Colorado Rockies: The franchise’s 10 worst free agent signings

Mike Hampton

Mike Hampton came into Colorado with the reputation of a baseball player with a football player’s mentality. Signed before the 2001 season for a then-record eight-year, $161M contract, the prevailing thought was that if anyone could handle the mental grind of pitching in Coors, it was Hampton.

Hampton was coming off an excellent seven-year run with the Astros and Mets, highlighted by his All-Star year in 1999. That year he went 22-4 with a 2.90 ERA and finished second in the Cy Young voting to only the otherworldly Randy Johnson.

Of note is the fact that Hampton had lead the league in suppressing homers in both 1999 and in 2000. The thin air makes it too easy to hit homers here, so get the pitcher that is the best at preventing them, right? You can see why this worked on paper.

Colorado Rockies

In the field, however, things didn’t go as planned. Hampton battled through a 0.3 WAR 2001 that actually saw him make the All-Star team based on a hot start to his season. Toward the end of May, Hampton was 7-1 with a 2.65 ERA and mashing crowd-pleasing home runs. Then things fell apart.

Despite his pedigree, Hampton started giving up homers over three times as frequently with the Rockies. When mixed with his always-high walk rate, this became a deadly combination. Hampton finished 2001 with a bloated 5.41 ERA and 1.58 WHIP. These numbers continued to trend in the wrong direction in 2002, where Hampton compiled an ugly 6.15 ERA and 1.78 WHIP.

Finally the Rockies mercifully sent Hampton packing in a three-way deal with the Braves and Marlins. Hampton was able to revive his career with some solid seasons in Atlanta while Colorado actually got back some useful players, like Charles Johnson and Preston Wilson. That gives the Hampton saga at least a happy-ish ending, which cannot be said for our next entry…

Denny Neagle

Denny Neagle, a two-time All-Star with a 3.92 career ERA, was signed for five years and $51M on December 4, 2000. Just eight days later the team would ink Mike Hampton in a spending spree the likes of which the Rockies have not seen before or since.

Coming off a World Series win with the Yankees, Neagle posted two mediocre seasons for the Rockies before his career – and life – imploded. In 2001 and 2002, Neagle threw a combined 335 innings with a 5.32 ERA, good for a 95 ERA+ and 2.0 WAR. Serviceable, if not quite worth the 14.2M he made over that time.

Then, after a brutal seven starts in 2003 (7.90 ERA), Neagle hurt his elbow and was placed on the DL for the rest of the season. He continued to languish there throughout all of 2004 as well, but then things got even darker for Neagle.

During the offseason between ’04 and ’05, the rehabbing pitcher was caught soliciting a prostitute. The Rockies used this as an opportunity to nullify Neagle’s contract by invoking a morals clause. Neagle later attempted a brief comeback with the Devil Rays, got hurt again, and was never heard from again … on the field.

He was heard from again off the field a little too much In 2007 when, in August, Neagle was caught driving under the influence. Later that year, Neagle would also be implicated in steroid use by the Mitchell Report.

Let’s just say there’s a reason that people in Denver don’t bring Neagle up much these days.

Wade Davis

Wade Davis was relatively effective in his first year in Colorado as he set the team record while leading the league in saves with 43. Unfortunately, he was so bad in 2019 (8.65 ERA) that he obliterated all his positive value.

Davis has accumulated a grand total of -0.2 WAR for the low, low price of $34M. What’s more, Davis is still owed $17M for next year, with a $15M mutual option for 2021. Interestingly, that option vests if Davis finishes 30 or more games. This may motivate the Rox to keep the former closer in the setup role behind Scott Oberg, who was clearly the better pitcher in 2019.

Bryan Shaw

When they signed Bryan Shaw after the 2017 season, the Rockies thought that they were getting a reliable, battle-tested, reliever who could help anchor the perpetually battered Colorado bullpen.

What they got was two years of below-replacement performance at above-market prices. Shaw has a cumulative 5.61 ERA (89 ERA+) over 131 games pitched.

Shaw’s 2019 wasn’t as bad as his 2018. However, it wasn’t good enough to make his now-$34M contract seem like a good idea. Maybe at a still-viable 32 years of age, the Rox will still be able to extract some value from Shaw. Let’s hope so because, like Desmond and Davis, he’s Colorado’s for a while yet.

Mike Dunn

You can see a parallel universe where Bryan Shaw, Wade Davis, and Mike Dunn all live up to the promise that they had coming in. Dunn would be the top lefty in a lock-down bullpen that helps the Rockies go deeper in the playoffs in 2017 and 2018 and maybe stay afloat through a tough 2019. But that’s not how things went in this reality.

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After three years, $21M, and 0.0 WAR, Dunn was finally released. He’d put up a 9.00 ERA in 17 injury-riddled innings in 2018, then managed only a 7.13 ERA in 17.2 innings in 2019.

Dunn was designated for assignment this June after a four-run meltdown against the Padres. The Rockies ultimately ended up paying a $1M buyout to get out of the rest of his contract, and there’s nothing that says “this was a mistake” like paying someone to NOT play for your team.

Darryl Kile

Darryl Kile’s untimely death cut short a career that showed both brilliance and grit in its time. In the collective imagination, Kile is remembered in part for resurrecting his career in St. Louis after two disastrous seasons in Colorado. This narrative is only partly accurate though, in that Kile wasn’t as bad in Colorado as he’s remembered.

No, the results weren’t pretty, but Kile actually had a positive WAR in both of his seasons in Denver. Sure, he led the league in losses in 1998 and in earned runs in 1999, but he also threw 421 innings across 67 starts in pre-humidor Coors Field.

By today’s standards, those numbers are almost heroic, considering the beating his arm must have taken as a curveball specialist in pre-humidor Coors Field. Still though, Kile was making the big bucks, by ’90s standards. His $24M over three years made him one of the highest-paid pitchers in the game – and three WAR in two seasons hardly seemed to justify the investment for the mid-market Rockies.

Kile was traded to the Cardinals where he pitched 232.1 innings with a 3.91 ERA, winning 20 games and making the All-Star game. Kile was a warrior during his time with the Rockies, but he never had the results with Colorado that he did elsewhere.

Bill Swift

The best thing that Bill Swift did for the Rockies was help convey a sense of organizational legitimacy with his signing. Announced on the same day as the signing of Larry Walker (perhaps you’ve heard of him?), the fact that these two respected pros were choosing to come to Colorado helped the fledgling franchise establish itself as a legit major league organization.

While the club did make its first playoff appearance in ’95, Swift was hurt through much of the season. He then spent most of the next two years on the DL and was a shell of himself when he was out there.

Overall, Swift accumulated 1.5 WAR total in his time on the mound for Colorado. Those gains were hardly worth the $13M the Rockies paid Swift, though perhaps they helped establish themselves as a viable landing spot for big-name starters … for better or worse.

Howard Johnson

Signing former Mets outfielder Howard Johnson was one of the early offseason misses in team history. Only two seasons removed from a 38-homer All-Star campaign in 1991, HoJo signed for $1.7M but managed to hit only .211/.323/.405 across 269 plate appearances. This was worth a meager -0.7 WAR, but hey, at least it was just a one-year deal.

Daniel Murphy

It may not be totally fair to put a guy on this list after only one year, but right now the Daniel Murphy deal sure looks like a mistake. Last year Murphy made $10M last year for an 87 OPS+, -0.5 dWAR season that started with a month-long trip to the DL.

It’s possible that with a healthy offseason that the 35-year-old Murphy could have a better 2020. Perhaps he and Ian Desmond combine to form an effective platoon at first. Sure. It could happen.