snowmanny said:
Then you have a ~$12 Million dollar player who sucks and your international scouting department has a lot of explaining to do. Are you saying they should never go in on these Abreu, Darvish, Cespedes, Puig, Matsuzaka type-players?
I'd much rather see them devote that sort of salary to a potential top of the rotation starter than to a 37 year old with clearly declining skills.
Matsuzaka is the "biggest bust" but he still rang up 11 WAR in his first four seasons, which cost the Sox about $31mil in salary. In the end it was a poor deal, especially if you count the posting fee, but while he was healthy that $3m/WAR rate of return was better than what you could get (now) on the FA market. Better examples:
Darvish: 9 WAR/$15 mil
Cespedes: 6 WAR/$15 mil
Puig: 5 WAR/3.7 mil (SSS)
Hisashi Iwakuma: 9 WAR/$8mil
Noriachi Aoki: 6.5 WAR/ $3 mil
Tsuyoshi Nishioka: -2.4 WAR/ $6 mil
etc. Of course, only Aoki, Nishioka, Darvish and Matsuzaka came via posting, rest were Intl FAs.
Anyway, while each situation will give us plenty to argue over, it seems like there's a decent trend of salary costs per WAR being a bit of a bargain thru the international or posting route.