Baseball Musings: Over Paying for Ichiro

July 11, 2007

Over Paying for Ichiro

Art Thiel explains why Ichiro deserves the big bucks:

Although Mariners officials said no deal and no announcement is imminent, the sides have been working quietly toward a new deal during the season. If the reported total of $90 million to $100 million is accurate, it represents a figure for a singles hitter that is astounding even by baseball's bloated standards.
As important, it means the Mariners' big money is again good.

More complete players have taken a pass on Seattle cash -- Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr., to name two of whom you may have heard. Griffey in 1999 turned down an eight-year, $138 million offer to take less from the Cincinnati Reds, his hometown team.

This time, the Mariners are buying more than a great player.

They are buying credibility.

One of their own believes in them.

That's nice, but unless credibility helps them bring in better players in the future, it won't convert to wins. In many ways, this is a typical Bavasi deal, over paying for an aging star. But it takes pressure off Bill with the fan base (here too). He kept the star in town, it's up to Ichiro to produce.

On top of that, Ichiro is one of those players you just love to watch. I used to feel this way about Bo Jackson. Bo wasn't a great players by any means, but I'd pay to see him play, because he might do something amazing. Ichiro has that quality. Who else takes balls in the dirt and turns them into base hits? Who else combines range and arm like Suzuki. Fans of all teams want to see him play, and that makes him more valuable.

So the Mariners bought an icon, a great player who is likely to decline over the term of his contract. Now it's up to Bavasi to put the right players around him to build a winner.

Posted by David Pinto at 08:26 AM | Players | TrackBack (0)

Comments

For certain players you need to look at contracts from the business side rather than the baseball side. How many millions of dollars does Ichiro bring in from Japanese fans and businesses? I have no idea, but its a lot. The same could be said about the Red Sox signing Matsuzaka.

Ichiro may not be worth $20 million for his play in 5 years, but he'll be worth it for the revenue he draws for the team.

Posted by: Frank at July 11, 2007 01:04 PM

Part of his big salary will be offset by the continued revenue stream from Japanese advertising and the additional fanbase that he generates.

Posted by: shawn at July 11, 2007 01:05 PM

The money from Asia is going to be bigger than we can imagine - consider the growing fan base as more and more players come from Japan (and other Asian countries via Japanese pro ball). The Mariners will have Ichiro, who will be the King of them all, which will help compete against the like of the Red Sox for consumers' eye-balls and all ranges of talent.

Posted by: Harry at July 11, 2007 07:08 PM

So far, the predictions I've heard about how much money teams will or can get from "the Asian markets" is almost completely incredible. Andrew Zimbalist estimated last winter that a huge superstar might net a team as much as $2 mil./year, and he usually knows what he's talking about, so, okay. And the Yankees apparently believed they would be able to offset a bunch of Matsui's salary. But I'm very, very skeptical about the idea that the Mariners will get anything worth mentioning from "Asian markets" out of having Ichiro on the team.

Posted by: James at July 11, 2007 07:18 PM

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