Why Sign Francisco Cordero?

I'll get straight to the point--this signing is pointless. Francisco Cordero was once a great closer, but not anymore. His ERA was low last year and he had 37 saves, but the supporting stats betray his abilities. Cordero is statistical skinny-fat; his numbers are nice looking on the surface, but underneath it's not so pretty. SIERA, xFIP, and FIP all think his ERA belongs closer to 4.00 than the 2.45 he posted in 2011. He throws too many balls, his fastball has lost velocity, and he's lost the ability to pitch out of jams via the strikeout. He is now a pitch-to-contact reliever, and those are not hot commodities.

Even if he can continue to survive on his diminishing stuff and post an ERA in the 3s against the vaunted bats of the AL East, I still see very little point in this signing. A very good reliever would be worth the $4.5million the Jays gave Cordero, but what will that do for the Jays? They won 81 games last year, but that was probably the top end of their abilities (according to Baseball Prospectus they were more like a 77-79 win team). Even with solid improvements across the board, they were looking at about 85 wins. The best case scenario for Cordero's addition to the team is roughly 1 extra win--86 wins almost certainly won't get you into the playoffs in the AL East in 2012.

What is the point of spending $4.5million for one season on a player who is probably not worth it (according to Fangraphs he's been worth about $1.4million on average over the last two seasons) and has no future with the team (he'll be 37 in May)? If the Jays had money to spend, there were a lot of other ways that they could have spent it.

Maximizing the resources at your disposal is how you win in major league baseball, and THAT is the point.