Money No Issue as Nats Pursue Fielder at BetLM

Money No Issue as Nats Pursue Fielder

First off, let’s dis­pense with the silli­ness that the Nation­als won’t sign Prince Fielder because they already have Adam LaRoche at first base. If you’re going to pay Fielder $ 150 mil­lion or some other big num­ber, swal­low­ing part or most of the remain­ing $ 9 mil­lion com­mit­ment to LaRoche is sim­ply the price of doing business.

Sec­ond, let’s not fret over Nation­als owner Ted Lerner over­pay­ing Fielder big after — ahem — over­pay­ing free-agent out­fielder Jayson Werth a year ago. Lerner is among the game’s wealth­i­est own­ers accord­ing to Forbes and — in keep­ing with the theme of the off­sea­son — the Nats’ local TV rev­enue is about to increase dramatically.

That rev­enue, reported to be $ 29 mil­lion a year, soon will “dou­ble, triple or more,” accord­ing to a major-league source. The Nats are due to “reset” their con­tract with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Net­work to ensure that their rights fee is still mar­ket value. If no deal can be reached with the Ori­oles, the larger stake-holder in MASN, the case will go to arbitration.

There’s your Prince money.

The Prince logic is just as clear — flawed per­haps, but clear.

The Nation­als likely would con­tend in 2012 and beyond if they added Fielder on top of left-hander Gio Gon­za­lez. Third base­man Ryan Zim­mer­man would par­tic­u­larly ben­e­fit; he had his two best sea­sons with another left-handed slug­ger, Adam Dunn, hit­ting behind him. The front-running D.C. mar­ket would be ener­gized, if not down­right transformed.

It’s rea­son­able to assume that Prince wants to join a stronger club than the Mariners or Ori­oles and sign a longer deal than the Cubs are will­ing to give him. Unless there is a mys­tery team — some­thing that can’t be ruled out with a player of Fielder’s stature — the Nats make the most sense. So much sense, that one source with knowl­edge of the team’s think­ing says that he “expects” a Fielder deal to happen.

Heck, some in base­ball have expected it to hap­pen all along, con­sid­er­ing that the Nation­als are Team Boras, as in Scott Boras. He is the agent who rep­re­sents not just Fielder, but also Werth, not just right-hander Stephen Stras­burg, but also out­fielder Bryce Harper, not just sec­ond base­man Danny Espinosa, but also third-base prospect Anthony Rendon.

You get the idea.

When Boras told me last week that to get Prince, “own­ers will move play­ers off their teams that already occupy posi­tions,” I thought right away of the Nation­als and LaRoche. Heck, Boras could map out a five– or even 10-year plan for the Nats based solely on his clients — and Lerner and his gen­eral man­ager, Mike Rizzo, repeat­edly have shown that they are will­ing to listen.

The Nats still need to sign Zim­mer­man long-term; he is a free agent after 2013. But if they had the money for Werth and Fielder, then it would be dif­fi­cult for them to say that they didn’t have the money for Zim­mer­man, who grew up in Vir­ginia Beach, Va., attended the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia and was the team’s first-ever draft pick.

Assum­ing, of course, they didn’t trade Zim­mer­man first.

Pre­pos­ter­ous? Fol­low the money. And fol­low the Boras clients.

Ren­don, the Nation­als’ No. 1 draft pick in 2011, plays third base. If the Nats signed Fielder, they could not move Zim­mer­man to first, a move Zim­mer­man might oppose, anyway.

Yet, if the Nats traded Zim­mer­man, they could clear not just a posi­tion for Ren­don, but also a high-salaried slot for yet another Boras client — cen­ter fielder Michael Bourn, who will be a free agent next off­sea­son. For now, the Nats’ plan is to use Werth as a stop­gap in cen­ter as they wait for Bourn and other cen­ter field­ers to hit the open market.

The Nats would not trade Zim­mer­man right away; he would have greater value if he rebounded after miss­ing time with fluke injuries in 2008 and ’11. Ren­don, mean­while, is com­ing off a strained throw­ing shoul­der and has yet to play a pro­fes­sional inning. Still, the poten­tial for a deal is obvi­ous — and the trig­ger would be if Zim­mer­man wanted a con­tract that the club deemed excessive.

Of course, all of this assumes that the Nation­als actu­ally will sign Fielder one year after award­ing Werth a back-loaded, seven-year, $ 126 mil­lion mon­stros­ity with a full no-trade clause. Fielder will want a deal at least that long and a full no-trade of his own. Yes, he is only 27. But his portly physique would be a greater risk for a National League team that can­not use a DH except in inter­league road games.

The solu­tion for both sides — in fact, for any Fielder suitor — might be an opt-out clause after three or four years. Such a deal would pro­vide the team with an imme­di­ate bang while giv­ing Fielder the chance to hit the mar­ket again at 30 or 31, when teams such as the Yan­kees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Mets might be in bet­ter posi­tion to bid.

How­ever the deal is struc­tured, the Nation­als can afford it. The amount of money won’t stop them. The pres­ence of LaRoche won’t stop them. The only thing that might stop them is Lerner say­ing no to Boras, and we’ve yet to see that hap­pen, have we?

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more MLB base­ball news see: Money no issue as Nats pur­sue Fielder.

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