Friday, December 7, 2007

Spiffy


Chris Vleisides/Kansas City Royals

John Buck, Mark Teahen and Alex Gordon: meet Jose Guillen and your new powder blue uniforms -- which look really good, actually. Opponents will cower.

The new Royal also speaks:

"I'm excited to be here, excited to be a Royal. I can't wait to get to Spring Training and meet all my teammates. Let's go, Royals," he said. "Let's win a championship here. This is a new start."

He comes to Kansas City against the goading of his mother, who wanted him close to her in New York.

"There were six or seven teams interested but she kept pushing me to come there," he said.

Sorry, Mom, these Royals also seem like a team with a good future and good young players. He got sold on that in his give-and-take with Moore.

"He said we're going to make this team a winner. I remember he told me we need some energy on this team and we need some leaders," Guillen said. "We just had a great conversation and everything fell into place. I just chose to come here."

The story ends on this quote (what else?): "We're not that far away," he said with a big smile, "from a championship."

And for the record, Guillen is appealing that suspension, so that story isn't over after all.

5 comments:

  1. Jose Guillen signs a 36 million dollar three year deal. Now without going too much into the details, lets say he makes about 12 million a year.

    He isn't worth 12 million a year and this is a bad signing.

    Some other players who have similar numbers and their salaries for 07, from USA Today.

    Guillen 07: .290 23 99

    Eric Byrnes: .286 21 89 $4.5 mil
    Aaron Rowand: .309 27 89 $4.3 mil
    Raul Ibanez: .291 21 105 $5.5 mil

    Some of these players are due raises, but still... he makes almost twice as much per year now as KC's next highest paid player, Gil Meche (Not counting Sweeney). On an outfielder who hit .219 in 2006?

    This is a contract that I don't think Guillen can live up to. Others who make near the same amount of money include

    Hideki Matsui ($13 mil)
    David Ortiz (13.7 mil)
    Magglio Ordonez (13 mil)
    Carlos Beltran (13.5)
    Carlos Lee (11.5 mil)
    Johnny Damon (13 mil)
    Adam Dunn (10.5 mil)
    Alfonso Soriano (10 mil).

    Guillen is worse than all of the above players and makes 12 mil. The Royals would be better off spending the money on pitching, or saving it for gathright or one of their young guns when it comes time to sign them.

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  2. all those guys on your list would get raises if they hit the market now. Also, Meche is making 11 mil/year.

    What can you say, baseball is awash in cash. The Royals are paying for what they believe will be an uptick in production, and they have reason to believe it. Guillen has shown that, when healthy, he's a possible 35-HR guy (check out his OPS+ from recent years). I know the word "possible" is anathema around baseball these days, in the age of PECOTA, but if Dayton tells me Jose is okay by him, he's okay by me.

    And btw, I'm all for making a huge push to get Adam Dunn. Unfortunately, he's not undervalued any more... he'll command 15.5 mil/year, at least.

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  3. I'd take J. Guillen over Damon at this point.

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  4. re: Nuprin's post

    Guillen's contract is pretty reasonable. League-average outfielders are averaging around $10m per annum on the free agent market. Jose Guillen has a lifetime EQA of .267 which is about average.

    Torii Hunter, a mediocre hitter and overrated fielder, is an example of a contract that's not "worth it." It won't be worth it at any point during the contract.

    And I'm not sure where you're getting those figures from. Cot's Baseball Contracts says that Beltran will make $18.5m in 08 and Soriano will make $13m.

    And no, I don't think it would be wise for the Royals to spend the money on pitching. There are no free agent pitchers worth getting and all of them would be overpaid and underwhelming. The best bet is to accumulate as many draft picks as possible and use the high draft slots to get as much talent as possible into the farm system.

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  5. I am glad the powder blues are back. Although, I do wish that the pants were powder blue as well.

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