The Five Biggest Free-Agent Busts of the Last Ten Years

It’s that time of year again known as the off-season in pro baseball and as always free agency was one of the hottest topics at the GM meetings this past week (November 5-8, 2007). The other two were instant replay and trying to approve the wearing of batting helmets for first and third base coaches. The helmet issue arose due to the death of Rockies Minor League manager, Mike Coolbaugh, who died after being struck in the head by a line drive while coaching first base.



Looking back in retrospect, free agency was born out of 70 years of player frustration at the hands of baseball owners who held a choke hold on player’s rights. The Brotherhood Strike (1890) was the first attempt by the ball players to end the owners grip on player mobility as they organized the National Brotherhood of Ball Players. But it failed miserably and the owners kept their death grip on the game until 1966.



That year, the players enlisted the services of Marvin Miller, labor union activist, and formed the Major League Ball Players Association (MLBPA). The final nail in the coffin of the owner’s reserve clause binding players to one team happened when both Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax refused to re-sign their contracts. In 1970, Curt Flood, St. Louis Cards outfielder, took the leagues to court to officially challenge the clause by negotiating a player trade citing the 13th Amendment and Antitrust legislation as grounds for the law suit.



He lost the case in 1972 in the Supreme Court by a 5-3 vote, but due in part to large-scale public sympathy, the damage had been done. In 1975, Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith played without contracts and then declared themselves free agents. The owners, whose grip on the ball players was weakened by concessions that came out of the Flood case, had no choice but to accept the Collective Bargaining Agreement put forth by the MLBPA, effectively ending once and for all the reserve clause’s effectiveness.



I’ve come up with a list of the five biggest free agent busts of the last ten years by putting in some due diligence and doing some research. Hopefully, you’ll see my reasoning behind choosing the five ball players that are on this list. I arranged the list from lowest annual contract salary to the highest, and oddly enough three of the five are pitchers.



Biggest Bust #5 – Albert Belle (LF/RF – Orioles) – 5 years, $65 million ($13m/yr.)



Albert “Joey” Belle played for three teams in his injury shortened 12 year career --- the Indians (1989-96), the White Sox (1997-98), and the Orioles (1999-2000). He was called “Joey” (his childhood nickname) while in the minors, but his temperament and excessive drinking habits labeled him a high risk draft prospect in college, and it was during his counseling for alcohol abuse that he started going by his proper name of Albert.



Even though his career was ended in 2000 due to a severe hip injury, Belle’s career was continually clouded by his questionable behavior both on and off the field. He was suspended in the 1986 college World Series when he went into the stands after a fan had been shouting racial slurs at him. In 1990, he threw a baseball into the stands, hitting a person that was taunting him about his alcohol rehab. He also ran into a Halloween vandal with his car after catching him in the act of throwing eggs at his house.



In 1994, a corked bat got him suspended. He was fined in 1996 for colliding with Fernando Vina on a play at second base. And in 1995, Hannah Storm of NBC Sports was the target of a profane outburst during the 1995 World Series when she approached him for an interview. It was also reported that the Indians billed him $10,000 a year for damages done to opposing team’s clubhouses during road games.



At the end of the 1999 season, Belle invoked a clause in his contract that would guarantee that he would remain one of the three highest paid players in baseball, and when the White Sox refused to give him a raise, he immediately became a free agent. The Orioles, desperate to get back into a pennant chase, jumped at the opportunity and signed Belle to a five year contract worth $65 million. But Belle’s career would end after only two of the five seasons on the contract when he was diagnosed with degenerative osteoarthritis of the hip. He was only 34 years old.



During his career, Belle became only the fourth player all time along with Ruth, Gehrig, and Foxx to have eight straight seasons of 30 or more homers and 100 or more RBI’s. In 1995, Belle became the only player in MLB history to hit 50 homers and 50 doubles, and to this day he remains alone in the record books with that stat.



Biggest Bust #4 – Chan Ho Park (P – Rangers) – 5 years, $65 million ($13m/yr.)



Park has been with 4 teams in 14 professional seasons. He was picked up by the Dodgers as an amateur free agent in 1994 where he spent eight seasons (1994-2001), then pitched for the Rangers (2002-05), the Padres (2005-06), and finally the Mets (2007). But the “bust” occurred when he was in a Rangers’ uniform.



After a 15-11 season with the Dodgers in 2001, Park signed with the Rangers for five years and $65 million, which was a record for size of contract signed by a pitcher at the time. But while he was in Texas he was hampered with injuries and a hitter friendly ballpark that did not play out in his favor. Park was an unpopular figure in the Dallas area. The media constantly demeaned him in print with nicknames like