Late Innings

Before I start this little “see I told you so", I want to pay some great props to the ever exciting Roto Professor. He interviewed Baltimore Sun beat writer Jeff Zrebiec about what’s in store for the Orioles. As a Baltimore fan, these questions were fun to read…

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Any ways we’re about a month or so after the arbitration offers were handed out by the teams to their Type ( A | B ) free agents. Granted there was some oversight on both sides. Bobby Abreu is still fighting for a three year, 48MM contract (fat chance dawg.) Maybe the Yankees should have offered him arbitration… any ways on to the other end of things, we’ve been having to hear about the poverty cases that are developing by the players who turned down their offers of arbitration. Notably this list includes Type A free agents Juan Cruz, Orlando Cabrera, and everyone’s favorite captain, Jason Varitek.

Sucka.

I’ve talked about the Varitek situation before, and I predicted the fallout weeks back about it. However now we’re starting to see this story envelope itself out to the financial markets… from Blogging Stocks today:

Varitek’s decision to reject the offer of arbitration probably cost him upwards of $5 million – maybe closer to $10 million.

Here’s the question: Why didn’t Varitek just accept arbitration and avoid this whole predicament? According to MLB.com: “Varitek was not aware that teams would have to surrender a No. 1 Draft pick to sign him, and he takes full responsibility for his decision.”

The moral of the story: Understand contracts and offers before you accept or reject them! And fire your agent if he doesn’t do a better job educating you. . . .

Wait…wait…wait…wait… so you’re telling me that Varitek didn’t know about the issue of draft pick compensation? Varitek is a smart guy, and he’s represented by an even smarter fellow in Scott Boras. However I’m pretty much sure that Boras brought up the issue with Varitek many times. And I’m pretty much sure that Boras told his client that a Jorge Posada-sized contract awaited him this offseason, which was four years in excess of 52MM.

Yeah hindsight is clearly 20/20. The catcher market (thanks to the Texas Rangers) is saturated. And as we’re starting to see, teams would rather sign a backup like Henry Blanco or Brad Ausmus than spend the money (and the first round draft pick) on Varitek. Varitek should have took that one year offer from the Red Sox. But he didn’t… and now we have to watch the PR disaster cover up from the Scott Boras Corporation. Apparently AIG isn’t the only one requesting a bailout here…