Add new comment

The White Sox blew their change on Adam Dunn, and his failure will ensure the defeat of the Sox for years to come.  Maybe he will turn it around next year, and take his team with him, but then again, maybe not.
The M's cannot afford a big bust for a free agent.  We've lived through too many already.  These one and two year deals are the ticket to avoiding them.  Gil Meche gave his money back when he didn't earn it,  but Prince won't.
Here's the option breakdown.
1. Don't sign Fielder, and resign Bedard or someone to an incentive laden deal.  The team continues down its youth path, and maybe becomes good someday.
2. Sign Fielder and break the bank.  He either:
a. Goes nuclear and takes his team along with him,
b. Does well, and the team does well, OR
c. Becomes injured, or depressed, or has a row with the manager, or becomes lacsaidaisical or whatever, and doesn't do his best for the team.  The M's are lame for another ten years, and they miss out on younger free agents when they are badly needed.
My problem with big free agent signings is the following:
"A laborer's appetite works for him, his hunger drives him on."  Proverbs 16:26.
Not many of us can relate to being completely set for life money-wise, so we don't have an idea of what kind of doldrums the ultra-rich must fall into.  Think about Chone Figgins.  All he has to do, is buy apartment complexes, or municipal bonds, or annuities, or something like that, and he can sit around, for the rest of his life, doing absolutely nothing, with full assurances that he will never go broke.  All that peace and quiet and comfort must sound nice to him on nights when the media is hounding him, the fans are booing him, and the manager is talking bad about him.
Figgins is only two years removed from life at the beach.  What drives him on?  Improved stats?  Safeco won't give them.  Pride, or obligation to Seattle?  Let's hope so, because all of the normal motivators are not there.
Mike Carp has shown us what a person determined to play major league baseball looks like.  So has Ichiro.  Most 160 lb. 37 year olds are chased down and arrested if they try to step onto a major league baseball field.  Ichiro is an overachiever coupled with a great baseball talent.   Unless you see a special kind of drive in a person, an Ichiro drive, it seems like a bad idea to give that person millions of dollars for multiple years, and tell them that all they have to do is show up to earn it.