ESPN still won't cry uncle on A.J. Burnett

During spring training, I blogged about how bad the Phillies' contract for A.J. Burnett was. True, it was "only" for two years (despite ESPN claiming it was a 1-year deal at first) for a sweet $33.5 million. (I consider any X-year contract with a player option to be an X+1-contract for the obvious reason that, if he's teh suck, the team's still stuck with him for X+1 years.)

That's in refutation to ESPN's Jonah Keri, who said, at that time, when I asked if he was going to update this year's bad contracts list, he said "no," saying on Twitter:

Burnett had a great 2013 & signed 1-year deal, so no.

I would NOT call that last year "great."

And, as noted, I would not call his contract a 1-year deal.

Even I, though, was generous. Here, on that blog post, is my preseason prediction for Burnett:

185 innings. ERA+ of 102. A WAR of 1.3 and WAA of -0.2. 

He may well get the innings pitched. But, at a current ERA+ of 90, WAR of 0.9 and WAA of -0.3, the rest of his year would take a "push" to hit those numbers.

And, in a trade deadline piece, Jayson Stark is admitting the player option is a reason the Pirates don't want him back. However, he's still not willing to call it a bad contract. Nor a two-year contract.