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January 6, 2008
January can be kind of depressing, especially for a perpetual optimist like myself. With the year-end clips shows in the bag and the endless, over-hyped but strangely comforting holiday bowl games winding down, the realities of a cold, harsh winter are all the more apparant. The NFL playoffs generally guide me through January, but this year’s non-stop love-in for the New England Patriots has left the experience somehow void of intrigue. Call me when someone’s up two scores on them in the final minute and I’ll tune in, is my attitude. Until then I’m just going to assume they’re taking it to the proverbial house. So this year, with Tom Brady’s ubiquity erasing any chance I had of caring about NFL, I’ve turned, more than ever before to the shallow pool of MLB free agency; where champions are born and mediocre relievers make more than 99 per cent of the planet. Only this year, the pool isn’t so much shallow; it’s kiddie-sized. It’s a plastic alligator-shaped child’s wading cup that snaps in half when you try to lie down in it. Barry Bonds still has no home, for one, and the most talked about headlines involve Alex Rodriguez’s relationship with his agent, creative ways to butcher Cubs' Japanese import Kosuke Fukudome’s name and of course, what Roger Clemens is or is not sticking in his butt. And who can blame us, this year’s free agent signee group reads like the roster of a 75-win team from 2002. I was bored so I made this list: do with it what you will, but hope, like me, that it’s no indication of what the upcoming season will bring. In order of overall contract value (excluding obvious and unavoidable re-signs like Mike Lowell, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and the $275 million man himself. Top Signed Torii Hunter: Angels, $90 million Aaron Rowand: San Francisco, $60 million Carlos Silva: Seattle, $48 million Kosuke Fukudome: Cubs, $48 million Francisco Cordero: Cincinnati, $46 million Andruw Jones: Dodgers, $36.2 million Jose Guillen: Kansas City, $36 million Hiroki Kuroda: Dodgers, $35.3 million Luis Castillio (re-sign): Mets, $25 million Scott Linebrink (pictured): White Sox, $19 million Pretty awesome, huh? Lots to get excited about. Ok, so maybe I’m being a little hard on some of these former free agents since after all, if someone was stupid enough to offer me way more money than I deserved to do my job it’s not like I’d be in any hurry to stop them, and it’s not as if the idea that baseball players are among the more overpaid professional athletes is particularly new. STILL. As questionable as some of the contracts above are, there’s nothing that really jumps off the page as particularly hurting either. There’s no Carl Pavano-esqe deals that I can see, although Carlos Silva could prove to be pretty damn close. But in general, I would say this is the most mediocre list of free agent signees in my brief history of critiquing just such things, and I not exactly know why, but I feel like the fact that all anybody in baseball wants to talk about is the Mitchell Report is a big part of the problem. It’s like anybody who isn’t on the list is now worth 10 times what they were before, which means steroids aren’t just ruining the game any more, they’re starting to hurt the off-season as well.
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