The ultimate legend is here…Gammo.
Yes, there is a pattern here. The game is trending West. In the week that the bidding for Greinke heated up, the Yankees were beaten out for Jeff Keppinger and Nate Schierholz.
Now, there are going to be a lot of people within the industry who can rattle through the reasons for their disbelief with Greinke’s contract. Five of the six years will be after he turns 30. He is 41-25 with a 3.83 ERA since winning the American League Cy Young Award in 2009. He has a lifetime 3.77 earned run average—3.53 for the Angels after his trade to Anaheim was thought to insure a playoff berth in Orange County. He has made three postseason starts in his career and allowed 15 runs in 16 2/3s innings. His WAR ranks 21st among active pitchers.
But he was the best pitcher on the free-agent market, and the deals Cain, Cole Hamels and Greinke have signed in this calendar year speak to how difficult it is to get to free agency healthy and productive enough to let the bidding begin.
...The baseball world changed when former owner Frank McCourt went into bankruptcy. The cash spinning around the industry is so staggering that the $260 million the Red Sox got from Los Angeles hasn’t bought them A-list players. Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino, Jonny Gomes and Koji Uehara are nice players that Boston signed out of a Tiffany catalog, and the Red Sox may do the same for Sanchez, Dempster and/or Stephen Drew. But they haven’t been able to put a Joe Mauer or Shin-Soo Choo on their company credit card.
If you’re the Rays, Indians, Marlins or Pirates, turn off the Lessons and Carols from the King’s College Choir for a few moments, and listen to Warren Zevon’s “if California slides into the ocean like the mystics and statistics say it will”—and try not to think about what a David Price might someday look like on a Dodger mobile device.
Repoz
Posted: December 09, 2012 at 12:00 PM |
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1. J.R. Wolf Posted: December 09, 2012 at 12:21 PM (#4320299)And $75 for every uniform that gets shredded.
Isn't this the case for almost all free agent contracts? Aren't a vast majority of their years after they turn 30. I don't have any problems with a team signing a player through age 34 season. If it requires you to sign them another year to get their peak years, then that shouldn't be a problem.
Indeed. If anything, Greinke is on the young side for a free agent. BTW, if Mike Trout performs at his 2012 level through his first six full years, he will be:
1) One of the youngest free agents ever, and
2) The highest paid ever.
I think his skill set is still worth the money, but I hate to think of him as being permanently injured.
Wha
He hit 3 home runs in 36 games after the trade. He certainly looks like a different hitter. The easy opposite field power appears to be completely gone.
Maybe he retools this offseason and comes back as the power hitter he used to be, but right now he looks like a .300/.350/.450 guy.
No they didn't.
Sentences I never thought I'd read for $400, Alex.
As we've been noting in other threads, most of the young stars are already tied up through their early-mid 30s, generally at reasonable prices. That includes smaller market teams like the Rays, Rox and Brewers. The Rays have price through at least 2015 (age 29) and let's see if he signs a buyout this offseason before we start assigning him to the 2016 Dodgers. And the Dodgers splurged $150 M on Greinke because Hamels and Cain were extended by their teams. The Greinke and Hamels contracts are pretty much the same -- which would you rather have?
BTW, if Mike Trout performs at his 2012 level through his first six full years, he will be:
1) One of the youngest free agents ever, and
2) The highest paid ever.
There's virtually no chance he'll get to FA.
Considering Greinke's psychological background and my personal loathing of anything Dodgers, I believe that "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day is the appropriate song to be used in this case.
Is there a reason it would be described that way rather than a 5 year deal with a player option?
Ehh, you never know. Maybe he decides he wants to be the first player to sign a $400M contract.
He might get more. ARod got 10/$275 6 years ago. Trout would look to be a better free agent than that, if he's even within 30% of last year's level. And by the time he'd hit FA, it'd have been 12 years since that ARod contract. I think you can hear the 'half billion dollar contract' articles writing themselves already. Ya, he'll never get there, but fun thought.
Just looking at ERA+, Hamels appears to have pretty obviously established himself at a higher level than Greinke, and for a bit less money committed, with the main difference that Hamels long past major outlier season was to the downside.
With the money in the game and the lack of competition for other marquee FA to take that money, at some point agents are going to advise players to stop taking these sweetheart deals and test the market again. I wouldn't be surprised to see Trout and/or Harper try to hit FA ASAP and get an ARod contract.
Hell, I don't get why Boras hasn't already arranged this.
Sure ... but what better team than the Angels to give it to him?
But, fair enough, when I said "virtually no chance" I really did just mean "I am of the opinion that this will 'never' happen."
Sentences I never thought I'd read for $400, Alex.
Seriously. The only words that make sense to me are "the," "for" and "and."
But, fair enough, when I said "virtually no chance" I really did just mean "I am of the opinion that this will 'never' happen."
I read it as a threat.
And yet they sold 3.3 million tickets and ranked 5th in MLB in attendance. LINK
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