Well, he’s also a huge upgrade over the current first baseman. That doesn’t count for anything?
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Kinda curious if Prince Fielder really is fatter than Pedro Sandoval or Mo Vaughn or his own father …
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Cecil Fielder in his 20s was a big boy, but he wasn’t THAT fat. If you look at images of him, you can see that Cecil GOT fat; Prince STARTED fat. Cecil Fielder, when he came up with the Blue Jays, actually wasn’t really fat at all; he was a big guy but he was in decent shape. By his prime years with the Tigers (Detroit or Hanshin) he was obviously carrying some weight but there’s no way he was as fat as Prince is. Later, he got super fat, but he also couldn’t play well anymore and was out of the majors before his 35th birthday.
Mo Vaughn was pretty big (he was taller, too) but I don’t think in his prime he was as fat as Prince Fielder. He got huge, especially after he left Boston and signed a long-term contract with a buffet. Vaughn is basically who I think of when I think of Fielder’s future. Vaughn was still an excellent, top-tier hitter his last year with Boston, when he was 30, and started to decline rapidly after that. It’s the same career path most fat first basemen follow; their athleticism can fight past the flab up to a point, but that point is somewhere around 30-32 and they fall apart from injury.
Sandoval, however, is a contender. Sandoval is pretty chubby and still has time to significantly out-fat Fielder while in his prime. Sandoval is the same height as Fielder and claims 240 pounds to Fielder’s 275, and I think they’re both lying by a few pounds, but Sandoval is only 26 and can still eat a lot of double bacon cheeseburgers before he hits 30. Of course, whether Sandoval can stay this fat and maintain decent MLB performance is another matter.
Well, yeah. A little. With the Rangers usual luck, he’ll get hurt two months into the season and then be DHing the rest of the year and Moreland will be back on first. But, hey, Fielder can hit those towering solo shots into the upper deck porch in left field and make the fans happy. And, the Rangers will only lose 5-4 instead of 5-3.
The ESPN site has a twitter feed section. I usually don’t pay any attention to it, finding that it usually contains no information of consequence, but I couldn’t help noticing that in every one of the RIP tweets from various of the ESPN writers, the man’s last name was replaced with asterisks:
“Michael ***** showed amazing courage during the All-Star Game. He wanted to show solidarity with the players, who were always first for him” – Pedro Gomez
and
“Michael ***** always asked players about their families,kids. That humanity is part of the reason why many reached out to him last summer.” – Buster Olney.
I suppose I shouldn’t be amused by this. But I am.
Taveras is as yet untried at the big league level, though I get the impression they still have high hopes for him. Presumably this means they’re looking to trade Jon Jay and/or Shane Robinson.
Taveras probably starts the year in the minors, and when he does get called up, I imagine there will be some kind of rotation between he, Craig and Adams. Taveras in right against lefties, Adams at first against righties, and Craig bouncing between right and first as needed every day. Taveras’ defense has always looked to me like he’d be better off in right than center, anyway. Probably stay healthier there as well.
That’s a trade I was hoping would happen, although getting Aybar as well by throwing in one of our superfluous SPs would have been nice as well.
Freese was still a good option as IF depth to hit lefties though. The IF now looks REALLY light, and a lot of pressure will be on Wong to hold down 2B so Carpenter can play 3B.
Amazing how quickly a team legend can fall out of favor and get traded away…
And now I see that the Cards also got a legit OF prospect (#2 or 3 in the Angels system, it seems) and moved a RP they weren’t going to tender as well. Not bad at all, Mo.
Why are the Cardinals the only MLB team that can make trades that make sense in the offseason? Freese has got to be one of their most disappointing players over the past few years. Freese won’t do anything with the Angels except clog up the DL.
I don’t want to drag this Fielder thing on too long, but this isn’t how baseball works. Fielder will hit homers that don’t matter and homers that do matter. He is no more or less likely to hit a home run that doesn’t matter than anyone else, relative to the number of home runs he hits.
If Prince Fielder, not Mitch Moreland, had been the Rangers’ first baseman in 2013, there is a chance they would have won the AL West. (And if Moreland, not Fielder, had been Detroit’s first baseman, Detroit might not have made the playoffs at all.) Fielder is a good player. He makes his teams win more games than they would win without him.
The problem is whether he’s going to be a good player 2-3 years or so from now, when he will still be under contract but his body will be falling apart.
Whelp, the Cards have upgraded the defense (both OF by adding Bourjos and IF by moving Freese), found a SS, kept all their draft picks, actually added a prospect, and still have a few million left to spend on a bench bat or a bullpen arm.
All by Thanksgiving. It’s definitely a good time to be a Cardinals fan.
Presumably, Matt Carpenter is going to be the everyday third baseman (moving back to his natural position). If his offense and defense are near their 2013 levels, I think that’ll count as “working out.”
I’m not sure how I feel about committing big bucks and four years to a guy who doesn’t even know how to spell “Johnny,” but the Cards definitely needed a shortstop, and this may be the best of the available alternatives, and I’m inclined to trust John Mozeliak to know what he’s doing (and it’s definitely a good feeling to be able to say that about a GM).
Right, 3B is covered initially by moving Matt Carpenter there and starting Wong at 2B. If Wong struggles then you move Peralta to 3B, Carpenter back to 2B, and revert to Kozma/Greg Garcia at SS. Even in that configuration the IF is probably better than last season (since Peralta should out-hit 2013 Freese, with better defense).
Obviously no team is perfect, but it looks like there are good starters and decent to non-horrible backup options at every position, with the only really big question mark whether Wong is truly ready to carry the load at 2B.
Seeing “Peralta” and “Better defense” in the same sentence is a bit jarring. At least for sentences that don’t also have “nearly anybody would play” and “then”
I keep hearing this, and certainly don’t put 100% faith in defensive metrics, but I can’t find a single statistic that shows Peralta as anything worse than an average defender. He was pretty bad with the Indians, but then moved up to average with the Tigers. And that’s at SS, not 3B.
By comparison, Freese (who Peralta would replace at 3B in my hypothetical) has ranged from fringe-bad to godawful bad (in 2013) at 3B.
I don’t think Cano is going to get the type of monster deal he’s seeking. I can’t think of any of the usual big spending teams that are going to throw 28-30 million a year at him for the long term (10 years) he’s looking for.
I wouldn’t want to sign him for anything more than a 5 year deal, but it looks like the Yankees are willing to go 7.
If this deal blows up and Cano has to sign for significantly less, then it will probably prove that rappers have no business as agents since he can’t do anything more, and probably did less, than Boras or another one of the usual baseball agents.
That A Rod deal stinks for the Yankees and I’m just not sure they’re wanting to go out on another huge deal, especially since they don’t know what the end will be for the A Rod mess.
I’m not sure that’s really what he expects since that’s more or less the starting point. But I think he’ll wind up with something close to $200 million over seven or eight years. It does seem like a lot of the big-money teams are out of the running, and that gives him less leverage.
In the current climate I think you’d have a lot of trouble getting a 30-year old player at Cano’s level to accept a five-year deal unless the annual value were near that $28 million to $30 million range.