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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Who is the new Manny Ramirez?
A few years ago, the Redsox tried to unload Manny Ramirez. And their asking price was fairly low: nothing. Just take him. And no one did. Why is that? If you buy a house for 2 million$ all on mortgage, and then the market tanked, and the same house across the street can be bought for 1 million$, you’d be ecstatic if someone else would take over the debt. You wouldn’t say “Hey, here’s a 1 million$ house! For free!”. No, the buyer would actually need to take over the mortgage too. And why would he do that, if he can buy the house across the street at half price?
These days however, inflation has caught up with Manny, and Manny’s true talent level has not suffered the expected decline. If Manny were to be released, there are teams that would gladly pick him up. What about today? Whose contract is so out-of-whack with the market, that if the player was released, not a single team would bite. Who is the new Manny?
Dave gives us his list over at USSM. My first thought was Carlos Lee, who I had pegged as signing a free agent contract that was 50 million$ more than he could deliver (the direct opposite of Chase Utley). Later in the comments though, Dave makes an interesting point that there actually might be another team that would have similarly overvalued him. That is, in a market where a 1 million$ house carries a 2 million$ mortgage, there might have actually been two teams crazy enough to buy that house. But, you might be able to say the same about Meche and Zito, so I would probably have said “no recent free agents” for the list.
So, the question is: who do you think is the new Manny? How much cash would you have to send along with the player, for someone to take over the contract?
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