He’s a Scott Boras client isn’t he? I think Boras’s MO is to have his players sign as late as possible so that the teams that want them have no other options. The problem for Fielder is that the teams that might be able to pay what he wants all have first base covered, and the teams that really need someone like Fielder don’t have the money.
Yes, Boras represents Fielder.
And now, in the WTF department, the Royals have signed Yuniesky Betancourt.
Boy, and I thought it was disappointing we didn’t get Yu Darvish.
As to disappointment… wow, people in Toronto are pissed about this. Despite the risk involved in acquiring Darvish, the failure to land him, as well as the team’s firm policy of saying absolutely nothing about anything until actual deals are made, has people screaming for them to do something.
And I want them to do something too, but not something insane like giving Prince Fielder $200 million.
Or pay over $50 million for the chance to sign a Japanese pitcher to a huge contract?
Some risks just aren’t worth taking, IMO. I think it’d be great if Darvish panned out, but I felt the same about Dice-K and here we are.
Well there are benefits to signing Darvish beyond on the field, so I don’t think you can compare him directly to other free agents. Those are a bit hard to quantify though.
I don’t think the dicek comparisons are terribly relevant and find them lazy. Other than the fact that they both pitched in Japan, they don’t have much in common. Darvish is younger, throws harder, much different body type, and has better eras and k rates.
Related question. How much would teams have paid for the elusive negotiation rights of Strasberg or Bryce Harper when drafted.
I’m not saying whether or not the Darvish signing would make sense; I agree he’s a risk, but I agree that the comparisons to Dice-K are rather lazy. They aren’t remotely similar pitchers; it’d be like assuming Roberto Alomar was going to turn out just like Onix Concepcion because they were both from Puerto Rico.
But smart or not, Toronto fans are pissed. The team had a lot of goodwill going into the season, with it being generally a good and interesting squad, having a GM who doesn’t act and sound like a ginormous douche, the new uniforms, and the works, and then the hype machine sounded and poooof, and afterwards the team won’t even say if it tried. It’s a weird PR failure in that the Jays technically didn’t do anything wrong but they’re finally hearing the frustration of a fan base that’s really, really tired of mediocrity.
If they make another move, like acquiring Gio Gonzalez or Matt Garza or something, the goodwill will be returned. (My secret fantasy is they get Fielder to a not-too-insane contract and then use Adam Lind as part of a trade package to get Garza.) If they don’t people are going to think they’re throwing in the towel on 2012. I’m not sure they would be - the team is loaded with young pitchers and I could understand why they’d want to toss as many of them out there as they could to see who’s good and who isn’t. But I’m just reporting on the zeitgeist here in Toronto.
An important clarification - the team that submits the winning bid only pays it if they successfully sign the player. If the team and player cannot reach an agreement, the posting fee is forfeited. So there isn’t actually any risk in submitting a high bid, other than the normal risks associated with projecting the performance of the player himself. This is exactly what happened with the Oakland Athletics and pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma last year. They submitted a high bid of roughly $18M, but then played hardball on the actual contract. Iwakuma rejected their terms and ultimately returned to NPB for another year, while the A’s ended up not paying anyone anything.
(NPB does reserve the right to reject bids they think are being submitted in bad faith - i.e. a low-budget team bidding high just to prevent their rivals from getting the chance to sign a player, but with no intention of signing the player themselves. That being said, it’s tough to prove intention, and there have been significant mutterings that the A’s bid for Iwakuma was meant to deny him to their division rivals.)
Thanks for this clarification. I had heard conflicting reports on this, and wasn’t familiar with the Iwakuma story.
I still think that signing players from the Japanese leagues is still in the realm of “high risk” just because we don’t seem to have a very good handle on how to translate their results their to MLB. Some of this is the quality of the leagues and the style of play, but some of it also seems to be individual. Until there is a larger pool of comps I wouldn’t feel comfortable handing out the kind of contract that Darvish is going to require. YMMV.
Of course, I’m generally extremely conservative in spending other peoples money on long-term contracts for some reason. Probably why I’m not as apoplectic about Pujols moving on - at least I wouldn’t have to cover my eyes every time he dives for a ball or limps back to the dugout after grounding out as if it were my own money being jeopardized.
Gio Gonzalez has reportedly been traded to Washington for four prospects.
To be honest I don’t understand this trade from Oakland’s perspective. I realize there’s some logic to trading a veteran for prospects, but Gonzalez is just 26, is just entering his first year of arbitration, and so is both young and affordable. Exactly how far into the future are the A’s planning here?
All the Red Sox’ expectations about penetrating the Japanese market for apparel, TV, etc. when they signed Matsuzaka didn’t happen one little bit. Is that the sort of thing you’re referring to?
Re the Gonzalez trade, Beane has *still *never learned that tomorrow never comes. You have to build your team for the present. It could also be that he’s long been in the small-market mindset that says trading a dime for three nickels is good.
Cardinals sign Carlos Beltran. Two years for $26 million. Or, putting it another way, about the cost of one season of Albert Pujols.
Got a site for that?
Billy Beane hasn’t been subtle about the A’s plans. They don’t believe they will be able to compete until they get a new stadium. They simply can’t convince either fans to come up out or players to sign there. Unfortunately they have have now been waiting years for MLB to sort out the territorial rights to San Jose. So to answer your question, they will push out at least until their stadium situation is settled.
I believe in that case it was the player who had an unrealistic view of his worth. If the rangers don’t give Darvish a legimate bid, the rights can be assigned to another team.
Indeed, I read that shortly after I posted what I did; that the A’s are basically sandbagging until they can move to San Jose.
But they’d better actually get to move to San Jose, then, or else the franchise is doomed.
This part is distinctly not the A’s fault. MLB formed a committee in March 2009 to look into whether the A’s can move to San Jose. Perhaps someday they will announce some finding. Until then the A’s are pretty much in limbo.
Well, they have to do something with them.
Having been to their stadium (I’ve no idea what the corporate name currently is and have no interest in looking it up) I can attest to its being awful, as well as being horribly located (it’s basically just as an intersection of highways.) Whether or not San Jose is a better geographic location I can’t really say for sure, though; everyone seems to assume it is but I don’t really see how San Jose accesses more of a market than Oakland does. San Jose is technically a bigger city but the Oakland area emcompasses about as many people when one counts all the other municipalities around it, like Fremont, Berkeley, San Leandro, and the like.
What is for sure, though, is that a move would impact the Giants. People assume the Giants are greedy and such for opposing the move, but I’ll tell you; I’ve spent a lot of time in the San Jose area, and EVERYONE there is a Giants fan. I have never met an A’s fan in the SJ area, not one; they universally identify with the Giants, as well as the Niners. (The Golden State Warriors play in Oakland, right next door to the A’s, but nobody in the world is a Warriors fan.) Nobody there thinks to root for an Oakland team.
If the A’s move to San Jose there’s not a doubt in my mind people in San Jose will start to adopt them as their hometown team. They certainly love their Sharks; you can’t get Sharks tickets at all, unless you’re willing to part with a limb. I don’t know how Oakland-side fans will divvy up their loyalties, but for sure this will cost the Giants fans.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/three-ringed-circus/
And the pols aren’t going to give them a new stadium if their constituents have no reason to give a damn about them. Did they learn nothing from the Montreal fiasco?
Plus, the Oakland/Alameda officials got so badly burned on the Raiders deal that they have every reason to be cautious about bending over for another team.
I know the Pujols signing is old news by now, but I’ve been thinking about this one moment from his first press conference with the Angels and hadn’t gotten around to saying anything. I found it fascinating and also a little annoying.Here’s Pujols at the introductory press conference. At 3:07 I think he almost slips up and acknowledges the main reason he signed with the team:
“My agent told me ‘The Angels are in, and they want to make you- they want to give you an opportunity.’”
I am about 90 pecent sure that he started to say ‘They want to make you the highest-paid first baseman,’ which is what he wanted. None of the Cardinals’ offers gave him a higher average annual salary than Ryan Howard, for example. (I’m not sure if the Marlins got there, but they also wouldn’t give him a no-trade clause.) They were closer to the salaries of Gonzalez and Teixeira, and since Pujols has been the best player, he wanted the biggest per-year salary. I don’t fault him for that, but this was never about anything other than money - especially that annual salary compared to other 1B-sluggers - and it’s sort of tantalizing to me that he almost came out and said it.
The Reds and Cubs swapped Travis Wood for Sean Marshall.
ETA: The Reds threw in Dave Sappelt and Ronald Torreyes.