Well, first off, I haven’t seen any of the details of Jayson Werth’s brand spanking new $127M deal with the Washington Nationals. And I’m not about to say anything about the demise of baseball after another deal that is likely to be seen as a disaster.
In fact, I think there should be some kind of celebration! After all, while most average fans like me rightly consider ourselves much smarter than whatever general manager represents our favorite club, a deal like this only confirms what we already knew. I don’t know about you, but that’s a GREAT feeling!
Werth is going to be taking a lot of heat for this deal. Maybe not right away, but in 2012, when he’s hitting .249 with one home run at the All Star break and Stephen Strasburg is 5-7 with a 1.53 ERA after losing his third straight 1-0 decision, there might be some Nats fans starting to get just a tad impatient.
If Werth turns out to be a dud like his former mates Aaron Rowand and Pat Burrell, the market for Phillie outfielders who become free agents just might dry up.
We shouldn’t be blaming Werth or even everybody’s favorite agent Steve Boras for this. After all, nobody (as far as I know) was holding a gun to anybody’s head.
Really, the worst part of this deal is that the Nationals have not only tied their future to one player, but they have basically crippled their organization as far as making other improvements to the team.
Barring disaster, in a few years they will have over $50 million a year invested in three players (Werth, Strasburg, and Bryce Harper) and will have to round out their roster by filling it out with a bunch of castoffs and misfits (I know that worked for one team this year, but there’s a reason the term “castoffs and misfits” doesn’t describe most World Champions).
Bottom line is, like the Rockies on the heels of their massive deal for Troy Tulowitzki, the Nationals will have very little flexibility in the next several years. Like our current World Champion San Francisco Giants, it might well take four to five years after their big mega deal expires before they can become competitive again.
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