As if the Orioles' front office could not be any DUMBER, I must say they are handling this Mark Teixeira situation in the worst way possible.
Newsflash MacPhail and Angelos: Baltimore is not that great. Sure, those of us that live here love it and always will. But others, not so much. We have one of the highest murder rates in the country next to L.A. and Detroit. Therefore, why would you possibly think that Mark Teixeira would want to take a "hometown discount" to come here? Don't offer a discount! We are trying to convince him to play here, not assume that he wants to play here and offer him less since we are so "confident" that he will be an Oriole for scraps. Stupid.
The Orioles' initial offer was 7 years/$140-150 million. That was reported about a week and a half ago. The current offer after hearing the better offers by Boston and Washington? 7 years/$140-150 million. Um, what? Normally in an auction, to get the item that you would like, you have to OUTBID your opponents. The auctioneer does not just give the item to the third highest bid because the item has sentimental value to the bidder.
I would also like to remind the Orioles that this is not the Price is Right. There is no going "over." We cannot get away with bidding $1 and hoping that Boston and Washington bid too much. No such thing as bidding too much in baseball, especially when dealing with Scott Boras.
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One one hand, $20 mil per year sounds pretty damn good to me. Gotta hand it to the O's for actually offering that (the Phillies, you know World Champions, have no one paid more than $12 mil per year now that Burrell, $14 mil, is gone)
ReplyDeleteYou may rant that the O's should bump up the offer to match the Red Sox, but in all reality, I think the O's offer is incredibly generous and out of character for this club.
It is a very good offer, but the problem is the other offers have already beaten it. There is a 0.01% chance that Tex would take less money to be here than to go somewhere else. While what we are giving him is substantial, it is just not enough to keep up with everyone else.
ReplyDeleteWe need to bring it up to 8 or 9 years, and make it somewhere around $22 mil/year. Give him the no-trade clause and an opt out option for after 5 years. That way, if we still aren't winning by then, he can go somewhere else and save us the money.
I would say its higher % since he does like Maryland and $20 mil is not chicken feed. But it is true that it sucks to be in the AL east and have to compete with the Red Sox who, like the Yankees, will pay whatever it takes to get a player. If I were McPhail I would keep the base rate the same, but tack on extra years or options for extra years. The opt out and no-trade clauses are good. In addition, McPhail needs to really show Tex that the O's are committed to becoming a winning team, lay out the long term plan, sign or trade for a big name pitcher and go from there. Thats what these guys signing 10 year contracts want. They want to know they have a damn good chance of going to the World Series. As of now, Tex with the O's does not. But damn, even as a Phils fan, I would love it so much to see Tex playing in Bmore.
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