More off-season complaints

Okay so, here's part two of my ongoing series of off-season complaining.

The Yankees are seriously overpaying Mariano Rivera.

Apparently Rivera is close to signing a new contract with the Yankees worth $45 million over 3 years, making him the highest paid closer in history by nearly $5 million/year.

Like many others on the much-hated Yankees, i wish i could say that Rivera actually lacks talent, but the fact is that he has been one of the most dominant closers in the game over the last 10 years. That being said, he seems to have become much more hittable in recent years. Over the last three years his WHIP (walks/hits per inning pitched) has risen slightly every year. More importantly, his OPS-against (on-base plus slugging) and slugging-against have increased. In short, he's letting more runners reach base, and the hits that he's giving up are going for more bases.

Rivera is undeniably one of the best closers of all time. Maybe the best closer of all time. I just think he's in the twilight of his career, and the Yankees are overpaying him. That being said, I think they made a good decision in not agreeing to a fourth year in the contract, as he apparently requested.

The comments on the ESPN story about the deal seem to be fairly well split between "he's getting too old" and "he deserves it for the crap he's put up with in New York." I think the later is a valid point, but I have a feeling that the Yanks aren't including performance bonuses in the contract based on putting up with crap.

The last issue that i have with this contract goes back to my last post, about Posada.

Posada averages about 140 games per season, and, though I don't have stats to back this up, probably plays just about every inning of those games. Lets assume, for the sake of argument, that Posada's age gets to him a little bit this year, so he only plays 120 games, and can only play 8 innings per game before being pulled for a defensive improvement. Again, this is hypothetical.

That would put Posada at 960 innings played over the course of the season. Posada will make $13.1 million next season.

Rivera, on the other hand, averages roughly 75 innings per year and would be making $15 million next season, assuming this new contract is signed.

13,100,000 / 960 = $13,645.84 per inning
15,000,000 / 75 = $200,000 per inning

I realize I'm over-simplifying things a bit here, but all things considered, is Rivera really work nearly 15 times more than Posada is? Seems a bit extreme to me. If I was Posada, i think i'd be a little upset. Then again, if I was Posada i'd be made of money, playing baseball for a living, and married to a former model.
I guess he probably has better things to do with his time than worry about how the Yankees value him relative to Mariano Rivera.