Mauer remains a Twin

The Mariners didn't hurt themselves with Professor Jack Zduriencik, one-time employee of the New York Mets.

 

He worked for the Mets?

I take back all the nice things I just said about Seattle.

 

I was shocked, too.

I was going through a 1989 Mets yearbook last week or so, and there I see Jack Z as a young, balding area scout.

Before the dark times, before the empire.

 

RickStain isn't a small market guy. He is just capable of looking past being a big-market fan long enough to see that the risk involved for the Twins in this deal.

Try again.

 

The risk for the Twins was not signing perhaps the best hitter in baseball and alienating their entire fan base.

Get over your small-market nonsense. At least the Pohlad sons aren't the cheap bastards the old man was.

 

Get over your big-market bias. The risk is that if he gets hurt, they are toast for a long time. Even you should be able to see that.

That said, I'm not pissing on the move. My point above was that this is a unique situation, not "proof" that all small markets can spend with the big boys. That just isn't true. Even with Mauer's huge deal, the Twins' payroll is about half of that of the Yankees.

 

He's the best hitter in baseball now. Who knows how good he'll be in years five, six, seven, eight of the contract.

It's a risk they had to take, but it's silly to ignore the risk.

 

If he gets hurt and can't play, the insurance pays the contract.

And keep comparing it to the Yankees and tell us again in November how they (or the Red Sox or the Phillies) bought another Wolrd Series.
It's the mantra of whiny small-market loosers like you.

 

Most teams don't want to see a $20-plus million per year guy go down. The Dodgers signed Manny Ramirez to a similar contract, yearly dollars-wise, and would be screwed if Manny went down again.

All long-term, big-money contracts hold that risk. That's why free-agent pitchers have trouble finding teams that will go over five or so years.

The Yankees are the ultimate special case. They can do whatever they want, for the most part.

 

1) I'm a fan of a very large-market team.

2) What if he's just not very good? It's happened to plenty of players.

 

Incidentally, stathead site Fangraphs.com has an interesting but overly simplistic formula where they figure out how many wins a player was worth and how much money the average team spends on a win and comes up with a monetary value for each player for each season.

It estimates Joe Mauer's 2009 was worth $36 million, and his 2010 is projected at $32 million.

 

Thanks to Obama.