Blame it on the Cubs

We had made so much progress since 2001. Everyone was getting competetive, the bad teams were improving, and there was a change in the World Series champion every year. The Red Sox won. The White Sox won. Even the Marlins and Diamondbacks won. Now before last season, everyone was talking up the Brewers and Pirates, and even the Royals have fielded a good team this decade. The Tigers made the Series this year!
And then this offseason happened, and it’s all the Cubs fault. (A little blame can be assigned to the Red Sox too). First, the Cubs went out and hired a manager that won’t mesh at all on the North Side in Lou Piniella, then went after some players to bolster the roster, so he wouldn’t be reminded of why he left the Devil Rays. And the broke the bank. Alfonso Soriano got an outlandish contract to play the outfield, which isn’t his normal position, save for last season in Washington. They needed to put Soriano in the outfield, because they gave Mark DeRosa double his value to play second.
And that set the market for fielders (the Red Sox did that with the pitchers by biddin 51 million dollars to negotiate with Daisuke Matsuzaka).
So where do we stand? Gary Matthews is making ten million dollars a year. The Royals had to spend almost their entire surplus on Gil Meche. Gil Meche! And they have absolutely no wiggle room to improve any other aspect of their game. Gil Meche! That, of course, is the problem for this coming season. What will happen in the coming years?
Well, let’s take a look at my favorite small market team. The Twins have four big contract players, and a fairly set in stone with a 70 million dollar pay roll (tops), and I doubt they will go too high over that in the future. Their four big contract talents don’t have the contracts yet, of course. Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau will be earning their pay days pretty soon, and like it or not, Johan Santana and Torii Hunter will be getting even more money in the coming years as well. Let’s hypothesize. Johan Santana, as the best pitcher in baseball, will command in the neighborhood of 20 million a year. Torii Hunter, another veteran who is making 12 a year this year, will probably make 15 on his next contract, albeit for fewer years. Then you have the mystery of Morneau and Mauer. Morneau is comparable to Mark Teixeira in many ways, but we should probably mark up the contract by 25% since the market is inflated and he was an MVP. That puts Morneau at around 8 million. That would, of course, be an incredibly conservative estimate. I would say it could be nearly twice that. Joe Mauer might take the hometown discount at 10 a year. So, with those four players, the Twins will be looking at 53-60 million dollars a year alone. What does that mean for Carl Pohlad? That means that we’re either stocking the roster with town ball players, or you can expect to see a couple of those guys in other uniforms. It’s the sad truth.
And you can blame the Cubs. – Ryan