After losing Alex Rodriguez and getting nothing in return but a pair of draft picks, the Seattle Mariners stand at 20-6 and will win 88 games if they play just .500 ball for the rest of the season. What gives?
Rodriguez might be the greatest free agent -- he's certainly the most expensive one -- in the game's history, but he's not the first superstar to leave his team in search of millions elsewhere. The Mariners aren't the first team to face a future without their star player. But are they the first team to be the better for it?
We decided to look at only the very best of them -- the Top 10 Free Agents of All Time -- looking not at the players themselves, but at how their former teams fared after their departure. We put a few rules in place first:
1. No Rent-A-Players allowed. The Astros lost Randy Johnson as a free agent following the 1998 season, but he spent only two months in Houston, and they knew they could lose him from the moment the trade was made.
2. Teams holding a fire sale don't count. Larry Walker left the Expos after the 1994 season, but how the Expos fared in 1995 doesn't tell us a lot about how the Mariners will fare without A-Rod, because the Expos had essentially given up. (What, you think they traded John Wetteland for Fernando Seguignol based on talent?) The same goes for free agents leaving the 1997 Marlins, or the 1976 A's, when Charlie Finley was so afraid of dealing with free agency that he tried to sell half the players on his team in the middle of the season.
3. The Collusion Era doesn't count. For three consecutive offseasons from 1985 to 1988, the owners acted in unison in not signing other teams' free agents. The artificially restricted marketplace limited teams' options and makes any comparison to today's game inappropriate.
Given those restrictions, here are the 10 biggest free agent signings (or, from our standpoint, departures) of all time:
Darryl Strawberry, 1990 Mets. Strawberry's life may be ruined by drugs and threatened by cancer today, but 11 years ago everything looked peachy. Just 28, Strawberry hit the market after eight years with the Mets during which he had averaged 32 home runs, 73 walks, and 24 stolen bases while playing in a pitchers' park in a pitchers' era. (Strawberry hit .277 with 37 homers in 1990, his final season in New York, numbers that translate to a .299 average and 45 homers in a neutral park of today.)
Strawberry's decision to return to his hometown of Los Angeles might not have marked the end of the Mets' run of dominance, but the timing was uncanny if it didn't. After finishing second with 91 wins in 1990 (their seventh straight season of finishing first or second in the NL East), the Mets plummeted to a 77-84 record in 1991, a 72-90 record in 1992, and a major-league-worst 59-103 in 1993. The Mets tried replacing Strawberry with Vince Coleman, which proved a disaster of explosive proportions. Hard-hitting catcher Mackey Sasser forgot how to throw, Dave Magadan forgot how to hit (.328 in 1990, .258 in 1991), Gregg Jefferies failed to live up to his early promise, and the Mets started throwing money at every over-the-hill free agent they could find on their way to becoming "The Worst Team Money Could Buy," a moniker that served as the title of a book chronicling their 1993 season.
Nolan Ryan, 1979 Angels. After eight seasons (and seven strikeout titles) in Southern California, the Ryan Express finally came home to pitch, signing the first $1 million-a-year contract with the Houston Astros. Ryan had made five All-Star teams, averaging 17 wins (and 302 strikeouts) a season as an Angel. Perhaps just as important, he was a workhorse, throwing an average of 272 innings per season. The Angels, who had made the playoffs for the first time in 1979 with an 88-74 record, fell to 65-95 in 1980.
It wasn't just the loss of Ryan, though. Don Baylor, the AL MVP in 1979 with a .296 average, 36 home runs and 139 RBI, was injured for much of 1980, hitting just .250, 5, 51. Brian Downing, who hit .326 with 12 homers as the Angels' starting catcher in 1979, played in just 30 games the following year. No. 2 starter Dave Frost, who went 16-10, 3.57 in 1979, made just 15 starts in 1980 and had an ERA above 5.00. The Angels would disappoint once again in 1981, going just 51-59 in the strike-shortened season, before bouncing back to win the AL West in 1982 (behind Reggie Jackson and Geoff Zahn, a couple of free-agent imports themselves).
Bruce Sutter, 1984 Cardinals. Bruce Sutter was a nondescript minor-league pitcher who, in 1975 or thereabouts, learned how to throw a split-fingered fastball. From that point through the 1984 season, there was no more feared closer in baseball.
In 1984, all Sutter did was make the All-Star team for the sixth time in his nine-year career, tie Dan Quisenberry's major-league record with 45 saves, and throw 123 innings with a 1.54 ERA. Only two relievers in history have thrown as many innings with an ERA as low: John Hiller in 1973 and Bob Lee in 1964.
Sutter then bolted for free-agent millions in Atlanta, and many pundits predicted that the Cardinals, who had gone 84-78 in 1984, would finish in the cellar without him. Instead, they won 101 games and the NL pennant. Jeff Lahti and Ken Dayley headed a bullpen-by-committee that saved 44 games, posting ERAs of 1.84 and 2.76, and John Tudor and Joaquin Andujar each won 21 games. Willie McGee won the MVP award by hitting .353 with 56 stolen bases, and Vince Coleman stole 110 bases and win the Rookie of the Year Award. In 1986, the Cardinals slipped to 79-82, but even that couldn't be blamed on the lack of a closer, as Todd Worrell won Rookie of the Year honors by saving 36 games, a record for rookies that was broken by the Mariners' Kazuhiro Sasaki last season.
Don Sutton, 1980 Dodgers. Sutton went 13-5 and led the NL with a 2.20 ERA in 1980, and was as synonymous with Los Angeles as the Hollywood sign and rush-hour traffic. He had thrown more than 200 innings for the Dodgers in every year of his 15-year career, winning 230 games in the process. He bolted for the Astros as a free agent after the season, which was a particularly bitter pill for Dodger fans to swallow after the Astros had defeated L.A. in a one-game playoff for the NL West crown that year.
Sutton's departure left a huge void in the Dodger rotation, but along came a huge performance by rookie Fernando Valenzuela, who went 13-7, 2.48 ERA, and tossed eight shutouts on his way to Cy Young honors. The Dodgers won the first half of the split-season schedule, and got their revenge on Sutton and the Astros by beating them in the Division Series on their way to a World Championship. In 1982, the Dodgers would go 88-74 and again lose the division by one game, this time to the Atlanta Braves.
Mo Vaughn, 1998 Red Sox. Red Sox Nation was still bitter at Dan Duquette for letting Roger Clemens walk two years before, and that bitterness turned to apoplexy after Duquette let Mo Vaughn sign a six-year, $80-million contract with the Angels. The Red Sox had just won 92 games and a wild-card berth before getting bounced by the Indians in the Division Series. Still, many expected the loss of Vaughn, who had hit .337 with 40 homers, to send the Red Sox back under .500.
Instead, they won 94 games and another wild-card berth in 1999, and this time beat the Indians in the first round before losing to the Yankees in the ALCS. Vaughn's replacement, 27-year-old rookie Brian Daubach, hit .294 with a .360 OBP and a .562 slugging average, all better than Vaughn's numbers in Anaheim (.281/.358/.508) -- while getting paid $13 million less than the Hit Dog. Pedro Martinez won the Cy Young Award and Nomar Garciaparra won his first batting title. The Red Sox would drop to 85-77 and miss the playoffs last season, but few claimed they would have done better with Vaughn, who suffered through his second straight disappointing season with the Angels.
(Clemens, incidentally, does not make our list despite being the greatest AL pitcher of his generation, as he had gone just 20-18 with ERAs of 4.18 and 3.63 during his last two seasons in Boston, even though most analysts knew he was far from finished.)
Catfish Hunter, 1974 A's. Baseball's first free agent was also one of its finest. Hunter led the AL in wins (25) and ERA (2.49) in 1974, winning the Cy Young Award and making his fourth All-Star team in five years. The A's won their third straight World Championship, but owner Charlie Finley refused to honor the terms of the contract of his star pitcher, and when Finley was found to be in breach of contract, Hunter was set free to sign with any team. He eventually signed a five-year deal with the Yankees for the unheard-of amount of $3 million. (A-Rod made more than that just in April, but it was good money in the 1970s.)
The A's, who won 90 games in 1974, improved to 98-64 without Hunter, as Vida Blue and Ken Holtzman combined to win 40 games. But Hunter's postseason performance (7-2 with a 2.55 ERA in 88 innings) was sorely missed as the A's lost to the Red Sox in the ALCS. In 1976, the A's fell to 87-74 and failed to win the AL West for the first time since 1970. The wheels came off after that season, when Finley decided that free agency was for the birds and that he'd rather sell off his stars than pay them; the A's lost 98 games in 1977 and finished dead last in the AL West.
Albert Belle, 1996 Indians. Say what you will about Albert Belle the man, but Albert Belle the player could flat-out rake. Belle led the AL in the 1990s with 374 homers, 772 extra-base hits, and 1202 RBI, despite not reaching the majors for good until 1991. He was at the absolute peak of his game when he left the Tribe to sign a five-year, $55 million contract with the White Sox after the 1996 season.
In his two final seasons in Cleveland, Belle hit 90 doubles and 98 home runs. No other player in baseball history has hit 90 doubles and 90 homers over a two-year span.
GM John Hart responded to Belle's departure and Kenny Lofton's impending free agency by trading Lofton (and Alan Embree) to the Braves for Marquis Grissom and Dave Justice. While Grissom lasted just one season in Cleveland, Justice hit .329 with 33 homers and 80 walks, filling Belle's shoes ably enough that the Indians won three more AL Central titles, bringing their total to five straight, before faltering in 2000. In their first season without Belle, the Indians got within two outs of winning the World Series before losing to the Marlins in Game 7.
That's not to say the Indians didn't miss Belle, though: after going 99-62 in 1996 (and 100-44 in 1995, the best winning percentage by any team in more than 40 years), they won just 86 and 89 games in 1997 and 1998, but won the division both years because every other AL Central team finished under .500.
Greg Maddux, 1992 Cubs. Until Alex Rodriguez, the youngest free agent in history had been Greg Maddux, who was just 26 years old when he left Chicago for Atlanta immediately after winning his first Cy Young Award. His 20-11 record and 2.18 ERA would prove to be no fluke, of course; it would be the first of four straight Cy Young seasons. But as much as the signing of Maddux maintained the Braves' dominant run atop the NL, the Cubs actually improved from 78-84 with Maddux to 84-78 without him.
Jose Guzman, signed to replace him, went a respectable 12-10 with a 4.34 ERA, while Greg Hibbard was lured away from the crosstown White Sox and won 15 games. Rick Wilkins had one of the great fluke seasons of the decade, hitting .303 with 30 homers, but turned back into a pumpkin in 1994. Guzman and Hibbard suffered injuries and were never the same: the Cubs fell to 49-64 and last in the NL Central.
Barry Bonds and Doug Drabek, 1992 Pirates. Before Alex Rodriguez, there was no question that the greatest free agent of all time was Barry Bonds. While A-Rod was younger, signed a longer contract, and received nearly six times as much money as Bonds got from the Giants in his original six-year deal, Bonds was still the better free agent. All Bonds did in his final three years in Pittsburgh was win two MVP awards, finish a close second the other year, and lead the Pirates to three straight NL East crowns. The Pirates lost Bobby Bonilla and 20-game winner John Smiley after the 1991 season, but with Bonds still in the lineup, they won 96 games in 1992.
Once Bonds left, the roof caved in. The Pirates fell to 75-87 in 1993, then 54-61 in strike-ravaged 1994. They have finished under .500 every year since Bonds left, a streak that shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
In fairness to the Pirates, they didn't just lose Bonds that offseason; they lost Doug Drabek, the ace of their staff, who had gone 15-11 with a 2.77 ERA in 1992 and was the NL Cy Young Award winner in 1990. They had been able to get by after replacing Bonilla with Jeff King, and Tim Wakefield came out of nowhere to ease the sting of losing Smiley. But when Dave Clark and Steve Cooke replaced Bonds and Drabek, the team went south in a hurry.
A Hall of Famer, an All-Star, and a 20-game Winner, 1976 Orioles. Twenty years from now, we'll probably look back at Juan Gonzalez's season in Detroit the same way we remember Reggie Jackson's year in Baltimore: with a quizzical look and a "huh?" The Orioles traded Don Baylor and 20-game winner Mike Torrez to Oakland for Jackson and Ken Holtzman prior to the 1976 season. Reggie hit .277 with 27 home runs and led the league in slugging average during his season with the O's, helping them to win 88 games, but after the season he was tempted by George Steinbrenner's millions and signed with the Yankees. On top of that, Bobby Grich, who had won four straight Gold Gloves and made his third All-Star team in five years, signed as a free agent with the California Angels. And if that wasn't enough, Wayne Garland, who in his first season as a major-league starter went 20-7 with a 2.67 ERA, left Baltimore to sign an unprecedented 10-year contract with the Indians.
Despite being hit by free agency harder than perhaps any team in history, the Orioles actually improved from 88-74 to 97-65 the following year. Grich's replacement, Billy Smith, hit just .215 with five homers, but Jackson's departure opened a spot in the lineup for a 21-year-old rookie named Eddie Murray, who simply hit .283 with 27 homers and was an easy choice for Rookie of the Year. Garland's starts were given to 25-year-old Mike Flanagan, who went 15-10 with a 3.64 ERA, and 22-year-old Dennis Martinez, who went 14-7 as a long man and fifth starter.
Unfortunately, the addition of Jackson allowed the Yankees to win 100 games and keep the Orioles at bay, but after falling to 90-71 and fourth place in 1978, the Orioles came back to win 102 games and the AL pennant in 1979.
Let's look at the 10 in chart form:
Player Team Year Record Next Year Change
Straw NYM 1990 91-71 77-84 - 14
Ryan CAL 1979 88-74* 65-95 - 22
Sutter STL 1984 84-78 101-61* + 17
Sutton LA 1980 92-71 63-47* + 1#
Hunter OAK 1974 90-72* 98-64* + 8
Vaughn BOS 1998 92-70* 94-68* + 2
Belle CLE 1996 99-62* 86-75* - 13
Maddux CHC 1992 78-84 84-78 + 6
Bonds,
Drabek PIT 1992 96-66 75-87 - 21
Reggie
& Friends BAL 1976 88-74 97-65 + 9
Rodriguez SEA 2000 91-71* ???
* Made playoffs
# Strike record pro-rated to 162 games
The first thing you'll notice is that of these 10 teams, nine of them had winning records, and six won 90 games or more. The best players usually play for the best teams, and at least in the last decade, bad teams won't wait for a superstar to declare free agency -- they'll trade him first.
Of the 10 teams hit hardest by free agency, six actually improved their record the following season! Only one of the four teams that made the playoffs with their star player failed to make the postseason the following year, while two of the six teams that weren't playoff teams even with their star player made it to the Promised Land without him.
The four teams that declined all did so by over a dozen games, while only one team improved by that margin (the 1985 Cardinals), so on average the teams did decline, by the margin of 2.7 games. A three-game decline is nothing to be trifled with, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the impact these players are supposed to make.
Why is that? If there's one thing that links those teams that improved despite the loss of a superstar, it's that all six teams were of such quality, both in terms of talent and front-office acumen, that no one player defined their success. The two teams that improved the most, the 1977 Orioles and the 1985 Cardinals, were managed by Earl Weaver and Whitey Herzog, two of the greatest managers of the last 30 years. Each manager saw the departure of a free agent as an opportunity for another player. And sure enough, both teams -- along with the 1981 Dodgers, who were then the organization other franchises tried to emulate -- fielded a Rookie of the Year on their roster the year after losing their marquee free agent.
The other teams on the list dipped into other resources to replace the player they lost, whether it was by trade (getting David Justice to replace Albert Belle), a shrewd waiver-wire grab (Brian Daubach for Mo Vaughn), or even dipping into the free-agent market themselves (as the Cubs did with Jose Guzman). The Angels weren't able to cope without Nolan Ryan in 1980, but they got creative after that season, trading Frank Tanana for Fred Lynn and signing Geoff Zahn as a free agent to replace Tanana, and they were back in first place by 1982.
Only two of the 10 teams went down and stayed down after losing their free agent, the post-Strawberry Mets and the Bonds-less Pirates. Both franchises declined because they got away from what made them successful: the Mets fired the manager who took them to the top in Davey Johnson, stopped building with youth and tried quick fixes with veteran players, a tactic that worked dreadfully. The Pirates' minor-league system dried up, and they simply didn't have the financial resources to keep up in an era when salaries, and some teams' revenues, were increasing at a breakneck pace. But the teams that had a blueprint for success and kept to that blueprint did fine.
The Mariners are proving that they, too, are strong enough as an organization to weather the loss of A-Rod. With a gun to their head in both the Johnson and Griffey trades, they came away with real talent (Freddy Garcia, John Halama, Mike Cameron, Antonio Perez). They have done a fantastic job of dipping into the free-agent market for second-tier players (Aaron Sele, Arthur Rhodes, Jeff Nelson, John Olerud). They've taken the money that Rodriguez wouldn't accept and used it on another high-stakes gamble with a Japanese player, and, like Kazuhiro Sasaki before him, Ichiro Suzuki looks like he's worth every penny.
Three years ago the Seattle Mariners had four of the greatest players in the game, but had such appallingly little depth that they could not convert their great core into a great team. But today, with only Edgar Martinez left from their superstar quartet, the Mariners are a better team, because they have learned that no player is great enough that he can win on his own.
So give credit to the Mariners, who have shown the resilience that only a strong organization can possess. Like the successful teams before them that have lost a great player and soldiered on, they are proving that baseball is still a team game, and that no player -- not even the Quarter Billion Dollar Player -- can change that.
The team of writers from the Baseball Prospectus (tm) will be writing twice a week for ESPN.com during the baseball season. You can check out more of their work at their web site at baseballprospectus.com. Rany Jazayerli can be reached at ranyj@baseballprospectus.com.
| |
|
