Here at Red Fever, we're huge fans of ESPN's Dan Szymborski and his ZiPS projections at the beginning of every season, which uses his fancy mathematical formula to try to predict how every player in baseball will do in the upcoming season.
Szymborski recently wrote about the worst 20 contracts in all of baseball, and the Rangers have three of those players.
Ranked as the third-worst contract in baseball is designated hitter Prince Fielder, who won AL Comeback Player of the Year honors in 2015 but as Szymborski pointed out, didn't even garner a 2.0 Wins Above Replacement rating, largely because of his switch to being a full-time DH and his relative lack of power in the heart of the Rangers' order.
Fielder's nine-year, $214 million deal was originally given by the Tigers, who even chipped in $30 million prior to the 2014 season to get the Rangers to take him off their hands, but the Rangers will have to pay him a lot of money.
Szymborski ranks Shin-Soo Choo as the 12th worst because he believes he's going to still turn it around and maybe build on his fantastic second half of the 2015 season, but even still, he's a $20 million man and hasn't performed like one yet.
Finally, he ranks Elvis Andrus' deal as the 16th worst, a figure probably helped in Andrus' favor because of the fact he's still a relatively young player, but his defensive regression has killed what looked to be a pretty decent contract when he signed it.
The top two names on the list are Rangers' division rivals as the Angels' albatross known as Albert Pujols is the worst contract in the game, and Seattle's Robinson Cano has the honor of coming in second.
