Wire Taps: Who's The Frontrunner Now?: Washington Nationals Last Week, Where's Prince Fielder Rumored To Be Going Now?

d_c_guy we got to get things going to me in voice for the auditions, eh… Soul baritone/bass calling in for duty..

I only meant that would impact this year, and you’re right that it doesn’t come across that way.

good points…

(hopefully without getting into the pro and cons of the merits of Tom Boswell), how do you respond to his reasoning regarding the signing of Fielder below from yesterdays Ask Boswell chat?

Boswell: As I’ve said before, the biggest issue for the Nats is how big they ultimately think their payroll can get? How rich is the Nats market? Can they afford to spend ~$63M on Werth, (extended Z’man) and Fielder starting in ‘14 and going for many years? Here are some numbers to help you think about it. It’s been suggested that the Nats could Do It All if they were willing to go to a $140-145M budget in a few years. Oh, indeed? How nice. But how many teams have a fan base and TV deals to support anything close to that?

Top Average Payrolls the last three seasons. Over $100M = Nine teams: Yanks (207), Red Sox (151), Phils (139), Mets (139), Cubs (137), Angels (125), Tigers (118), White Sox (109), Dodgers (107). Others over $90M = Five teams: Giants (99), Cards (97), Seattle (94), Minnesota (92), Braves (90).
That’s 14 out of 30 teams. The Nats were 22nd in total attendance last year. I’ve maintained for years that the Nationals should be in the $85-to-$100M range. Maybe more if the MASN deals increases a lot. But if you give $60 to $63M/yr to Fielder, Werth and Zimmerman, how do you build the rest of the team and how do you extend any of your young players when they reach their arbitration years — and that’s a long list: Strasburg, Zimmermann, Storen, Ramos, Espinosa, Morse, Harper and plenty of others, like Clippard, Rendon, Matt Purke.
If you sign Fielder and Z’man out to ‘19 with Werth already out to ’17, and you also want to keep a reasonable percentage of your young stars, then Nationals Park better be packed, and I mean 35 to 40K every night, not just 30 to 35K, for years at a time. It’s nice to be optimistic. But this strikes me as foolish.
Finally, if Strasburg, Z’mann or Gonzalez gets hurt — just one of them turns out to have a short career like Prior — where do you get that third top-of-rotation starter? That may be where the free agent money needs to get spent in ‘13-1’14-15.
The question is not “Would you like to have Fielder on your team?” Of course you would. The question is: How much and how long. And, because Fielder is not a “fit” for the Nats position needs and because the N.L. has no DH, he should not be worth nearly as much to the Nats as he would be to the proper A.L. team.
However, this year, that “proper A.L. team” doesn’t exist. Unless it turns out to be the Rangers, which is quite doubtful.

To me the key issue when it comes to signing Fielder is “how much and how long”.
Yes the signing would be very exciting but not without a sizable risk. It seems to me that with this signing (especially if it’s for more than 4 years) the Nats could very well be unnecessarily be painting themselves into a financial corner.

you could certainly be right that we add him for just a few years, which I didn’t consider and should have. On the flip side, I wouldn’t be absolutely certain that he’d turn down a bigger deal due to championship probability. Werth certainly went with the money instead of a worse deal to stay with Philly, and since one of the main reasons people have held back on Fielder is because they think he very well might decline sooner than later, you’d have to imagine that he’s aware that he’s taking a real risk if he goes for the shorter deal with the idea of getting another big payday when he’s in his 30s… just food for thought.

I expect the suitors on the phone are comprised of the Nats, M’s, O’s and the Jays. My speculation is the Nats already placed an offer, probably above the other three, and Boras is hoping for a counter from Texas.

still I’d rather have heat than that darn snow stuff.

Eighth all time in bWAR for shortstops, and 61st among all players. Put up 56 bWAR between 1988 and 1998, nearly twice as many as the next nearest shortstop, and in fact third most of ANY player during that time (behind a couple guys named Bonds and Griffey). 10 seasons with at least 500 PAs, ties him for 20th among shortstops. Fourteenth in games played at shortstop. Third all time in homers by a shortstop. Twelve All Stars. Nine Silver Sluggers. An MVP.

I think he’s qualified.