Baseball’s free agent market is littered with the careers of players who waited too long to make a commitment. Alex Gonzalez wasn’t going to make that mistake.
Last fall, when Blue Jay GM Alex Anthopoulos served up a contract offer to the free-agent shortstop, he wasted no time in hitting it out of the park, leaving the Boston Red Sox looking for a replacement.
The Red Sox went into the off-season with a $6-million option on Gonzalez, but declined to exercise that option. They still wanted Gonzalez on their team but asked him to wait to negotiate until they had completed a deal (or not, as it turned out) with Jason Bay. The 33-year-old wasn’t of a mind to sit around and let offers come and go and perhaps lose out in this game of high-stakes musical chairs.
“They didn’t take the option,” Gonzalez said Sunday after hitting his eighth home run of the year to help the Jays to a 9-3 win over the Oakland Athletics.
“The only thing I heard from Boston was they wanted me to wait for Jason Bay to sign. And I said: ‘I don’t want to wait for anybody.’
“The Blue Jays called my agent and they made an offer and we signed.
“Everybody knows what the market is right now. I feel good here. It’s a great city to play ball and I like my teammates and the staff.”
It goes without saying they like him, too.
“We’ve been blessed with good shortstops,” said manager Cito Gaston, “and he’s just another good one. He’s got good hands out there, turning bad hops into good hops. And he’s hitting the ball, too.”
Gonzalez is tied with Vernon Wells for the team lead in home runs with eight and he leads the team outright in runs batted in, with 21.
The baseball dynamics that led, essentially, to the Red Sox and Blue Jays swapping shortstops are intriguing, if not downright curious.
From the start, it was clear the Jays were going to let Marco Scutaro go as a free agent. He had two outstanding seasons with the Jays, pressed into service as a regular out of necessity. When the Jays traded two minor-leaguers to Oakland for Scutaro in the fall of 2007, he was to be a “super-sub” with the idea that he would be a backup at multiple positions. Through injuries and poor performance by others, he stepped in and delivered his best years as a pro, especially after Gaston made him his everyday leadoff man.
But with the team heading into a rebuilding phase and Scutaro, at 34, a type A free agent, the Jays stood to get two draft choices from the club that signed him.
Meanwhile, in Boston, the Red Sox had that club option on Gonzalez but decided to decline it and paid the $500,000 buyout, making him a free agent, yet still hoping to re-sign him. The Jays moved quickly to fill their need and got Gonzalez to sign a one-year deal at $2.75 million, with a club option for 2011 at $2.5 million.
Rebuffed by Gonzalez, the Red Sox surveyed the field of candidates, identified Scutaro as their best option, and signed him to a two-year, $12.5 million contract. It will be interesting to see which team got the better part of the various aspects of this transaction but the early returns would indicate the Jays are well ahead of the game from both a financial and a competitive point of view.
Toronto has an outstanding two-way shortstop, who is leading all major-league shortstops in a variety of offensive categories, and still delivering his trademark solid defence at a very reasonable ($2.75 million) price. They also have Gonzalez under control, again at a reasonable price ($2.5 million) for 2011. They also have the 34th pick and the 80th pick in this year’s June draft as compensation for losing Scutaro.
Even if heir-apparent Adeiny Hechavarria adjusts to pro ball faster than expected, it’s doubtful he’ll be ready for the major leagues before 2012, just in time to take over from Gonzalez, if all goes to plan.
The Red Sox have Scutaro under contract for two years and he is giving them the solid play they expected: A .287 batting average, .362 on-base percentage and a .745 OPS for about the same price that it would have cost to keep Gonzalez around for this year.
Sounds like a solid win for the Blue Jays.
