Odds and Ends: A-Rod, Morrow, Cabrera

OMG, Part 13 of the A-Rod binder is hilarious!

An entire page dedicated to this quote: "Rodriguez will be ravished with such riches this time around that smart teams shouldn't woo him with money alone. this is a player keenly aware of his value as a marketing commodity thanks to his looks, bilingualism and squeaky clean behavior. He instantly gives any franchise prestige and should be treated as such." (Alan Schwarz, Baseball America)

Then there's a page with the top 10 paid position players of 2001... and then a comparison of A-Rod's age 24 numbers to each of those players, each ON A SEPARATE PAGE, and each page has the heading "Compared to _____, Rodriguez is clearly superior at age 24". And the comparisons are mostly meaningless, since by age 24 none of the ten players had gotten within 1000 plate appearances of A-Rod (Griffey Jr. excepted).

The rest of the thing is just as bad, with entire pages dedicated to glowing reviews mostly from people you've never heard of (And I think Mike Cameron had a crush on A-Rod: "Alex is just poetry in motion. He's Michelangelo. He plays smooth like no one you've ever seen."?) I love that Boras wasted so much space. Just wanted to drive those meaningless points home, didn't he?

metafrantic, you make fun of Boras' tactics, say they are meaningless points, but he got his client the biggest contract in the history of baseball two times in 7 years, so laugh all you want. Boras is laughing his way to the bank.

Morrow is one of the best setup men in the league, and a future star as a closer or a starter. The M's already have dropped a bundle into their rotation with Felix, Wash, Miggy, Ho Ram and now Silva. Leave the kid where he is. Morrow/Putz makes the M's untouchable after 7.

Unless Tim Lincecum's arm blows off, Morrow will always look like a bad draft choice to me. Bringing the hometown hero with the awesome 1-2 punch, how do you screw that up?

Oh well, Tim Lincecum would have just stolen a starting pitching spot needed by Carlos Silva or Miguel Batista anyway.

By the way, no Morrow isn't one of the best setup men in the league. A 1.67 WHIP is crap. A 4.12 ERA isn't good. His control is a joke. If you meant to write "Morrow is one of the best setup men on the Mariners" even then you could make arguments.