The Worst Contracts In Baseball

Jonah Keri highlights his picks.  My favorite:

12. Adam Dunn, designated hitter, Chicago White Sox

It's been talked about in board room strategy sessions and huddles with managers, written on by stat mavens and beat writers. Now the notion that teams are emphasizing defense at the expense of offense has turned from intriguing theory to an actual, verifiable trend. Witness the modest contracts doled out to solid-offense, lousy-defense/minimal-positional-value players like Josh Willingham, Jason Kubel, and others. If you're going to pay an offense-only player $15 million a year in that climate, he'd better be Babe Ruth crossed with Rickey Henderson crossed with a St. Bernard puppy who brings you neck-barrels of Cristal.
Adam Dunn is not that guy. He's not quite a full-time DH yet but he might as well be, costing his team two to three wins a year when he was a full-time outfielder and remaining a net negative when shifted to first base. And while the 33-year-old slugger regained his power in smashing 41 homers last year, he still hit just .204/.333/.468. Of course that's a marked improvement over Year 1 of Dunn's four-year deal, when he "hit" .159/.292/.277 and offered his usual negative baserunning and defensive value; FanGraphs calculated that Dunn made his team lose three more games than your typical replacement-level player that year, making his 2011 season one of the worst recorded by any player in the game's history. At least we're down to the final two years of Dunn's anachronistic deal.

Thank God Dunn is in the AL with the designated hitter.  He was a disaster on defense.  He's also a disaster at hitting for contact and base running.  But if you like a guy who hits a lot of home runs and strikes out an incredible amount, then he's your guy.  He's also ranked fifth all-time in career strikeouts (soon to be fourth, as he's one behind ARod).  He's only 3 average (for him) seasons from the top, as long as Jim Thome doesn't go too far past Reggie.  The guy is just a very ugly baseball player.