Re-signing Fielder and scott boras factor

[PrinceFielderx1]

I was wondering what the Brewers chances were of extending Fielder's contract before FA considering Boras is Fielders agent?

 

Is there any chance?

 

The way I see it Suppan, Hall and Riske salary's are all coming off the books after 2010 which adds up to about 26 million. Couldn't that money be better spent going to Prince Fielder in a long term deal?

[greeg35]

My first question is whether or not it would be good idea to break the bank on Fielder. He is my favorite Brewer of all time; but I'm not sure it would be wise to tie up the amount of money it will take into a first baseman that may or may not stay in shape after signing the contract. My bet is that he stays in shape and produces for a long while; but I still think we have to save our money for more important and less replaceable positions.

 

That said, to answer your question, I think after seeing the package we put together for CC that it might be possible. Not probable though.

[Invader3K]

I'd offer him something huge like 10 years/$160 million. Make sure it gets leaked to the public, so when Boras inevitably turns it down, everyone knows who the real devil is. If he takes it, then you have some good cost certainty at a fair price for the next decade.

[endaround]

Yeah turn the public against the player! That'll be a great idea!

[JohnBriggs12]

My first question is whether or not it would be good idea to break the bank on Fielder. He is my favorite Brewer of all time; but I'm not sure it would be wise to tie up the amount of money it will take into a first baseman that may or may not stay in shape after signing the contract. My bet is that he stays in shape and produces for a long while; but I still think we have to save our money for more important and less replaceable positions.

 

That said, to answer your question, I think after seeing the package we put together for CC that it might be possible. Not probable though.

If you equate Fielder with Pujols (and his numbers this year certainly equate), then he's not as replaceable as you think. It's one thing replacing a .275 hitter with 35 HR and 105 RBI. It's quite another replacing 46 and 141, and 110 BB and a .300 BA. As for the weight issue, I think that's a non-issue. You don't put up those numbers if money is your sole motivator. Fielder has tremendous pride. He was determined to rebound from his "off" year of 08. There's no reason to think he won't have 6-7 more years of peak production, especially if he's teamed with Braun. Those two push each other as does the "competition" with Pujols and Howard.

[Thurston Fluff]

Yeah turn the public against the player! That'll be a great idea!

 

If he takes the deal then the public won't be against him. If he doesn't so what? He won't be here anyway.

[Invader3K]

Yeah turn the public against the player! That'll be a great idea!

The sentiment would probably be more against Boras, but I don't care either way. Players turn stuff against the team all the time. At least if they offer him a large contract (for the second time), it will show the Brewers are serious about trying to keep him, and trying to field a winner. Then when he leaves in FA or gets traded, it will dull the pain felt by the fanbase somewhat.

[WV Brew]

I don't have negative towards Sabathia. Quite the contrary. The Brewers offered him a fair deal and earned the fans' respect by doing it. The fans have been turned off in the past (Molitor anyone?) by not at least offering a fair deal. It makes them seem like they don't care if the team wins or not.

[owbc]

Prince will get a Teixiera-size deal if he wants it. I think teams will be a little hesitant on the 8th or 9th year due to his size, so I see something around 7 years, $160 million. That really has nothing to do with Boras. The Brewers have absolutely no chance if he gets to free agency, the only possibility is if he agrees to something like a 5 year, $120 million extension in the next year or so. They should definitely market him at the deadline this year.

 

The Brewers never had any intention of resigning Sabathia...the offer was purely symbolic.

[thebruce44]

If you equate Fielder with Pujols (and his numbers this year certainly equate), then he's not as replaceable as you think.

 

Pujols was worth almost 2 wins more than Fielder this year, which is huge. As good as Prince was, his defense and the fact that he plays first base don't make him worth what he will earn after his Arby years. Add in the fact that it is very possible he will not consistantly provide the offensive numbers he did this year, and I would be looking to trade him as some team is going to give him way too much money.

[Never Outhustled]

Fielder provided evidence that he is the rare player who is a client of Boars, but not a pawn of Boras, this past offseason when he accepted a 2 year deal during his arby years.

 

Next Fielder will have decide how his destiny will unravel. Will he decide he would rather become an all-time icon in the city of Milwaukee and make more money than any sane person could ever spend, or will he strive for pride-filled gesture of becoming one of the games highest paid players, become a career nomad, and possibly gaining greater national recognition? Will a desire to win factor into choosing either path?

 

I can't even speculate which he'll choose, much less which path is the right one when I'm not wearing his shoes.

[Invader3K]

Actually, some of Boras' clients do work out deals with their teams, but usually only before hitting FA. So the fact that Prince took a two year deal isn't really all that unheard of for a Scott Boras client. I do think a lot of it will come down to Prince's personal feelings, like you said. Part of me thinks he isn't really a big city guy. Imagine if he went to play for the Boston, and had one bad season, looking slightly overweight. The media there would never let him hear the end of it. In Milwaukee there's a lot less scrutiny overall for a baseball player. He may decide he likes playing with Ryan Braun and Co. and is willing to take only a huge amount of money instead of an insane amount of money to stay for a few more years. I wouldn't bet on it, but it isn't impossible.

[JoeHova]

The question is whether the team will make a relatively fair offer to Prince. They declined to do that with Sabathia but they have somewhat better bargaining position with Prince and the Yankees have a 1st baseman already so they might feel they have more of a realistic chance to sign Prince than they did CC.

 

If we look at the average of Prince's last years, he's been worth 4.7 wins annually. If we use what teams paid for wins last off season ($4.5 million per win), that means Prince is worth $21.15 million per year. Knock a little off because he's already under team control for 2 years and because the team assumes all of the risk in a long-term deal but it's still clear that Prince is a legit $20 million per year player, even discounting the possibility that he will improve more because he's only 25.

 

If the Brewers took the initiative and offered him a 7 year $135 million deal that kicked in after 2010, I think that he'd have to think about taking it. I'm not sure he would, but I'm sure he'd be tempted. That would save him from having to worry about getting hurt over the next two years before he reached free agency.

 

As for whether it would be smart for the Brewers to offer that much cash to anybody, much less a perceived injury risk like Prince, I don't really know. However, a team has to spend some money at some point if it wants to be consistently competitive.

[TooLiveBrew]

I never knew Jay Fiedler was a two-sport star! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

 

I still think the chances of re-signing Prince are pretty remote, but what the Brewers can eventually get in return via trade will probably make it all worthwhile.

[logan82]

The CC offer was fair, it wasn't competitive.

[twobrewers]

I never knew Jay Fiedler was a two-sport star! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

You were wrong. Jay Fiedler played some professional beach volleyball after he retired from the NFL.

[PrinceFielderx1]

The Brewers never had any intention of resigning Sabathia...the offer was purely symbolic.

I don't believe you make an offer of that magnitude without intending to pay it IMO.

 

Actually, some of Boras' clients do work out deals with their teams, but usually only before hitting FA.

I mentioned Boras because he usually advises his top players reach FA to set the market. He rarely agrees to a deal before FA that buys out FA years.

[ELCABALLO45]

It think it would be funny PrinceFielderx1 is really Prince Fielder asking for some advice from brewer fans http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif.

 

But seriously, I hope we offer him a big deal and he accepts. However its so hard to see it happening.

[PrinceFielderx1]

Fielder provided evidence that he is the rare player who is a client of Boars, but not a pawn of Boras, this past offseason when he accepted a 2 year deal during his arby years.

I think this bold part could be potentially very important when it comes to resigning Prince Fielder.

 

If anybody is interested here is a youtube link on everybody's take on when Prince Fielder signed that 2 year deal. There are comments from all of the Brewers upper management and even Ryan Braun. Very cool..

 

Link

[JoeHova]

The CC offer was fair, it wasn't competitive.

This is mostly semantics but when you offer only 62% of the market rate, that's not really a fair offer in my mind.

[Invader3K]

You're forgetting that the Yankees probably overpaid by at least a bit (relatively speaking) to scare off other bidders. It doesn't matter because I think the Yankees were intent on paying basically any price it took to land C.C.

 

It was a fair offer...the Yankees offer was irresponsible, but you can't blame Sabathia for taking it.

[Thurston Fluff]

This is mostly semantics but when you offer only 62% of the market rate, that's not really a fair offer in my mind.

 

It was 62% of what he got not the market rate at the time the Brewers offered him the deal.

[JoeHova]

If you were selling a $20,000 car and someone offered $12,000, would you consider that a fair offer?

[Invader3K]

That's not a good analogy because it's not like C.C. was selling his services for a stated price (at least as far as any of us know).

[JoeHova]

But because of the Johan contract, it was obvious the sort of contract CC would be receiving, despite not having quite as good a track record as Johan. Santana received a 6 year, $137.5 million contract extension. CC's is basically the same contract with one more year added on. Thus, I think the car analogy holds. CC knew he was worth over $130 million, even if he didn't know exactly how much he was worth (same thing when you sell a car, the blue book gives you a guide, but not necessarily an exact price). The Brewers offered far, far less than that and knew they had no chance of re-signing him. They are likely to do the same thing with Prince, but hopefully they decide to make a competitive offer instead.

 

The Mark Teixiera deal is an analogue for Prince's deal in the same way the Johan one was for CC. Teixiera was worth an average of 4.5 wins over the 3 years before he signed his deal and was going into his age 29 season. Prince is 3 years younger, possibly making a long-term deal to him a slightly safer proposition (although that may be canceled out by Prince's body type). Teixiera signed an 8 year, $180 million dollar contract. Prince is under contract for $10.5 million next year, for 2011 let's give him the $19 million Ryan Howard signed for to avoid his last year of arby.

 

If we use those criteria, Prince is probably in line for an offer of 8 years and $165 million this offseason. Like I said before, knock a little off because Prince has 2 years of arby left and the team assumes some unneeded risk, but a deal is not going to be cheap. If the Brewers publicize some sort of 6 year, $90 million offer, they are not being serious in negotiations and are pulling another Sabathia.