Jeff Samardzija and Past Value in Big Money Contracts

As was pointed out the other day on Fangraphs, on its surface it just doesn’t seem right for a pitcher with an ERA last year of 4.96 to ink a 5 year contract for $90 million. Jeff Samardzija is far from an elite pitcher – in 8 seasons he has made one All Star team and hasn’t garnered a single vote for a Cy Young award.  He has a single season with a WAR above 2.0, which came in 2014 when he posted a WAR of 3.7 between the Cubs and the Athletics.

At the same time, as with all free agents the Giants aren’t paying for what Samardzija has done in the past – they’re paying for what they think he can do in the future.  Between pitching coach Dave Righetti and the move to a pitcher-friendly park in the National League, it’s certainly possible, and perhaps likely, that Samardzija can perform better in at least the first couple years of his new contract than he did in 2015.

That being said, pitchers with Samardzija’s track record typically aren’t given that type of money.  The list below shows the 23 free agent pitchers (mostly starters) who between the 2006 and 2015 offseasons signed contracts of at least $50 million.  This list excludes signings of foreign players (such as Daisuke Matsuzaka, Masahiro Tanaka, and Yu Darvish) and also excludes players who signed extensions with their existing teams (such as Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw, among others). This takes into account the value of the contract at the time of signing, thus doesn’t take into account inflation, and it also doesn’t take into account components of the contract that could have impacted their actual value (such as the amount of deferred money in Max Scherzer’s contract that lowered its actual value).

With all those caveats aside, here are the 23 players, sorted in ascending order by pitchers with the smallest career Wins Above Replacement at the time their contracts were signed:

(Contract values come courtesy of the ESPN Free Agent Tracker. All WAR figures come from Baseball Reference. The player’s age refers to his age season (as defined by Baseball Reference) the season before signing a new contract.)

Here’s the list in a graph, with Samardzija highlighted:

Players closer to the left of the list have produced the least career value, and players near the top of the graph signed the highest contract.  There’s a general positive relationship, as players who have posted the most value have typically signed for the most money.

Among the players at the top at the top of the list:

• Gil Meche – this contract was widely panned at the time, the Royals were desperately seeking respectability at the time.  Due to his retirement before the 2011 season, Meche only collected $37 million from his original contract.
• C.J. Wilson – Wilson spent the majority of his major league seasons before signing his contract as a reliever, so he only had two seasons to prove his value as a starter before signing with the Angels
• Ryan Dempster – Dempster was coming off of a career year in 2008 after up and down seasons in the years prior
• Edwin Jackson – Jackson’s career has seemed to be marked by promise with a dose of durability.  He didn’t pan out in Chicago, but it wasn’t hailed as an awful signing at the time.

In short, Samardzija has one of the least impressive bodies of work on this list.  He signed for more money than thirteen players on this list, and is one of the most unimpressive pitchers of them all.  That he signed for this much money while being in a free agent pool that was so starting pitching-rich points to the financial health of the sport in general.