What would you pay for Eric Gagne?
It wasn’t too long ago that Eric Gagne was baseball’s premier closer and one of the few relievers to ever win a Cy Young. Then came two years in which he battled injuries, and a pretty good (but not stellar) start to the 2007 season in Texas. Yet in July, enough teams felt that he had enough left to vie for his services at the trade deadline. The Boston Red Sox bested their perpetual competitors in all major acquisitions, the New York Yankees, to win Gagne’s services for the remainder of the season, sending starting pitcher Kason Gabbard, minor league outfielder Dave Murphy, and highly regarded prospect Engel Beltre to Texas in exchange for Gagne. Boston also had to buy out the performance incentives in Gagne’s contract, since they wanted him to be their set-up man, not their closer. At the time, the deal was considered by most (though not all) to be a major coup.
How quickly things change. For reasons even he couldn’t understand, Gagne imploded in Boston. Red Sox fans quickly turned on him, moving from shock to hate to please-kill-him-it-would-be-more-merciful in record time. Time after time after time, Red Sox manager Terry Francona gave Gagne the chance to redeem himself. Time after time after time, Gagne failed. In fact, Eric Gagne was solely responsible for knocking several games off of Boston’s division lead over New York, almost single-handedly fostering an unnecessarily dramatic pennant race at the end of a season in which the Red Sox had commandeered the top spot in the AL East since mid-April.
Now the Red Sox have offered Gagne arbitration. Gagne may accept, but is expected to decline (not least because his agent is Scott Boras, and when do Scott Boras clients ever accept arbitration?). According to Jon Heyman (via mlbtraderumors, which I know all of you are refreshing every 10 minutes, don’t pretend you aren’t!):
The Brewers and Astros are among teams bidding for Eric Gagne, who has to be a closer wherever he goes (he was almost perfect as a closer in Texas last year, then perfectly awful as a setup man in Boston). Perhaps he could return to Texas, too, where he thrived.
And the Dallas Morning News reports that the Rangers have already contacted Gagne about returning to Texas, where he certainly had more success than in Boston. Last year, they gave him a one-year, $6 million deal with $5 million in performance bonuses.
So I ask you: if you were a baseball GM, would you take a chance on Eric Gagne? Do you think he struggled in Boston just because he wasn’t in the closer role? And if so, how much would you pay him?
December 6th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
The one Scott Boras client who famously did accept arbitration was Greg Maddux. The Braves were shocked.
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December 6th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Touche, Coley.
For what it’s worth, if Eric Gagne wanted to pitch for my team, I’d make him pay me rather than the other way around.
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December 7th, 2007 at 10:36 am
I know this is a totally lame answer, but it depends. If your team needs a closer, you can pay $7-8m per year. If your team doesn\’t, it\’s a max of $3-4m. I\’d be happy to give him a one-year deal if he\’s looking to reestablish his value before signing a long-term deal. If he wanted more than two years, I’d probably balk.
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December 7th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Okay, here’s a stupid question, one that I have never understood about baseball. When a player is offered arbitration, does that mean that the team offering it wants that player back the next year? If so, would that mean that the sox are actually wanting him back on the roster next year?
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December 7th, 2007 at 11:05 am
No, AT. Often teams offer arbitration to a player they have no interest in, as long as they are SURE that that player will be signed by someone else, so that they can get “compensation” draft picks from that team. I think that is what is going on here. The Red Sox don’t want Gagne, but they are also pretty sure he will sign with another team and not accept their offer of arbitration. So they won’t get stuck with him and they will also get to steal some other team’s draft pick.
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December 7th, 2007 at 11:07 am
AT, again, it depends. Arbitration could be a way to keep a player that the team wants back. For a young player with three years of service time on an MLB roster, they are what’s called “arbitration-eligible”. It’ll be the first time that they can really get more than their rookie contract. Lots of guys sign long-term deals before they get this far. But there’s also lots of guys who still haven’t proven worthy of one. So the team wants to see them for another year before deciding. In this case, the team wants the player back, but for only a one-year basis. So they go to court and decide what the fair salary would be.
In many cases, though, teams offer arbitration to veteran players they don’t want. Not sure if you’re familiar with the whole Type-A, B, C free agents (if not, read our comments here: http://umpbump.com/press/papi-the-perfect-player/)
Even if they don’t want the player back, they offer arbitration if they know that this player is unlikely to accept. This way, they get compensation draft picks.
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December 7th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Thanks! Your responses clarify it a bit more, so that helps. And I’m glad to hear that the Sox are probably offering it because they have no desire for Gagne to be back. If I have to watch him blow yet another game for the sox one more time, I think I might have to put my foot into the tv!
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December 7th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Basically, if you offer arbitration to an older player with a reputation to uphold, he is likely to decline and you’ll get draft pick goodies. Thus, offering arbitration to such players can be a sign that you do not want them. If you offer arbitration to younger players without established value, you generally do want them (think Wily Mo Pena-types). For instance, the Sox did not offer arbitration to Doug Mirabelli because it is unlikely he will sign with a different team at this point and, even if he did, his departure would not yield a draft pick as his only real value is his ability to catch Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball. (Plus, going to arbitration is pretty much getting an automatic raise.)
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December 7th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Oops AT, I see my response came through too late! Totally with you on destroying one’s own television rather than watching another blown save by Gag-me.
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December 7th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
1. No.
2. No, he couldn’t hold it down even when he came in as the “closer.”
3. A shiny nickel.
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December 7th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Gagne was hurt and never got better. The Red Sox were sold a bill of goods. Nothing new there. How many sore arm pitchers have the Red Sox acquired over the long years?
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December 7th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Tom, the correct answer is “not too many since Dan Duquette got the boot.” Picking up those scrap heap guys and “rehabbing” them was always his game plan. I think Theo and Co. have a slightly different strategy. And where’s your evidence that Gagne was hurt in 2007? (Aside from the total suckage, that is.)
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December 8th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Elbow surgery in ‘97, ‘05, and ‘06 plus back surgery in ‘06 would seem to be the only reasonable explanation for his abrupt transition from one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball history to a bum. Plus, the funny way he would stretch his arm between pitches. Plus the nature of his problem, lack of control, which he would try to remedy by throwing meatballs after getting behind in the count with men on base. I should apologize for the tone of my previous comment, because it was probably a reasonable risk at that point in that season. But it makes you think twice about how much to pay for 30 yr old Santana who already has a so-so season to his record.j
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December 8th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Tom, Santana is only 28 years old and has pitched over 200 innings in each of the last 4 seasons, showing no signs of physical breakdown. In ‘06 he was 15-13, with a 3.33 ERA, 235 SO, 52 BB and 219 IP, for a team that was 79-83, he was better than so-so. On his career he is 93-44 with a 3.22 ERA and has won 2 Cy Young awards so yes teams will be thinking twice about what he’s worth.
Eric Gagne is a player that may have had great success followed by injury and decline due to performance enhancing drugs. It will be interesting to see if his name is mentioned in the Mitchell report. He was 16 of 20 in save opportunities in ‘06 so someone will give him a shot. It’s not easy to find pitchers that can get outs 25-27 and he has proven in the past that he can. The Brewers are rumored to have interest in him but not for more than one year. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a one year deal for $4-5 million with incentives. No, I do not want to see him and that UFH in my team’s uniform next season.
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December 8th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Yikes! This is getting too heavy for me. I think Gagne just fits the typical pattern of blazing strike out artist who doesn’t last long. As far as Santana, I can’t argue with you. It’s just that I’m blinded with dispair at the thought of losing a player like Ellsbury
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December 9th, 2007 at 1:23 am
Holy crap! The Brewers just signed Gagne to a one-year, TEN MILLION DOLLAR deal!
Tom, I too am blinded by desp., etc. But that was a different comment thread, and I don’t want to go back there again. ;)
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December 9th, 2007 at 9:00 am
You know, that is quite a deal given his season…
I wish I got that kind of redemption had I done my job the way he did his.
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December 9th, 2007 at 9:01 am
WHOA… excuse the verb tenses on that last one. You know what I mean.
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December 9th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
If the Brewers are guaranteeing Gagne $10 million they’ve overspent. It’s also being reported that there are incentives that would increase the deal to over $11 mil. It’s hard to imagine that he will perform at a level that will justify this salary. They lost their closer and set-up man in free agency and this still isn’t a smart deal save for the one year term. They already paid Jason Kendall $4.5 million which is probably twice what he’s worth. If Doug Melvin thinks Gagne and Kendall are going to put the Brewers over the top in ‘08, he must be anticipating some kind of divine intervention. It is a weak free agency market but who else was offering Gagne this type of money? Probably no one.
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December 9th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I think what will put the Brewers over the top in 2008 is a full season of Ryan Braun.
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December 10th, 2007 at 9:49 am
“If the Brewers are guaranteeing Gagne $10 million they’ve overspent.” Melissa, that is the understatement of the winter. It is a preposterous deal. What kind of money would Gagne have seen had he NOT pitched like crap in the second half of the season? Clearly baseball salaries are no longer tethered to any sort of reality. They are just abstractions that have no real reality, like the ideas of the Lithuanian semiotician Greimas, the breasts of Jennifer Love Hewitt, or the square root of one.
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December 10th, 2007 at 9:52 am
And Coley, yes, they would have been better off saving the $10 million bucks for a couple of years and then using it to sign Ryan Braun to a long-term contract.
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December 10th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
References for Sarah’s post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algirdas_Julien_Greimas
http://l.yimg.com/img.tv.yahoo.com/tv/us/img/site/75/82/0000037582_20070206141607.jpg
http://www.google.com/search?svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&q=square root 1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw
Remember when $1million was a lot of money?
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December 10th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Hold on. It can be argued that baseball is an “efficient market”. These guys are the best at what they do. Compare Bernie Ebbers, Dennis Koslowski, Bill Gates. Those pricks, who get orders of magnitude more than baseball players, never stepped into a batters box in front of 40,000 people, never got grilled the next day in newspapers, TV and radio for what they did the night before, never gambled their whole lives on the unlikely prospect of becoming a major league baseball player, never had to worry about a sore shoulder or knee ruining their careers, never really entertained anyone or did anything useful at all, and stole billions in the process. Talk about “untethered to reality”. I think we should pay more money to baseball players. If the life of the average minor league player weren’t such a miserable poverty of hot dogs and crummy motels, the whole game would improve. They deserve every penny! Pay them more!
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December 10th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Sarah, thanks for adding the hyperbole that I lacked. I find this as inexplicable as you do. Also, Dennis Miller could use your help with his latest talk show.
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December 10th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Tom, point taken, but without Bill Gates, could we even be blogging about this subject right now? I think not. Eric Gagne’s price is clearly market price, but since market price is whatever the market will pay for something, that logic is a bit circular. We must ask ourselves three simple questions:
A) Did Eric Gagne do anything to merit a pay raise? No.
B) Could the Brewers have gotten Eric Gagne for less? Yes.
C) Was this money the Brewers NEEDED to allocate to Eric Gagne, or could it have been better spent elsewhere? Could it, in fact, have been better spent putting in a brand-new, walnut-paneled clubhouse, scented with truffle oil, staffed by geishas, and festooned with individual marble bathtubs for every player on the 40-man roster? Almost certainly yes.
@ Melissa—thanks!
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December 11th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Geishas for our besuboru samurai! What a lovely idea. Should the Red Sox be thinking of this?
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December 11th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s already in Matsuzaka’s contract somewhere…
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