Update: It was pointed out to me the compiled Batting Averages were calculated wrong, so those numbers and the graphic have been updated in the post below.

So as everyone knows by now, the Red Sox designated Pablo Sandoval for assignment today. Look the Red Sox have given out a lot of shitty contracts over the years. Thats what big market teams do. You throw money at problems that other teams can’t afford to do. Except the problem with that is by definition free agents are most often older players who rarely live up to the pay day. You’re usually paying for past performance and almost always are eating money towards the end of the contract when the player is a shell of what he once was. Which is fine. I accept that.

BUT, when you have guys that are a disaster from Day 1 and can’t even make it through an entire 162 games then you have a huge problem.

So who was the worst Red Sox contract of all time? Well looking back over the years the two names that standout as the frontrunners are soft-ass Carl Crawford (who STILL complains about his 2 seasons in Boston) and the recently departed Sandoval. While a lot of people want to say Crawford is the worse deal because of how toxic his attitude was and how bad his play was, its got to be the Panda. Look, I made a spreadsheet to make it easy for you.

Although Sandoval was here for parts of 3 seasons and Crawford only two, due to DL stints by both, their total number of games played for the Red Sox is the EXACT SAME at 161. Which makes this the perfect sample size.

Compared to Sandoval, Crawford had more:

• Runs Scored
• Hits
• Doubles
• Triples (shocking)
• RBIs
• Stolen Bases (Panda with the elusive 0 in that category).

Now want to compare their slash lines as members of the Red Sox?

• Pablo .236/.303/.360
• Crawford .260/.296/.418

Both completely SUCKED for guys who had signed gargantuan contracts. Granted Crawford’s deal was for $142 million to Pablo’s measly $95 million, but Pablo has been so bad that they’re gonna have to eat the last 2+ years of it. At least the Red Sox were able to dump Crawford onto the Dodgers. So while Crawford signed a much larger deal, he wasn’t so far gone that another team thought “Hey Boston is a bitch to play in, we can turn this around.” Barring an even more stunning deal than the Crawford/Gonzalez/Beckett Dodgers heist, there’s no getting out of this one.

So yea, the Kung Fu fucking Panda is by far the worst contract in Red Sox history.