Rob Neyer, whom I generally like, said the contract scares him. That's great, but he also said this about JD Drew:
"The Drew contract has worked out decently for them"
Are you f@#$ing kidding me? Over the past 4 seasons, JD Drew has gotten $14M per year to play right field in Fenway Park. Disregarding defense, cuz they got him for his bat, these are his seasonal averages with the sox (c/o baseballreference.com)
131 games (not great but given his health issues, pretty durable)
66 (!) RBI
79 R
119 (!) Hits per season
His OBP is a respectable .377 but his SLGis .476 and his BA was .270. I realize batting average isn't a very telling stat or whatever, but for $14 million, the guy's hitting, well, badly. The ops of .853 is nice in theory, but it's not resulting in many RBI, runs, or hits of any kind for that matter. I'd say that this contract was a bust, not "decent."
I was just talking to a friend about the free agent market. If it can be considerd a true market, where each contract is a commodity, I wonder if at some point there will be a crash! I mean, the value of the contract per player has been all sorts of whacky the past couple seasons. One guy gets low balled and we say it's a change in direction; then Jayson Werth and Carl Crawford get 2006 type money and no one knows how to treat the free agent market. I wonder if someone who knows more about economic theory could project how the market will go, seeing how the relative value of players has gone up and down and up and down over the past couple years. Surprisingly, it's not Scott Boras' fault!
I'm also interested to find out what the Sox offer Adrian Gonzalez as a contract extension. That could be a boatload of $$ as well.
-Natron (12/9/10)
Response 1:
Dang, dude. Well, I agree with you that his contract is mostly a bust. I'd say that the .377 obp and .476 slg are pretty good. What's wrong with those numbers IYO (in your opinion)?
I don't think the "contract market" is going to crash other than what seemed to be the downward trend and/or people getting low-balled since 2006 (until now). However, if there were a real serious economic depression in the US, I could see contracts crashing...
-StanO (12/9/10
Response 2:
.377 and .476 are pretty good. They're definitely above average. Are they worth $14M a year though? Also, he plays a lot of games at Fenway, which is certainly a hitter's park. Finally, you can say all you want about qualitative stats, what really matters is his actual production - and in this case its about 20 HR and 70 RBI a year. That's pitiful return for $14M. Ok maybe not pitiful, but I wouldn't call that decent. Would u?
It would be interesting, not in a good way just like in an experiment gone wrong kinda way, to see what would happen if teams started going bankrupt. I dont think its likely cuz I'm pretty sure MLB still makes billions of dollars a year, but if teams' ownership did start to default, would the contracts deflect back to MLB itself? It wouldn't be good that's for sure.
-Natron (12/10/10)
Response 3:
The .377 and .476 are worth $14M. IF they have the actual production that you're referring to (HR, RBI, R). It's a poor return.
For everyone to default? "Everyone" being the owners. That's crazy. And would be depressing (no pun intended). Just remember, the Steinbrenners are not (at least George hadn't been) the richest owners in the league (or the top for that matter). That had way too many parentheses...
-StanO (12/13/10)
-Natron (2/26/11)
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