Tuesday, April 13, 2004 |
Shaft Resigned
Update: on the money, $48M over four years. That's one heck of a big gamble.
Update: The more I think about this, the less I like the deal. GA took advantage of Arte's neck-sticking and got far more in dollars and years than he should have been given. What this comes down to is Stoneman betting that the 37-year-old version of Anderson will hit as well as the 32-year-old version. It's about as bad as the Salmon deal, and will be coincident with it for a couple years. PECOTA (subscription required) projects Anderson to take a substantial dip in value starting this year, with an eye-popping 36.4% collapse rate this year alone. Many of his comps (Tony Oliva 1972, Joe Pepitone 1972, Ted Kluszewski 1956, George Bell 1991, Orlando Cepeda 1969, and Dante Bichette 1995) started or were in the midst of substantial declines. It looks startlingly like another move based more on sentiment than sense. The major caveat with PECOTA is that Anderson only picks up 35 comps, so as crystal balls go, it's a pretty foggy one. Chalk it up to Stoneman's inability to discern from career years, a flaw that got Scott Spiezio resigned as a starting first baseman in 2003.
Update yet again: U.S.S. Mariner agrees with me, and even goes so far as to say Arte could prove to be another Tom Hicks. All that, of course, predicated on PECOTA's accuracy. For sure, I wouldn't have given GA that much dough for that many years.
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