Gerrit Cole has never won a World Series.

Neither has Clayton Kershaw.

Neither have a lot of big free agent players.

Difference is, for some reason, Cole is the Face of Successful Championship Megadeals.



Then, in order to support his current argument about the value of megadeals, Mike Lupica wrote the following, which seems to reverse his stance for the past fifteen years:

"Rodriguez had been with the Yankees since 2004, opted out of his old Rangers contract during the 2007 World Series, re-upped with the Yankees for the ’08 season. The Yankees won it all in 2009. They couldn’t have done it without him..."


Then Lupica just embarrasses himself, continuing his weird fascination with David Price"

"In the third season after David Price signed his contract with the Red Sox, they won another World Series. And absolutely, hands-down, 100 percent don’t win it without him."

The Red Sox don't win the World Series without David Price? How do you figure?

"Whether or not he’s always pitched like an ace since joining the Red Sox, when they needed him to pitch like a total star in the ALCS against the Astros, starting and relieving, he did that."

That's terrific.

He gave up 4 runs in 10 2/3 innings during the ALCS against the Astros.

You know how the Red Sox could have conceivably won without Price?

If they pitched a guy who gave up 3 runs in 10 2/3 innings.


Then the same observation about Scherzer. He signed a big contract, he pitched pretty well at times in the playoffs, and his team won the World Series.




I can list dozens of nobodies who pitched better than Price and Scherzer in small sample size crunch time.

• Lance McCullers Jr.
• Brad Penny
• David Weathers

Yeah, man. The Red Sox didn't need to pay David Price all that money to win the World Series. They just needed David Weathers and his 0.82 postseason ERA.


So what does this prove?

It doesn't prove anything.

I can find a list of players who fit a criteria and a list of accomplishments and there will always be a cross-section of the two lists.


Most of the time, megadeals don't pay off, if the sole goal is to win the World Series.

Not because the players are bad or because the deals are ill-advised. It's just because winning the World Series is difficult, only one team wins it per year, and one player can't win it all by themselves.