Four years ago, before the Arizona Diamondbacks had ever played a game, they traded for Matt Williams and signed him to a five-year, $45 million contract extension. They signed Jay Bell as a free agent to a five-year, $34 million contract.

At the time, I criticized the signings, pointing to the length of the deals for two players who would be 32 years old in their first year with the team, and 36 (for Bell) and 37 (for Williams) in the final years of their contracts.

I wrote the following for ESPN SportsZone (that was the predecessor of ESPN.com for you kids out there):

Keep in mind that Bell has actually topped 15 homers just twice in his career. Keep in mind that in a couple years he will probably lack the range to play shortstop. .... Most likely, when Matt Williams is 36 he'll be hitting .230 with an extremly low on-base percentage. ... Hey, it's [Jerry Colangelo's] money. He can spend it as foolishly as he wants.

I think that assessment was right on. Williams and Bell had big years in 1999 and the Diamondbacks won the NL West. But in 2001, the two combined for just 29 home runs and 111 RBI while making $17 million in salary. Williams hit .275, but does have a low on-base percentage (.314). Bell is no longer a shortstop and has lost his starting second-base job to Craig Counsell, who makes $425,000.

Another Marlins?

The 1997 Florida Marlins were in their fifth-year of existence. They had never had a winning season, but signed free agents Moises Alou, Alex Fernandez, Bobby Bonilla and Dennis Cook to go along with Kevin Brown, Al Leiter and Devon White, who had signed as free agents in 1996, and Gary Sheffield, Robb Nen and Jeff Conine, who had been with the team since their first season in 1993. They went 92-70, won the NL wild card and beat the Cleveland Indians 3-2 in 11 innings in Game 7 of the World Series. In 1998, they went 54-108. The Marlins, of course, immediately dumped contracts after winning it all, trading Alou, Brown, Leiter, Nen, White, Cook and Conine in the offseason and Sheffield, Bonilla and Charles Johnson early in 1998. Why? Owner Wayne Huizenga said he was losing millions but also wanted to sell the team -- which he did in 1999 to John Henry -- and purging payroll made it easier to sell. Given the financial difficulties of the Diamondbacks, could the same thing happen? The team has taken additional cash calls from its partners, borrowed money from MLB's central fund and asked players to defer their salaries, just so they can pay their bills. All their highly-paid veterans except Reggie Sanders are signed through at least 2002. Jerry Colangelo has given no indication this will happen, but neither did the Marlins. Consider also that the Marlins had several marketable players to deal (not that they got anything in return for their trades -- A.J. Burnett, Mike Lowell, Preston Wilson and Derrek Lee are it). The Diamondbacks have Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson, but no team is likely to take on the contracts of Matt Williams, Jay Bell, Steve Finley and Todd Stottlemyre. Another way to look at this: the Marlins' 1997 nucleus of Brown, Leiter, Alou, Sheffield, Nen and Livan Hernandez would still be a formidable foundation four years later. Many players on the 2001 Diamondbacks will be out of baseball in four years. The Diamondbacks have some cheap players who are decent major leaguers -- Erubiel Durazo could be a 35-homer guy and David Dellucci and Craig Counsell are worthy starters. But this could be a franchise in trouble. No money. A barren farm system. Nobody to trade except Luis Gonzalez and their two aces. If Arizona does that, this team will lose more games next year than the '98 Marlins. --David Schoenfield

And Jerry Colangelo, the Diamondbacks' managing general partner? Thanks in part to Arizona's fat $81 million team payroll, he has had to make two cash calls from his partners to pay the bills, taken out a big loan from Major League Baseball and deferred millions in player salaries.

Nonetheless, my prediction that "Colangelo will be wondering why his team is in last place" wasn't quite as accurate as I had hoped. (Though, to be precise, that was in reference to 2002, so don't count me out just yet.)

Foolish? Well, the Diamondbacks are in the World Series. So, despite the absurd contracts for Williams and Bell, how did they do it?

Can you say Johnson and Schilling?

The two aces combined to go 43-12 this season. When those two didn't get a decision, the team went 49-58. To establish how much those two mean to the Diamondbacks, look at the winning percentages of all the playoff teams minus their top two pitchers:

Team       Aces              Without
Mariners   Garcia/Moyer      78-34, .696
Athletics  Hudson/Mulder     63-43, .594
Yankees    Mussina/Clemens   58-51, .532
Indians    Colon/Sabathia    60-54, .526
Cardinals  Morris/Kile       55-50, .524
Astros     Miller/Oswalt     63-58, .521
Braves     Maddux/Glavine    55-56, .495
D-Backs    Johnson/Schilling 49-58, .458

So, without those two, Arizona is about as good as the Anaheim Angels. The Diamondbacks can talk all they want about their "strategy" of bringing in veteran players like Williams and Bell and Steve Finley "who play the game right," but the fact is that this is a bad team when Johnson or Schilling isn't on the mound.

True, Arizona deserves credit for bringing in those two. They signed the Big Unit as a free agent and he responded with consecutive Cy Young Awards and will probably win his third straight. And they didn't give up much to get Schilling last July: Omar Daal, Travis Lee, Nelson Figueroa and Vicente Padilla.

Their other big player, of course, is Luis Gonzalez. Again, Arizona didn't give up anything to get him: Karim Garcia, whom they had originally selected from the Dodgers in the expansion draft.

But does the Arizona front office really deserve credit for acquiring an MVP candidate? Not really. Check his three-year averages before joining the Diamondbacks and his three years with Arizona:

             HR  RBI   AVG   SLG
1996-1998    16   73  .266  .433
1999-2001    38  122  .324  .593

Gonzalez was a pedestrian major-league outfielder who suddenly transmogrified into Joe DiMaggio. That's luck, not front-office acumen. Heck, if Gonzalez had even hit like he had in 2000, the D-Backs wouldn't have made the playoffs this year.

Arizona's second-best offensive player this year was Reggie Sanders, who hit .263 with 33 home runs and 90 RBI. He signed as a free agent for $1.5 million. Considering that was a career-high in homers and that he hadn't driven in more than 72 runs since 1995, it's unlikely Arizona actually expected that kind of production.

Finley is another of Arizona's high-salaried veterans. He signed as a free agent in 1999, had two big years, but tailed off this year to .275 and 14 home runs. For $5.3 million, that's not much production. And he's still signed for another year.

A couple other points: