Barry Zito. Vernon Wells. Mike Hampton.
It doesn’t matter how much money is at stake, Major League GM’s make a lot of mistakes. Few names prove as much better than the three players listed above.
Some bad moves are avoidable. Some are not. But every offseason, every trade deadline, some general manager is going to make a move he thinks will help his team, only to see it backfire and eventually cost him his job.
2010 has certainly not been immune to bad deals. Adrian Beltre, Marlon Byrd, and Vladdy may have been terrific pickups for their current teams, but free agency is a zero-sum game. Somebody always loses.
Hindsight is 20/20, and with that in mind, let’s rank the 20 worst deals of the last year, from the 2009-10 offseason to the 2010 trading deadline.