MVN - Most Valuable Network

Meche Is Still a Good Investment

Gil Meche took the mound last night for Kansas City with his team looking to take two out of three from an opponent for the fourth straight time. Not only was their ace taking the hill for the Royals, but he was facing one of their own cast-offs: Todd Wellemeyer. As we all know, the obviously certain almost never seems to happen in baseball.

Meche did not make it out of the fifth inning as the wheels inexplicably flew off with two outs and no one on in the bottom of the fifth. Neither he nor his counterpart, Wellemeyer, ended up being much more of a footnote in the five and one-half hour, 14 inning Cardinal win. Still, despite the rough outing, few can argue that Meche has given the Royals the kind of performances they expected when he was signed to a $55 million five year deal last winter.

Without a doubt Dayton Moore overpaid for Gil Meche: he had to. If the Royals were not out there, it is likely Meche would be pitching for Toronto on a four year deal worth $42 million or so. Thanks to years of bargain basement shopping, Kansas City simply had to offer an extra year to even get into the discussion. Case in point, the Royals offered Miguel Batista almost the identical contract as the Mariners and we all know ehre Batista ended up.

What Royals fans are gradually learning, however, is that overpayment does not necessarily have a negative connotation. While one would certainly be correct to point out that forty percent of one season does not begin to justify a big contract, it is the only data we have right now. With that in mind, let’s take a look at Gil Meche’s free agent class to see how his contract stacks up.

A couple of notes here. One, I did not include aging stars like Roger Clemens, Tom Glavine, Maddux, Pettite and the like. Those guys quite obviously have far different dynamics affecting their contracts, not the least of which is their age. Second, on the chart below, the number immediately following the player’s name is his age. Third, under ‘Contract’, I first list the amount of the total contract (the players are sorted by this amount, by the way) and its length, following in parantheses by the amount that player is getting paid just this season. Finally, just in case you are not familar with these, ‘OBA’ is the opponents’ batting average against a pitcher and ‘WHIP’ is simply walks+hits per inning. Okay, now that I have bored you all with over explanations, let’s have a look:

	CONTRACT	GS	IP	ERA	OBA	WHIP
Barry Zito (29)	$126mil-7yrs ($10mil)	14	83.2	4.41	.248	1.42
Gil Meche (28)	$55mil-5yrs ($7.4mil)	15	99.0	3.00	.260	1.25
Jason Schmidt (34)	$47mil-3yrs ($15.7mil)	6	25.2	6.31	.296	1.79
Jeff Suppan (32)	$42mil-4yrs ($6.25mil)	15	96.0	4.69	.291	1.46
Ted Lilly (31)	$40mil-4yrs ($6mil)	14	85.1	3.69	.231	1.05
Vicente Padilla (29)	$33.75mil-3yrs ($9mil)	14	76.2	6.57	.316	1.73
Miguel Batista (36)	$25mil-3yrs ($6mil)	15	83.0	4.99	.300	1.64
Mark Mulder (29)	$13mil-2yrs ($4.5mil)	0	0.0	0.00	.000	0.00
Randy Wolf (30)	$8mil-1yr ($8mil)	15	87.0	4.24	.265	1.36

*All stats are prior to Wednesday’s games*

Quick - how many of you thought Mark Mulder was older than 29? Or that Jeff Suppan was older than 32? Any of you think that Dayton Moore has someone out there trying to expunge the records of his pursuit of Miguel Batista? Now, back to the matter at hand.

So far, Meche stacks up awfully well against the other pitchers in his class. The Dodgers are probably not writing out Jason Schmidt’s checks with a smile on their face as he was hurt/ineffective and now hurt again. However, their pain is soothed somewhat by the performance of Randy Wolf. It will be interesting what Wolf commands this winter if he can keep on his current pace.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals cannot be overly pleased that they have exactly ZERO innings out of Mulder thus far. Luckily, they had the foresight to obligate themselves to just $13 million over two seasons and tied the truly big money to number of starts. If Mulder had logged 30 or more starts in 2007 and 2008, his deal would have exploded into a three year-$45 million deal.

So far, signing Gil Meche has been the absolute best move made by Dayton Moore and the Royals. Ted Lilly has given the Cubs roughly ‘Meche-like’ numbers, but he is three years older. Jeff Suppan has logged the innings, but will never be more than a number three starter. It is also likely that Barry Zito’s numbers will improve and that monster seven year deal will work out for the Giants, but the Royals never even got a call back from Zito. As for the rest, Meche has clearly outperformed them all.

Now, a lot can happen (good and bad) between today and the end of 2011 when Gil’s contract ends. Just by the very nature of pitchers, you can almost count on a stinker of a year somewhere in there at the very minimum. Still, Dayton Moore surveyed a crop of free agent pitchers with similar track records, similar ages and frankly, similar contract demands. Hard to argue with the guy he picked.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 4:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.