Mike Hampton and the Crash

In the simplest terms, Mike Hampton was a good pitcher. 


He won 148 games over 15 major league seasons and, for a precious few years, ranked among the top left-handed starters in baseball. He helped the Mets to the 2000 National League Pennant, won 22 games for the Astros in 1999, and carried an ERA under 4.00, while throwing 150+ innings for six consecutive seasons (1995-2000) during baseball’s most home-run-happy era.

You'll hear little talk of those accomplishments in the days following his retirement announcement.



Hampton is better remembered as the notoriously fragile benefactor of perhaps the most imprudent free agent contract in the history of baseball. In the early 2000s, as top salaries began to inch north of $100 million for the first time, the Rockies gave Hampton a laughably large sum of money, $121 million to be exact, and he proceeded to post two -- yes, two -- completely forgettable seasons in the purple and silver before latching on with Atlanta.

Also, the dude could hit.

That’s what you’ll hear about Mike Hampton. And it’s all fair. He signed the deal, and soon as the ink dried it became pretty clear that the contract would define his career. Barring any major postseason triumph or miraculous individual performance, it’s hard to look past a mountain of money stacked 121 million dollars high.

And the dude could hit.

But the ramifications of Mike Hampton’s mammoth contract reverberate beyond the jaded legacy of Mike Hampton’s career. The contract was a Waterloo moment for the Colorado Rockies, and a cautionary tale for all of their small-market brethren. In the years since, teams like the Rockies have spent considerably less money on the free agent market, choosing instead to focus their resources on developing talent and using what funds they have to sign that homegrown talent long term.

In 2001, the year Hampton signed, Colorado had the 13th largest payroll in baseball. Realizing the infeasibility of such an approach, the Rockies eventually bled themselves to the bottom. By 2006 they’d slipped to 28th, redirecting resources instead into player development. In 2007 they reached the World Series with baseball’s 25th highest payroll. When the Rays followed up with their remarkable low-budget run in 2008, the new standard for franchise rebuilding was set: buy your talent when its young, and cheap.


In some ways, baseball in the post-Mike-Hampton era has become a sort of anti-NBA.For a basketball franchise it makes sense to clear house for a few marquee players because in a 5-on-5 game each individual player makes a significant impact on the outcome. But baseball GMs have finally realized that this calculus makes little sense in a game where even the most regular participants get only four to seven isolated chances to effect the outcome of a given game. Baseball GMs have to invest in the whole, and for small-market teams it makes little sense to clear house for one impactful player.

For a long time this stunningly simply observation failed to register. Baseball in the early 2000s was like Wall Street in the 1920s, and as the stakes grew higher and the judgments more muddled, the act of bidding became, itself, the sport.

There had to be a crash. Mike Hampton was the crash.

Ok, so maybe he wasn’t the only element, but between Hampton, Tom Hicks’ Alex Rodriguez albatross, and Ken Griffey Junior’s failed experiment with the Reds, one could feel the momentum shifting. In all of those cases, smaller market teams invested a large portion of their capital in superstar players, and failed spectacularly.

In the post-Hampton era we’ve seen less and less mega contracts handed out by traditionally low-payroll franchises when the player in question is changing teams. Mega-extensions, yes, but major free agent contracts less so. Of the 22 $100 million+ contracts awarded after Mike Hampton’s deal, 18 were either current-club extensions or came via teams with top 5 payrolls.

The Hampton debacle sparked a sense of urgency in small market clubs who realized they could not hope to play the same game the big boys were playing, and that urgency would in turn spur new thinking.


Oh, and the dude could hit.

Further Reading:
http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2011/3/25/2072367/braden-looper-retires-cardinals-marlins
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110326&content_id=17128496&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
http://nybaseballdigest.com/?p=34865
http://www.mastersball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1125:life-and-death-in-the-transactions-27-two-mikes-and-a-scott&catid=954:mastersblog&Itemid=67