Next up for bidding is free-agent first baseman Chris Davis, most recently of the Baltimore Orioles. Born in 1986, he stands at 6 feet 3 inches tall and has led the American League in home runs in two of the past three seasons. Can we start the bidding at $100 million? The Orioles start us off at $100 million. Do I hear $120 million? Orioles again. How about $140 million? Come on, people, this is a great price for Davis, who can even play third base in a pinch! And we have $140 million from -- Baltimore. Oh, and Baltimore also calls $150 million. And $161 million. Are you guys sure you know how this works? Sold to the team from Charm City for $161 million, unless they care to make another bid!
That's not quite how the auction for Davis went this offseason, but it's not that far off. With most of the market turned off by the asking price from Davis and his superagent, Scott Boras, the Orioles were the prime bidder this winter. The question was whether Baltimore would spend enough to bring back Crush, especially after the team's initial seven-year, $150 million offer was met with the sound of crickets. After hints about pulling the contract off the table, and a proposal dangled to Yoenis Cespedes, the O's offered $161 million and closed the deal.
The O's are one of those teams stuck in the middle. They need to improve to be among the top-tier playoff contenders, but don't have enough in their farm system or enough remaining targets in free agency to make large upgrades without a lot of creativity. That left the O's in an awkward position. Bringing Davis back might have resulted in a crippling contract in future years, but not bringing him back might have meant a crippled offense in 2016.
The bad news for Baltimore is that in baseball, the "winner's curse" frequently applies to those that sign first basemen and corner outfielders who have left their 20s in the rearview mirror (Davis isn't 30 yet, but will be when the season starts). That doesn't just apply to limited, overrated players, like Ryan Howard at the time he signed his much-panned contract extension in 2010, but legitimate superstars like Albert Pujols. Some have been OK, such as Adrian Gonzalez's deal and Joey Votto's, after he showed he can finally stay healthy, but the history of big deals to past-prime players on the easy side of the defensive spectrum is not pretty.
The ZiPS projection for Davis reflects the sizable risk a team takes when signing a 30-year-old player to a contract of this length. While there's some good news in that ZiPS projects Davis to age better than he would in most parks, thanks to his homer-laden skill set being a good fit for Camden Yards, his projected value over seven years falls short of his $161 million deal, with ZiPS suggesting only a $116 million valuation.
There's a silver lining for the O's, in that the nature of the deferred contract, which pays Davis through 2037, gives them a de facto refund from the headline-grabbing $161 million. The temptation to compare Davis' contract to the Bobby Bonilla buyout is there, but also misguided, given that there's a huge difference between deferring payment at eight percent, as the Mets did with Bonilla, and the interest-free deferral here. Don't believe me? Ask your mortgage company to refinance your house at zero-percent interest and listen to the laughter. At three percent interest, the long-term deferred money is only about $29 million in 2016 dollars instead of $42 million, and at five percent, it's $25 million. Baltimore also avoids this winter's hot new trend, the player opt-out, which means that if Davis does age exceptionally well, the team reaps all that upside rather than him hitting free agency again in a few years.
With this move, Baltimore solidifies their win-now strategy for 2016, something that would have been extremely hard to pull off without Davis. But while bringing back Davis (or bringing in someone comparable to Davis) was necessary to have a good shot at the playoffs in 2016, it's also not sufficient by itself. Remember, the Orioles aren't adding Davis to the team. This deal simply prevents them from losing him -- his projected four wins in 2016 can't be added to 2015's 81 wins as a rough estimate. Essentially, Baltimore still has its 2015 roster, with Mark Trumbo and Hyun Soo Kim in and their best pitcher from last year, Wei-Yin Chen, out. And even if that trade is an even one, that just leaves the Orioles with the same talent level as last year's .500 club.
Adding Davis back to the roster improves the (very) early ZiPS projection for the 2016 team to 80 wins. Can a team with 80-win talent go deep in the playoffs? Absolutely. The future holds a great deal of uncertainty, and while 80-win teams occasionally win 70 games, they also occasionally win 90 games, and when we get into October, any team has the potential to go on a run and do serious damage. But going into a season with 80-win talent still isn't the best strategy when all your investments are geared toward short-term winning.
Projecting out the rest of the AL East shows the perils of being an 80-win team. Even with Davis back, ZiPS only projects the O's to be the fourth-best team in the AL East.
In other words, while the current Orioles payroll of around $135 million will easily be the largest in team history (though their '90s payrolls were larger relative to the rest of baseball), it's still not enough. If they want wins in 2016, the O's can't afford to be finished spending. That means they still need to be in the Cespedes mix, they still need to be looking at Justin Upton if they can't land Cespedes, and they still need to be in conversation with Doug Fister or Mat Latos, hoping they get lucky with the pitcher they sign.
By signing Davis, the O's have made a firm decision to make that push forward and attempt to return to serious contention after a one-year hiatus. They now have to be committed to this goal, because like a skydiver after jumping from a plane, there's now no opportunity to have second thoughts and head back up.