the anti-christ? meh.
Maybe it's the liquor, maybe it's all the Veronica Mars I just watched, or maybe it's just the all-consuming relief I feel at being done with finals, but I really don't care all that much about Johnny Damon heading to the Yankees for too much money over too many years.
I mean, really. I want to boil his noodle arm and serve it with pesto.
Okay, yeah, it's the liquor.
Anyway, I'm kind of okay with the idea of trading Bronson Arroyo to the Mariners for Jeremy Reed. Or kidnapping Brad Wilkerson. Discuss.
I mean, really. I want to boil his noodle arm and serve it with pesto.
Okay, yeah, it's the liquor.
Anyway, I'm kind of okay with the idea of trading Bronson Arroyo to the Mariners for Jeremy Reed. Or kidnapping Brad Wilkerson. Discuss.
posted by Suzie at 2:16 AM
6 Comments:
4 years 52? Considering we payed 30 mil for Brown for two years, this is a fucking steal.
And from what I hear the Sox were going to jump at 5 - and should have - but didn't. Oh well. The holes in Fenway just keep growing, don't they?
If the Yankees want to overpay for a guy who turned it up this year for the sake of driving up his market value, they can go right ahead. I've never been a big Damon fan. I'm not all that unhappy that I don't have to root for him anymore, and I'm certainly not unhappy that I won't have to root for him when he's 37 and making $13m per to roll the ball to the infield. (And how much of that $13m will be invested in alimony payments by that point?)
The offseason hasn't ended yet, and the Sox have a surfeit of pitchers. Considering that they turned an overhyped prospect into Josh Beckett and Doug Mirabelli into Mark Loretta, I don't doubt that Sox management can trade for what they need.
Trade who? Who do you give away at this point to get hitting? The precious Boston pitching staff, the only thing you can "hold" over the Yankees, will be the guys suiting up and leaving. Well, unless you want to purge your farm system, which would be fantastic. That way, I can keep up my "Sox are becoming Yankees" argument.
I really enjoyed your comment about overpaying. It's a shitty FA pool this year, and everyone's getting overpaid (see: Blue Jays). If Damon was a FA two years ago, or even last year, he'd be commanding less. But, because of the shallow FA pool, he gets more cash. It's baseball - it's not the Yankees. And saying how he "turned it up in a contract year," wow, that NEVER happens in sports. C'mon, you're smarter than that - I've read this place enough.
More so, check the stats - his avg went up a nice amount of points, but everything else is fairly consistant for the last few years.
Did I ever say A.J. Burnett and his ilk weren't being overpaid? No. If you scroll back a few entries, I expressed my complete and utter disbelief that the Giants were paying Matt Morris $25m over 3 years because Matt Morris kind of -- and this is putting it delicately -- sucks. You know this, Manton; you commented on the thread. I know it's a shallow FA pool this year. I ain't ig'nant.
If you have a "Sox are becoming Yankees" argument, it's going to have to hinge on more than the farm system. For one thing, the Sox' farm system was more barren than the Yanks' about ten years ago or so, but no one was making the argument that Boston was turning into New York. I honestly don't have a problem with the way the Yankees conduct their business -- if they have massive streams of revenue coming in, they may as well use it. Buying a championship still gets you a championship, and that's supposed to be the end result. If I thought -- as many genuinely stupid sports columnists do -- that using the resources available to your team was somehow violating the integrity of the game, I wouldn't have done a semester-long research project on the elimination of the reserve clause and the rise of free agency -- and I'd wear my A's cap a hell of a lot more often, not just on days when I'm annoyed with Larry Lucchino for continuing to exist and acting like he's trying to sell me an '89 Windstar during press conferences.
Honestly? The Yankees really aren't of any concern to me. Not any more than any other AL team, anyway. I'm a baseball fan first and a Red Sox fan second; I like the game itself more than the amped-up, overhyped rivalry shit that the media feeds everyone with a TV and a literate brain. I get that people get whoo-ha over the blood-feud and all, but I don't. Baseball is about 90 feet from base to base and 60 feet, 6 inches from the mound to the plate, not who can come up with the best "A-Rod" pun. That has a lot to do with my whole argument re: the Damon thing -- who the hell cares? The guy's always gone where the money's taken him, like many professional athletes do, and I'm surprised people really didn't think he'd go to New York. I don't understand why so many fangirls and sports columnists feel like they're entitled to make Damon into the 21st-century Benedict Arnold. He played for Boston for a while. Now, he will not. World didn't end, people.
Back to the point. The Sox farm system has (thank God) progressed since its barren days of the early-mid '90s, and here's the thing: the Red Sox are not the A's. They do not have to rely on developing talent to win; they should put a priority on developing homegrown players, but as a big-market team, they can afford to go after players on the free agency market. This isn't to say they can be stupid with their money; I'm still annoyed that they basically paid the GNP of Costa Rica for a year of Edgar Renteria. But the Sox (and the Yankees, and the Dodgers, and the Mets) do not have to live and die by what their prospects produce. In this situation, if you have a strong farm system, you have the option of trading prospects for proven talent. In fact, in many cases, that's what you SHOULD do. The problem arises when you trade away everything you've got AND fail to develop talent, which is what the Sox did in the early '90s and the Yankees did in the late '90s. The Sox and Yankees were, then, forced to trade their entire farm system every time they wanted to make a deal; throwing in one prospect wasn't enough because they didn't bother to properly scout and develop talent. They had to throw in three or four washouts when one good player would have been enough in a low-level deal.
Re: the Sox' "precious" pitching staff -- I don't care about lording a pitching staff over the Yankees any more than I care about lording a pitching staff over the Royals. If the Sox can flip Arroyo to fill one of the holes, I'm all for it. There is a surplus of pitchers and a significant lack of SS, CF and 1B. Ergo, trading a pitcher (or a 3B, or a 2B in this case) to get a position player makes sense.
(Damn, this comment was longer than the post itself. And I thought about this comment more, too.)
For the record, the sign over the Peter Pan Bus terminal says "Steinbrenner: The Grinch Who Stole Damon". My feelings on the situation are pretty similar to yours, but I thought it was pretty amusing.
yeah, i'm definitely with suz on this one. i'm glad he's gone, he's going to do really shitty this season. and don't contest this prediction, i'm psychic.
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