Mark Teixeira? Just say NO

I woke up this morning to read this: according to some un-named source in the Nationals front office, they are “99% likely to land Teixeira.”

But wait! There's more; according to sources yahoo.com reports that the Nationals are willing to offer 20 million a year for up to 10 years. 200 million dollars!?!?! You have to be kidding me here Jim.

Don't get me wrong, Mark Teixeira is a great talent, and probably a great guy (even if he was on the Braves). He's a 28 year old, 6 foot 3 inch, 220 pound slugger who can hit for average, gets on base, and doesn't strike out all that much. His fielding ability has been praised by many and he's a local boy, from Annapolis.

It's not as if he came out of nowhere to produce these career numbers either, he's was a top 5 draft pick in 2001, and was a star at Georgia Tech. In fact I remember Baseball America quoting one of his minor league coaches as saying, “The only thing wrong with him is he's not extremely fast, his name is hard to spell, and he can't walk on water.”

Now that I've given him his due, let me explain why this deal would probably end in disaster for the Nats.

This season, splitting between Atlanta and Los Angeles (so hitting behind or in front of Chipper Jones or Vlad Guerrero) Texierra combined to bat .308 with 33 homers and 121 RBI. Compared to other first basemen in the league he ranked fourth in batting average, 8^th in homers, and fourth in RBI. Therefor it's safe to say he was probably the fourth or fifth best first basemen in the majors behind Pujols, Berkman, Howard, and Miguel Cabrerra (Maybe even Kevin Youkalis?). You can argue the order, but you can't argue that he's certainly better than any of these guys.

Lets also not forget about Prince Fielder, David Ortiz, Justin Morneau, Adrian Gonzalez....

So why do the Nationals want to pay him like he's Alex Rodriguez?

Miguel Cabrera contract- 8 Years/$152.3 million

Albert Pujols contract- 7 years/$100 million

Ryan Howard contract- 1 year/$10 million

Lance Berkman contract- 6 years/$85 million

Supposed Teixeira contract with the Nats- 7 years/$150 million – 10 years/$200 million

Let's not forget that the market, and the economy, is much more bear than they were when all those contracts were signed. More recently guys like reigning AL MVP Dustin Pedroia signed a 6 year/$40.5 million deal, and reigning AL Rookie of the Year Evan Longoria inked a 6 year/$17.5 million deal.

Economic disaster aside, the Nationals are very very far away from competing in any division, much less the National League East. They lost a league leading 102 games this season with poor pitching, poor hitting, poor fielding, and poor baseball intelligence. How far are they from turning this team into a playoff team? There's no clear answer for sure. They need their young talent who are a ways from the majors to develop, and they probably need to acquire a pitching prospect or two...then they need to wait about two or three years.

Quite frankly there aren't enough free agents out there for them to buy up and become a playoff team. So what impact could Teixeira have?

Positive impact: His WARP is listed as 10 wins above replacement player, which means based on his performance he would give his team an estimated extra 10 wins over a guy like Aaron Boone or whoever the Nats had filling in for injuries at first last year. That gives brings the team down to 92 losses...excellent. One could also argue that having his bat in the line up may give more protection to other batters, making their WARP slightly increase as well.

Negative impact: When Alex Rodriguez signed a mega-deal to a last place team in Texas, it crippled them financially. Sure, they did have the best player in baseball, but it didn't take them out of last place. It financially constricted them from getting good young free agents, and caused tension between a star who wanted to win, and a team that couldn't get out of his shadow.

Signing Teixeira would put the Nationals in a very similar situation. However a key difference is, Teixiera isn't the best player in baseball, he's three years older than Rodriguez at the time and most importantly, The Nationals already have the most money on the team invested into his position. Let's also not forget the Nats top prospect last year, Chris Morrero, plays first base.

So what would giving this contract to Teixeira do? It would lock up for 10 years a guy who will only be in his prime another 4 or 5, a time frame when the Nationals wont need a star because they probably wont be competing. It will restrict the team from getting better free agents over the next several years like Tim Lincecum, Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes and others. Let's also not forget we havn't even given team cornerstones John Lannan or Ryan Zimmerman a long term deal yet.

Let's rethink this Mr. Bowden.