
you know, the guy's going to be 38 next june. he had a really nice three year run in seattle, somehow even managing a .290/30/120 one of those years... then he had that gangbusters start to the 09 season in philly where it was like OMFG RAUL IBANEZ!!
after he got inserted into that stacked philly lineup and played in a bandbox, he was amazing during the first half of 09.... but then in teh second half, he fell the fuck off (injury?) and the head of dennis green began to rise up over the horizon... which carried into his thoroughly pedestrian 2010 season.
he signed a three year deal going into 09 at roughly $10-11 mil per year, and now with domonic brown on the horizon (his extra-large cup of coffee last year wasn't exactly upping depends sales in philly, but he did put on some impressive displays in spring training 2010) so maybe you can get him for a song? i dunno why the phillies would want carlos quentin, unless they figure he's younger/cheaper and maybe you put him in that bandbox with that lineup he has some raul-type-magic and at worst you save a few bucks before giving domonic brown a real shot?
the sox' potential offseason plans aren't exactly inspiring confidence in me... although i confess that i had forgotten that matsui managed ~.275/20/80 last year for the angels, coming off of his world series MVP season.... that prospect just doesn't excite me. granted, if you make the postseason the guy does have a .930 career OPS with a pretty good sample size.
i'd also note that vlad is more than likely going to be back on the market (it's one of those mutual options that never gets picked up, cuz if the player does well fuck that he wants new paper, and if he blows fuck that the team doesn't want him) and even tho his postseason sucked, personal bias aside, i'd still roll the dice on vlad in a bandbox before i did it with matsui, who had an awfully quiet/pointless .275/20/80 last year. granted, once again, vlad fell the fuck off in mid-late july and swooned until september, when josh hamilton went down for awhile and he started picking up the pace to manage to scrape together a little more power and a push to get right back to .300 for the season...
i'd love to see vlad on the whitesox. if he avoided a late-season-swoon and could get back to his career average of .320 that'd be awfully nice. both he and matsui don't strike out much, tho an alarming trend for vlad in the last two seasons is basically he's said "fuck this, i'm swinging" and taken unusually low #s of walks, even tho he only struck out 60 times last year.
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Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?