The 2015 MLB free-agent pitching class is rich. As in, loaded with talent.
Now, it's rich in another way. As in, drowning in dollars.
Consider this: Four starting pitchers have been signed for a combined $623.5 million. For perspective, that's only slightly less than the gross domestic product of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which is indeed a country and not an '80s hair band.
Anyway, the point is, these deals are massive, gargantuan, mind-boggling. Grab your thesaurus and keep going.
It began with Jordan Zimmermann's five-year, $110 million contract with the Detroit Tigers. That turned out to be a mere appetizer for the feast that followed, as David Price broke Clayton Kershaw's MLB-record pitcher's payday by signing a seven-year, $217 million pact with the Boston Red Sox.
That record stood for less than a week before Kershaw's now-ex-teammate, Zack Greinke, shattered it with his six-year, $206.5 million deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Then, for a kicker, Jeff Samardzija inked a five-year, $90 million deal with the San Francisco Giants, never mind the fact that he led both leagues in hits and earned runs allowed.
There's more coming down the pike. The rest of this class is about to get richer, including Johnny Cueto, who reportedly rejected a $120 million offer from the D-Backs and is "in no hurry" to sign, as his agent, Bryce Dixon, told ESPNdeportes.com's Enrique Rojas.
Cueto is arguably the biggest fish left in the pool, but the likes of Scott Kazmir, Mike Leake, Wei-Yin Chen and Japanese ace Kenta Maeda will be waiting to bite off sizable chunks of their own.
In November, super-agent Scott Boras suggested Chen—a 30-year-old who's never eclipsed 200 innings and has struck out seven hitters per nine innings in his big league career—deserves "well north" of $20 million per year, according to Fox Sports' Jon Paul Morosi.
Chen probably won't get it. But Boras wasn't laughed out of the negotiating room or the Twittersphere, either.
Let's just pause here to say: This is getting out of hand. When the last ink of the offseason is dry, the top free-agent starters—the aces and potential No. 2s and 3s—will have hauled in somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars.
It's almost crazy to ask if they're worth it, because worth is such a relative term. Certainly guys like Price and Greinke will change their teams' fortunes in the short term, and paying down the road for production now is the model in today's game. If you don't like it, you'd better draft and develop cost-controlled talent.
Still, recent history has brought an explosion of nine-figure megacontracts for pitchers (and position players, too, but that's a discussion for another day). And not all of them have worked out.
If you want to go way back, you can circle the seven-year, $126 million contract the San Francisco Giants handed Barry Zito prior to the 2007 season. The Giants, of course, won a pair of rings with Zito on the roster, and he had his shining moments, but overall, it was a classic example of paying a guy based on track record over potential.
More recently, the New York Yankees extended CC Sabathia for five years and $122 million with an option for a sixth year and have watched the large left-hander succumb to injuries and personal demons.
Or there's the six-year, $127.5 million contract the Giants handed Matt Cain, who has also fallen victim to injuries and diminished performance and enters 2016 as a significant question mark.
We could go on, but you get the idea. Long-term, expensive contracts for pitchers are high-risk endeavors. They can backfire explosively with long-reverberating payroll implications, yet they're becoming increasingly common.
Overall, 19 pitchers (and counting) have signed contracts worth $100 million or more, per Baseball Prospectus. Of those, more than half were signed in the last three seasons. And only one dates back further than Zito—the disastrous $121 million pact Mike Hampton signed with the Colorado Rockies.
(Sorry, Rockies fans. We'll give you a minute.)
OK, let's add a dollop of perspective, via USA Today's Ted Berg:
All [massive contracts] correspond with boon times for the baseball economy, as payrolls and contracts skyrocket thanks to massive influxes of TV money in markets large and small. So it’s important to note — obviously — that a $105-million deal for Homer Bailey in 2014 is a heck of a lot different than the $105-million deal Kevin Brown signed with the Dodgers before the 1999 season. Guys just get paid more now, so Bailey’s salary represents a smaller portion of his team’s payroll and less risk than it would have a decade ago.
He's absolutely right. The dollar figures leap off the screen, but you have to put them in the context of today's MLB economy.
Still, in the case of Greinke and Price, you're paying two pitchers in excess of $30 million a season. Assuming they stay healthy, that's roughly $1 million per start.
They might be worth it next year. They're the Cy Young Award runners-up in each league, coming off brilliant seasons and still on the outskirts of their prime.
Over the life of the deals, though, expect regression. Father Time bats 1.000, after all, and Greinke will be 37 when his Diamondbacks deal expires.
Neil Greenberg of the Washington Post did a nice job breaking down Greinke's value based on the assumption that a win above replacement is worth $8 million, and he found that only under the most historically optimistic scenario will the right-hander earn his $200 million and change.
Price, meanwhile, got his bucks from a Boston front office that has expressed an aversion to locking up pitchers on the wrong side of 30, as Jimmy Golen of the Associated Press noted, via the Washington Post.
"There are exceptions to any rule, and certainly this is one of the most exceptional pitchers," Red Sox owner John Henry said, per Golen. "He's putting up historical numbers, or at least bordering on that, at this stage of his career."
Price can opt out of his contract after three seasons. He'll be 33 years old and have more than $120 million left on the table at that point. Would he actually walk away? If he pitches well enough and the dollars keep trending upward across MLB, why not?
That's how it goes. One payday begets the next. Yesterday's headline-grabbing megadeal is tomorrow's ho-hum market rate.
Still, some of these contracts are going to be albatrosses for the clubs that invite them and complaint fodder for disillusioned fans sipping $15 beers.
We won't know which ones without the benefit of hindsight. Overall, though, we can say this year's free-agent pitching class has stretched and twisted the notion of "worth" beyond recognition.
The money will keep flowing for now, that much is obvious. But like a kid who shovels down too much rich chocolate cake, someone's going to end up with a tummy ache.
All statistics and contract information current as of Dec. 7 and courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.
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