More on the Joey Bats Contract

Assuming you haven't been living under a rock for the last few days, you've probably heard of the Jays signing Jose Bautista to a contract extension. The deal is for 5years at $64mil., and while a lot of people are skeptical  about this (including myself), I still think it just might work out.





First, let's take a look at the structure of this bad boy. Bautista is scheduled to earn $7 million in the coming 2011 campaign and $14 million for the remaining 4 years with a club option for a 6th year and a buyout tag of $1 million. Now, my real beef lies in the fact that its a little heavy on the backside (much like my ex girlfriend...ZING!) in 2014 and 2015.If you buy into the Jays farm system at all, you will know that a lot of our minor-league stars like Kyle Drabek, Zach Stewart, JP Arrencibia, Brett Lawrie and Brett Cecil will be well developed by then and (hopefully) kicking some major ass. And should this be the case, we're going to need some serious dolla dolla bills to hang onto them.

Now we can't expect him to repeat his Christ-like feat of 54 home runs from last season, but we can expect some good offensive numbers. Keep in mind that in the second half of last season he hit 30 of his 54 home runs, meaning that teams were still having trouble figuring out how to get it by him. Hypothetically if he hits 30-35 HR and brings in 100+ (which he should as we expect him to be hitting cleanup) then the contract will start to make more sense. Not to mention the whole "being a leader" thing and all those other intangibles that people like to suck on to justify a deal this big. But then again- a "big" contract is all relative. For the Jays, $65 million is a pretty big number, but relative to the Yankees or Red Sox, this is chump change that can be scavenged from the pockets of Brian Cashman or Theo Epstein themselves. Also, if he did  in fact hit the FA market, we could have expected to see a deal this big, if not bigger.

Payroll is an issue for the Jays and AA, but don't forget that we have some of the biggest pockets in the league backing this club - Rogers Communications. These guys know that we are going to need some serious funding down the road, and they are well aware of this shit-kicking juggernaut thats growing more and more every day. All in all, don't fret too much about the size of this deal and expect the payroll to blow up like Kirstie Alley did back in '03.