Nationals' $245 million, $140M free agent signings ranked as 2 of worst in MLB history
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The Washington Nationals haven't gotten all their contracts right in recent years.
And when you crunch the numbers, massive deals for Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin simply didn't work out in the long haul.
Corbin comes with the caveat that he helped the Nats win a World Series in his first season before a total fall off.
Strasburg simply couldn't outrun injury troubles.
Still, $245 million (7 years) for Strasburg and $140 million (6 years) for Corbin are ranked as two of the five-worst free agent contracts ever by ESPN's Bradford Doolittle in a new article out Friday.
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And yes, Strasburg was technically a free agent, even though he chose to return to the only team he'd ever known.
"It was a supremely bad contract given at the wrong time to a superstar pitcher coming off one of his best seasons," Doolittle writes. "Pitching injuries suck. Strasburg won a lone game after signing this deal."
Corbin will always have that ring, and the Nationals won't totally regret his deal for that specific reason.
"In retrospect, Corbin really had only one high-level season under his belt when the Nationals signed him," Doolittle writes. "And his first season for Washington was terrific -- 14-7, 138 ERA+, 5.1 bWAR -- and he helped the Nats win it all. So he has that flags thing going for him as well. But after that magical season, Corbin's composite bWAR over the next five seasons was minus-2.3."
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Would the Nationals' present fortunes be different if these contracts had been handled differently? Maybe not.
They're still quite painful in retrospect, particularly Strasburg's when you consider simply what might've been if his generational arm had stayed healthy.
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