Last offseason, Ramirez’ agent, the infamous Scott Boras, pulled off the ultimate heist in securing another client, Alex Rodriguez, an even better contract than the one he opted out of to become a free agent. The trick in this case was that after wriggling free of a ten year 250 million dollar contract right in the middle of it, Boras was able to get the Yankees to up the ante for another ten years and about $275 million, with no apparent competition willing to go anywhere near those figures. The Yankees declined to call Boras’ bluff and, in effect, bid against themselves.
Of course, we all know that the laws of MLB economics don’t apply to the Yankees, so there really should be no surprise there. However, other teams took note of the outcome of the A-Rod contract saga and, given the tightening economy, are simply refusing to play Boras’ brand of hardball. This has led to the incredibly intriguing standoff between Manny Ramirez and the Dodgers.
While some have made the interesting assertion that teams publicly disavowing their connection to Ramirez (and thus keeping his price down) might be an indication of collusion among the MLB owners, this has no doubt been a bizarre offseason, and it isn’t exactly true that no other teams want Ramirez on their ballclub. There is no one in baseball who actually believes a bat like Ramirez does not make their team better. However, this isn’t a question of not wanting Ramirez so much as not wanting him at the price and length of commitment he and Boras are asking.
There are a number of factors which have been working against Ramirez securing the four to six year, 25 million dollar per year contract he was originally seeking. The first, as I have already mentioned, is the struggling economy. The second is that, before the economy decidedly turned south, there was already a distinct movement among MLB executives favoring financial flexibility. A number of teams had been the victims of contracts which never made sense for them in terms of length of the deal, and had been burned for it. The names Chan Ho Park, Darren Dreifort, and Kevin Brown should ring familiar for Dodgers fans.
Unlike the Yankees, who are able to eat money and withstand a bad deal or several (see: Carl Pavano, Jason Giambi, Jaret Wright, etc.) most teams cannot afford to commit to paying a single player a large portion of their operating payroll for a long period of time, as such deals don’t often work out in the team’s favor in the long run, particularly with veterans on the wrong side of 30. And that is essentially where the Ramirez standoff lies: caught between the Dodgers’ perceptive refusal to give a player more than the market dictates, and an agent working under an antiquated notion of what that market is.
In a market of four years ago, Ramirez would have easily gotten his $25 million per year over the long haul, and by that sixth year whatever team was employing him likely would have been paying a 42-year-old player and getting little to no return. Teams have gotten wise and are refusing to lose out over the long term for a short term payoff. Especially for an NL team, signing the already oafish-fielding Ramirez to a long term deal would be ludicrous, and it should be no surprise, given all the other mitigating factors, that teams are staying clear of Ramirez (or at least refusing to best the Dodger’s initial offer) and he is so far without a job.
The great irony, and humor, in this situation is simply that if Ramirez had played the good guy, continued to hit and endear himself to the city of Boston, the Red Sox likely would have picked up his 20 million dollar options for the 2009 and 2010 seasons. Instead, Ramirez behaved poorly -- to say the least -- to ensure that this would not happen, believing he would get a better (and longer) deal on the open market. Of course, maybe this was not Ramirez, but Boras playing the devil on Manny’s dreadlocked shoulder. In either case, someone made an incredible misread of the economic situation and market for Ramirez, and here’s guessing he ends up taking a variation of the Dodger’s initial offer with added incentives or an option year thrown in to save face -- slightly more money than he would have received in Boston, but having taken a giant PR hit in the process.
For someone who really doesn’t like Manny Ramirez, it’s been quite satisfying offseason. Whether it be him brooding that no one will sign him, the fact that Ramirez is the victim of his own ego, or the continued deconstruction of the invincible aura of Scott Boras, there are enjoyable twists in every aspect of this story.
No comments:
Post a Comment