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12/15/2005: "Thrown for a... my heart's not in that pun."


Yes indeed, ex-Card Braden Looper, three years, $13.5M. Couldn't spend $3M on a second baseman, but $3.5M for the first year of a deal for a relief pitcher? Come to Papa!

I don't get it, either, but taken in isolation of the Cardinals' inane salary caps it's not a bad deal. A better deal than the two years, $11M Scott Eyre extorted from the Cubbies, so maybe this is one of those contracts that needs to be viewed in terms of the bizarre economic climate in which baseball finds itself. And, really, Eyre isn't a bad reliever to compare Looper with, since the newest Cardinal epitomizes the rare breed of righty specialists people have portmanteau'd into ROOGY.

2005 was his worst season since becoming an effective reliever in 2001, and it wasn't even close--he lost two strikeouts per nine innings, struggled with his control, and went under the knife this September. Even then, these were his numbers against righties: .210/.285/.266. Yikes--you can write your own Aaron Miles joke. Those aren't fluke totals, either, since his three-year splits look pretty much the same. So how did he end up with a 3.94 ERA? Well, let's just say that he and Rincon will be splitting a lot of innings; over the past three years lefties hit .307/.356/.466 against him, and in 2005 that ballooned to .336/.402/.578.

You know how Tony loves his platoon splits--this could be a great acquisition. Are they overpaying? A little, maybe, although what is overpaying this offseason? But if you're going to spend that kind of money on a specialist, it might as well be the one who specializes in getting out the majority of major league hitters. And isn't it nice to hear about the Cardinals overpaying again?


Replies: 22 Comments

on Thursday, December 15th, CalvinPitt said

So as long as we keep him away from lefties and if my memory of this year serves, the ninth inning, he'll be fine. And for that 13.5 mil.
What a world we live in.



on Thursday, December 15th, Liam said

At least you gave up on your "thrown for a loop" bit. I'll lamely follow through with an even worse joke that his jersey number will be 127.0.0.1...



on Friday, December 16th, Dan said

No, that joke I approve of--if I had thought of it you can be sure I wouldn't have used my one "Heart not in it" exemption for the year.



on Friday, December 16th, Zach said

I think the reason the cards "overpaid" to get looper is because they are tired of losing out to all the other teams on free agents. And yesterday all i heard was that looper was headed to Philly so this came out of nowhere. Its nice to see the bullpen actually start to fill up but jesus lets get some outfield help.



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