Saturday, January 9, 2010

Thoughts on Matt Holliday

In what seemed like an inevitability after Jason Bay landed with the Mets, Matt Holliday recently signed a 7 year, $120 million deal with the Cardinals.

This is pretty simple, St. Louis is a great baseball town, with a manager players love to play for, and a great pitching coach to boot. It's probably the best baseball city in the world. Matt Holliday played well there, and him hitting next to Pujols is scary. Also, this signing is extra incentive for Pujols to stick around.

Only question marks include: why didn't anyone else really get in on the bidding? Did they sense he never wanted to leave, and just wanted to use free agency as a tool to get a huge deal out of St. Louis? Is $16-$17 million a year over 7 years smart considering they seemed to be bidding against themselves? If Holliday's fielding is as bad as some say, is he really worth that kind of cash?

Honestly, I think not trying to get him at a lower price is smart, if they had let these negotiations continue much longer, some one else surely would have stepped in and caused competition for St. Louis.

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