Honestly, I agree on most of your concerns.
- Prince Fielder COULD turn into Mo Vaughn, giving us 3 great years, a couple of okay years, then injury and career death following shortly after.
- The amount spent on Prince COULD hamstring our ability to keep our own homegrown players.
- and yes, the Mariners COULD decide that since they forked over all this money for Fielder, they now need immediate vet help so they don't "waste it" instead of staying the course and waiting on the kids to finish developing.
But only the Prince = Mo Vaughn concern is about the guy on the field. The other concerns are about management, and having watched this Front Office operate the purse strings for many years, I don't see us abandoning the youth movement. Youth movement = cheap and less risky to the pocket book, and unless Gillick was running this team they've been all about trying to minimize risk and staying within their comfort zone.
I don't worry so much about them wanting to get away from that. They want to develop from within as a way to deflate cost concerns. Prince Fielder to me isn't about them abandoning that philosophy as much as making an exception because of a player and a situation (one I don't really expect them to complete).
As to whether Fielder = Vaughn...
Games missed (not all due to injury, just missed) in first 6 full seasons:
Vaughn: 114
Fielder: 13 (1 in last 3 years)
Fielder's healthy as a horse. A really fat and happy horse, maybe...but so far Smoak has missed more games in his career due to injury than Fielder has.
It's certainly a concern, but I have it ranked lower on the scale.
Like I've said before, using Fielder is not the only way to continue constructing a team that can compete in the AL West, but he's one way. Other ways tend to drain the farm, require evolutionary miracles from our young players, or take a while.
I'd like to keep the farm healthy and vibrant while making the Ms a competitor for the short-term and the long-term. If we don't do that with Fielder then I hope our plan B to accomplish that is really good.
"A fun day at the park" while losing a hundred games a year and setting records for offensive futility isn't doing it for me as a fan. I can be patient if they have a real plan. "Be the Royals" isn't a real plan, though.
~G
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