Hinske Contract Follies

The signing of Chris Young to a long-term deal by the Diamondbacks has prompted a revisitation of, among others, the Eric Hinske contract over at Primer. Where it was asserted that "it wasn't a good idea to commit to Hinske so soon".


My thoughts :


The Jays knew that Hinske had flaws in his approach at the plate, so I think it's quite legitimate to criticize the early commitment to Hinske, but two points need to be emphasized:


1. Based on the available projections at the time, the contract was a steal - in other words, I don't think anyone showed empirically that it was anything other than a good idea.


2. The Jays thought they could fix Hinske's flaws, correct his style without disturbing his talent.


They proved to be wrong on point #2, and that's a shame (Hinske's weight is still too far forward), and the hand injury probably didn't help, as he cut down his swing and started even further over his centre of gravity, slashing at the ball instead of driving off the back foot. Everyone (literally just about everyone) started pitching him backwards and he began to flail. He's not a "student of the game", exactly, is Hinske. Or a student of anything.


Should they have known? Debatable - it wouldn't have hurt them to exercise caution and it would have saved them a bit of money (true, Hinske delivered just about market value for his performance after 2002 but they wouldn't have had to pay *him* that much). Hinske had dropped off in the second half as word got around that he would overcommit to his weight transfer, and that should have been obvious - there may have been some who believed it was just the season wearing on him. I wouldn't have hesitated to sign him to the same deal at the time, though. I thought it was a fine idea, that didn't work out.