The Royals sign Jonathan Broxton

The Royals have signed relief pitcher Jonathan Broxton to a one year 4.4 million dollar deal. Due to injury, he pitched just 12.2 innings in 2011, so we will throw those numbers out. However, in 2010, his WAR was just .1 in 62.1 innings. From 2008-2010, his WAR was .9, worth 2.7 million. This appears to be an awful deal for the Royals. Especially once you factor in the fact that the Royals had the smallest payroll in 2011 at around 35 million. So Broxton, who (if healthy!) will throw around 60 innings (about 4 percent of the around 1458 innings that the Royals will play), will make about 12.3% of the Royals payroll. The closer market is really ridiculous right now. So obviously this is a horrible move by the Royals, but lets look at Broxton's statistics anyway. Broxton has a career -4.95 PE and -5.43 Adjusted PE, both very very good. His TR is also excellent at 11.87 and the Bill James projections have him putting up a -4.43 PE in 2012. If he is healthy, which is quite a question, he is a very good reliever. However, it simply doesn't make any sense to sign him for this amount of money, especially if you are a small market team.