Bad contracts can sneak up on a team. One day a team has a star player locked up for the next 10 years, the next day it’s the iceberg to the team’s Titanic.
Normally, these good-at-first-glance deals happen via the open bidding process that is free agency.
This is the time when multimillionaire owners start bidding against each other for players’ future services. Unfortunately the players are usually already 30 years old and nearing the end of their prime.
But the temptation to get a few more years of prime production outweigh the major risk involved with paying someone hundreds of millions of dollars for past results.
With that in mind, here are the worst 10 contracts in baseball today:
10. José Reyes, Colorado Rockies: 2 years, $48 million left
Like most players whose offensive and defensive production is mainly derived from their speed, Reyes has not aged well. The 32-year-old may need to shift away from shortstop. Meanwhile, the days of his leading the league in steals and/or triples are long gone.
