Satchel Price's brutally-titled post "Ed Wade is Not a Good GM" makes the following calculations with the signings of Lyon, Myers, Feliz, Moehler, Blum, and Michaels:
That's $29.3M guaranteed to six players, and $19.3M committed to the 2010 payroll.
CHONE projects Lyon (0.8 WAR), Myers (1.0 WAR), Moehler (0.6 WAR), Feliz (2.0 WAR), Blum (0.4 WAR), and Michaels (-0.1 WAR) to be worth about 4.7 wins above replacement in 2010. Even if you assume that Lyon maintains 0.8 WAR performance for three years, that's 6.3 WAR for $29.3M.
In a market where 1 WAR is going for slightly less than $3.5M, Wade has paid $4.65M per win. Factoring in the fact that Houston isn't exactly on the high side of the win spectrum, and you're looking at arguably the worst offseason in baseball.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
