Seriously?
Mark Teixeira is a pretty good ballplayer--his career OPS+ is 134, he’s good for 30 taters and 100 RBI, knows the value of a base on balls and is a pretty slick gloveman for a first sacker. Here are his last three seasons from age 26-28:
AVG OBP SLG Runs HR RBI OPS+
.282 .371 .514 99 33 110 126
.306 .400 .563 86 30 105 150
.308 .410 .552 102 33 121 151
Pretty solid. Yet hardly anything that would indicate that he’s the second coming of anything yet Scott Boras has teams soiling themselves in anticipation of landing him for the next eight years at $20 million annually at the minimum. To put his numbers into some kind of perspective, let’s see how some other recent first basemen fared at the same age:
AVG OBP SLG Runs HR RBI OPS+
.292 .385 .592 94 38 115 150
.272 .377 .571 113 44 134 137
.344 .470 .664 115 41 137 181
Any guesses? Would you rather have Teixeira or Carlos Delgado? Let’s look at another example:
AVG OBP SLG Runs HR RBI OPS+
.286 .423 .579 104 40 102 156
.293 .413 .584 89 30 85 153
.277 .426 .540 101 33 108 141
Again, a superior offensive force but not as good defensively. Yet, that was Jim Thome at the same age. Now to really blow your minds:
AVG OBP SLG Runs HR RBI OPS+
.353 .487 .729 106 38 101 211
.308 .454 .606 102 40 111 179
.349 .459 .626 110 40 134 178
Not even close--but those were “The Big Hurt” Frank Thomas’s totals for his age 26-28 and guess what? His age 26 and 27 seasons were shortened by the strike of 1994-95 yet still put up better counting numbers than Teixeira. One more:
AVG OBP SLG Runs HR RBI OPS+
.368 .451 .750 104 39 116 213
.290 .399 .496 88 21 87 142
.315 .451 .570 111 31 120 178
O.K. his age 27 season might not look so hot, but bear in mind that like Thomas, Jeff Bagwell’s age 26 and 27 seasons were likewise strike shortened. He was every bit as good a defender as Teixeira plus he was a better base stealer going 30-30 on a couple of occasions.
Were any of these guys lusted after the way Teixeira is right now? We get a good idea of how effective the Scott Boras hype machine is; nobody would’ve thought of dropping the years and dough on the four players cited above for 8-10 years even though Teixeira is probably the worst offensive player of the bunch.
That glove must be really special though eh?
I think whatever team ponies up for him will experience the truth of “the winner‘s curse” in that once his offense starts to decline the club will be left with a roided up version of Lyle Overbay (I’m not saying Teixeira uses steroids, I’m just saying that if Overbay was a user his offense would likely be better plus he’s a pretty slick gloveman himself).
As always, I’m rooting against Scott Boras and I’ve given up hope that teams will see Teixeira for what he really is and not what Boras portrays him to be; I’m nowhere near ready to celebrate the reduced contracts that may be given to his other big clients (Manny Ramirez and Derek Lowe) since it’s far too early to say that they won’t get vastly overvalued deals from some sucker.
We should never lose sight of what Boras did for Magglio Ordonez--he was coming off knee surgery, feuded with the White Sox front office and played just 52 games in 2004 at age 30 batting .292/.351/.485 (114 OPS+) and looked to be only good for a one-year deal to re-establish his market value. Then out of nowhere in the first week of February word came out that the Detroit Tigers were giving him a five year/$75 million deal.
I’m looking forward to Boras’s decline and fall but there’s too much offseason remaining for me to hope that he’s badly misread the market and being fired by a couple more of his clients. Teams are too desperate for starting pitching for Lowe not to land a deal not unlike A.J. Burnett’s and if Boras can corner Hank Steinbrenner one-on-one anything can happen.
He’ll blow it big time one day--I’m just not sure that this will be the year.
Best Regards
John
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