The Baltimore Sun’s Roch Kubatko and Joe Christensen are reporting that free agent 1B Richie Sexson (above) has passed a physical examination performed by Mariners doctors and will sign a four year, $48 million contract with Seattle sometime tomorrow.
Kubatko and Christensen also claim that after being rebuffed by Sexson, Baltimore has turned its attentions to Marlins righty A.J. Burnett, as well as continuing to monitor the status of Carlos Delgado.
Running out of options at first base, they remain interested in Carlos Delgado and again contacted agent David Sloane Tuesday, though a source close to the negotiations referred to them as “kind of a housekeeping sort of discussion.” Sloane boarded a plane Tuesday night for his South Florida home, which is located about 20 minutes from the Orioles’ spring training site.
Baseball insiders speculate that Delgado is waiting to see if the New York Yankees enter the negotiations. His four-year, $68 million contract expired after the season, and it’s believed that he wants to avoid taking a sizable pay cut.
SS Royce Clayton, who didn’t quite make people forget Ozzie Smith, signed a one-year deal worth $1.3 million with Arizona.
the values of these contracts never cease to amaze.
Nick, the question is whether or not Sexson’s deal is commensurate with sums being paid to other players at his position with similar stats, age, etc., but also whether or not there is a relationship between player salaries and the revenues generated by the clubs. As staggering as the amounts paid to ballplayers must be, the profits collected by ownership aren’t too shabby either. Even for clubs that are said to be losing money, they’re generally sold for far more than what was paid to purchase them (the NBA’s Bucks being a good example).
Now that Beltre is onboard at Seattle, Ichiro is going to score a truckload of runs in 2005. It will also save him a bit of wear and tear as plenty of thse runs will be him jogging home with a Belte or Sexson jack. I dont dont expect a comeback year from Bret “I got my vitamins from Tijuana isntead of BALCO” Boone”….