The price was $154 million for seven years, Casey Kelley, Anthony Rizzo, Reymond Fuentes, and Eric Patterson. Gonzalez and Crawford cost the Sox a cool $296 million dollars. I guess you could also add the $29.7 million for Buchholz to bring this to $325 million. Wow.
Is Gonzalez worth that kind of green? The only other players who have signed more lucrative deals are:
- AFraud – 275m
- Jeter - 189m
- Mauer – 184m
- Teixeira – 180m
- Sabathia – 161m
- MannyBManny 160m
- Tulowitzki – 157.5m
That is select company. Since the Sox lost out on Teixeira, that would be a good comp. Here are the numbers:
Adrian Gonzalez
- 24 – 24 HR, 82 RBI, 304/362/500
- 25 – 30 HR, 100 RBI, 282/347/502
- 26 – 36 HR, 119 RBI, 279/361/510
- 27 – 40 HR, 99 RBI, 277/407/551
- 28 – 31 HR, 101 RBI, 298/393/511
Mark Teixeira
- 24 – 38 HR, 112 RBI, 281/370/560
- 25 – 43 HR, 144 RBI, 301/379/575
- 26 – 33 HR, 110 RBI, 282/371/514
- 27 – 30 HR, 105 RBI, 306/400/563
- 28 – 33 HR, 121 RBI, 308/410/552
After his 180 million dollar deal with the Yankees, he produced:
- 29 with NYY – 39 HR, 122 RBI, 292/383/565
- 30 with NYY – 33 HR, 108 RBI, 256/365/481
In the five years from age 24-28, Gonzalez hit 161 HRs and Teixeira hit 177 HRs. Teixeira produced at a better clip then Gonzalez during those years, slugging more and getting on base at a better rate. I expect that the Red Sox are hoping that Gonzalez will have production close to Teixeira’s 29 and 30 season. If so, then the Red Sox will get their money’s worth. From what little I have seen so far, I’d say Gonzalez is on par, if not a tad better, then Teixeira defensively.
Baseball Prospectus has Teixeira as Gonzalez’s #2 comp and they project (at 50 percentile) that Gonzalez will have a 30 HR, 96 RBI season. That would be nice, but not Teixeira numbers for his age 29 season. My prediction? As a Sox homer, I say Gonzalez does a tad better – along the lines of his 70th percentile – 293/391/519 with 33 HR and 100 RBI.
Will he be worth the money? According to Fangraphs value numbers for Adrian, he has been worth 29 and 21 million the last two years. If that estimate of his value is close then I’d say the Sox will do just fine. This will not be an albatross contract.
As an aside, look out Twins fans, don’t get weak in the knees, your season may be in big trouble. This quote from Ron Gardenhire must be very worrisome:
“Honestly, I don’t know how long it’s going to be. We’ve got the DL time, the two weeks, 15-dayer, but I don’t know how long it’s going to be, because this is something we haven’t had to deal with.”
“Actually, his knee is feeling great. It’s the rest of the body that’s kind of taken a hit, and we’ve just got to try to get that all straightened out and whether he’s compensating for one thing, the weakness in the leg that he had surgery on or whatever, we’ve just got to figure it out and back off a little bit here.”
“You know what? It happens. It happens in this game. This is a tough game, and he’s in a tough spot catching. You just have to deal with it and you have to move forward.”
Hello Drew Butera. Those can’t be good words to hear in the Twin Cities.

Posted by Chris 

