Abarcá do have quite a history of cut-price flyers though. While sure his stock isn't such that he'll have come for nothing, they won't have paid what they would have done two years ago for him if he'd been on a one year deal at Ag2r.
Yes, those cut-price flyers have usually resulted in some pretty huge fails, but not always. They have made some odd calls over the years though.
Antón at least has managed some results in the Spanish calendar, and Rujano was decent in a few races (Deutschlandtour, Suisse) and far better than he had been at QS or Unibet. Cobo had already failed at the same team once before. Plenty of other evidence that they like to take this kind of punt though, especially with regards riders with good experience at the Giro, which tends to be the "development" GT for them as a Spanish team. Soler you could argue was a similar kind of punt to Betancur, both prodigiously talented Colombian climbers who'd been through a lean patch and whose market value was hurt, albeit for different reasons. Soler did OK for Movistar when healthy, and was on his way back to his best when their fated 2011 curse hit him. Maybe that's their hope. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary in their cut-price punts though:
Szmyd - obviously running on empty. Useful knowledge as a climbing helper, maybe a bit of inside track on Liquigas, similar reason to signing eg Sutherland?
Gadret - on the slow-down, never a good fit for the team, well into his 30s, suppose it gave them something for the Giro team.
Karpets - he'd been good at Abarcá before, maybe they hoped they could turn him around again like they managed with the likes of Plaza.
Teruel - over 30 with barely any pro experience, signed to help drill the TTT and because he was friends with Valverde iirc.
Bruseghin - past 35, had a few decent days but his 3 year tenure at the team is still best known for finishing stage 3 of the 2010 Giro with his buttocks exposed thanks to a bad crash.
Oyarzún - 29yo Chilean journeyman, did a really good Worlds TT and a great season in Spanish amateur calendar, has since gone on to bounce from Portuguese team to Portuguese team before being busted for doping.
If any big team was going to take a flyer on Bananito at this point in time, Movistar had to be major front-running contenders to make that gamble.
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