So it has been widely reported that the Tigers have made Ivan Rodriguez a very generous offer of 4 years for $40 million and the response has been a resounding silence. Up until Wednesday, I thought this was purely a ploy by Scott Boras, but then with Pudge coming to Detroit for the physical I acutally started to believe the deal might happen. Now, without any response for the I-Rod camp I’m reverting back to ploy concept, especially considering there hasn’t been another team interested. Sure, Boras has talked about a mystery team, but nobody can figure out who this team is. Whether or not you like the Peter Gammons’s, Jayson Stark’s, Ken Rosenthals they are pretty well connected in the sport and nobody has published a hint of another team.
So what does this mean for the Tigers? Could they have done anything differently to seal this deal? I actually think the Tigers played this as well as they could have. Yes, 4 years is too long, and $40 million is too much money, but the Tigers are in a position where they need to play by a different set of rules. All they have to offer is money because they can’t sell players on a good situation. As long as 2-3 years from now we don’t start hearing how the Tigers can’t sign players because so much is invested in Rodriguez it should be okay. I like that they didn’t make a play until the market was completely dry for Pudge. I also like the fact that they tried to keep this fairly quiet, but not totally silent. The Tigers also get additional points for the timing of this “negotiation” that occured the same week that season tickets went on sale hoping to further generate buzz, which it did.
Now the other question is who is the anonymous source that released the terms of the contract? The obvious answer would be Boras to increase the bidding. However, could it be that the Tigers made the offer on Thursday, and when Pudge didn’t accept it by Friday night they leaked it to scare off other bidders (if there are other bidders)? Nobody else is going to offer those years or dollars. Sure, it might make the Tigers look bad to be spurned even though they offered the best contract, but before last week was there anybody that actually thought Pudge would sign here?
The next question is how long do the Tigers leave the offer out there?
Other Stuff
-Over on Tigerscentral there is a pretty good discussion about the impact of Pudge signing.
Billfer, solid analysis and thanks for the Tigerscentral plug. I’m disturbed at the indication that the contract is backloaded. If that is the case they will have trouble unloading him if they need too. I think he’s going to sign; nobody else is going to come near their offer in either dollars or years. The PR value and ticket-selling potential far outweigh any contribution Pudge will make on the field. This will not be like the Juan Gone fiacso because they will have him wrapped up for four years and there will be at least some nominal sense that he wants to be here. As far as how he improves the team– well their catching is so awful that even if Pudge collapses from an .830 OPS to .700 he will still be a huge improvement.
Thanks Tim. I’m also disturbed that the contract may be back loaded. I’d much rather see them paying $12 million the first two years and $8 million on the back two. It wouldn’t bother me however if the back end years had heavy incentives for games caught. The longer Pudge waits to decide, the harder it will be for him from a fans PR perspective, especially if he does drop from last years performance level.
I’m pretty out of touch on this seeing that I didn’t even know about Pudge and the Tigers until today. I think that will be pretty cool if they get him and hopefully a good sign that Illitch is serious about building Tigers back to respectability.
I really don’t think Pudge is the same type of guy that Juan Gone was. He could get discouraged, ala higgy, but he wont become a problem.
I was looking at Fransisco Cordero’s numbers yesturday…man, what i would give to get him and the Cat back.
Thanks for the plug Bill.