Late Innings

The Huffster elaborates on the term “contract year":

I don’t know how guys do that. … Some guys, they go into their contract years and put up huge numbers. It amazes me. Adrian Beltre, I think he hit 49 home runs in his contract year. I don’t know how they do that. I just go at it the same way, go one day at a time, and see what the numbers are at the end. You see these guys put up ridiculous numbers and then they don’t do as much the next couple of years. Does that mean they’re just playing for the money?

Now I could be a dick and state that Beltre hit 48 home runs in his walk year instead of 49, but to suggest that Beltre has been nothing more than a “bad contract” for his new team is false. Beltre has been worth 57MM to the Mariners over the past four years, with the Mariners paying him just over 50MM for his services. Even in his worst of the four seasons, he was still a 2.5 WAR player.

Beltre is going to be one of the most-sought after targets after the season is over, when he becomes a free agent. His glove is fantastic, and his bat shows up from time to time too. Still when the Mariners signed him, they most likely didn’t have expectations for him to repeat the same season he had in 2004, when he was a 10 WAR player. That’s Albert Pujols-territory my friends.

It’s clear now that Richie Sexon was the worse of the two big signings that Bill Bavasi and the Mariners partook in that year.