November 03, 2006
Zito's Money
Barry Zito represents the cream of the crop of available pitchers in the free agent pool this winter. Like Soriano, Barry benefits from a lack of supply at his position. The only two left-handed starters of note this winter are Andy Pettitte and Ted Lilly, and Pettitte is thinking of retirement. The problem facing teams signing Zito is that they're looking at a 29 year-old pitcher already in decline:
| Barry Zito | Through 2003 | 2004-2006 |
|---|
| ERA | 3.12 | 4.05 |
|---|
| K/9 | 7.2 | 6.6 |
|---|
| BB/9 | 3.4 | 3.7 |
|---|
| HR/9 | 0.79 | 1.10 |
|---|
It's interesting to note that Barry's decline corresponds to the departure of pitching coach Rick Peterson from Oakland. It makes you wonder if this gives the Mets the inside track on landing Zito.
How do you bid on such a pitcher? The lack of competition for lefty starters drives his price up, but his record over the last three seasons is good but not spectacular. A.J. Burnett recieved $11 million a season last year with better numbers than Barry. Zito is healthier, making 34 or 35 starts in each of the last six seasons.
Using talent and health, a good estimate for Barry's worth should be around Burnett's. It's a seller's market, however. The teams avoided this situation over the last few years, with enough free agents on the market to keep the price down. Now, a possible bidding war (especially among the New York teams) may drive Zito's price over $15 million a year. That will feed into following seasons, as Barry's money becomes the new base. Will owners be smart enough to avoid this and bid simply on what Zito is worth? With the new CBA and television money, I doubt it.
Just an interesting bit of perspective... Barry Zito is likely to be the highest paid free agent this offseason, and you're talking about him commanding $15 million or so. There will be the usual outcry about the money, but why is baseball the only sport where this happens?
Just-waived Knick Jalen Rose was making $15 mil. Jalen Rose! He's practically a role player. But A-Rod is public enemy number one?
Just a thought...
Baseball has no salary cap is the only reason I can think of. And the Yankees spend an exorbitant amount of money, even though historically they've spent far and away more money than everyone and are pretty close to their historical overage percentage (if that makes sense). Lazy writers expound on how much money baseball teams spend, yet the lowest payroll in the NBA is $36MM and the highest is $142MM (Knicks, which is $45MM more than second place). NBA teams have LESS than half the number of players that MLB teams carry, yet it's baseball that's out of whack. I really hate the mass sports media sometimes.
