MLB: 5 overvalued/undervalued players entering 2015
By Will Osgood
SP C.C. Sabathia New York Yankees
Contract: 8 years, $186 million ($23.25 million/year)
One of the fascinating trends already being exposed is that large market teams who say they rely on “Moneyball principles” are teams which signed players to exorbitant contracts. The next player on our list is also a Yankee, and there’s at least one more player on that roster who could have easily made this list, but did not because of space.
The sickening part for a sabermetrics apologist is that Sabathia’s contract wasn’t horrific when it was agreed upon and signed. It may not have been seen as the most valuable, but it was as wise a pitcher to spend that kind of money on as there was in the game from a number’s perspective.
In fact, from 2008—when he was traded midway through the campaign by Cleveland to Milwaukee—to 2012, Sabathia was one of the five best pitchers in baseball. But then his weight ballooned to astronomical proportions, and the arm issues popped up.
Sabathia has fallen so far that now at age 34, he is merely trying to recoup arm strength and swagger on the mound. The swagger part appears to be coming, as he told reporters after his latest poor start this Spring, he doesn’t “give a [sic] what stock they (reporters) put in it.”
Some of that fire on the mound might help him return to the old dominant Sabathia. For now Sabathia is simply a significantly overpaid third starter for an overall overpaid New York Yankees team.
Next: Probably the most obvious Yankee