The worst contract in D-backs history: Yasmany Tomas

The Arizona Diamondbacks have taken some big swings and misses with free-agent contracts in their short history as a franchise. While spending on marquee names brought them early glory, their luck has taken a turn for the worse lately.

Zack Greinke’s contract may not have had the return on investment that the team was seeking, but it could hardly be considered a bad move; perhaps just overpriced. While an argument could be made for Russ Ortiz’s season-and-a-half stint with Arizona being the worst deal in club history, one contract — fueled by hype and a trend in baseball — stands out as the most irresponsible case of spending by the D-backs. That dubious contract belonged to outfielder Yasmany Tomas.

The story doesn’t begin with Tomas. It begins in 2012 with a boom of Cuban-born players raking across the league. Yoenis Cespedes and a scrappy Oakland A’s team were causing waves in the AL West. Cespedes — who experienced a harrowing tale while defecting from Cuba — hit .292 with an .861 OPS, 23 homers, and 82 RBI in his first season, finishing second in the American League Rookie of the Year voting.

In 2013, Yasiel Puig was lighting up MLB with his bat, his arm, and his charisma. He slashed .319/.391/.594 in his debut season with 19 home runs, a .925 OPS, and 42 RBI in 104 games for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He also finished second in rookie of the year voting and 15th in MVP voting. The 23-year-old followed that up with an All-Star appearance in his sophomore year. He began to emerge as a leader on the Dodgers and a top villain for D-backs fans.

Meanwhile, another young star who also defected from Cuba was on the rise in Chicago. Jose Abreu made his debut for the White Sox the year after Puig and quickly became one of the hottest stars in the American League. Abreu led all of MLB with a .591 slugging percentage and a 173 OPS+. He was an All-Star, the AL Rookie of the Year, and a Silver Slugger Award winner in his first season. He also finished fourth in MVP voting.

Due to those success stories, every team in baseball began scouring Cuba for the next potential superstar, including the Diamondbacks.

Tomas was putting up numbers in the Cuban National Series that were eerily similar to Puig’s stats. He slashed .301/.333/.580 with 16 homers and 42 RBI during the 2011-12 season and caught the eye of scouts. He played for Cuba’s World Baseball Classic team in 2013 and garnered even more praise and exposure. In the WBC, he hit .375 with two home runs, one double, one walk and four strikeouts. Just like that, the hype train for Tomas was on the tracks.

Labeled as one of the top young power hitters in Cuba, Tomas defected to the United States in June 2013. Arizona wasn’t the only team looking to sign him. Every team in baseball took an interest in the 23-year-old. Touted by his agent Jay Alou as having more power than Abreu and more discipline at the plate than Puig, Tomas was a ready-made star ripe for the picking.

However, scouts cautioned that he lacked a position and his bat wasn’t as impressive as advertised. Criticism focused on his inability to field, suggesting that his best option would be as a designated hitter. Instead, Tomas ended up in the National League. With no DH.

After an assumed bidding war, Jesse Sanchez from MLB.com reported that Tomas had signed a six-year deal with the D-backs worth $68.5 million on Nov. 26, 2014. The Diamondbacks confirmed the signing via social media on Dec. 8.

Done deal. pic.twitter.com/U2L3CwO5kC

— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) December 8, 2014

From the winter meetings on, the D-backs front office boasted about the acquisition of Tomas and its excitement for the future. Manager Chip Hale promised that opposing pitchers were “going to fear that lineup.”

“Talent wins … Pitchers are going to fear that lineup.” – @Dbacks manager Chip Hale on Yasmany Tomas. #WinterMeetings pic.twitter.com/bLp7i02QiM

— MLB (@MLB) December 8, 2014

At the time, Puig’s seven-year, $42 million contract began to look like the deal of the century. If Tomas could produce at a similar level, Arizona’s contract would be viewed in a similar light.

Narrator: He could not.

Tomas started off his MLB career with talk of how out of shape he was in camp, but that didn’t stop the D-backs from expediting his timeline. He played in five minor league games with the Reno Aces in 2015 before being called up to the main roster.

His debut season with the D-backs proved he was a liability in the field at a major league level. He slashed a mediocre .273/.305/.401 with a .707 OPS, nine home runs, and 48 RBI. But his play in right field, left field and at third base were all sub par, posting negative fielding numbers for Total Fielding Runs Above Average. Arizona tried to place him at four different positions, including first base where a certain folk hero named Paul Goldschmidt resided. He finished the season with -1.0 WAR.

2016 was Tomas’ best season. The D-backs were still seeking a position for him defensively, but he was making improvements. He lowered his strikeout percentage and increased his walks. He slashed .272/.313/.508 with an .820 OPS, but he really broke out as a slugger with 31 home runs and 83 RBI. In fact, he led all of MLB with seven multi-HR games that season.

Unfortunately for the team, his fielding was so bad that despite his performance at the plate he still posted a -0.9 WAR for the season. Only three players in MLB history have ever hit 30+ HR and been less valuable than Tomas was in 2016.

The following year, he played in just 47 games before missing the remainder of the season due to a core injury similar to a sports hernia. He hit .241 with eight home runs and 32 RBI in the injury-shortened season.

Then in January of 2018, Tomas was pulled over for going 105 miles per hour on the Loop 101 in Tempe and was arrested for criminal speeding and reckless driving. That was the beginning of the end of his career with Arizona.

The D-backs announced that they placed Tomas on outright waivers prior to the start of the 2018 season. He finished the final three seasons of his six-year contract in Triple-A, playing for the Reno Aces. He played six more games in an Arizona Diamondbacks uniform before again being placed on outright waivers in 2019.

Tomas’ tumultuous career with the D-backs ended on Oct. 28, 2020 once his contract expired. Left behind are memories of his inability to live up to the hype of his contract or the expectations set by the front office. Despite his successes and failures, it is the organization that is ultimately responsible for handing out what was the biggest contract in team history at the time to an unproven talent.

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