8.15.2007

The $40 Million Question

It's your job to give the final say on a contract for Brewers rookie phenom Ryan Braun. Due to the incredible start to his career, he's demanding an incredible amount of money. He wants to stay with the Brewers though and your fan base is in love with him.

You've been to the future and know that if you DO sign him - he will be plagued by injury. He'll never miss an entire season but he'll be on the disabled list frequently and when he's not, his play will be so-so. Fans will know that when you signed him, you had every reason to think he'd be incredible, but at the same time they'll be angry that all the teams money is tied up in someone that isn't helping the team.

You also know that if you DO NOT sign him - he will sign with the Devil Rays. There he will go on to a Hall Of Fame career - one of the greatest of all time. You will never play the Devil Rays directly, but everyone will always look back on the time that one of the best players of all time wanted to play for you and you sent him packing.

What do you do?

6 comments:

michael said...

Both in your situation and in the real world: I think the Brewers should shop him around. It looked like Rickie Weeks was going to be a blockbuster guy and before that we had Richie Sexon. Add in Ben Sheets and it is easy to see why spending big on one player is a bad strategy in the MLB. If we give Braun big money it will be bad news. Prince Fielder on the other hand....

Anonymous said...

have to trade him. Good GMs consider winning first, and fans opinions sometime after that (not necessarily second). If the team has a better chance of winning by trading him for prospects and signing a number of other players with the money, that's what they should do. Fans will come around when the team wins, most of them aren't very smart anyway, so they shouldn't be running the team.

jimhalberg said...

I agree with you both the comments so far. Sheets definitely shows how easy it is to not only commit a bunch of money to someone... but also to have him be *just* healthy enough at contract time to commit for a few more years.

tom said...

Yeah, you'd have to trade him in that situation.

There was some sort of weird economic circumstances when he was brought up, too. I wish I remembered the details of this, or understood the contract he's under better, but there was something where the Brewers were going to owe him about $8 million less if they would have waited 2 more weeks to call him up.

Regardless, a trade might be the for the best. I think we're seeing that all of the young talent on this team needs a couple more years of experience before becoming a legitimate threat. Tough to keep them all together for that long.

Whitney said...

Upon reading the post, I too immediately thought of Sheets. Don't we already have a guy that supposed to be awesome when not plagued by injury?

Anonymous said...

Jimmer, Sign him and platoon him so he doesn't get hurt. Oops, if you sign him you gots to play him....Right ? Great stick...needs a little experience at the hot spot. I say, thumbs up....he stays.

Your best F-in-L