2007 Salary Leaders Didn’t Perform

The problem that most large, long term contracts create is an over the hill, essentially un-tradable player raking in the big bucks. Some teams also backload their contracts (about as stupid as one can get), paying the player less for his productive years and more in his declining year. I assume the rational (or at least the cover) is that this is done to protect for salary inflation, yet all it really does is increase a teams cost for a depreciably asset (the player’s production). This could certainly be the case for many of the 2007 salary leaders.I’m not going to delve into a bunch of win share, petco or marcel value for these players. The list speaks for itself. A-Rod, Jeter, Manny, Helton, Pettitte, & Bonds had value in 2007. I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine whether their levels of production equal their pay. Now Giambi, Colon, & Schmidt spent either the majority or a good part of 2007 on the DL. Whether this due to age, steroid abuse or something else really isn’t’ the issue. The fact is they didn’t produce at the level of a $5 million player. Sexson just sucked.In 2007, top-level salary clearly didn’t equal top-level performance. Will 2008 differ?