Quote Originally Posted by AtomicDumpling View Post
The thread was about Choo, Jocketty and bad contracts from the very first post. Go back and read it. Honestly, it is like facts don't mean anything to you. You hijacked it into a Bronson Arroyo thread.

My comment about Arroyo being "drastically overpaid for his mediocre production" was very clearly directed at the 3-year contract extension, not his entire career as you misconstrued it. The facts show that Bronson Arroyo did not return value equal to the money he was paid with that final three year contract. It is indisputable. His good years prior to 2011 are irrelevant to that discussion. Arroyo was quite valuable as a league-average innings-eater before that, but after that he was clearly overpaid.

Again, the contract extensions and free agent contracts for pitchers around baseball over the last 20 years have overwhelmingly turned out poorly for the teams who signed them. The Arroyo and Bailey extensions were examples from recent Reds history. Just because a pitcher was healthy before the new contract does not justify signing him. Almost every pitcher is going to get hurt eventually, and history shows us very clearly that free agent pitchers who sign long contracts either get hurt or underperform their salary approximately 90% of the time. So if you advocate signing a pitcher to a big money, long-term contract you are making a reeeeeaaaaaaalllly stupid decision. The facts of history are very clear on this issue.
I don't like to look at a free agent signing strictly from a WAR/salary perspective. It leaves out a bunch of context.

You need to consider many factors, such as:

How valuable was the players production to the team?
How replaceable was that production?
What would be the cost of that replacement?
How would the money spent on their player be better spent?
Would the savings from signing a cheaper replacement be enough to improve the team?
Was the players contract preventing the team from making other improvements to the team?

And so on.

I don't like paying older pitchers market value, and I wasn't happy with the extensions at the time. But I think a more detailed analysis of the extensions and their context is needed before calling them a bust.