After turning down a 7-year contract worth $107 million two springs ago, former Nats SS Ian Desmond accepted an one-year, $8 million contract to play left field for Texas yesterday, a precipitous drop in market value that left more than a few observers questioning the competency of Desmond’s agent, Doug Rogalski. Amongst those outraged ; MLB Network’s Jim Bowden and Dan Duquette, as quoted by the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg :
“I’m in a state of shock,” Bowden said on his SiriusXM program Sunday morning. “So [Howie] Kendrick gets 20 [million] for two [years], Desmond gets one year at eight. I am stunned. Absolutely stunned. … That’s a shocking number. What a great job by [Rangers GM] Jon Daniels to hang around long enough to get Desmond for one year at eight. So he went from 107 million to losing 99 million over the last 12 months? You want to talk about a humbling sport? How does a player’s value go from 107 to [eight]?”
“Here he is at age 30, giving up the position at shortstop for the most part,” Duquette said. “Now maybe that’s not the case. Maybe he’ll go back on the market next year as a shortstop. But we’ve talked about this quite a bit: the agent has not done a very good job in this particular deal, obviously turning down the money with the Nationals. But to now look at him in left field, on a one-year deal? I’m sorry. That’s about as bad as it gets for the kid, and I feel bad, because we know what kind of player he is and we know what kind of makeup he is. There should have been a multi-year deal out there somewhere.”