Bay Signs w/Mets?

[Neato Torpedo]

Beltran may be getting old, but he can still cover a lot of ground out there. Just have him shade closer to LF and it won't make up for all of it, but it will make up for some of the ground that he can't cover out there. And I wish we would play Pagan out in RF and throw Francoeur over at 1B. Therefore the whole OF can shift towards LF and still cover a lot of ground.

That sounds like a pretty good plan, actually, except the part about benching Murphy in favor of Francoeur.

[kab21]

He'd have to OPS 1.000 to make up for his defense and earn that $18 mil/year average.

Except that his contract avg's 16.5M which is apparently heavily backloaded and reduces the present day value more. And according to fangraphs he earned 15.7M last season so earning his contract isn't far fetched. the biggest problem is that it will be hard for Bay to earn more than his contract while there is quite a bit of downside (think magglio Ordonez).

But this is true of nearly every big dollar FA signing. these guys are never bargains. I think a guy like Lackey will end up being a bigger disappointment than Bay. Burnett and Lowe are pretty questionable to earn their contracts. Even guys like Tex, MCab and CC who had great seasons only exceeded their contract value by 3-4M. Pretty much when you are getting a top FA then the best you can hope for is that he merely earns his contract.