November 2nd, 2014
by Dakota Antelman
Earlier this week the Red Sox managed to ink a two year 18 million dollar deal with their closer, Koji Uehara. Uehara who, especially in 2013, exhibited near hall of fame talent from his position, will likely end his career making $9 million a season. Needless to say, nine million dollars is a hefty price to pay for a player in his final professional seasons. Whether or not it is a worthy price will be proven by Koji’s play throughout this contract.
Uehara has been in baseball for over two decades now. He came to the MLB having already amassed a particularly impressive career with Japan’s Yurimori Giants baseball team and soon did the same in America. He played three years with Baltimore and two seasons with Texas. During that span, Uehara was only given the role of closer once and rarely even made it into games.
With Boston, that all changed. Since he came to the team in the onslaught of transactions that preceded the 2013 season, he has made 47 saves and blown just 8. His ERA has averaged out at just about 1.8 while his ability to utterly humiliate batters has never been overlooked.
"You're really looking at a guy who has been one of the elite relievers in baseball for several years," Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington said.
But after all, Uehara also was at times shaky this season giving rise to the question; was 2013 just a fluke?
Furthermore when you compare Uehara’s deal to those of some of the MLB’s other top closers its values could worry some Sox fans.
For example, Tiger’s closer Joe Nathan was given a $20 million dollar contract before this past season. By the numbers his contract is similar to that of Uehara. However Nathan was handed the pay raise after a 43 save season in which he amassed an ERA of 1.39. Those numbers are not similar to those of Uehara.
The Sox appeared to have evaluated the play of Uehara intensively but it also appears that they may have not reached the best final decision. Very frankly, giving a 39 year old such a big money contract after he was admittedly “shaky” could very well hurt this team in the near future.
Koji Uehara is a very talented player but the Sox are showing some blatant inconsistencies in their personnel decisions. If they saw enough problems in their closer’s game to bench him than they should not then turn around and claim to see enough good things in his game to pay him such a big contract.
The Boston Red Sox are walking a dangerously thin line here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment