Repeatability: The Key To Lucrative Contracts, and Pirates' Lack of Such

The New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez is a superstar, and is paid as such. More to the point, he is a superstar just about every year. So he is not "overpaid."

The Toronto Blue Jays' Vernon Wells had one good year in 2006. On the strength of this one year, he was granted a lucrative multi-year contract. But a compensation scheme that was commensurate with his best year was too much for his later, mediocre years.

The Pittsburgh Pirates did not make this mistake with Freddy Sanchez. In his best year (2006), he won the National League batting title, and would have been worth almost the $20 million that Wells would have commanded as a free agent. (according to Fan Graphs). Except that he was paid only a little over $300,000 during his third club-controlled year.

But Sanchez went downhill after that, although his decline was moderate, not steep like Wells'. Even so, before trading him last year, the Pirates offered him only $5 million a year for two years, which was probably less than what he was worth. And then they replaced him with former Tampa Bay Ray Akinori Iwamura for even less money.

A somewhat similar case was Jason Bay, whose productivity was worth about $20 million in his best club-controlled year, but actually less than that as a free agent. (Many baseball players "top out" before they become free agents.) In any event, the Pirates did NOT consider his $20 million peak value repeatable, and probably weren't willing to pay half that to keep him. Instead, they can get a comparable performance from rookies Lastings Milledge or Andrew McCutcheon for "minimum wage."

The Pirates do the same with their pitchers. They dumped Oliver Perez on the New York Mets (as part of the trade for Xavier Nady), who is now the latter team's $12-million-a-year headache, after having had one good year in 2007. But they traded a possibly "non-repeatable" slugger Nate McLouth (an outfielder), for the slightly less valuable starter Charlie Morton--plus two other players.

The Pirates don't have many people on their staff with "repeatable" statistics. That's why they don't pay their players much. On the other hand, they hope to build a team with rookies, and other assorted question marks, who will play well some year. And then hope that a "critical mass" of them plays well the same year to get them at least to the playoffs.