Late Innings

Update (Tues 2:42 PM): According to Jayson Stark of ESPN, the 17.1MM deal for Blake will be announced Thursday. Also, the team inked free agent Mark Loretta to a 1.25MM deal last night (not a bad signing at all.)

I’m reading RotoWorld now, and apparently Casey Blake is about to sign a three-year deal with the Dodgers. BTBS is also discussing this now. The Indians apparently were interested, as were the Twins. The main reason here is that the Dodgers went the extra mile and gave Blake that third guaranteed year. RotoWorld isn’t too optimistic about the deal:

This looks like another awful multiyear deal handed out by Ned Colletti, but we suppose one of them will have to work out eventually.

I’m not sure if I agree with this. Blake’s not going to handcuff the team with a contract in terms of both term and compensation. There have been far worse deals given out the past two years, and Blake does offer a sense of consistency, though he essentially has little value over the replacement player (if any.) At 17MM, it’s not that bad of a contract (the average value is less than the 6.2MM that Blake got in 2008.) They would have got compensation if Blake signed elsewhere since he was a Type B and was offered arbitration, but he cost the team the young catching prospect Carlos Santana last July.

This signing isn’t overly surprising. Heck, I even predicted that Blake would get a three year with the Dodgers deal back in August. Then again I guessed 25MM, and that was before the whole “worst economic times since the Great Depression” rhetoric kicked in. Still this deal in the end will only hurt the third baseman market, which includes both free agency (Joe Crede) and trades (Garrett Atkins.)