Seriously, Papelbon isn't the dumbest contract this offseason. Overpaid? Yes. Worse in light of how many alternatives? Yes. Smart? No. However, it isn't going to be franchise crippling no matter what happens. You can take the first year off, since we were paying someone $8-$12 mill per year to close, may as well be Papelbon. So you are really looking at the last couple of years of the contract as potential drags if Papelbon goes the way of Lidge - but we just came off the last three years with the same dead weight type closer contract, and it wasn't crippling then and won't be in the future. If he sucks, one of Aumont, Bastardo, DeFratus or someone else will close. Of course, that same fact is what made it kind of dumb. Howard is the crippler, and Prince's contract is almost as bad (the main difference being that Fielder's last few years have zigzagged between low 130 OPS+ to mid 160s OPS+, while Howard had been 124, 141, 127 in the three years prior to the extension).

Is there any chance, Howard can improve in his 30's? I don't think his bat speed will improve, but can his plate intelligence improve? That's the only hope. Maybe Thome can be an influence on getting more walks at least. If he can hit 40hr every year and get 90 walks, it's fine.

he's down in clearwater and charlie was saying how ryan wants to be more receptive to learning things at the plate. charlie said he's never stood where he wants him to stand at the plate. also made mention of how thome is essentially a hitting coach for howard.

Because I'm bored (and a masochist)

Pujols 10/240
Votto 10/225
Fielder 9/214
Gonzalez 7/154
Howard 5/125

Does the "Amaro misread the market" thing still apply? It would have cost us a shit ton to replace Howard with an elite first baseman this offseason. And if Howard held to 2008/2009 production, which was a reasonable bet, he would be worth a lot.

If Howard were healthy -- which I think is a fair construct, since he wasn't any more likely to get hurt than the others in May 2010, and the Cards and Brewers lost their guys by waiting -- would his contract still be seen as a "fiasco"? Though most critics would still argue he's not worth $25M a year, would the blog lulz have receded?

I believe the back end of the Fielder and Pujols deal are going to seem worse than the back end of Howard's deal. However, by the time Pujols is in year 8 of his deal, someone is going to get an 8 year 500 million deal.

I think you can look at this multiple ways: Howard's contract probably isn't the worst in baseball, but it's also still really bad.

Compared to some of these deals, Howard's doesn't look nearly as bad, all other things equal. But everything else ISN'T equal because all of those players are superior to Howard, probably by a wide margin. I think the main argument is that paying Howard like he's an elite 1B in the first place is misrepresenting his value and misinterpreting his skills.

Eem wrote:I think the main argument is that paying Howard like he's an elite 1B in the first place is misrepresenting his value and misinterpreting his skills.

I've come to accept that, yeah. But I defend Amaro's feeling that Howard was a decent bet to keep his production up at the time of the deal, in which case it would have proven wise financially.

I wonder the extent to which the ankle injury affected his numbers, but that's impossible to say.

Just imagine if we didn't sign Howard to an extension, then he got injured just as he was about to go into free agency.

Then we'd be players in the Pujols/Fielder race with the Howard money.

lethal wrote:Just imagine if we didn't sign Howard to an extension, then he got injured just as he was about to go into free agency.

Then we'd be players in the Pujols/Fielder race with the Howard money.

I hadn't thought of it that way.

Seriously, fuck you for ruining my afternoon.

lethal wrote:Just imagine if we didn't sign Howard to an extension, then he got injured just as he was about to go into free agency.

Then we'd be players in the Pujols/Fielder race with the Howard money.

I highly doubt we would have gotten Pujols. Not sure 10 years for either him or Fielder is realistic for an NL team, either.

But while that's the way it played out, it wasn't the most likely scenario. What if Howard had kept up his 2009 production, or even close (adjusted for league-wide declines)? What would we have had to give him this offseason?

i know you're gonna try to find ways to spin this one till the day you die, but it was ill-advised at the time, and still looks bad now.

its best to just move on. i think even the most angry people about the deal are close to acceptable at this point.

hey whatre youse guyses thoughts on juan pierre?

What Floppy said

At least his knees work.

yea. I love Howard. I defended this deal. It is a lot less $$ than the other deals, but Howard isn't nearly as good as those players, is older and now is hurt.

Soren wrote:yea. I love Howard. I defended this deal. It is a lot less $$ than the other deals, but Howard isn't nearly as good as those players, is older and now is hurt.

I'm not asking who's better or which contract you'd rather have right now. I'm asking what Howard would have been worth this winter if he stayed healthy and produced around an .880 OPS, which I think was a reasonable expectation at the time.

It will always be difficult to not find fault with the timing of the deal. And on the dollar amounts, you can the argue that Ruben wanted to hedge against the Fielder/Pujols contracts going bonkers, but that's a difficult argument to accept b/c those guys are a lot better and Howard was never going to get as much them in an open market. I honestly think Ruben played scared a little on this one and gave in just to get it over with. He gave a free agent deal to Howard when he didn't have to, at a time when Howard didn't have that much leverage.

Unfortunately, the deal wasn't all about production and numbers. He was/is the face of the franchise and great off the field. Amaro paid him for that too.

I still hope he can come back strong and just be a solid hitter with some power. His best years are definitely behind him though and he's not worth the money, but going forward, this team is rich enough to not let this bite them in the ass

Woody wrote:I honestly think Ruben played scared a little on this one and gave in just to get it over with. He gave a free agent deal to Howard when he didn't have to, at a time when Howard didn't have that much leverage.

Probably true

there's so much hindsight to this besides the fact that it's been beaten to death, I'm not really sure what the point of comparing his extension to the deals Fielder, Pujols and Votto got. Those guys are on another level.