And neither of those things are true.

Look, virtually no team ever signs a guy expressly to be a DH, most teams sign guys to play in the field somewhere and then use the DH to keep another good bat in the field. So, the fact that Posada was signed to be a catcher and Sheffield was signed to be an outfielder, but both of them ended up as DH’s making 13M undermines the whole “the contract was bad because it doesn’t make market sense.” idea.

I’ll entertain you making an argument that the contract was a bad idea because we shouldn’t be paying 13M for an old DH OPS+ing 120 as some sort of intrinsic philosophical misallocation of resources, because there’s some legs to that argument. But you can’t claim that the contract was a bad decision because it’s not in line with the market or it puts us at a competitive disadvantage, because the contract is perfectly in line with the market, and if our competitors all have DH’s producing at Posada’s levels and getting paid what Posada’s getting paid, there’s no competitive disadvantage (although there is the opportunity cost of being prevented from securing a true competitive advantage instead…)

Let’s say you can go into the way back machine and it’s March 2008, but you have mysteriously forgotten everything that happened during the 2008 season.

So, purely on the basis of past performance and your expectations going forward (is the player going to decline, etc.) — how many of those contracts would you have taken?

Sheffield at $13.3 — no effing way.
Thome at $15.6 — no.
Thomas at $12.6 — no effing way.
Ortiz at $13.0 — yes.
Hafner at $8.1 — yes.

You’re justifying $13MM for a DH who has an OPS+ of 120 or so by pointing to a lot of bad contracts which I would never have signed in the first place.

It’s like justifying what Pettitte should get by pointing at Zito’s contract and saying: “Look what Zito’s getting paid? Pettitte is definitely better than him!”

On one hand, it’s nice to wait and see what you’ve got and/or who might get injured, etc. (who would have guessed the Yankees would have acquired Pudge last season if you’d have asked them last December), but that also adds to the uncertainty of what you’ll be able to acquire. You don’t know which teams will be looking to dump contracts, or what contracts they’ll be looking to dump; you may have to sacrifice prospects (and if the Yankees are in a dire situation offensively, they might be forced to sacrifice fairly valuable prospects) or assume a bad contract, etc. There are a variety of reasons why it is not necessarily in the team’s best interest to wait until they see what they’ve got and/or get a feel for the in-season trade market.

The more I think about it, the more I’d be satisfied with Dunn on a reasonable contract (3/$39M?).

Sheffield at 13.3 was horrid and a terrible decision by the kittens.

Matsui was supposed to be an outfielder not a DH.

Ortiz had a terrible 2008 and may be past his best years, but in 2007 he had an OPS+ of 171 and in 2006 it was 161. That’s what he was getting $13MM for.

Thome has a career OPS+ of 148 — that’s how he got that ridiculous contract. (Posada =124).

All the guys you are saying “he’ll get a raise” will definitely get them, but those raises won’t put them anywhere near $13MM.

The reality is, the only one of those guys getting $13MM last year who was definitely worth it was…oh wait…it was none of them. Except maybe Ortiz but he missed a lot of time. The best DHs last year were both paid less than $10MM.