MLB: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the (Small) Market...

A team representing the largest city in its country just signed a player to the largest per annum contract in baseball history this past week. This is just another example of the Yankees “buying a championship,” right?

Well, not exactly.

Actually, the country was Canada, the city was Toronto, and the player was Carlos Delgado–whose new four year, $68 million contract supersedes the three year, $36 million pact he signed last winter, which contained the provision that he could demand a trade within the 10 days following the conclusion of the World Series or become a free agent.

“This is the first step in re-establishing the winning formula for the Blue Jays of the future,” Blue Jays president Paul Godrey told the Associated Press.

Perhaps you might remember the Blue Jays’ winning formula of 1983 to 1993. During that time, Toronto averaged 91 wins a season, captured five division titles, and capped it off with consecutive World Series titles. Things went sour in 1994-95, though, when the Blue Jays’ core of stars started getting old, the Strike hit, and the Belgium brewery Interbrew purchased the Blue Jays’ connected organization, Labatt Beer. Toronto’s payroll remained high, relative to the league, through the 1996 season; however, manager Cito Gaston came under fire, general manager Pat Gillick left a mess by jumping to Baltimore, the Blue Jays kept losing, and the fans stayed away in droves.

While the Blue Jays’ payroll has generally stayed in the $40-50 million range, their payroll rank has fallen to the cusp of the bottom third in the major leagues. Toronto’s situation, and others like it, have inspired many pundits such as ESPN’s Peter Gammons to conjure doomsday lists of up to 20 teams that have “no hope to compete” for the eight postseason slots–lists formed well before the start of the season. The Blue Jays, as well as several other teams, have bucked these prophesies–yet haven’t seriously contended, either: The Blue Jays have finished above .500 three years running, but each season they have finished third to the Yankees and Red Sox. All the while, attendance has not rebounded, this season dropping 16-percent from 1999's total of just over two million.

The Blue Jays’ future appears much bolder, however, now that Interbrew has sold its stake to media mogul Ted Rogers, who strikes American reporters as something of a Canadian Ted Turner.

"We didn't buy the team to skimp on the light bulbs," Rogers told reporters at the press conference announcing the deal. Securing Delgado with such a hefty contract certainly provides evidence of this sentiment.

Delgado’s contract serves as a symbolic contrast to the proceedings of last winter, when the Blue Jays traded outfielder Shawn Green to the Dodgers for outfielder Raul Mondesi–then watched Green sign a record contract. As with any signing of this magnitude, it affects subsequent free agents. Delgado has set the market for Manny Ramirez, Juan Gonzalez, and many others, including the grand prize, Seattle Mariners’ shortstop Alex Rodriguez–who may sign for as $20- 25 million per season.

People all over baseball are asking this, so we might as well too: Is Delgado worth it?

Without getting into the emotional/ethical issue of whether athletes deserve huge amounts of money just for playing sports, I can imagine several different questions that can be asked in order to address this subject. A few which I will examine are: How good is he? How valuable is he to his team? Can his team actually afford him?

1. JUST HOW GOOD IS DELGADO?

Delgado’s fans can make a solid argument that he is the top first baseman in baseball entering 2001. In fact, his hitting in the 2000 season put him in a level accompanied by Jason Giambi just below a half-season of Mark McGwire, but at least a notch above Todd Helton and Jeff Bagwell. Skydome, Delgado’s home park, played as a heavy hitters’ park this year (though not nearly as much as Coors Field, of course), but Delgado’s performance was legitimately monstrous: a .344 batting average, .470 on-base percentage, and .664 slugging percentage. He drew 123 walks, yet still nearly compiled 200 hits, while also slugging 41 home runs and a league-leading 57 doubles.

Delgado smoothed over an awful defensive reputation in the media’s eyes this year, although that might be because they really noticed him for the first in 2000, and he emerged as a team leader also. He turned only 28 in June, so it appears Delgado has a couple seasons left before he experiences a perceivable decline in his skills. This year, however, will probably stand out as his peak season–if for no other reason than that it was so incredibly great.

In sum, Delgado is essentially at the top of his position, granting that his position requires the least amount of defensive value on the diamond.

2. HOW VALUABLE IS DELGADO TO THE BLUE JAYS?

With respectful nods to Rodriguez, Giambi, Helton, Barry Bonds and Mike Piazza, among others, Delgado might be the most valuable player to his team in all of baseball–outside of Pedro Martinez, of course.

The Blue Jays received a lot of attention for their American League-leading total of 244 home runs, but Toronto’s offense was actually fairly mediocre, ranking eighth in runs scored despite going crazy at times in Skydome. The reason is fairly obvious, and it can be summed up in this series of numbers: .363, .323, .340, .329, .355, .307, .313 and .271. These are the on-base percentages of, respectively, Shannon Stewart, Jose Cruz Jr., Brad Fullmer, Raul Mondesi, Darin Fletcher, Tony Batista, Alex Gonzalez and Homer Bush–in other words, all of the Blue Jays’ regulars with the exception of Delgado. Only Stewart and Fletcher (barely) managed the league average in that important category, more than 100 points below Delgado’s mark. As a team, the Blue Jays finished twelfth in OBP, a horrible ranking.

Given the average 2000 big league first baseman, such as Fred McGriff or Todd Zeile, the Blue Jays wouldn’t have finished in the top ten in the American League in runs scored; given an essentially “replacement level” first baseman, such as Tino Martinez or Kevin Young, Toronto might have scored less than everybody but the anemic Tampa Bay and Minnesota outfits. With Delgado, the Blue Jays had essentially an average offense.

Even the best players in any given year are rarely “worth” more than eight wins, over the course of a season, than an average player at that position. Even giving him no credit for defense, however, Delgado contributed as much to his team in 2000 as any position player in baseball.

3. CAN THE BLUE JAYS AFFORD DELGADO?

Well, this is the real trick, now isn’t it?

The Blue Jays, who used to draw three million fans per season blindfolded, have a rather significant attendance problem. Attendance has been shown to correlate most strongly with winning, but it appears no one notified Toronto fans of this. Despite averaging 85 wins a season for three years now, attendance is going down.

The usual owner response when faced with low attendance is that the team is hamstrung by its budget, and indeed Labatt conveyed this fear more than a few times in the post-Strike era.

Who really knows if a general claim like this is actually true? For one thing, the owners rarely open their books for the public to check; for another, the owners are known to cook their books by not reporting revenue or hiding it in associated-party dealings.

At any rate, Rogers promises to increase the payroll well above the $50 million mark, which the Delgado signing accomplishes by itself, but general manager Gord Ash has stated that the Blue Jays will not attempt to outspend the Yankees or Mets. As it is, the Blue Jays are looking at a steep increase in player salaries. In addition to Delgado’s new contract, young players such as Fullmer ($310,000 in 2000), Escobar ($500,000), and Cruz Jr. ($395,000) are arbitration-eligible and due for hefty raises. Moreover, Fletcher, Gonzalez, and starting pitcher Steve Trachsel are free agents. It is likely that Toronto will try its best to keep Fletcher and will add a shorstop via trade or free agency if it decides not to re-sign Gonzalez.

Down the road, top starter David Wells becomes a free agent next winter, when the Toronto will also face arbitration with Stewart and pitcher Chris Carpenter. Closer Billy Koch becomes arbitration-eligible after 2002, and the Blue Jays are responsible for Mondesi’s $10 million annual salary through 2003, when Delgado will be earning $18.5 million. The only large salary to be dumped, if Toronto opts not to deal Mondesi, will be Joey Hamilton’s $5.5 million.

These forthcoming expenses have led some to argue that Toronto would have been better off trading Delgado, then using the money left over to sign pitching and/or a competent middle-of- the-order bat. After all, a top first baseman is somewhat easier to replace than a top player at other positions.

This is true, but the Blue Jays (wisely) already let go of their top player at another position, Shawn Green, before he got really rich. Otherwise, they have a powerful but impatient third baseman (Batista), a good leftfielder (Stewart), one good starter, and a good closer. (According to the Pythagorean Theorem of baseball, which assigns a winning percentage based on a team’s ratio of runs scored to runs allowed, Toronto wasn’t even a .500 team.) Essentially, Delgado is the franchise, and management decided it must pay him as such.

A professional sports team’s public currency is its perceived commitment to winning. Despite their sustained respectability the last three years, the Blue Jays appeared to be treading water–capable of some excellent stretches, but mostly existing to finish third to New York and Boston. Spending (essentially) $17 million a season on a first baseman might seem foolish, but it’s not indefensible:

- Delgado’s prior contract allocated $12 million (essentially) a season to him; that might be closer to his “market value” as a first baseman, but considering Delgado was in a sense a free agent, how many free agents coming off an MVP-type season receive an 8-10% raise? If anything, the old contract was more foolish.

- The annual rate of the contract is higher, but the span is shorter; as a result, the contract will be up when Delgado is only 32. Toronto should get very good production from him, much better than if it were signing a player who’s already 31 or 32.

Additionally, it has been shown in some cases that a notable signing will spur public demand for tickets, even if slightly. The Blue Jays know that the Yankees are in decline and the Red Sox are saddled by weighty contract problems of its own. It is obvious that the Blue Jays are banking on a run for the AL East title next year and an additional spike in attendance in the following one. Toronto is the fifth-largest market in Major League Baseball, and still-recent history suggests the Blue Jays are not without a fan base.

In sum, the Blue Jays’ decision to sign Delgado to such a large contract might, in presidential economic parlance, seem like a “risky scheme.” But try imagining their future without him. It’s, in the spirit of equal time, rather “fuzzy.”