Phillies sign Lidge for "cruelest fans in the sport"--Marchman

Tim Marchman notes rising cost of relief pitchers, 7/7/08: "Yesterday...the Philadelphia Phillies signed closer Brad Lidge, 31, to a three-year, $37.5 million contract that makes him either the second-highest-paid reliever in the game, if you go by the contract's average annual value, or the sixth-highest-paid, if you go by its total value....

• Lidge isn't one of the top two relievers in the game, or one of the top six. He may not even be one of the top 20 — there are a lot of terrific short men in the game, and while Lidge has great pure stuff, it isn't all that different from Kyle Farnsworth's. So how, aside from Philadelphia's traditional insistence on paying relievers as much as possible, to explain this?

Most obviously, the man is having a spectacular year. In 31 games, he's given up only five runs, and never more than one at a time....That's ridiculous, all the more so given that he pitches his home games in a shoe box

• in front of the cruelest fans in the sport.

Eight different Phillies earned saves last year, and five the year before that. It's easy to see why a team that felt compelled to put their no. 2 starter in the bullpen last year would want to lock down their relief ace. A bit less obviously, this is what established closers cost these days.

• The best-paid reliever in the game is Mariano Rivera, who makes $15 million a year and is completely unique.

The next tier comprises Billy Wagner, B.J. Ryan, Francisco Cordero, and Joe Nathan....

• (Lidge is) making more than these other pitchers per year — $750,000 more than Nathan, and $1 million more than Cordero, previously the best-paid relievers who don't pitch in the Bronx — but he's also the only one without a guaranteed fourth year, and he's giving up his right to test the market....

Mostly...the inflation in reliever salaries has to do with how badly underpaid ballplayers are generally; they make far less of a percentage of the sport's revenues than do their peers in any of the other major team sports.

• NFL players are guaranteed 59% of the sport's revenues by contract, NBA players 57%, and NHL players 55.6%. It's tough to pin down just what baseball players are getting, because of the sport's opaque accounting, but the Sports Business Journal reported in March that it has varied between 51% and 55% in recent years. Last year, Major League Baseball payrolls (which, to be clear, are far from the only player-related expenses for teams) added up to $2.475 billion, just 40.6% of the sport's claimed $6.1 billion in revenue.

Given this, there's no reason to be especially surprised when a very good but not elite player such as Lidge cashes in for $37.5 million with a team whose needs he answers"...

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