Baseballer Ian Desmond cost himself $140 million

YOU can find this American sports star sobbing uncontrollably in a corner somewhere after his huge mistake cost him $140 million.

TWO years ago, Ian Desmond turned down a reported seven-year, $US107 million ($AUD150 million) extension from MLB side the Washington Nationals choosing to instead, as we hear so often in sports, “bet on himself” by playing two years and hoping to cash in even more in his 2016 free agency.

Then, after a horrendous contract year, the kind that makes people say “he folded under the pressure”, Desmond turned down a qualifying offer from the Nationals for a little under $US16 million ($AUD22.4 million)

After all that, Desmond waited month after month for a free agent deal, whereupon it became clearer and clearer that his payday wasn’t going to come and he’d probably have to sign a one-year deal to get back in the good graces of the free agency gods.

But no one was prepared for the one-year, $US8 million ($AUD11.2 million) deal he signed with the Texas Rangers this weekend, which is an insane lowball for a guy who won multiple Silver Slugger Awards and averaged a Wins Above Replacement (WAR) of 4.4 in the three years before 2015.

Even worse, the Rangers are moving Desmond to left field, where his value is immediately undercut. A big-hitting shortstop basically becomes a mediocre-hitting left fielder.

So, to sum up: Ian Desmond basically lost nine figures — $AUD140 million — betting on himself.

Even so, he forced himself to look at the positives. We don’t know how long he must have spent looking for one of those in his new deal, because we certainly can’t find any.

“This is a new chapter,” Desmond was quoted as saying by the Dallas Morning News.

“I’m going to embrace the challenge.”

How can Redmond sleep at night?

Former Washington Nationals general manager Jim Bowden said on MLB Network Radio he’d “never seen a worse contract for a player”.

“That’s a shocking number,” Bowden said.

“What a great job by (Texas Rangers general manager) Jon Daniels to hang around long enough to get Desmond for one year at eight.

“So he went from 107 million to losing 99 million over the last 12 months? You want to talk about a humbling sport?”

Perhaps Desmond turned down the offer because he’d seen the astronomical figures earnt by former Colorado Rockies player Troy Tulowitzki ($AUD224 million) and Texas’ Elvis Andrus ($AUD168 million) in their new contract dealings at the time, and he thought he could match that.

But the 30-year-old’s biggest problem was that instead of maintaining his impeccable standard, he only got worse from 2013.

After hitting 20 homes runs that season, his 2014 was mediocre in comparison and his 2015 was just plain awful.

What Ian Desmond did was play a game of high-risk/low-reward. He bet on himself at awful odds. If he played his best, he was only going to increase his yearly salary by 15-20 per cent. That’s huge if you’re a regular person, but when you’re a baseball player getting $150 million, it’s less of a hit and the downside is so much greater.

Nobody needs to explain that to him though, one look at his bank account will tell him just how badly he messed up.

Originally published as Baseballer Ian Desmond cost himself $140 million