LeoCarrillo said:
Ben has the numbers, too. And I bet he was at dinner last night choking down the bone of a sixth year or a salary near $20M per.
This is more about floor than ceiling. There's nothing better coming in the near-future in FA. Let's presume by the interest in Panda that BC sees no solution in-house. Fixing the 3B hole allows BC to proceed with trades for pitching with better knowledge of which assets become more expendable (Cecchini, Marrero, whatever's left of WMB). Right now, 3B is a flat tire on this team. If they overpay by a third fixing it, well, that's not ideal. But 1. young; 2. lefty; 3. spray chart suggests Monster oppo fit; 4. can go to 1B/DH in a worst-case; 5. good clubhouse guy.
Is it nuts to be throwing around $20 million per to fix a flat tire and get back on the road? Yes, no, maybe.
Lots of good stuff in there, and sort of touches on an issue that I've thought about with respect to FA but can't quite articulate. One school of thought is that overpaying is always a mistake. There are enough talented baseball players in the world that if demand exceeds supply in the FA market at a position (or, if talking about trades, your trading partner is not rational) you simply fill the position of need with a replacement level option and buy your wins elsewhere -- hopefully at a position where demand does not exceed supply. While the Sox (and others on this board) have forgotten more about roster construction than I've ever known, this is sort of my baseline predisposition.
So, for example, I look at Russell Martin, who just signed for $82 million, and I think, even given their age difference, it's hard to imagine forecasting Panda to save/produce more runs than Martin over the next 5 years. Which makes $100 million really hard to swallow.
But, on the other hand, there is both an elegance and efficiency to buying your runs or run prevention at a position that also happens to be a position of need. If you go out and buy a 5 win center fielder when you already have a 2 win centerfielder at the position, you have to ask what you're going to do with the 2-win guy. If you feel confident in your ability to get 2-wins out of him (by trading him, by moving him, by platooning him, etc.) then great. But if you put him on the bench or in the minors, you've been less efficient than you should.
So, maybe there is some justification in overpaying in order to buy your runs at a position where you get full value for them. I dunno. Problem is, if the Sox are going to overpay a FA, pitcher seems to be the spot. I know that FA timing always doesn't work out like you want, so maybe they intend to do both.
Edit: I guess I should add that I don't think I'm necessarily disagreeing with the point that E5 has been making. At least, maybe I'm not. Though I used the word "need" in my post, in part I'm trying to explore the question whether there's a difference between a position of "need" and a position where your FA dollars are used efficiently because of the delta between the runs you're buying and the runs you'd other wise have if you didn't buy them (or went with a cheaper option). I recognize this may be the same exact thing, so I suppose I'm mostly just asking the question whether it is.
