Same Old Story

To the great relief of, well, me, the Phillies have not signed Jamie Moyer to any kind of ridiculous contract, as the Seattle Mariners have instead retained their aging workhorse, with a three-year, $15.5 million deal. With incentives, Moyer could garner up to $21.5 mil over the course of the contract. This, I suppose, is not a terrible deal by today's standards (heck, Darren Dreifort made $9 mil last year, and he pitched about as often as the retired Ron Popeil). Jayson Stark reports rumblings that Moyer's contract with Seattle takes the form of a $1.5 million base salary with incentives based on - get this - being a good pitcher! If he pitches a certain number of innings and makes a certain number of starts, he makes - are you ready? - more money! Based on performance! What a concept. You see, in the great tradition of Charles Manson and Gomez Addams, Moyer chose to represent himself in the negotiations. In doing so he accomplished two major things:

1) He saved some cash. No comission to some grubby-handed agent.

B) He was able to recognize, in ways that the agents for other players often are not (see: Alfonzo, Edgardo), his own limitations, and did not want to hamstring the organization with his contract if he should begin to suck three years from now, which is somewhat likely, given that he's already 40 and that he throws slowly enough that he can sometimes get three strikes on a batter out with only one pitch.

The Mariners also re-signed John Olerud (34 as of 1 June 2003) to a reasonable, two-year contract, kept Edgar Martinez (40), Dan Wilson (33), and Shigetoshi Hasegawa (34), offered arbitration to Norm Charlton (40), and signed Pat Borders (40) to a minor league contract. The team's other mainstays include: Mark McLemore (38), Jeff Nelson (36, no relation), Bret Boone (34), Arthur Rhodes (33), and Jeff Cirillo, who is 33-going-on-corpse. This is a team that miraculously won 93 games in the toughest division in MLB last year, but they're not doing anything to improve, so far theis off-season. GM Pat Gillick earned the sobriquet "Stand Pat" while he was in Baltimore and Toronto, for his propensity to resign guys on the roster and not make many late-season trades. The nickname seems pretty appropriate so far, but when thew Angels and A's got better, the Mariners are going to start falling off precipitously if they don't start bringing up some more young talent. (Yes, I know about Piniero and Franklin, and if Freddy Garcia's 26, I'm Elizabeth Taylor.