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Originally Posted by Skipaway
Well, all these four players saw their most productive year 3-4 years ago, and Ortiz is not a great player to start with.
I think all these players are good for rich spending teams like the Yankees or the Angels to fill out the middle of their lineups. The Yankees can afford gambling on risky players like they did with Kevin Brown.
Both Vazquez and Glaus would only worth the money if they can return to their career peaks, but Ortiz would be overpaid even with the typical 3 year 21 mil contract.
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Then who should Arizona have signed to improve their team? Spend $53 million on Pedro? $64 mil on Adrian Beltre? $55 mil on JD Drew? Maybe they should have spent $40 million on Carl Pavano? And that's assuming these guys would sign at 100-loss Arizona for the same price as playoff teams.
It takes money to improve your team in FA and you will probably have to overspend a bit to convince someone to come out and play for a 100-loss team. I'm not thrilled that Arizona is paying Ortiz $30 million over 4 years, but I don't mind the deal they made for Glaus (4-45 mil), Clayton ($1.3 mil), Counsell ($1.5 mil) or the fact that Vazquez will essentially be pitching for free in 05. And I would rather the team invest money in guys like Glaus and Ortiz than go with "the Caseys" (Fossum and Daigle) at SP again or be forced to put another soft bat at third. And the reality is that Arizona had about $40 million ($56 if you count RJ) coming off the books and some flexibility to sign some better players.
Now, Arizona could have played it cheaper and signed Vinny Castilla for $3 mil per instead of Glaus or Orlando Hernandez at $4 mil per year instead of Ortiz. But then the team wouldn't really be any better and the team would be sitting on an additional $10-$15 mil that they could have afforded to spend on upgrading the team. I would much rather prefer that Arizona go out and try to spend at the cap of what they can afford than to horde cash like a Tampa or Kansas City and put out consistent losing teams.