David Price.
Sure, he is one of the best pitchers in the MLB during the Regular Season, but, in the postseason, he is miserable.
He is so bad that these are his actual stats:
Record: 1-8
ERA: 5.48
Now, for most pitchers, this would be enough to bury their careers but for Price it has not. During the Regular Season, Price is one of the most consistent and dominating pitchers in the entire MLB. But for some reason, during the postseason, he forgets to pitch well and it costs his teams dearly.
All of this is bad enough, but it is all compounded by the fact that the Red Sox, the team that Price currently pitches for just handed him a seven-year $217 million contract this past offseason.
For one of the highest paid pitchers in the MLB, you would think that he would prove his worth to the team that went almost broke paying for him.
This is the latest in the biggest and most perplexing trends in sports, giving a lot of money to players and then the player failing miserably.
Ryan Howard. Pablo Sandoval. Jason Bay. Nnamdi Asomugha. Albert Haynesworth.
The list goes on and on and on and on.
I can already hear the question, "Well, if this keeps happening, why do sports teams keep signing players to high value deals?"
Well, there is an answer for that.
All of these players who were signed for multi-year deals because they more likely than not, had one great season and then they parlayed it into a large contract.
So, the problem really isn't the players, it is the teams and their scouting departments for not seeing that players would flop.
For most of these players, there were a substantial amount of red flags for the players that could have been avoided if the teams did a better job realizing them.
The whole situation that the Red Sox have with Price is something that could have totally been avoided. He has a track record of being amazing during the season but being awful in the postseason. It is the biggest knock against him.
Very rarely does the notion of signing a player for an exorbitant amount of money work. The only case that has kind of worked was the case of Giancarlo Stanton and the Miami Marlins.
Stanton was bred through the Marlins' Farm System and then he had a string of seasons where in them, he hit more than 25 home runs, the Marlins proceeded to reward him for his play with a contract totaling $325 million dollars over 13 years, making him a Marlin for life.
Now, Stanton has been on and off the field since he signed the deal but for the most part, the outfielder has been mildly successful since the signing of his new deal.
Just because of this one outlier, it does not represent the whole truth of the players who are signed to large deals.
Teams should take more caution when they are thinking about signing players to large deals that they cannot live up to.
