Quote:
Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom
Whoever sets the time out limit for inactive accounts needs to seriously consider lenghthening it. I just had a great post ruined by it again. This is so frustrating.
Car: VW is comparable to Beltran. He has two more gold gloves, two less AS appearances, one less ROY award and similar silver slugger awards. Personal prejudices aside, the two are closer than you are making them out to be. VW has been way healthier and deserves credit  . I don't know for certain if Jp was pressured by Management to sign VW, but it makes sense. And lots of extensions are penned with one year remaining on the previous deal: ie Halladay?
The other numerous contracts you allude to are misleading. The notable ones were: Big Hurt, AJ, BJ, VW and Riso. Vw and Rios notwithstanding, the only one that really shouldn't have been signed was FT. BJ was a lights out closer for his first year here and a lights out closer who made the ASG the year before. You can't forsee or plan for injuries. The fact of the matter is the big budget teams can afford to absord the bad contracts and move on without much caterwauling from the faithful. Whereas with our team, every dollar has to count. Thus, the margin for error is much smaller and this argument proves that the smaller teams' fan base is hung up more so than the bigger teams' fans.
Also, as always I respect your efforts in enriching dialouge. But, how does a 3 time GG winner inspire those adjudicating his worth, to suggest his Defense was already deteorating? |
I'll address the bold points in reverse order.
GGs - Defensive metrics. If this wasn't a Friday night, I'd be finding them - and I promise to look them up when I have some free time this weekend. Gold gloves in general are rewards, they often hold little value when it comes to assessing the actual fielder. See
Jeter, Derek. It is an absolute travesty that he managed to win a GG. It pretty much casts doubt on the validity of the entire award.
Back to the point at hand. The year that VW signed the contract, even though he won a GG, his metrics showed that his range was already starting to decline. It made sense too, he was built like a linebacker - and players with those body types seldom keep their defensive range up. Not to mention he never had a cannon of an arm to make light of what would be declining range in his later years. I'll look up the graph when I get back.
BJ - I cast doubt on the Ryan contract for the following reason: Why on earth would a team with a budget of less than 100 million (which is shrinking very very fast) sign a guy who takes up such a large chunk of their payroll.
Ryan was worth 10 million to a team that needed a closer - with a budget of 120-150 million. Not the Jays. Just brutal fiscal mismanagement. It was all about JP trying to make a splash in the off season. A closer cannot take up such a large % of your player budget. Ryan was never worth that type of coin anyways, because he didn't have the track record as a closer (even though he kept up his numbers).
Beltran vs. VW -
675 762
876 909
847 809
911 783
915 899
OPS for the last 5 seasons for each player, prior to signing their contracts. Beltran was injured for about 40% of the 1st season too. You'll notice Beltran had 1 poor season and 4 good ones (all in a row) and Wells had 2 poors, 1 avg, and 2 good (spaced out inconsistantly).
Think about it Ziggy, what reason did the Jays have for signing Wells to the 6th largest contract in MLB history. Did they seriously think that there was going to be some sort of better offer on the table during the year he hit free agency? Was someone going to bump the offer up to 20 million a season instead of 18???
Wells had zero leverage in this situation. The Jays could have and would have been the top bidder even if he repeated his really good performance the year before.
