Yes, good example.
I also always got a chuckle out of people criticizing JDM for swinging at all those low outside breaking pitches, while he had an OPS of .900.
We use the term albatross pretty loosely here, of course. "Paying a guy a lot of money to do nothing" would be the standard definition, I think.
For the Red Sox recent examples of albatross contracts would be:
Sale (extension)
Price
The Sandoval/H Ramirez/Castillo triple combo pack
I think those would qualify for any owner.
I assume what you're getting at is that some franchises can handle an albatross or two and still be successful.
Forget the splits. I'm just a little freaked out by Houck's stats in these spring games (1.92 WHIP, 9 HR in 20.1 IP). When the numbers are this incredibly bad you have to wonder if the guy is healthy or not.
In case anyone is curious about Cora's contract status, per Alex Speier, when they re-signed Cora for 2021 he got a 2-year contract, plus a team option for a further 2 years, which they "quietly" exercised, as Speier put it.
The biggest correlation with runs scored is OPS.
Last year the Red Sox scored 4.54 per game with 155 HR/.731 OPS
The Brewers scored 4.48 with 219 HR/.724 OPS
There are plenty more examples like that.
What strikes me as funny is that so many fans want their owners to spend like madmen, but they will also moan and groan endlessly about the mega-deals that turn to financial albatrosses.
It seems like the players are happy as long as free agents are still landing mega-deals from the big spenders. You rarely hear players complain about small-spending teams like the ones mentioned.