Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Thievery

Tonight the Mets wasted an opportunity to annihilate the sorry Cubbies and got shellacked tonight 10-1. Maine is obviously luring the league into a false sense of feeling he's beatable. But tonight's drudging sparked some thoughts about 2 other wastes the Mets have been a part of.


1. Bobby Bonilla - in 1991 Bobby Bo became the highest paid player in baseball. Once joining the Mets, he quickly began to eat it. You think we've heard the last of him but guess again. Bonilla is scheduled to make $1.9M from the Mets in 2011. Oh, my bad, he's also scheduled to make $1.9M from the Mets for the next 25 YEARS AFTER THAT. That's right, from 2011 - 2035 Bobby Bonilla will be on the Mets payroll. Let's look forward to Keith Hernandez expressing his jealousy on the nightly broadcast during most games he calls during those years.



2. Mo Vaughn - Vaughn is special in that in '95 he won the AL MVP when Albert Joey Belle obviously should have won (.300/.388/.575/39/126 vs. Belle's .317/.401/.690/50/126). This opened Vaughn up to a new universe of being overpaid. Vaughn spent his newly found riches on an Overpay-Me-Bandwagon, which the Mets jumped on in 2002. From '02-04 Wilpon paid Vaughn $45.5M to hit a total of 29HR. Certainly not a good investment, but I'd like to focus on 2004, when it's well known that Vaughn was paid $17M and change to do ZERO. Not one game, not one at bat, not one plate appearance. For today, I will claim that this $17M is quite possibly the largest sum of money ever paid to anyone anywhere to do ZERO.

Know a better example of anyone in any field getting paid more money to do literally absolutely nothing? Let me know at davemagadan@gmail.com

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