In a not so surprising surprise, the Cubs dumped closer Jose Veras.
The Cubs misjudged Veras, who saved 19 games for the Houston Astros
last season before getting traded to the Detroit Tigers. President of
baseball operations Theo Epstein – who’s called closing “a nice carrot
to be able to dangle in free agency” – hoped this would become another
sign-and-flip deal that netted a nice prospect.
Veras had a poor spring training (7.00 ERA), got booed at
Wrigley Field, lost the closer’s job 10 games into the season and wound
up being stashed on the disabled list with an oblique injury. Veras gave the Cubs two blown saves and an
8.10 ERA. Management should have known something was up because Veras had been with 8 different teams before signing with the Cubs.
The Cubs got a total of 13.1 innings from Veras for $4 million. That equates to $100,000 per out.
This almost a full year after Kyuji Fujikawa underwent Tommy John
surgery, and the Cubs don’t expect many returns from that $9.5 million
investment. Fujikawa only threw 12 innings for the Cubs. That equates to $263,889 per out.
This is just the recent major league questionable contracts.
If you start adding up the bad, broken player contracts:
Edwin Jackson $52 million
Fujikawa $9.5 million
Veras $4 million
Barney $2.3 million (2014)
Schierholtz $5 million (2014)
Carlos Villaneuva $10 million
James McDonald $1 million
Ryan Sweeney $3.5 million
Jorge Soler $30 million
Geraldo Concepcion $6 million
Justin Ruggiano $2 million
This list totals $125.3 million. That is more than one-quarter of Ricketts construction budget for the Wrigleyville projects.
Yes, the Cubs have spent money, but clearly the Cubs have not spent wisely.
And these contracts are evidence of how current Cub management values players and potential performance. This is not a good sign since the same tools and perspective is used to evaluate amateur talent. So far, the progress of the Cubs has been toward the poor house.
