The release of Oliver Perez reminded me about the binder that Scott Boras put together two years ago, when Perez was looking for a fat new contract. Some of the highlights, from Michael S. Schmidt (in the Times) ...
Oliver Perez Not, As It Turns Out, Sandy Koufax
The Perez book is divided into eight chapters that include such headings as: "Perez Turns Corner in 2006," "Perez Is One of Baseball's Top 5 Left-Handed Starting Pitchers," "A Rare Young Left-Handed Starting Pitcher Available on the Free-Agent Market," "Big-Game Ollie," and "Durable Ollie."
In the chapter "Perez Turns Corner in 2006," charts are used to argue that the pitching statistics for Perez, who is now 27, are similar to those of Randy Johnson and the Hall-of-Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax at the same age. What's more, the charts argue that Perez's control problems will improve, just like they did for Koufax and Johnson as they got older.
In the past, I’ve argued that Boras’s famous (or infamous) binders are transparently one-sided, and exist more for the benefit of his clients than any actual negotiations.
A few weeks ago, MLB Trade Rumors went back and grabbed some of the reactions when Perez signed with the Mets, and Jayson Stark was the only guy who really nailed it, listing Perez’s deal as one of three “most outrageous” contracts of that off-season.
I wish I could find my reaction, but no luck so far. Considering my skepticism about the binder, I’m guessing I wasn’t wild about three years and $36 million. But I’ll bet if you ran a projection for Perez, the moment he signed that contract, the money wouldn’t have seemed that crazy. In fact, I recall a valuation on the order of $9 million per season, maybe even a little more.
There’s just no way anyone could have reasonably guessed that Perez would go from 25-17 and 3.91 over two seasons to 3-9 and 6.81 in the next two. To be sure, this was an organizational failure and a big part of Omar Minaya’s legacy. But sometimes players will surprise you, and sometimes terribly.
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