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Originally Posted by Cross-Over
Beltre wasn't on purpose, they were surprised and dissappointed to see him go.
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True, however I never thought that the 2004 Beltre was the real Beltre and resigning him would be a big mistake for the team. His 2004 season was so far beyond his consistant mediocrity pre-2004 that there is no way he'd live up to the numbers the contract would be based upon.
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You didn't comment on the main idea of my post, the fact that Gagne was drastically underpaid up through his Cy Young year.
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Teams that give out contracts that are in excess of market value to 'reward' a previously underpaid player are teams that make bad decisions. It's a hometown discount, not a hometown premium. I've seen the Diamondbacks do this too many times.
His 2003 season was in line with what he should have been making
at that time Going into that year, he had one good season and two crappy seasons. Relief pitchers are notoriously unreliable so you can't give a huge contract based on one year (see Beltre). Therefore, 550k was all he should have been given.
Going into 2004, it was obvious that he was the real deal and therefore due more money. He didn't want to take what they offerred so he went to arbitration. Arbitration is known as a dirty deal. It's made worse because the arbitrators aren't usually baseball people also. Teams use everything they can to win their case and because a lot of not so nice things come up, they try to avoid it. Still $5M is a lot of money for a player that has been aribtration eligible two times.
$12M is too much because if grossly exceeds the amounts made by other closers (except Rivera). I know Smoltz was way up there too but wasn't his contract signed when they expected him to be a starter and he only ended up as a closer because they didn't think he'd be able to put those innings in his arm? The max they should have given him was $8M/yr.