Scattered Thoughts on Tanaka

Are people really outraged about this?  The Yankees offered the guy $155MM.  !!!!  You guys!

I mean, I'm kind of with Stoeten at DJF, though not as aggressively as he is, when he says that he doesn't really believe that there's a 5-year max policy, and that the Jays just have that plastic film over everything that suggests that they're going to bother signing someone to a contract that's too long, and therefore terrible.  What sounds better: "We tried, but we didn't spend enough." or "We like the player, but we only like him at this price and at this length, both of which, were apparently not enough to land the player."  I'm totally not irritated at the idea of signing someone that we don't really know to such a huge deal.

It's just that... well, 7 years and $155MM for Tanaka... it's probably not a good idea.  It might be a good idea.  But it's probably not a good idea.  It's a shit load of money, and it's one of those deals that hurts if it goes bad.  Remember Vernon Wells?  That was only like 7 years and $126MM.  There are definitely some differences between the two in terms of the relative value of a dollar today and eight years ago, but still.

All this suggests that it was just a "highest bidder wins" kind of thing, which, by all accounts, it wasn't.  Tanaka was rumored to prefer LA or NY to any other location for a few reasons, such as location and the apparent opportunity to win now, but also preferring a city having a sizable Japanese population.  It's one thing to suggest we can just throw infinite money at a situation, but if he doesn't care about the difference between the $155MM he got, and whatever the hell any other team offered, biggest offer or not, then what's the difference?

I dunno, maybe I'm too much of an apologist.  We don't know what Tanaka is going to be, though, so there's no real reason to make a big stink about it.

I'm interested to see what Ubaldo, Garza and Santana sign for when everything is said and done.  Based on price and performance though, I'd probably feel pretty good about Ubaldo, Santana and Garza's performance being closer in line with their performance than Tanaka, given that they'll all probably sign deals worth half of what Tanaka signs for.