Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.

 
Gonzo extension
Three guaranteed years for $30 million, with a mutual option for a fourth at $10 million. He's 35 now and will be 38 by the time the guaranteed part of the deal expires. I really don't know what there is to say about this that wouldn't have already occurred to anyone who'd be reading this, but I'll spend a few words on it all the same. It's just amazing that there are still organizations out there who are willing to make eight-figure-a-year commitments to 35+ year old guys who aren't Barry Bonds or Randy Johnson or performing on similar levels. Luis Gonzalez had an amazing 2001 season, one which would have been worthy of an MVP in just about any year in major league history. It's also pretty damn clear that it was as good as it's ever going to get for him and that while he's still a very capable, above-average hitter, his 2001 was more fluke than an indication of what should be expected from him going forward.

Of course, his 2002 numbers (forget about his injury at the end of the year in terms of evaluating his performance, he still played in 148 games) bore that out very nicely. He declined in just about every offensive category, many of them substantially. A few of these dropoffs are listed below.

Rate stats:
AVG: .325 (2001), .288 (2002) = -.037
OBP: .429 (2001), .400 (2002) = -.029
SLG: .688 (2001), .496 (2002) = -.192
OPS+: 176 (2001), 128 (2002) = -48

Raw stats:
Hits: 198 (2001), 151 (2002) = -47
Doubles: 36 (2001), 19 (2002) = -17
Home Runs: 57 (2001), 28 (2002) = -29
RBI: 142 (2001), 103 (2002) = -39

Okay, so I'm simply stating the obvious here: we all knew that Gonzalez would decline and that he did, by a significant margin in many areas. He's just not worth $10 million a season at this point, and it's pretty amazing that while a hell of a lot of people realize this who are completely outside of baseball and have no power to control these things are able to recognize that, those inside can't figure it out. Maybe Joe Garagiola Jr has some information that he's refusing to disclose, but I see no way to justify this. I hope for the D-Backs' sake that he plays well enough over the life of the extension to justify half this money, but I'm not holding my breath. Arizona is an old team that's very heavily reliant on old guys like RJ, Schilling, Gonzalez and other elders like Steve Finley, Matt Williams and company for success. If anything, you'd think they would want to be moving these players to teams that think they need some veterans in exchange for younger, cheaper players they can count on to be around for a few more years. Guess not.

Rob Bell again
It's not much of a surprise that another organization is willing to take a chance on Rob(bie? I still don't know) Bell, and it's nice to see that the Devil Rays are the ones to do it. Tampa is almost certainly going to be starting guys who are inferior to Bell this season, so maybe he's got a chance to stick down there for awhile if he can put any kind of success together.

I don't understand why more borderline major leaguers aren't taking this route (we've now seen it with Travis Lee as well). Tampa's not a terrible place, and they happen to have an abysmal baseball team that could stand to improve at just about every single position, meaning there are plenty of opportunities. While they've got some promising talent on the way up with some of it likely arriving this year, there are certainly going to be jobs that can be won by simply performing well at the AAA level and jumping in when guys on the major league team fail, as some of them inevitably will.
posted by VZW Watcher at 4:38 PM -