The $8 billion to Cubs paid out to Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano make a couple of things clear:
* Despite all the talk about a new, smarter generation of GMs, there are still folks who are more than willing to shell out crazy amounts of money regardless of the long-term consequences.
* Coco Crisp’s three-year, $15.5 million contract extension (with an $8 million team option for 2010) is looking a lot more attractive. How attractive? Well, as Buster Olney points out, Carlos Lee, one of the remaining big-time free agents on the market, must be salivating at the prospect of an obscene payday (Lee is already said to have a five-year, $60 million deal on the table). From ages 24-26, Lee averaged (and I’m eyeballing this), a .275 average, a .345 OBP, and a .475 slugging percentage. If you take at face-value the notion that Coco was injured last year, his 24 and 25 year old seasons average out to somewhere around .298, .345, .450. That’s $7 million more a year for 25 points of slugging percentage. Let’s say Coco does end up being a bust; it still puts the Sox’s decision in much better perspective.
* Speaking of perspective, the WMP deal — while still, considering the dearth of good pitching (to say nothing of good two-tone mullets), an occasionally painful one — makes even more sense. Here’s a guy who has the potential to be an absolute monster who’s under the Sox’s control for two more years.
* All of which offers one more illustration of why it made sense to offer up that $51.1 million posting figure for Matsuzaka. The Sox have the revenue to spend a lot on payroll, but don’t want to shell out obscene amounts for free agents who want to be signing until they’re 52 years old. They do, however, want to spend that money on 26-year old studs.
* Finally, if the Sox were really thinking about J.D. Drew as a Trot replacement, that option just got a helluva lot more expensive. It’ll be interesting to see what happens here; overpaying on dollars and years for someone like Drew would seem to go against everything the Sox have been working towards as of late; on the other hand, maybe they can get Drew at a relative bargain because of his injury history.
I agree with just about all you said. WMP can be a very exciting player for us and I hope we don’t trade him for a bag of paint rags and old Iriver mp3 player, or something more useless, like Chad Cordero ( 13 gofer balls – as a closer!).
if you start defending drew, I’d have to, no definately never read again. The guy has injured body parts that I’m not sure exist and would meltdown completely in Boston. For everyone’s sake, step away from Drew.
In this market there will be no injury history reduction for Drew, especially coming off of a season where he played in his most games ever. There are 30 clubs out there and at least 2 will be willing to overpay. 1 is usually enough.
Are the Sox lucky to be in such circumstances, or are they really that deft in reading the market? Perhaps John Henry’s soybean wizardry has transferred seamlessy to his baseball operations, or perhaps his influence in MLB (read: revenue sharing) has allowed him to corner the market… Whatever the case, Seth is right. The Red Sox are looking awfully genious right now. Not to mention that the Soriano deal makes Manny a veritable bargain at $17 million per. The hot stove is a sizzlin’….
Why don’t we just keep Trot? Has his offense slipped that much?