Big Z Cashes In
After five months, the Carlos Zambrano negotiations have finally ended with the Cubs rewarding Big Z with $91.5 million dollars over the next five years. Obviously, I love Zambrano. He's the best pitcher the Cubs have been able to keep on the mound since a young Greg Maddux in the early 90s. He's been extremely durable and his final numbers have been very consistent over the last five years in Chicago, and there is no baseball reason not to keep him around. He can hit, too. I have two concerns, though.
- He's a pitcher. The recent history for pitchers that cashed in on big contracts has not been good. Phil Rogers ran the numbers, and roughly two out of every three long-term deals given to pitchers over the past fifteen years has ended up being a bad deal. And many of those have been monumentally bad, where the pitcher with the money has won less than 15 games over the life of the deal. Zambrano does have two things going for him which suggests he may beat the odds. One, he's never had a problem with his arm. Well, that's not entirely true. He did miss one start a few years back after he started getting carpal tunnel after chatting with his brother online for ten hours a day. But other than that, he's been a work horse. Two, he's a tremendous athlete. Big, strong, fast. He's one of the best athletes on the team, and he hustles on every single play. Loafers tend get in trouble when they turn on the afterburners and their body isn't used to going all out. Big Z goes all out on every play, and not coincidentally, he's always been healthy.
- He's a nut job. Zambrano has stretches where he looks like Sandy Koufax for a dozen starts in a row. Then, he'll have a bad day at the plate, snap a bat over his knee, and start walking the world when he gets back on the mound. During these times, you see him yelling at himself on the hill and showing up players with over-dramatic gestures to the heavens. He really is crazy, and let it be said that giving $91 million dollars to crazy people isn't always the most sound investment advice.
Still, I'm happy he signed. He's already one of the top five pitchers in the National League, and has been as much for the better part of four seasons. If Barry Zito is worth $126 million dollars on the open market, then Zambrano is probably worth $150 million. So the Cubs got him at a discount, if a few million dollars short of nine figures can be described as such. If he simply repeats his last four seasons over the next four seasons, he will have been worth every penny.