I understand. My point though is that his performance is undervalued when compared to a contract that he didn't give himself. I would argue last year that the fans were a little hard on him for booing him despite the issues he was dealing with. I mean, he can say his personal life wasn't affecting him as much as he wants, but I find it very hard to believe that he could consistently take the baseball field each night and be unaffected by his son's condition. Combine that with the adjustment year a player takes, and I'd say he was given a bit of an unfair treatment.
I don't think that comparing performance to salary is a good idea. Most players are overpaid anyway. I just have my expectations for a player given their career numbers, and I base his performance as to where his numbers are at the end of the season relative to his career norms. I don't really judge whether or not we got bang for our buck. Sure, the contract was paying way too much for performance that didn't deserve it, but we did end up with a WS title in the end. Go figure.
Basically all I'm saying is that I don't use a player's salary to determine whether or not they're "worth" it. It's not my money anyway. Well, I guess it kinda is, but I pay to see a winner play...not a JV squad. How they use that money to put one out there is out of my hands. I guess the only time I really get irritated with salaries is when they pay $9M/yr for Lugo and didn't really upgrade at the position. At least Drew was an upgrade over Nixon.