Arizona Diamondbacks — Madison Bumgarner
2023 Salary: $23,000,000
When Madison Bumgarner signed with the Diamondbacks ahead of the 2020 season, many experts pegged the deal as a disaster waiting to happen. The feisty lefty was sensational as a member of the San Francisco Giants — three World Series triumphs, three top-six Cy Young finishes — but he was showing some signs of regressing in his final year. In the first three years of his tenure with the D-Backs, MadBum is 15-29 with a 4.98 ERA. Bumgarner makes nearly twice as much as Arizona’s next-highest paid player (Ketel Marte), and is nowhere near as valuable. It can be argued that Bumgarner is Arizona’s fourth-best starting pitcher. $23 million is far too much for the 33-year-old.
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Atlanta Braves — Eddie Rosario
2023 Salary: $9,000,000
Eddie Rosario is the classic example of a player getting hot in the postseason and riding that into a terribly overpaid contract. Rosario won NLCS MVP after destroying Los Angeles Dodger pitching for a week straight. After Atlanta capped off its World Series run, Rosario was rewarded by the team with a two-year/$18 million contract. Year 1 didn’t pan out how either party envisioned. The oft-injured Rosario was limited to just 80 games, and was one of the worst hitters in baseball (.587 OPS) in those at-bats.
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