S'more November baseball
What a wild week for the baseball world. I don't even know where to begin...
Let's start off with some contracts.
Juan Pierre, Los Angeles Dodgers: 5 years, $44 million
Bad arm, no power, okay batting average. He's essentially a singles-hitting leadoff man, so he can get on base but had only 3 homers and 40 RBI last season. Worth $9 million per? I'm on the fence with this one.
Moises Alou, New York Mets: 1 year, $8.5 million
At least New York had the sense to sign him for just one year. I love Moises but he's 40 years-old and has missed a significant number of games the last few seasons. (Trust me, I know. I've had the guy on my fantasy team the past two years, and if it wasn't for his guaranteed offensive production when healthy, I would have dropped him.) 114 hits, 22 homers, and 74 RBI in 98 games isn't too shabby. This is not an everyday player, though, and he would have done much better in the AL when he could have played more games as a DH.
Nomar Garciaparra, Los Angeles Dodgers: 2 years, $18.5 million
This should surprise no one. Nomar, of course, had his obligatory stint on the DL this season but the switch to first base has been good to him, making for a great year offensively. Compared to Alou and Frank Thomas, he's a youngin at 33 years-old and he's managed to keep his career batting average up at .318. Definitely has a few more years in him.
Alfonso Soriano, Chicago Cubs: 8 years, $136 million
I have much to say on this after doing a bit of research for a Point/Counterpoint segment in my Broadcast Sports class...
Point: For a Chicago Cubs team that finished in the basement in the NL Central, 19th in the league in homeruns and 28th in runs scored, it was obvious they needed to get a hitter. What did they get? Only the fourth player in MLB history to join the 40 homerun/40 stolen base club, a guy who has hit 30 homeruns in each of his first four seasons. There's no power outage with this guy. Simply, a job well done. They got exactly what they needed and didn't care about the cost because right now, the Cubs don't have to.
Counterpoint: Sure, Soriano has the homers and he has the stolen bases, but what he doesn't have is plate discipline. This guy had 160 strikeouts last season and his career-high .351 OBP this past year was 91st in the league, good but not $17 million per year good. He's a .280 lifetime hitter and he's turning 31 in January. Not exactly a young guy. That means he'll be 38 years-old in the final year of his contract and still making almost 20 million per.
Point: Obviously, the Cubs team means business. They went out and got themselves a proven manager who does not accept mediocrity in Lou Piniella and then re-signed slugger Aramis Ramirez and ace Kerry Wood. They also added Mark DeRosa who had a 13/74 season with Texas. This Cubs team is finally putting money back into its team. That's what good teams do. You look at the Red Sox and Yankees, two teams that are always at the top of the league each year. The Cubs are ready to compete and Soriano only strengthens that.
Counterpoint: It was important for the Cubs to show their fan base they're serious about winning, unleashing that financial power, but Soriano is by no means a flawless player. A few years down the road, if they want to, the Cubs will have some serious trouble shedding his contract. Now, they have Soriano and Aramis Ramirez making a combined $32 million per year, bringing up their 2007 payroll to more than $112 million. If the Cubs were going to overspend this off-season, they should have focused on rebuilding the starting rotation, not signing two right-handed bats.
(Can you guess which side I was arguing? Heh.)
I'll let someone else handle the Justin Morneau MVP thing, since I'm somewhat indifferent to it. Can't believe Joe Mauer didn't even crack the top five. In fact, one of the voters put him 10th and another five (yes, FIVE) totally left him off the ballot. That's just wrong. Keith Law's column about Morneau not even being the MVP of his own team was interesting. As he wrote, "It's time for some of these voters to put aside their fantasy-baseball mentality -- one that assumes that RBI measure something important and that OBP is a hip-hop song from the early 1990s -- and to reevaluate how they go about voting for the MVP."
And I'm in agreement with the NL MVP voting. Just think about how utterly abysmal Philadelphia would have been without Ryan Howard this season, not nearly as bad as a St. Louis without Pujols situation.
Let's start off with some contracts.
Juan Pierre, Los Angeles Dodgers: 5 years, $44 million
Bad arm, no power, okay batting average. He's essentially a singles-hitting leadoff man, so he can get on base but had only 3 homers and 40 RBI last season. Worth $9 million per? I'm on the fence with this one.
Moises Alou, New York Mets: 1 year, $8.5 million
At least New York had the sense to sign him for just one year. I love Moises but he's 40 years-old and has missed a significant number of games the last few seasons. (Trust me, I know. I've had the guy on my fantasy team the past two years, and if it wasn't for his guaranteed offensive production when healthy, I would have dropped him.) 114 hits, 22 homers, and 74 RBI in 98 games isn't too shabby. This is not an everyday player, though, and he would have done much better in the AL when he could have played more games as a DH.
Nomar Garciaparra, Los Angeles Dodgers: 2 years, $18.5 million
This should surprise no one. Nomar, of course, had his obligatory stint on the DL this season but the switch to first base has been good to him, making for a great year offensively. Compared to Alou and Frank Thomas, he's a youngin at 33 years-old and he's managed to keep his career batting average up at .318. Definitely has a few more years in him.
Alfonso Soriano, Chicago Cubs: 8 years, $136 million
I have much to say on this after doing a bit of research for a Point/Counterpoint segment in my Broadcast Sports class...
Point: For a Chicago Cubs team that finished in the basement in the NL Central, 19th in the league in homeruns and 28th in runs scored, it was obvious they needed to get a hitter. What did they get? Only the fourth player in MLB history to join the 40 homerun/40 stolen base club, a guy who has hit 30 homeruns in each of his first four seasons. There's no power outage with this guy. Simply, a job well done. They got exactly what they needed and didn't care about the cost because right now, the Cubs don't have to.
Counterpoint: Sure, Soriano has the homers and he has the stolen bases, but what he doesn't have is plate discipline. This guy had 160 strikeouts last season and his career-high .351 OBP this past year was 91st in the league, good but not $17 million per year good. He's a .280 lifetime hitter and he's turning 31 in January. Not exactly a young guy. That means he'll be 38 years-old in the final year of his contract and still making almost 20 million per.
Point: Obviously, the Cubs team means business. They went out and got themselves a proven manager who does not accept mediocrity in Lou Piniella and then re-signed slugger Aramis Ramirez and ace Kerry Wood. They also added Mark DeRosa who had a 13/74 season with Texas. This Cubs team is finally putting money back into its team. That's what good teams do. You look at the Red Sox and Yankees, two teams that are always at the top of the league each year. The Cubs are ready to compete and Soriano only strengthens that.
Counterpoint: It was important for the Cubs to show their fan base they're serious about winning, unleashing that financial power, but Soriano is by no means a flawless player. A few years down the road, if they want to, the Cubs will have some serious trouble shedding his contract. Now, they have Soriano and Aramis Ramirez making a combined $32 million per year, bringing up their 2007 payroll to more than $112 million. If the Cubs were going to overspend this off-season, they should have focused on rebuilding the starting rotation, not signing two right-handed bats.
(Can you guess which side I was arguing? Heh.)
I'll let someone else handle the Justin Morneau MVP thing, since I'm somewhat indifferent to it. Can't believe Joe Mauer didn't even crack the top five. In fact, one of the voters put him 10th and another five (yes, FIVE) totally left him off the ballot. That's just wrong. Keith Law's column about Morneau not even being the MVP of his own team was interesting. As he wrote, "It's time for some of these voters to put aside their fantasy-baseball mentality -- one that assumes that RBI measure something important and that OBP is a hip-hop song from the early 1990s -- and to reevaluate how they go about voting for the MVP."
And I'm in agreement with the NL MVP voting. Just think about how utterly abysmal Philadelphia would have been without Ryan Howard this season, not nearly as bad as a St. Louis without Pujols situation.
posted by Pam at 12:19 PM
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