Sexson signs, 4y $50m
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[ESPN][MLB.com has it as $48m]
“We have stated from the outset that our primary goal this offseason was to add offense,” general manager Bill Bavasi said. “Richie was one of the premier free agents available on the market.”
PAYING ME FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS WOULD NOT MAKE ME A PREMIER FREE AGENT ARRRGHHHHHHHHHHHH
“Any time you add a hitter with numbers like Richie has produced over his career, it helps to legitimize your lineup,” Mariners manager Mike Hargrove said in a statement.
Helps to.. whaaaaaaaaaat??!! Does he come with a notary seal on his forehead?
HIRING FOR INTANGIBLES IS DOOMED TO FAILURE!!! SEE LAST YEAR’S GRIT DRIVE AND VETERAN LEADERSHIP HIRES!!!! WHYYYYY GOD WHYYYYYYYY??
Comments
123 Responses to “Sexson signs, 4y $50m”
wow, some people are really angry at the people who are angry. The problem, #58, isn’t that he’s costing 12/yr instead of 8/yr (well, yes, that’s part of the problem) – most of us would not like 8/yr, if its guaranteed for four years. I’m no doctor, but it seems the chances are greater that he misses half the time on the contract than the chances that he plays it all out. secondly, #78, i would rather they spend this money on aurilia’s, spiezio’s, etc (i just violated my own pet peeve of using people as common nouns), provided that they are one, or maybe two year contracts. Let’s face it – coming into this offseason there was almost no chance that we put together a team that is winning anything next year. The sensible thing is to overpay for beltre if necessary, or even beltran (not close to 10/200 though), and built the team around belt+ and ichiro, and pineiro, madritsch, (king felix?). lock up beltre for 5 or 6 years, fill the roster with one year stopgaps, and add another piece or two next year. That would still have left us with the money to sign clement or perez for 3 or 4 years, and add them to the puzzle. Signing sexson to a ridiculous contract that a fully healthy sexson probably won’t even justify is a setback that is very likely to prevent the mariners from competing for more than just this next year. It could have been one more year of <90 wins. Today it is much more likely than yesterday that our losing ways continue for more than a year.
Generally… no. They only come out for holidays and special occassions.
To DMZ: The slashes represent an either/or circumstance.
Nooooo, that’s not itttttttttttttt. No free month’s subscription for you.
What, Ron Villon hasn’t been signed yet; Meche is due either a new contract or will go to arbitration…Bloomquist is due the same thing, too…Not quite sure where my errors were, other than that.
Alright — the accidental error in the spelling of Ron’s last name notwithstanding — I understand my mistake; I was jus’ going on the assumption that they would retain the three of ’em.
David, your statement that the chances are greater that he misses half the time on the contract than the chance he plays it out–that’s based on what, exactly?
You qualify that statement with “I’m no doctor,” and then proceed to give a medical opinion. That’s like me saying “I’m no surgeon,” then going on to perform an appendectomy.
The fact is, there are people who ARE doctors that examined Sexson’s shoulder–and OK’d it. Don’t you think they probably have a better opinion on the condition of Sexson’s shoulder than you do.
The Mariners have already shown reluctance when dealing with shoulder injuries (see Glaus, Troy). They’re not going to sign Sexson unless they feel his shoulder is in good shape.
People who are qualified to make judgments about Sexson’s shoulder OK’d it–he passed the physical. Could they be wrong? Sure. But there’s risk involved with every player. Based on the results of the physical examination, I’d guess that the Mariners don’t deem Sexson to be at a significantly greater risk for injury than your average player. If they did, they wouldn’t have signed him.
I believe your mistake is that you’re missing Bobby Madritsch from the starting rotation (and you don’t have him in the bullpen either). You’d rather pay big bucks to re-sign Villone and keep Madritsch in the
minors????
So, knowing that the M’s doctors approved Sexson’s shoulder, why not sign him to that deal?
Let’s say we overpay for Beltre, as David suggests, and build around Beltre, Ichiro, Pineiro, Mads, and Felix. I concur. However, I don’t see how signing Sexson to this contract precludes us from doing what you suggest.
Just for arguments sake, let’s say we’ve got Sexson, Beltre, and Ichiro making approximately 40 million dollars a year. Mads and Felix are making nothing, Pineiro’s reasonably priced. Lopez, Reed, Olivo are all making near the league minimum.
These are players that we deem to be cornerstones; really important parts of our future. And they’re all making near the league minimum. We can afford to have a large portion of payroll tied up in three guys, because so many of our younger players, guys that we’re going to depend upon if we want to compete, are so cheap.
Especially after Boone and Moyer come off the payroll, we’ll have a lot of freedom when it comes to payroll. Sexson’s contract isn’t an albatross that will follow us whereever we go. Our young players that we rely upon are all going to be pretty cheap. And what happens when they get into arbitration and start being more expensive? Sexson’s contract comes off the books.
Also, I don’t think I’m being very angry at all, certainly not as angry as many of the people deriding the front office here. If it came off that way, mea culpa. I just think that there can be a reasonable discussion of this, instead of one sentence comments that get us nowhere.
Really amusing to see some people hype a prospect( King Felix) no major league experience, and knock down a proven major leager-Sexson
Irony Irony Irony
RE #108:
How did I miss Madritsch? Good question…plug him in there over Villone, and place Villone at the long reliever spot; my error.
AK1984,
I think the point is…..GO AWAY!
DMZ I know the errors in post #98…. There are way more than three though….
2005 Mariners line-up:
1b. Ichiro (we can’t get rid of him)
2d. Willie B. (but tell him to keep his 1st base glove handy)
ss. Jolbert (can always play first in a pinch)
3b. Scott S. (has to play 3rd even tho 1st is his best position)
c. Dan W. (lou used him at first a few times; Grover can too)
lf. Raul (can switch him to 1st if our infield goes on the dl)
cf. Richie (he better play a premium position for the $ he is getting)
rf. Bucky ( can’t have too many slow lumbering 1st sackers in the line-up)
Do I get the free subscription?
So much negativity around signing Sexson??
Didn’t a lot of people were against signing Pudge for a long term deal last winter? Many said, no way, he was injured, so max 1 or 2 year deal. Tigets signed him for 4/40 and please take a look at his numbers last year (and the year before with Marlins coming back from injury) – heck, Pudge even finds a place in Dave’s top 20 this year.
People can come back from injury and peform well. Have some hope and optimism.
In the same tone, no one would have thought Sexson will injure himself last year – after playing every inning in all 162 games in 2003. So no one can guarentee that Beltran or Beltre are gonna be imjury free through the next 5 years.
Like some other guys here, I find it amazing that some people whine when M’s dont sign anybody – and they also whine when they do sign somebody (which is not as ridiculous as Pedro/Omar deal).
I don’t post here a lot, but I love to read the site. But this thread has denigrated into some painfully unthought out bashing.
1- All this “We did what you wanted and you’re still not happy!”
Um… no. No one bashing this deal wanted it. No one wanted the M’s to just spend money indiscriminately. They wanted a big slugger. They didn’t ask for a vastly over-priced first baseman who injured his shoulder on a check-swing. It’s silly to say we got what we wanted.
2- Disagreeing with a bad deal is not “being negative”. As I recall there were a lot of bad deals last year being bashed and how did they work out?
3- “Yeah, maybe Bavasi knows more than you!”
I think it’s time to entertain the possibility that, in fact, he doesn’t. I see no reason to believe that our front office is any more talented and informed than the people that run this site.
Look, it’s not like people on here just bash everything. They make recommendations. They say what they would like to see happen. They advocate. They accept criticism when their ideas turn out to be wrong.
My football team is the Miami Dolphins. Believe me, the front office does NOT know more than everybody else.
There ARE dumb GMs. There are DUMB deals.
If you want to be happy about this, no problem. Be happy. But it is just plain inane to come on here and bash the people that DON’T like this deal.
I think when I fly home this weekend I am going to the home depot, stocking up on pitch forks. Then I will drive down to the safe and sell them for a HUGE profit. You could make a killing doing this, just gotta find some place to buy torches also….
What exactly has Bavasi done as GM of the Mariners to make him so terrible? Fleece the White Sox? I know you don’t want to point to Spezio, Guillen, etc because we all know those were Gillicks deals as Bavasi wasn’t in position to make informed decisions at that time.
Personally, I give him the benefit of the doubt. If healthy (which the doctors say he is) then Sexson is making money in line with other first basemen around mlb putting up similar #’s (assuming they are/were FA eligible at some point).
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting?split=0&league=mlb&season=2004&seasonType=2&sort=OPS&type=reg&ageMin=0&ageMax=99&state=0&college=0&country=0&hand=a&pos=1b
117 – “We all know…” that? I don’t know that. Who was general manager?
You’re welcome to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I don’t. For me, it’s the opposite. I don’t think he has earned the benefit of any doubt at all. In fact, he should be on a very short leash indeed. Did you see how his team did last year?
He has made zero impressively good deals since he got here. He’s made terrible deals and smaller, ok deals.
Is it ok for me to criticize the Glauss contract? How about Pedro’s? Yeah? Then it’s ok for me to criticize this one.
Who would you rather have? Vlad or Richie? Then you choose which GMs to praise and which to criticize.
For those who are downplaying Richie’s injury history, let’s examine what actually happened to him.
Richie suffed a reverse sublocation of his shoulder (popping the humerus completey out of the glenoid fossa) while he was checking his swing (an ordinary baseball activity that happens several times per game). And then, as soon as he came back, he did it AGAIN.
And he hasn’t played since.
This is the sort of injury that could reoccur, not just in the activity that first caused it (something he’s going to be doing a lot anyway), but also even minor things like catching the ball.
Geez, he could hurt himself signing that big contract or waving to the fans down in Bush Prairie! C’mon, get real.
I hope this is the guy that takes on the “Jay Buhner” role for the M’s – funny guy, 40 HR, etc.
Look at Willis McGahee – his career was done in AAA (oops, I mean NCAA) football due to a devastating knee injury. A few weeks ago he paraded thru the Hawks like they were a B-8 team, and is having a solid rookie season (albeit delayed 1 year to recover). No one, including Sexson, Bavasi, or Pedagana, really knows what will happen here. We can only hope that a good decision was made. The most important point is that the decision was made. It’s over. Move on.
The M’s, and a lot of people here, seem to think that Sexson is one of the top hitters in the game. RBIs, who cares; it’s just not true. He’s a big HR basher, but his real numbers are good, not great: his career OPS is well under .900. Delgado’s, in contrast, is about a hundred points higher, more SLG and a LOT more OBP. Sexson is a HR basher; Delgado is an all-rounder, a plate monster in a number of different ways.
As someone above pointed out, Sexson’s #1 comp by age is Mo Vaughn; Delgado’s is Willie McCovey. I know which guy I’d prefer. And though Delgado’s older, by two years, he’s the kind of player who’s likely to contribute later than Sexson.
Keep in mind I’m not that big a Delgado booster. But that’s how much better Delgado is likely to be than Sexson.
I predict something closer to 33 HR, .260/.340/.499 or thereabouts. That’s if he’s healthy. Not a huge amount different than Ibanez, actually. That’s $3-4 million performance, not $12 million. And that’s money that can’t be used for something else, like Clements, Perez, or Beltre.
And the real problem, again assuming perfect health, is in a couple years, when (again like Ibanez) he’s putting up .210/.299/.401 or some such garbage. Sexson is a textbook example of a type of player who doesn’t age well. It’s bad to pay good players as if they were superstars; it’s worse to pay retired players so.
Joe Sheehan at BP says “All I keep hearing is Pete O’Brien”.
Right on target. .224/.308/.314 in 108 games, anyone? Adjusted upward for offensive inflation, of course. But then, Safeco’s tougher than the Dome was.
#121: What you said, Steve. I like Delgado’s skillset, though I don’t like his knees, age, or desired contract length and size. And Delgado’s skillset is significantly and fundamentally superior to Sexson’s. Sexson just isn’t that great. Even the healthy Sexson isn’t worth 12, he’s not worth 10, and he’s not actually amazingly better than Ibanez.