Interesting post from a Seattle Board...
Why Signing Richie Sexson Is A Bad Idea
As with playing the popular work time-wasting game minesweeper, you can only float through the free agent market for so long. Eventually, you win — or you hit a mine.
If reports from multiple sources, including Fox and the Seattle P-I are to be believed, the Mariners just [url="http://msn.foxsports.com/story/3242270"]hit a big, 6-foot-8 mine named Richie Sexson.
I’m on the record in multiple places saying that signing Sexson is a bad idea, having placed him squarely on my not recommended list of free agents.
Let me go a step further this time: at best, this signing is merely an ill-advised waste of resources. At worst, it’s a complete disaster.
Contract details are not available at this time, so I’ll refrain from assuming the worst, but I’m wholeheartedly against guaranteeing Sexson any more than a single year. You might say this makes me ultra-conservative — but Arizona, at this point the only team with full information about his health, agreed.
Think about this: the Diamondbacks sent six players to the Brewers for Sexson one short year ago — then let him walk when he refused to take an incentive-laden deal — even though the deal offered $10 million in guaranteed money for next year. The Diamondbacks say their medical staff estimates a 10 percent chance his shoulder injury recurs, and as Will Carroll has written, surgery doesn’t prevent the injury from recurring.
Our A-B neighbor and resident medhead has written a lot about Sexson, and none of it is encouraging.
Check out this grisly description of the injury — the force of Sexson holding his swing up was so violent that the bone popped out of joint and was bruised upon re-attachment. Will speculates that Sexson’s long arms will continue to tax that shoulder during his swing.[/url]
Though Sexson’s injury wasn’t as severe as a similar malady suffered by Shawn Green, Carroll says that Green’s power outage after surgery could be a close parallel for Sexson. Given that all Richie Sexson does well is send baseballs a long way, that’s not a skill he can afford to have diminish.
If looking at Shawn Green’s hundred-point slugging percentage drop post-op isn’t enough to scare you, maybe Jon Weisman’s take on whether he’ll ever be the same will.
Why did the M’s go in this direction? The market for Carlos Delgado is heating up. Reports have Delgado seeking four years, $64 milion, or five years, $75 million. That’s too much, and I don’t blame the Mariners for shying away — but I also think, frankly, that the older Delgado will come closer to earning a four-year deal than Sexson would.
Health issues, while at the forefront of my concerns, aren’t the only reasons I’m against this signing. It uses prime dollars on a position where replacement talent is readily available and cheap, Sexson is a right-handed batter likely to adapt poorly to Safeco Field, and the M’s have to give up a draft pick as compensation since Arizona offered him arbitration.
Ironically, Sexson’s health issues might be the silver lining. The P-I and Ken Rosenthal are both reporting that the deal is pending a physical.
Like David Cameron, I am actively rooting for Sexson to fail that physical. Unless Sexson signed for the same deal he rejected in Arizona, I can’t imagine the financial outlay being worth the substantial risk.
Posted on Dec 13, 2004 at 1:51 AM
Why Signing Richie Sexson Is A Bad Idea
