Guest Author - David Landry
While this year’s crop of available free agents has not been particularly impressive, the outlay of money has been. It's relatively early in the process and we've already seen two blockbuster deals. More are rumored. Alfonso Soriano signed with the Cubs for eight years and $136,000,000. That's a lot of zeroes and a lot of years for a guy who is a very good player but not quite Hall of Fame material.
The Cubs in their desperation to win a World Series after almost a century are sparing no expense. They started by signing Lou Pinella as manager at 3 years and $10,000,000 with an option for a fourth year at $5,000,000. They also signed Aramis Ramirez to 5 years and $75,000,000. This is not the end of it, they’re still shopping and still driving up the prices for the rest of baseball.
Other major signings to date have been Frank Thomas at 2 years and $18,000,000. He’s 38 years old and has been injury prone, but this didn’t seem to deter Toronto. If he plays as he did in Oakland last year, it won’t be a bad deal, but the likelihood of getting consistency over both years isn’t very great. Similarly, the Mets signed Moises Alou for one year and $8,500,000 at 40 years old. That’s a surprisingly rich deal.
Other major signings include Nomar Garciaparra for 2 years and $18,500,000 for the Dodgers and Jim Edmunds at 2 years and $19,000,000 with the Cardinals. Both have the potential to make a major difference for their teams, though with Nomar there is always the concern about his health.
The last sign that baseball has too much money is the Red Sox paying a $51,100,000 posting fee to the Seibu Lions for the right to negotiate with Daisuke Matsuzaka. It’s likely that the Matsuzaka contract will be for at least another $50,000,000. That’s $100,000,000 for a pitcher who has never thrown a major league game!
The Matsuzaka deal bodes well for the other pitchers on the free agent market. Super agent Scott Boras had already promised Barry Zito at least $100,000,000 over seven years and it appears likely he’ll come through. Zito is a dependable number two starter who is benefiting from a market blown out of proportion. Similarly, Jason Schmidt can expect a high eight figure deal in this market.
Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte at 44 and 34 respectively can expect to have riches heaped upon them, though there is a possibility that both will retire. Expect to see Clemens work half a season as he did last year. It’ll be interesting to see if the Yankees and Red Sox make another run at him. The Yankees and Astros can be expected to go after Pettitte.
Among position players, Carlos Lee and Barry Bonds are the two most interesting unsigned free agents. I expect to see Bonds in an A’s uniform next year. The A’s are the team that stands to gain the most by signing him. They have a problem filling their stadium and Bonds is a proven draw in the Bay area. They could play him at designated hitter and market his attempt to pass Hank Aaron to the hilt. This would justify a big one year deal.
