Adam Rubin of ESPN New York (who else), posted the full details of the deal the Mets signed with Shaun Marcum. The one-year deal guarantees him $4 million as well knew, but here’s the breakdown of the other $4 million he can earn with incentives:
— $250,000 apiece for reaching 120, 140, 160 and 170 innings.
— $375,000 apiece for reaching 180 and 190 innings.
— $500,0000 for reaching 200 innings.
— $375,000 apiece for 90 and 120 days on active roster, or on disabled list for injury unrelated to his right arm.
— $500,000 apiece for being on active roster or DL for injury unrelated to right arm for 150 and 170 days. (The major league season is 183 days.)
Marcun tossed 52 pitches over five scoreless innings in an extended spring training game yesterday in St. Lucie. He’s on target to make his Mets debut on Saturday against the Philadelphia Phillies. Rubin says that Marcum will most likely will be capped at 90 pitches.
Remember, Marcum was supposed to replace the 200 innings we lost in R.A. Dickey. Nobody expected him to replace what the reigning Cy Young did last season, but Marcum was being relied upon to be an innings eater for the team despite missing a good chunk of the season with arm troubles last season.
Since arriving to camp in February, he has dealt with one ailment or another ranging from weak shoulder, neck pain and biceps tendinitis.
So far, he is already out of the running for the $500K bonus for being on the active roster for 170 days. That ship has already sailed.
I think it’s a safe bet to say he won’t pitch more than 160 innings this season which wipes out another half dozen of those incentives.
My question is this…
If Marcum was supposed to replace Dickey’s innings as stated by Sandy Alderson after he signed him, why then did he need all those incentives to simply achieve that end?
It appears to me that Alderson had some deep and abiding concerns about whether marcum could even pitch 100 innings, hence all these incentives. So why give him $4 million guaranteed in the first place?
Why didn’t we invest the $8 million he apparently was willing to commit on a less riskier starting pitcher who was a proven innings eater that didn’t have the injury concerns that Marcum had?
Throw in the fact that Johan Santana was still incommunicado on January when Marcum was signed and nobody knew if Johan would be ready to pitch in Spring Training. And I do mean nobody.
All I’m saying is that we could have put our money (what little of it we had) on a safer bet.
Thank God for Matt Harvey and Jon Niese or the Mets placing in the NL East standings would be much more different right now. Those two alone have accounted for seven of the Mets nine wins.
