Lets Talk Some Ball

First baseball blog of the year. And as the reluctant accountant, its only appropriate that I’m inspired to write by the signing of the Alex Rios and Aaron Hill contracts in the past week. For those of you who aren’t in the loop, the Jays have been pursuing a Rios extension for quite awhile now, and it seemed inevitable to be completed. So its not entirely surprising. The Hill signing came as a bit of a surprise to me. With that being said, I’m in agreement with the general media consensus, that these deals are great moves for the Jays.

The jays now have a solid core of players locked up into contracts that expire at the same time (Halladay, Burnett in 2010, and Wells, Rios and Hill into 2014). Sure, the contracts are somewhat backloaded, but it’s all about AVERAGE salary, since there’s no cap in baseball. Any good accountant knows that. In the end, these guys have all been locked into current market value contracts, and if their production continues on par, they’ll be ahead by 2014. The one exception to this is Burnett, BUT, I could argue, that this turnaround of the franchise would not have been possible without a gutsy signing like Burnett. At the time, no one wanted to be here, so we had to overpay to get what we wanted. Burnett was the best available that year, and we got him. He still shows potential, and IF he can stay off the DL, his stats will turn around.

But back to the main point. What makes me really happy about these signings is that the Jays are taking the initiative by signing quality players, who have their heads on straight. Don’t get me wrong, if the Jays could go out today, and get themselves an A-Rod, I don’t think you could argue about it. I’m even of the believe that Barry B in a Jays uniform could be a pretty decent thing to do. But there is something to be said about the signing of players (both by the Raps and the Jays), who are both solid players on the field, and great guys off the field.

Hill was interviewed after the signing and, when asked to comment on his contract, and the general belief that he signed a contract that undervalued his worth, he said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) “the money that was offered was right at what we were looking for. Sure, I could have gone year-to-year, and maybe gotten a little more, but how greedy can you be”.

And that’s pretty darn refreshing to hear.