum!" I'll run down some of the rationales:
1. He and the Giants both signed a contract. The Giants obviously didn't expect this, but they are fully aware that these types of things happen in baseball. So Zito should feel no obligation to return any money just because he's not meeting expectations. A contract's a contract. He took what the market was willing to give him.
2. Zito was grossly underpaid (by baseball standards) for the first 4 seasons of his career. From 2000 - 2003, Zito was 61 - 29 with an ERA right around 3.00, but got paid less than $2 million total. So really, he's just recouping what he should have earned when he was arguably a top 5 pitcher in the AL for four years. In other words, no he doesn't deserve it now, but he had it coming to him for his prior body of work, so he should keep it.
3. Zito should give some of the money back to help the Giants field a better team. He could agree to keep a certain amount per year, and give the excess to the Giants, strictly for the purposes of signing free agents or spending it on the farm system to develop players. Although judging from the way the Giants have approached free agency, this seems like a poor investment.
4. Zito should give the money back simply out of moral obligation. Whether it's written in his contract or not, the Giants obviously signed him to be a top of the rotation starting pitcher, and he's falling well short of that. He should feel guilty for cashing that paycheck every month.
5. Zito should take the money from the Giants but give it all to charitititity because he doesn't deserve to keep it. Well, not ALL of it, but if I hadn't said "all," none of you would have got the Sublime reference.
So what would you do? Let's assume for a minute that the Player's Association would even allow something like this. In all likelihood, if you even so much as THOUGHT of this, some large Italian man would show up at your door with a large metal pipe to "reason" with you.
If it were me, I'd do #5, but I would do that whether I was playing well or not (at least I hope I would). So that's not really relevant to the discussion since it's not mutually exclusive of the other choices.
I certainly wouldn't choose #3, because the Giants aren't really close to winning anything. If they were one player away, I would consider that, but they're a lot farther away than one guy. Plus there's absolutely no evidence that Brian Sabean would do anything with the money but wipe his butt with it and toss it at a rapidly aging 37-year-old middle infielder.
I don't think I'd pick #2 either. It sounds good, but it's not really accurate. Baseball players are given contracts for future performance. Now, it's true that future performance can be somewhat predicted by past events, so he got his contract BECAUSE he was really good for awhile. Still, the contract is paying him to pitch NOW. So I don't buy that whole argument.
That leaves #1 and #4. The problem I see with #4 is that he would basically be giving the Giants a free pass. He didn't force the Giants to make that deal - they offered it to him. Sabean should have seen some of this coming. Zito hasn't been a great pitcher since 2003, and he's been declining every year since then. Judging by the type of guy Zito seems to be in interviews and such, it looks like he's out there trying his hardest to be a great pitcher. It's probably just not there any more. As long as he's putting in the effort, I don't see why he should feel guilty. It's the GM who should feel guilty for being a bonehead and not doing a little research. I guess I would probably feel guilty if I were in his place, even if I was trying my best. But I still don't think I'd give it back.
So I guess I pick #1. Like I said, I would hope he's giving some cash to charity, but it's his money. The Giants put the contract in front of him, and like any of us would do in a heartbeat if $126 million was sitting on the table, he signed it. He never has to work again after this. If in 3 or 4 years, Zito's still hanging around, pitching 180 innings of somewhat under league average ball, the Giants' young players have developed and are ready to go, and there's a hot free agent looking for a $20 million per year deal out there, then I would think about donating some cash to help pay for that free agent and try to get a World Series championship.
...unless Sabean inexplicably still has a job there. I wouldn't give that guy any more money than he already has.
2 comments:
I've felt for years that someone could devise a sliding pay scale to pay players for their performance. You get so much in base salary; that would increase each year as a factor of seniority. Then you would get incentive pay for hitting ceratin milestones as a player, depending on whether you are a postion player or a pitcher. So much for hits, average homeruns, stolen bases; strike outs, innings pitched, wins, saves. You get the idea. Then there would certainly need to be some sort of discretionary pay that can be given for those intangibles that certain players bring to a team that don't show up in the stat boxes.
I feel that this would reward players for excetional performance each year, while not paying for "past performance" while getting screwed with the current performance.
I know there are probably some holes in this theory, not to mention the Players Union would never agree to it, but I think it could work in a "pay for play" atmosphere. (Assuming that's what the owners really want. Of course, the Steinbrenners of the world would always find a way around it.)
Yeah, bonus contracts work that way to some extent, but like you said, there is no way the MLBPA would agree to it, and even if there was, you'd never get anything close to a consensus on which stats were worth what.
So basically it's just a free market system where players get whatever some silly owner is willing to give them. And these types of contracts are what happens when billionaire owners get greedy.
I just think it would be really interesting for some reporter to ask Zito how he feels about cashing his check after he throws up (pun intended) a 3 2/3 IP, 8 hits, 3 BB, 7 earned runs stinker. Obviously that would be a very touchy question, but Zito doesn't come across as an "I've got mine, screw the rest of you" type of guy, so the answer might be interesting.
I think he's just lucky he's not playing in New York or Philadelphia. They would DESTROY him every time he stepped on the mound. He'd feel pretty bad, pretty quickly.
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