Thoughts on Ryan Howard's Riches

Sometimes one contract can ruin an entire market. It's not the player's fault, and certainly in this case the finger pointing shouldn't be pointed at Ryan Howard. But the Phillies screwed the market for at least a handful of teams with first baseman about to reach free agency this season or next.

Put it simply, his combined deals since he became an MLB player are almost identical to the one that Mark Teixeira received on the open market. Once he reaches his new deal in two years, he will probably be the second highest player in the MLB behind Alex Rodriguez (although who knows now, some much, much better first-basemen will hit the open market by then, and could surpass this deal).

As Rob Neyer put it, even in his best years, Ryan Howard is maybe, maybe one of the best 30 players in baseball, if you choose to look at a very specific set of stats. So what will happen when Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, and Albert Pujols approach free agency? This has to mean Pujols should get $30 million/year for 7 years, and Fielder should expect at least the same deal as Howard, even if he will be taking it at a younger age.

Howard should take up anywhere between 15%-20% of the Phillies payroll in the next several years. It also means they probably can't keep Jason Werth, who's primed for big money this offseason (Yankees or Giants maybe?). That's ok, because they have Dominic Brown, but it'd be better if they had Werth locked up up long term and could either trade Brown, Victorino or Ibanez away for a decent return (Werth will probably shake out as a "B" free agent, although he has a chance to grab an "A").

The Phillies should have waited, seen him declne as he aged, and used that as leverage. They probably could of at least shaved him down to $18 million a year. And they won't be able to keep Halladay either probably, as he'll want big money. The advantage of their big farm was they would have options as all their inexpensive talent became expensive. Now they're sticking themselves in a corner.

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.

Thoughts on Annual Awards

I could write a 1000 word essay on how bad the Gold Gloves are. On average, about 3 choices per league are correct or strongly, strongly defensible. But otherwise, the awards this year were pretty on the money, but it's not as if they were particularly contentious races either.

Alber Pujols and Joe Mauer each won MVP's by near unanimous margins. Rightfully so.

Zack Greinke won the AL Cy Young after being nearly unhittable. Perfect choice.

Tim Lincecum won the NL Cy Young and deserv....errrr....what? Poor Adam Wainwright got shafted. That makes two Cy Youngs Lincecum's won that he hasn't deserved. Lucky man, BBWAA seems to want to help make him real rich.

Still 3 out of the 4 major awards ain't bad, although admittedly they screwed up the only real difficult choice.

Thoughts on one blog for September!

Guess who's been a crappy blogger since he got to college? Time to do better. I think I'll do better once playoffs start.

So here's some quick thoughts on baseball's happenings of late.

First, with Bobby Valentine returning to the USA, I'm going to rehash one of my favorite opinions: Bobby Valentine should be the manager of the Mets. He's a white Ozzie Guillen. He fits perfectly for them. He gives a team without any character some character. He should have never been fired for Steve Phillips' mistakes. The Wilpons love him, his players loved him, and he was a winner. Fire Jerry Manuel if, and only if, Bobby Valentine returns.

Second, it's about time Eric Wedge got fired. Seriously, that team's underachieved for the last 5 years.

Third, the awards this year are easy. Pujols and Mauer should be MVP, Lincecum and Greinke are the Cy Youngs. Apologies to Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, and Prince Fielder.

Fourth, I'm not making playoff predictions right now. I want to see the matchups, I don't see clear-cut favorites that will beat whomever they play.

Thoughts on Clint Hurdle

So my least-favorite manager in the league was fired last night. Clint Hurdle might have been the worst manager in the last decade. I saw an article on Yahoo! where the writer quoted someone who said that he was always in a hurry to get his second best team on the field. How else can you explain why Barmes gets played over Stewart and Fowler would sit behind Spilborghs every other night? You couldn't move Spilborghs to left and sit Seth Smith? Why was Manny Corpas closing at all this year? I don't care what he did two years ago!

This team has the potential to compete in the NL West (take my word, the Dodgers aren't that good, especially without Manny).

Speaking of the Dodgers, I saw Jeff Weaver pitch a little today. He had some really nice movement on his fastball, but then he would leave it over the plate. And then he'd leave 5 feet off the plate. Oh Jeff, I wonder what it's like to be Jered and knowing you're ten times better than your brother.

Then I caught a little of the Giants/Cardinals game later. Barry Zito threw possibly the best curve I've seen live to strike on Albert Pujols. And we all know Pujols doesn't strike out that much. If he can keep his fastball up aroudn 88 consistently, we could be seeing a 4ish ERA out of Zito this year.