Jays Extend Edwin, Baseball Gets Ever Closer

Yeah.  Big news.  I bet he did that arm flex thing when he found out that it was official.  The deal will guarantee him $29MM over the next 3+ years; $8MM in 2013, $9MM in '14, $10MM in '15, and the Jays hold a club option for 2016, worth $10MM with a $2MM buyout.

This is pretty exciting to me, I dunno about you guys.  Edwin has been pretty fucking fantastic over the last calendar year, ranking 8th in HR's over that span (tied with a few others), and has some pretty comparable numbers with a lot of the game's elite.  Some of the highlights of that link, using the arbitrary endpoint of 365 days:

• A 150 wRC+ (basically, he's created 50% more runs than the average offensive contributor), good for 8th best in MLB, and 3 points better than Jose Bautista.
• 8th best wOBA, tied with Carlos Beltran, ahead of guys like Bautista, David Wright and Andrew Mccutchen.
• 4.4 fWAR, good for 27th best in baseball (among position players).
• A .380 OBP, good for 12th in baseball, assuming I counted correctly.
• A .535 SLG, 13th best in baseball.

Yep, 3y/$29MM will do just fine.

I'd like to point you to this, by the way:

Edwin is probably in a position to command a 4-year deal at the end of the season, by virtue of being a 29-year old free agent-to-be enjoying a career year.  He has some suspect defensive abilities (though he's been alright at 1B this year), which should limit his market to AL teams looking for a DH or 1B/DH combo, so maybe he won't do any better than the 3y/$27MM than Josh Willingham got this past offseason from Minnesota (though Willingham is 33).

Not bad.


Stuff
I have my trade deadline previews up at Nowhere Plans.  These were written before the Edwin signing, so he'd still be listed as a trade candidate, but you get the idea.  Here's the American League, and here's the National League.


Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic had some juicy stuff about the Justin Upton rumors, notably that the Jays are definitely a fit, and could include a third team if necessary.  It could happen, folks.


I don't remember if I mentioned this or not, since days are kind of starting to blend together, but Luis Perez is out for the year with elbow fuckups or something.  He's going to get a second opinion, but he'll probably have Tommy John.


Ever wonder what would happen if you hit a baseball pitched at 90% of the speed of light?  Me neither.  Way too fucking precise.  Anyway, here's the cliff notes, in video form.