Magglio Ordonez

When I first heard of Maggio Ordonez signing with the Tigers for up to $105 million over 7 years I didn't know what to think. I mean if healthy Magglio is a very good player but JD Drew is a similar player and he got just 5 years and $55 million. No way that this is a good deal money or sabremetric wise - right?

Honestly my first thought about the signing was more about how Scott Boras is bad for baseball and conversely if I were a player how I would want him as my agent. Tom Meagher has thought about Magglio's deal though and he really doesn't like this signing:

The Tigers have made a signing that smells like summer armpits, tastes like sun-dried mayonnaise, and sounds like John Kruk’s unreleased album of Cyndi Lauper covers. Awarding Magglio Ordonez a possible $105 million, as Dave Dombrowski and company have just done, is the Ben Affleck film festival of free agent signings. Detroit has just proudly volunteered to clean the bathrooms at a frat in the aftermath of a party. It doesn’t get much worse than this.

Tom then proceeds to skewer the Tigers management for making such a deal (a skewering that is probably well deserved - I mean Billy Beane probably threw up in his mouth when he heard about the deal).

The Transaction Guy also doesn't particularly like the signing (though he is nowhere near as harsh as Tom Meagher in his assessment):

So he has a past history of excellent performance. But, he’s 31 years old and coming off a serious injury. Even without the injury, it would be reasonable to expect a drop-off in performance. By the end of the contract, the Tigers will be paying a 35-year-old $18M a year, and it’ll be even more for even longer if he does manage to come back fully from the contract and play enough to trigger the guarantees in the contract. The current crop of wizened superstars might lead one to believe that players perform better, longer than they used to, and that might be true, but this is an awful big gamble in order to find out.