Even worse than I predicted

Once upon a time I maintained a website where I (and the others on this blog) wrote pretentiously about the shit that I (we) found interesting. Now we do that here. Anyway, the last article that I wrote for that site, over a year ago, was about baseball. In particular, the article was about how stupid the Los Angeles Angels were for signing Gary Matthews, Jr. to a 5 year, $50M contract to be their centerfielder. I argued that Matthews might be an ok player for a year or two (but never worth $10M a year), but in the long run the Angels would regret having him on their roster.

I was wrong. The Angels regretted having him on their roster almost immediately. Gary Matthews, Jr. was statistically the worst player that the Angels played everyday last year. The Angels offense was pretty potent last year, with only two regulars that were below average according to OPS+. Shortstop Orlando Cabrera was 5% below average and Matthews was 7% below average. Coincidentally (or not), Cabrera was traded away this winter. I'm sure the Angels would love to trade Matthews away, too, but no one will take him with 4 years and $40M left on his contract.

Matthews was so bad that the Angels went out and signed Torii Hunter to a 5 year, $80M contract to play centerfield for them next year (I won't go into why that is also a bad deal except to point out that Hunter is already 32 and admitted that he was prepared to sign for less). That means that Matthews will probably move to leftfield (or the bench) one year after signing his big contract, in part, because of his "outstanding" defense in centerfield.

Perhaps this will turn into a yearly post for me, where I can break down the stupidity of the Angels as the sign a new centerfielder to a bad contract each year. Thank you to the Los Angeles Angels for providing me something to write about.