Don't Fall For It!

[Espo]

He didn't do it because Oakland has a history of doing those things, they did that with field players like Giambi & Damon. They have historically built their teams through their farm systems and get what they can out of their players until they become free agents and then trade them away or let them sign elsewhere.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/category?blogid=21&cat=539
Jason Giambi contract offer
Giambi ended up walking away from the A's six-year offer, and that's a good thing for Oakland. He has had a couple of good seasons in New York, and this year is back to his old form -- dammit. But he was also a drag on the offense for two years while struggling with a mysterious intestinal parasite. The Yankees can afford to pay somebody for 7 years at $17 million a year in order to get four productive seasons. The A's don't have money to burn like that.

 

[Zeno]

This kind of spending happened a few years back when A-rod got $25M/year and it came back down to earth. To say that the market is set and won't EVER go down is a far stretch. There will be a market correction when people realize how stupid some of the spending was.

Thats a terrible analogy. A-Rod who is considered one of the best players in the game got paid a fortune--its not like Rich Aurellia got paid $20 Million...Meche and Suppan who are average(at best) starters got paid a fortune, that sets the bar, no good pitcher is going to accept less than that, money=respect to a lot of athletes and a player is not going to settle for less because spending is "stupid", they are going to take advantage of it.

 

[Espo]

You forget that that was also the offseason that Chan ho Park got $100 +M

 

[devilfan02]

It's well documented that certain teams this offseason are spending ridiculous amounts of money because the players they signed during the last big spending offseason (2000) are off thier payroll.

In 2000, Arod signed a 252 million dollar deal, Mussina signed a 88 million dollar deal, Darren Dreifert 55 million dollar deal, and there were several others. Besides Arod, all those players deals expired this past offseason or the year before which resulted in a spike in spending. I'm with Espo, this offseason will be chalked up as abnormal and next year should return back to somewhat normal. Contracts will definitely be higher but not as crazy as this year. The same thing happened after the 2000 free agency nightmare