You’d have a hard time finding a player as poor as Suppan who got anything close to a contract this big under these circumstances.

Jarrod Washburn, a year ago, was a clearly superior pitcher to Suppan; left-handed, better ratios, pitching in the American League, and coming off a season where he ranked 5th in the league in ERA. He got 4/37.5 and the M’s got laughed at.

Teams aren’t good at evaluting pitchers corrrectly, but they’re also not that bad. They’re not going to see Suppan as a $40 million pitcher.

Funny that reminds me of Carlos Beltran… His postseason “heroics” (besides going 0-3 in game 7) with the Astros (2004) probably netted him a few extra million, while he goes on to the Mets and strikes out looking with the bases loaded in game 7 of the NLCS.

True we know Beltran is no scrub, but it just points out the fact how much media can hype up a player, and how that benefits the player in contract season.

The only argument I’m putting forward is that quite a few mediocre players have been rewarded with contracts disporportionate to their skills/stats simply based on their “Post-Season Heroics” (TM). It always seems to happen. It’s a phenomenon similar to the big contract rewarded to the player who puts up huge numbers in his walk year that are not reflective of his past history.

Someone will look at a player’s recent performance and decide it’s a better indicator of their future performance than all of their past history. Take Gil-ga-Meche for example. When he was on his hot streak, how many people were ready to annoint him the ace of the staff. That’s the argument I’m putting forward.

Should these things happen? No. Do they happen? Yes. Unfortunately.

Player A: 3.2 BB/G, 4.8 K/G, 0.98 HR/G, 4.86 xFIP
Player B: 3.3 BB/G, 4.5 K/G, 1.18 HR/G, 4.92 xFIP

One of those is Jeff Suppan. The other one is Joel Pineiro.

Dave may not be extending himself as far as he’s letting us think. Jason probably works really well with horsemeat.