Defending the Indefensible

Much venom is spewed in these parts about the performance relative to contract ratio of Gary Matthews Jr. No one liked the contract when it was signed, and even fewer people like it now (yeah, that’s negative people – we’re through the looking glass here folks). Rob Neyer commented on a piece that rated Matthews as the least valuable player in the majors. Neyer basically agrees.

You will never see me defend this contract outright. I didn’t like it when it was signed either. And that was before I found out how much it was worth. But at the risk of being pelted with Rally Monkeys for my impetuousness, let me try to play devil’s advocate. I’m not sure where this is going to go, since I haven’t thought it all through yet, but here goes nothing.

The Angels needed a CF after the 2006 season. Erstad was getting old and rickety, Garret Anderson was clearly in no shape to play center, and the only internal option was Reggie Willits, who had just posted an .874 OPS (mostly OBP) in 97 AAA games. The free agent options were slim to none. The best were Matthews Jr. (coming off that career year in Texas of .313/.371/.495), Jim Edmonds (coming off of a down, injury-plagued season), JD Drew (actually coming off of his most healthy season in awhile, but a little down offensively), and Juan Pierre (blech). Those were, literally, the BEST candidates for a starting center field position.

The Angels main problem was power, as in, they had none other than Vlad. Juan Rivera was coming off of a promising season and then promptly broke his leg. So the Angels are looking for a guy with decent pop who can play a good centerfield. Let’s break down the candidates:

Erstad – The Angels could have brought him back at a reduced salary (Erstad was willing to do that apparently), but after such an awful year, this was hardly an appealing option.
Willits – A 26-year old “prospect” with zero power. With guys like Figgins and Izturis already in the lineup, they didn’t want another guy with absolutely no pop out there. Understandable.
Jim Edmonds – it never seemed like he seriously considered signing anywhere other than St. Louis, plus he was hurt, plus it wasn’t like he left the Angels under the best of circumstances the last time he was with them.
Juan Pierre – He got his own awful contract from the Dodgers. He was Reggie Willits, except a little fast, older, and much more expensive.
Drew – His big knock was that he couldn’t stay healthy. Well, he did that in 2006. He has moderate, not great power, but certainly more than what any of the other options was offering. Great at getting on base. He also had a reputation as a loafer and hadn’t played a lot of CF in a few years.
GMJ – He had a career season at the exact wrong time (for the Angels). He made some flashy plays in center, but mostly because he didn’t get good jumps on balls (and there was that one admittedly amazing play robbing a home run). He did hit for decent power, and his power had been trending upward the last few years.

In retrospect, the obvious decision would have been to sign Erstad to a one-year contract or let Willits play center until Torii Hunter or Andruw Jones became free agents (thank God they didn’t sign Jones!), but of course how would the Angels have any assurance that those guys wouldn’t resign with their current clubs? That would have been a gamble.

Drew would have been the next best choice, but again, he’s not REALLY a CF, and the Angels were loaded at the corners. Whether for good or bad, they also didn’t seem like they would have been a good fit organizationally for Drew. So I can’t blame them for not signing him.

I have to say that the next best choice would be GMJ, from a pure performance perspective. This is a team who wanted to win – they didn’t want to wait until 2008, and money wasn’t really an issue. So they threw a ton of money at him.

I think the only problem with this contract is the years. I don’t know where the other bids were, but the Angels are on the hook for another $33 million for this guy over the next 3 years. That’s a lot of salary to cut loose. But it’s quite possible that’s what it was going to take to sign what they thought was a decent centerfielder.

So that’s as close as I can come to defending that signing. Bottom line is they never should have given Matthews more than 2 years. Anything above that and they should have just said, “No thank you,” especially when they did have Reggie Willits as an option in the minors, even if it wasn’t a very attractive option. They could have always kept Figgins out there and found someone else for 3B. (To be fair, they did go hard after Aramis Ramirez to play 3B.) It’s just that plan B wasn’t very attractive.